Tuesday
Because I’m currently traveling and lack access to a library, I can’t quote directly from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon about black men who turn homicidal in response to racial injustice. I can say, however, that the man who murdered five Dallas police officers reminds me of Guitar, the best friend of Milkman, Morrison’s protagonist.
When he is a child, Guitar is orphaned when his father is sliced in two in a lumber mill accident. The mill’s boss doesn’t even have the sensitivity to put the pieces back together properly. Guitar’s mind is further turned by the brutal killing of Emmett Till for supposedly whistling at a white woman.
Morrison sympathizes with Guitar’s anger, but she also shows what happens when anger becomes violent. Guitar joins a secret organization called “the Seven Days,” which kills an innocent white person each time an innocent black is killed by whites. Although supposedly constrained by a set of rules, the gang is unhinged by its violence, and an increasingly paranoid Guitar goes after Milkman when he thinks his friend has double-crossed him. Trying to shoot Milkman, he instead kills his wonderful aunt Pilate. Violence meant to be retributive justice instead becomes a horror show, with other African Americans as its major victims.
Such was the case in Dallas. This police force in America’s seventh largest city was trying to clean up its act, with its police chief having his officers learn new ways to deescalate potential conflict. There were even instances of the Dallas police and protesters posing together for photographs before the shooting started. In other words, a relatively enlightened police department was targeted.
In her novel, Morrison gives us a positive alternative in Milkman. Initially adrift and uninterested in politics—as a privileged black man he can afford to be—he embarks on a roots quest and consequently develops a strong sense of black pride. He learns what it means to act powerfully and effectively in the world, and by the end of the novel he is literally soaring into his potential. He is a good model for the Black Lives Matter movement.
