The Devaluation of Black Life: Silence as a Governmental Policy

On that day, with the smallest of hopes, I turned thirty-six years old and celebrated with used plastic cups and tainted black neglect. For television screens were once again filled with new reports of America’s uncouth dark children looting, rioting, and carrying on in baseless thuggery. The plain reason for this behavior was another Black body had been snatched from the grips of an unclean urban street by a police officer. But as with most things in life, the surface rarely explains the nuances.

At this point, it’s bastardly to continue a conversation about those reacting to the death of someone who looks like them, without a proper critique of the institutions that killed said person. So in an attempt to steady the discussion of what occurred on April 27th, 2015—the day of Freddie Gray’s homegoing, we are obligated to turn our most critical eye on a government that regulates the sale of lettuce with more care than it extends to the Black lives.

Freddie Gray’s murder at the hands of Baltimore police officers didn’t happen in a vacuum. He was just another Black edifice thrown atop a pile of already bullet laced black bodies. These murders, those of innocent Black folk by agents of the state, do not in and of themselves devalue Black life. No, that occurs when the very government that is said to be of, by, and for the people remains mum. This is the space in which we exist. We must name this space because without summer sky clarity we run the risk of not completely understanding how and why.

Devaluation normally refers to the official lowering of the value of a country’s currency in a fixed or semi-fixed exchange rate. This process is not to be confused with deprecation. Depreciation occurs when value drops due to outside forces. Said plainly; when the United States allows these officers who are killing our Black loved ones to walk free, then the United States is systematically, deliberately lessening the worth of Blacks and participating in devaluation through its semi-fixed exchange. This fixed system or exchange happens to occur at every level of government in this country and, it creates an extra tax for Blacks. The extra tax levied against Blacks manifests in education, economics, the body politic, and it swims gracefully through the unjust justice system. The extra tax—or said another way, the demonization of Blacks—consults and guides the warped thoughts of officers who choose to shoot, choke, and as in this case break the soft spinal cords of Blacks for simply being.

Countries that devalue their currencies usually do so for selfish gain. So, what does the United States gain from devaluing Black lives? The gain is plain: America gets to remind every strong-willed Negro that they are still second class citizens who exist only when they reject the notion of “uppityness.” For he, she or they who choose to stand upright shall be snuffed out as was the case with Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and Freddie Gray and so many before and since. The eradication of Blacks is but collateral damage in a country dead set on maintaining the status quo: white supremacy. Lest we forget John F. Kennedy’s hands were soiled by his silence when Southern cops maimed and killed Blacks, Abraham Lincoln’s hands were dirtied when he chose complacency over freedom—for all Blacks—Franklin Roosevelt’s hands were muddied when he used the New Deal to destroy and denigrate Black communities, and this list extends to every president before, after, and in between.

So, rather than surprise or shock that a Baltimore Court found Edward Nero (one of the officers who murdered Freddie) not guilty on all charges, I’m simply reminded that silence has always been the United States’ preferred policy stance as it relates to Black folk. While we seek to redefine justice and make it more equitable, we all are crying with Freddie’s family.

RIP Freddie Gray.