How Dare You, America

Bearing witness to the lynching of Jordan Neely in New York City.

Image taken by Mariela Lombard.

Another Black person was lynched this week.

Another.

That sentence, a savage declaration, a lamentation of heartache and sorrow, should pierce through the marrow of your bones, and sear itself to the depths of your soul. It is a truth which echoes like the mournful cry of a mother who has lost her child, like the rattle of old chains that still seek to shackle our bodies. When said aloud, it should roll off the tongue with the sound of thunder, shaking the very foundations of a society that has long been dishonest about its own cruelty.

Jordan Neely was lynched this week.

His name added to a list that grows like a noose around the collective neck of our consciousness, tightening with each Black life stolen, each act of anti-Black bloodlust committed.

As difficult as it may be, don’t look away. For each time you opt to turn your gaze to something more comforting, something easier, the hands that clutch at our throats swell with a sinister vitality, fed by your own indifference. The systems and the people that hunt us down—those relentless predators—thrive in apathy, nourished by silence.

Do not look away.

***

I do not pen these words to convince anyone of our humanity—for that has already been done. Nor do I write to chronicle these acts as an illustration of how the past remains ever-present in our lives. That, too, has been done. Instead, I compose these lines to cast judgment upon this nation, to express the unclouded disdain and repulsion I harbor towards a country that dares to believe it can stake a claim on our souls, our thoughts, our very flesh.

How dare America act as judge, jury, and executioner for people simply wading through waters poisoned by this wicked nation’s own godlessnesses.

This thought has sat with me in various ways since I was but a young child, when I began to understand the hypocrisy and hatred that courses through the veins of a country that believes it owns me. A country that believes it owned Jordan Neely.

How dare this depraved nation.

As the sun rose in a cloudless sky, the light diffusing softly through the window, casting warm shadows on my bedroom walls. The quiet of the morning disturbed only by the soft, rhythmic tapping of my fingers on my phone screen. The sound of my daily morning scan of social media and news. Swiping through a haze of mindless content, I came across a post that immediately grabbed my attention.

"He was hungry and thirsty. He just needed help. He wasn't hurting anyone."

The words were intertwined like ivy, with images that I immediately knew would join the many ghosts of tragedies that will haunt me for the rest of my life. There, under the florescent light of a New York City subway car, a lynching unfolded.

A young Black man lay on the cold, unforgiving floor. His body twisted, writhing like a nightmare in which flight is impossible but the fall is imminent. A white man's arm, pale and insistent, locked around his neck, squeezing the life from him. The Black man's eyes, wide and pleading, seemed to reach out, grasping for the oxygen he was being denied — or maybe they were reaching out for the help everyone on the train decided he didn’t deserve.

The help this nation decided he wasn’t worthy of.

Two other men, one white, one a person of color, knelt beside him, holding him down, their hands pressing into his flesh, as if trying to mold his body into something more palatable, something more easily consumed. Something less houseless, less mentally ill, less Black.

A few inches away, a white woman stood, her gaze locked onto the scene before her. Her expression, a mixture of curiosity and detachment, underscored by a quiet complicity. She looked down, her eyes as cold as the steel tracks that lay beneath the subway car, witnessing the life being forced out of another human being. No one did anything to help him.

Savagely, unrepentantly, and unceremoniously snuffed out. His name was Jordan Neely, and he is gone.

In the tender ache of my heart, I steeled myself to watch the actual video of the moment, to bear witness to the unspeakable violence that unfolded. I do not claim that one must watch such horrors to grasp the urgency of dismantling the systems that enable them. But for me, it was a necessity, a responsibility I carried on my weary shoulders.

Tears cascaded down my cheeks like a torrential downpour as the video played, my chest heaving with the unbearable weight of grief. Jordan Neely, was choked for nearly fifteen minutes by a white former marine, for having the audacity to shout on a subway car about his hunger, his thirst, his houselessness. For daring to expose the raw truth of America's failures.

All while harming no one.

I cannot shake the image of Jordan Neely's lifeless body from my mind, it sits in the many hollow spaces this Black American life has created in my heart. The bitter truth that not one soul was immediately charged with a crime for this abhorrent act feels like a stone lodged in my throat. As I pen this, even the names of the perpetrators remain shrouded in secrecy, as though their heinous deeds deserve protection.

Much of the media, in their cold-heartedness, lauded the act, as did many voices online. Hailing the person who lynched Jordan Neely as a hero, an arbiter of vigilante justice. In their twisted minds, someone suffering a mental health episode or daring to hold a nation accountable for its dark insensitiveness deserves to be extinguished.

Fifteen minutes. An eternity. Seven minutes and fourteen seconds longer than George Floyd's last breaths, which birthed one of the largest moments of civil protest in world history. A period touted by some as a “ racial awakening”. Nearly three years later, and still, the cycle continues.

As I read the online commentary and headlines, my blood boiled with fury. I know how unmoved so many people can be, how heartless they are in the face of such monstrous acts. And I am not naive enough to fully believe New York City’s self-promotion as a liberal bastion. But I was of the the belief that, here in this city, we had somehow cultivated a fragile yet enduring understanding. An agreement, if you will, that allowed us to coexist in this chaotic urban landscape.

It’s simple — mind your business.

I thought that baseline understanding allowed those of us who are fortunate enough not to carry the burdens of houselessness and mental illness to exist paralleled with those who do. I believed that we New Yorkers saw ourselves as part of a larger community, where the subway, the parks, the city, belonged to us all.

