I’m Black, My Brother’s White … and He’s a Cop Who Shot a Black Man on Duty
It’s one thing to have to ask this of the police. It’s another to ask it of your brother. Photograph: Steve Eberhardt/Demotix/Corbis
By Zach Stafford | Originally Published at The Guardian. August 25, 2014 07.30 EDT
By Zach Stafford | Originally Published at The Guardian. August 25, 2014 07.30 EDT
My white brother loved black people more than I did when we were growing up. As a black interracial child of the south – one who lived in a homogenous white town – I struggled with my own blackness. I struggled even more with loving that blackness. But my brother, Mitch, didn’t. He loved me unapologetically. He loved me loudly.
He also loved screwing with other people’s expectations. Whenever we met new people or I joined a social situation he was in, Mitch would make sure I was standing right next to him for introductions and say, “This is Zach, my brother” – and then go silent with a smirk.
These new acquaintances would then scan back and forth with such intensity – black, white, white, black – that our faces became a kind of tennis court, with strangers waiting for someone to fault. Eventually someone would awkwardly laugh and say something like: “Oh, adopted brother,” immediately looking relieved to have figured it out. My brother would deny that and push the line further, “No, like, my brother. We have the same mom. We are blood.”
That would lead to someone questioning me intensely, and, each time, my white brother would stand next to me, proud: prouder than me of my own skin. And over the years, as he continued playing this game, I became prouder … with his help.
And then, years later and far away in Chicago, I got the phone call: my brother, now a cop, had shot an unarmed black man back in Tennessee.
Hearing about black men dying is never exactly a surprise. Every day, you see the news stories: On the news, black men die while getting Skittles. On the news, black men die in choke-holds. On the news, black men dieempathyeducates – I’m Black, My Brother’s White … and He’s a Cop Who Shot a Black Man on Duty:
