The Afterlife of Property: On George Floyd’s Death and Black Fatherhood

Summary

The article reflects on the systemic racism and violence against Black individuals in the United States, as exemplified by the death of George Floyd, and its impact on Black fatherhood and the author's personal fears for his son's future in a society that still grapples with the legacy of slavery.

Abstract

The author, a Black father, recounts his personal experiences with the police and the fear that accompanies such encounters, particularly in the context of raising a son in a country where Black individuals are often treated as expendable. He connects the historical institution of slavery to the present-day treatment of Black Americans, highlighting the lack of substantial progress despite pivotal moments in history that could have led to true freedom and equality. The article underscores the concept of "the afterlife of property" as it pertains to Black people, suggesting that the nation's collective memory and actions, or lack thereof, continue to devalue Black lives. The author contemplates the challenges of nurturing his son in a society that may view him as a statistic or a token of diversity rather than a person of meaning and beauty. He contrasts the joy of welcoming new life with the harsh reality of preparing his child for a world that may not value him, using the metaphor of the afterlife of property to describe the ongoing struggle for Black personhood in America.

Opinions

The author believes that the United States has repeatedly failed to reconcile its foundational contradiction of affixing freedom to bondage, particularly in its treatment of Black individuals.
He expresses a deep-seated fear during interactions with law enforcement, aware that any encounter could potentially be his last due to the systemic injustices faced by Black men.
The author suggests that the lack of meaningful reparations and the delayed response to George Floyd's murder are indicative of a nation that has not fully come to terms with its history of slavery and its ongoing consequences.
He criticizes the indifference of many white people to the struggles and lives of Black Americans, which he sees as a manifestation of the afterlife of property.
The author is determined to raise his son with the knowledge that his life has intrinsic value, despite societal pressures that may try to reduce him to a mere statistic or diversity quota.
He mourns the fact that Black Americans are still fighting for basic recognition of their humanity and rights, and that their lives are often only acknowledged in the context of violence and death.

The Afterlife of Property: On George Floyd’s Death and Black Fatherhood

This morning, while I waited for my son’s Similac to warm up, I learned that protesters in Minneapolis burned down the police precinct where Derek Chauvin allegedly operated from. I was disquieted. I changed his diaper, fed my child, and settled into what feels like a daily routine of looking at the ledger of Black death in the media and on my Twitter timeline; I always feel I am one encounter with a cop away from joining. All I know is that I wanted justice for George Floyd.

I think about my recent encounter with the police. I was driving on Old Stage Coach Road, north of Wal-Mart, blasting some Biggie when I noticed the red and blue lights in my rearview. I could not hear the klaxon’s sounds. It felt surreal. I looked past my recently installed car seat and the “Baby on Board” sticker affixed on my rear window pane and saw the flashing, flashing, flashing. I pulled over. My heart tightened as it does with all encounters with police. I wanted to hang on to see and hold my son. Please don’t let this be the time the state punches my card.

Through his Arkansas Razorbacks mask, the police informed me my tags were out of date. He was gentle, courteous. I did my best to ensure he had no reason to challenge me by forking over my license and registration and keeping my hands on the steering wheel as I spoke, traffic stop etiquette being a survival behavior ingrained into muscle memory. I prayed the officer did not seek challenge, asking to search my car or some other violation of my civil and property rights that is visited all too often on Black folk. I know what such challenge means. I would stop being a person and become an object. People do as they please with objects. Did Floyd feel this fear as Chauvin pressed down on his neck with his knee?

The police gave me a warning and went on his way. I took my hands off the steering wheel once he turned down Old Stage Coach Road. My papers laid on my passenger seat. I carefully organized them and put them back in the glove compartment. I was sweating; the air conditioning was set to 65 degrees. I looked back and wondered how that encounter would of went with my son in the back seat. I don’t play any more rap music during the trip.

The thing, the Big Thing, that happened to America — its genesis and what will be its apocalypse — is slavery. No nation that so intentionally affixed freedom to bondage would be able to escape or survive its contradictions. We had several chances to sever this paradox; Bacon’s Rebellion, the framing of the Constitution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement. But at each pass, freedom faced deferment and defeat. At the core of all the failures to midwife the true birth of freedom is the deep-seated belief in the hearts of enough politically active white people that Black people deserve this fate — preordained, and seemingly out of their influence — and them forgetting that fate is simply an exertion of power for good or ill. A nation gets the fate it works for. Our fate is that the state kills Black folk like George Floyd and blames them for their demise, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Professor Christina Sharpe, author of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, refers to Floyd’s state of being as “the afterlife of property.” Property is used, traded, and discarded once its owner has no more use for it. In this nation built on black slavery, the afterlife of property is evidenced by the absence of reparation. “If museums and memorials,” she argues, “materialize a kind of reparation…how does one memorialize chattel slavery and its afterlives, which are unfolding still? How does one memorialize the everyday?” A nation with honest memory would never use its knee to clamp shut the windpipe of a surrendered man. A state that memorialized the brutalities which Floyd’s ancestors endured would never take four days and a burned city to react to a crime that was documented in real-time.

White people and Black personhood manifest the afterlife of property in different ways. For whites, it is the indifference to the subjugation and annihilation of Black life. Never forget that Philando Castile was gunned down in the city that now burns, despite having his papers in order; his killer walked free, for what is the consequence of killing something with the patina of property? For Black personhood, the manifestation happens in our folklore. Our music and our histories, our BBQs and our cautionary tales — that despite how caviler this nation has condition itself to be concerning us, our lives are of meaning and beauty.

It was easier to focus on the folklore when it was just me. I was fresh out of college and was eager to pursue justice. It became harder once I married, and I entered the web of love that defines so much of my happiness now; I would not have my wife a widow.

Now I have a Son, a child I have to raise in a nation that has never accepted that his people are no longer property. This imperfect nation will try to flatten him into myriad forms of property that they can own and manipulate; a statistic on some CompStat report to show crime is going down while police forces continue to commit rapine on my community; some diversity hire to show that companies and non-profits are committed to diversity while my community remains the most segregated in the nation; some behavioral or academic statistics that shows a school is doing its best while presiding over massive opportunity gaps between its white and black students. My family came together, despite police and pestilence, to welcome this beautiful human being into this world. George Floyd’s lynching, however, shows the world that we have to prepare him for. He lives now the afterlife of property, simultaneously the most precious thing in the universe and a object for America to work out its historical frustrations.

The Similac cooled enough for me to give to my son. I cuddle him, and sing him what is quickly becoming his favorite song — Lauryn Hill’s cover of“Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You.”