George. Breonna. Tamir. Andrew. ‘It hurts to be a Black man’ for exhausted NC residents

Chris Kenan pulled up to Rochelle Manor Apartments for an event he created to encourage dialogue between the predominantly Black residents of the East Durham neighborhood and the police. Before he could shut his car door, he saw the deep division.

Multiple police cars and officers were huddled on one side of the street, with a crowd of residents, tensions rising, who at the moment wasn’t interested in attending the weekly Safe Zone Friday gathering he organized last August.

It sums up the dilemma many Black men are feeling when dealing with police. With every positive interaction and stride taken to heal old wounds, it seems a fresh scab is ripped off.

Police, responding to a call of a “suspicious person with a gun,” had their guns pointed at a Black teen-aged male before handcuffing him. Ultimately the police admitted the 15-year-old was not who they were looking for, The News & Observer reported at the time, which was why the residents were so angry.

The scenario Kenan faced was exactly what Safe Zone Fridays were trying to prevent. And he noted that Durham Police Chief C.J. Davis and Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead were always willing to help and were open to dialogue when he had events.

“The problem is,” said Kenan, the organizer behind Building Leaders for a Solid Tomorrow (BLAST), which works with Durham’s underserved kids, “dealing with this work you recognize that Chief Davis and Sheriff Birkhead aren’t the people that’s really going to pull you over.”

It’s played out again this week, not that far from home.

Protesters have taken to the streets of Elizabeth City after Pasquotank County deputies shot and killed Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man in his car, while serving a warrant Wednesday. It sparked an emergency meeting of its city council where councilman Gabriel Adkins gave an impassioned speech on how he’s feeling after hearing about Brown’s death.

“It hurts to be a Black man this day in time,” Adkins said, in a video from the meeting that was posted on his Facebook account. “It hurts because of what we have to go through and what we have to see other fellow Black people or Black men have to go through.”

The killings of Tamir Rice, Daunte Wright, Breonna Taylor and others

There should have been a small victory after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted Tuesday on three counts, including second-degree murder, for killing George Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes last May. Right before Chauvin’s conviction, Ma’Khia Bryant, a Black teen girl with a knife, was shot and killed by Columbus, Ohio police officers.

“This is Strange Fruit 2.0,” said Kwame Jackson, a Charlotte native and political commentator for MSNBC and CNN, referencing an anti-lynching song Billie Holiday recorded in 1939 that describes Black bodies being lynched. “It’s modern-day, digital lynchings that we’re seeing played out over and over again, and we can’t come to grips with one before the next one starts.”

A new name to mourn when there have been so many: from Tamir Rice, a child gunned down in Cleveland for holding a toy gun; to the death of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte; and Daunte Wright, shot not far from where Floyd was killed when an officer claimed she meant to use her taser, but instead pulled her gun.

A new hashtag for social media. A new video recorded to visually play out that pain.

Part of the reason why Floyd’s murder sparked such resounding protests around the globe was watching a callous Chauvin kneel on his neck until he could no longer breathe.

But a large part was the killing of other Black women and men, including Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. Arbery was shot by residents while jogging through a neighborhood. His killers, who were both white, were not arrested until months later, after video of the shooting emerged. Local prosecutors and police blamed each other for their inaction and the Arbery family labeled it a cover-up.

The shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky as police served a no-knock warrant and awoke her from her sleep just added to the hurt. Daniel Cameron, the commonwealth’s Attorney General, declined to prosecute police in the case leaving many to believe justice was not served.

“People are tired, they don’t want to have one more conversation,” said Bishop Ronald Godbee, who leads The River Church in Durham. “They don’t want to post one more meme. They don’t want to have one more Facebook conversation about it because -- and I don’t even think numb is the right word -- I think there’s a sense of apathy maybe, because will they ever make it right for us?”

More frustration after murder of Laquan McDonald

Kenan is like many who didn’t bother watching Chauvin’s trial and held their collective breaths while awaiting the verdict. There have been plenty of shootings caught on video before where police were not held accountable.

“I wanted to watch it, but I was afraid that I’d be upset and it takes out on my daily living,” Kenan said. “It’s hard.”

One guilty verdict from the Chauvin trial won’t change things either.

Cheryl Dorsey, a retired sergeant from the Los Angeles Police Department, pointed out that officers have been convicted before. The author of “Black and Blue” mentioned former Chicago Police Department officer Jason Van Dyke was also convicted of second-degree murder after shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014. But Van Dyke’s sentencing brought out more frustration. He faced up to 96 years from the charges; prosecutors recommended 18-20 years, but he only received six years and he could be out in three.

“A lot of times I don’t think the sentence is commiserate with the crime, that’s my personal opinion,” Dorsey said. “But it’s (the Chauvin verdict) not going to do anything, wholesale, to stop the institutionalized racism that exists across 18,000 police departments in the U.S.”

Fatigue from continued Black trauma

Godbee said he supplemented his weekly Tuesday night service with a psychologist, an attorney and a family health care counselor to help discuss all aspects of the verdict and upcoming sentencing.

Godbee is aware of the growing sense of fatigue from discussing another case of Black trauma. But he said until there is a substantial change in policy regarding how Black communities are policed, the system will continue to be broken.

“We have to engage in conversation that other communities will never have conversations about,” Godbee said. “It speaks to the trauma that we’ve experienced. It speaks to the fears that we face daily. And it uniquely qualifies us for things that we haven’t asked to be qualified for.”

It’s why Cedric Walton doesn’t even watch the news anymore. The 41-year-old, Durham native is tired of consuming the images. He’s worried that his 14-year-old son is becoming desensitized to seeing the death of Blacks at the hands of police.

Every day, Walton says he consults his son on how he needs to interact should the case arise, to simply get back home safely. It is of particular importance for Walton because his son is chasing 6-foot-3 and 280 pounds. He looks like a full-grown man, but is very much an adolescent.

“I’m tired of talking to my son about this,” Walton said. “Like, I shouldn’t have to explain it to a 14-year-old so many times that he’s looking at me like, ‘I know, I know.’ It should be so infrequent that he’s being raised like I was, but it’s almost like another day in America for him. I remember when it wasn’t like this, I don’t know if he does.”