I laughed at the Montgomery dock brawl because Ahmaud Arbery can’t | Opinion

I laughed because Ahmaud Arbery no longer can.

Because this time, no one was murdered on an Alabama dock the way Arbery had been murdered like a rabid dog on the side of a Georgia road.

Because the three white men who murdered him, or watched, felt Arbery had committed a grave sin – jogging through their community while black – knew they wouldn’t be stopped, and weren’t.

Because there have been far too many Ahmaud Arberys and far too few times a group of strangers assembles like The Avengers – armed with little more than a folding chair and an impressive swim stroke – as they did on a fateful day last week in Montgomery, Alabama.

I laughed because it was a “Not Today Satan!” moment, a saying I don’t have to explain to those who spent the days after the “Montgomery Dock Brawl” cracking up every time a silly meme scrolled across our social media timelines, at every re-enactment, singing along with every iconic song repurposed specifically for the occasion.

“Lift ev’ry chair and swing, Till Earth and noggins ring,” one of them began to the tune of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the national black anthem Rep. James Clyburn wanted to become the nation’s nation hymn.

On that Alabama dock, a Black riverboat co-captain, Damien Pickett, asked a group of white men to move their pontoon boat so the passenger ferry could dock in its regular spot. They spent 45 minutes refusing to move their boat only a few feet. As the black co-captain argued with one of the white men, another appeared and assaulted him.

“I’m going to kill you, (expletive),” Pickett heard one of the men scream.

Within seconds, the Black man was on his back with six white men and one white woman either pummeling and repeatedly punching or hovering over him. Mary Todd, 21, Richard Roberts, 48, Allen Todd, 23, and Zachery Shipman, 25 would later be arrested and charged with third-degree assault.

Freeze that frame in your mind and you’d see more than just the shadow of some of this country’s worst periods. It was more than an echo. But bystanders refused to allow it to become a repeat.

On Feb. 23, 2020 in Brunswick, Georgia, no one came to Arbery’s rescue as Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael chased him down and shot him to death while William Bryan recorded that 21st century lynching. There would be no lynching on that Alabama dock because the calvary showed up. A Black bystander surveying the scene intervened. A young black man jumped from the ferry and swam to the dock to help. Others did as well, including one man wielding a white folding chair and unwittingly launching a million memes.

This is the part where I’m supposed to say that I’m against violence and that the man with the folding chair got out of hand, especially when he used it during that chaotic scene to hit a white woman in the head as she was sitting not threatening anyone. Both those things are true. Maybe I’m supposed to note that initially it was a young white man who tried to help the Black co-captain, though he was quickly repelled by the older-bigger angry white men. That’s also true. And I know – I know – there are those who’d rather I focus on Chicago and “black-on-black crime” to deflect from the racial dynamics at play in this incident. But I won’t. Not today Satan. Not today.

Because I refuse to prioritize white comfort. Because there are moments white people should just listen, for understanding even if not agreement.

Black people’s reaction to The Montgomery Brawl is one of those moments.

We didn’t laugh because there was a fight. We’d rather there had been no fists flying, chairs swung or kicks administered, like those Mary Todd landed on Pickett.

We laughed because we didn’t have to lament another Ahmaud Arbery or Trayvon Martin.

Because another Black mother wouldn’t have to make the type of excoriating decision Mamie Till had to.

We laughed because, for once, we didn’t have to cry. Or grieve.