You don’t have to like me — just stay in your lane.

A subway car, for many, serves as a means to reach a destination. For others, it offers a fleeting sense of refuge, a place to rest your head, a home. As subway riding New Yorkers, I imagined we all understood: if you find yourself uneasy in the presence of another's suffering, you simply move to another car.

I was wrong. I am sorry, Jordan.

After reading a few particularly hateful comments online, I slammed my fist onto the hardwood floor in my living room. Maybe I believed I was striking with the force of every Black life that has been taken. Hoping to crack the very Earth beneath me, so that those who despise us might plummet into the abyss that their hatred has wrought.

With heavy resolve, a few hours later, I watched the video once more. Trying to come to terms with how people could be so cruel when giving an opinion on what they had watched as well. In doing so, I was submerged in a sea of familiar emotions—sorrow, anger, fear. But one remained absent, as if it had long abandoned me. The feeling of surprise.

The smirk etched across the face of the man as he stole the life from Jordan did not astonish me, nor did the terror imprinted on Jordan's face as life slipped away from him. The fact that no one did anything didn’t startle me. The comments online did not leave me in a daze. By now, there is little left that America can inflict upon a Black body that would surprise me.

What could possibly be astonishing in a country where postcards once displayed pictures of Black people being lynched, and were circulated as mementos from trips to various American towns?

It is these sort of realities that has found me dedicating much of my adulthood to the pursuit of understanding, educating, and penning words on the complexities of race, class, and sex within this nation. And what I have ultimately come to understand is that the hunger that propels America to ravage marginalized communities is akin to an insatiable beast. It is a truth we must confront with unwavering honesty. Jordan Neely's existence straddled the crossroads of all that this nation seeks to consume and obliterate.

Poverty, mental illness, and Blackness.

Proof of this rests at the center of the dehumanizing comments made by New York Governor, Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor, Eric Adams.

Hochul responded to the tragedy by saying, “People who are homeless in our subways, many of them in the throes of mental health episodes, and that’s what I believe were some of the factors involved here. There’s consequences for behavior…”

Adams refused to condemn the act, stating, “Each situation is different…. We cannot just blanketly say what a passenger should or should not do on a situation like that.”

ANDREW SAVULICH/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE VIA GETTY

Watching the discourse and inaction in the aftermath of Jordan Neely's lynching, I find myself affirmed in a harsh reality: this nation's soul remains unmoved. Because this nation barely has a soul.

Despite countless books, educational initiatives, and advocacy efforts aimed at addressing race, class, and mental health disparities, the stark truth is that we have barely scratched the surface. So much so, that this act of murdering Jordan Neely while he was in the throes of a mental health crisis took place at the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Month.

That is not irony — that is evil.

The plethora of resources available to us is not the issue; rather, it is the stubborn refusal of this nation to genuinely engage with and internalize truths. It is a willful ignorance and an insistence on maintaining the status quo that allows these atrocities to continue unchecked.

In moments such as these, I see many people use the word fear. As in, white people's fear of Black people manifests in these sort of hateful acts. Maybe the Black man yelling on the train about his hunger and thirst is planning on harming someone. Maybe every Black teen in a hoody is planning on robbing someone. Maybe every Black driver reaching for their license and registration is planning on shooting a cop.

Maybe we should stop centering fear, as it serves no one but white people. This idea of fear is at the root of Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul’s comments, as well as much of the discourse taking place online and in the media.

But what do people such as Jordan Neely get to be afraid of?

Black people have neither systematically or institutionally done anything to white people to make them fear us at-large. We have not committed genocide against white people, we have not imprisoned white people, we have not burned down white neighborhoods, we have not assassinated white leaders, nor have we mass raped white men and women. In fact, despite all that has been done to us, we have not even sought revenge against white people. Instead, we have simply asked to be left alone. To be free to the fullest extent of our human rights.

No — it is not fear.

That is an excuse for impunity. A license to kill.

The honest issue is that four hundred years of existing in a false hierarchy that places white people at the top of nearly every power structure, has created a reality where many white people exist on a spectrum somewhere between believing they are a deity or savior. As such, it is not that these white people simply don't see Jordan Neely as worthy of humanity, it is that they also don't see themselves as human. But rather something more -- something greater than. Something that gets to decide when to bend gospels to fit their needs and who on a subway car should be sacrificed for their comfort and supposed holiness.

The people on that subway car, and those who praised them afterwards, put Jordan on trial. Then they executed him. In doing so, they continue to put every marginalized person in this nation on trial, leaving us to wonder who will be executed next.

We have explained all that can be explained, taught all that can be taught, and offered perspective on experience as much as one could offer perspective on experience. There is no need for new books, new films, social media accounts, or workshops. We have been doing the work in this capacity since we were still on plantations.

Instead, it is time for this nation to confront the mirror, to peer into the depths of its own soul, and reckon with the devastation it has wrought upon generations. The truth is, most people in this nation resemble those on that subway car as Jordan lay dying. They are either directly killing us with rage or indirectly killing us with complicity.

Either way, we continue dying.

If this nation truly wishes to reckon with the demons of its past and present, it must first shatter the mirror of self-deception and confront the ugliness that lies beneath the surface. It is not enough to simply acknowledge the existence of these systems; it is not enough to nod along with the poignant words of scholars and activists who have dedicated their lives to fighting for justice. Any American claiming to care must take those words to heart, and translate them into tangible, transformative action.

What happened to Jordan Neely will continue until those with power and privilege put themselves and their nation on trial.

How dare you, America.