When news broke that a prisoner awaiting trial on rape charges in Atlanta had overpowered a sheriff’s deputy, taken her gun and entered a courtroom where he fatally shot the judge presiding over his case, the court stenographer and, later, two others, many African Americans thought: I hope it’s not a brother.
That was the same reaction when it was learned in 2002 that two suspects n John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo n had been captured after a Washington, D.C.-area killing spree that left 10 people dead and three wounded. And it was the reaction just three weeks ago when a convicted man shot the husband and mother of a federal judge in Chicago.
This time, rather than just examining what propels certain people to go on violent rages, we should ask ourselves another question: Why do we think it is a collective fault when some confused African American goes berserk? Why and how does that reflect on all of us?
Intellectually, we know this is nonsense. Still, when blacks are thrust into the national limelight in a negative fashion, there is the frequently heard refrain: Why did he have to be a brother?
This wasn’t a brother; evidently, he was a violent criminal.
Brian Nichols, the suspect in the Atlanta case, was accused of holding his former girlfriend hostage for two days in her home because she was dating someone else, according to a spokesman for the Sheriff’s office. He allegedly bound her with duct tape and sexually assaulted her.
Inside the 8th-floor courtroom at the Fulton County Courthouse, prosecutors were preparing to cross-examine Nichols in connection with that case. At the time, he was being moved from a basement holdover cell to a small room on the 8th floor where he could change into regular clothing and enter the courtroom without handcuffs or prison garb so as to not prejudice the jurors against him.
Nichols, it is alleged, took that opportunity to kill Judge Rowland W. Barnes and Julie Ann Brandau, the court stenographer. He is said to have descended to the first floor and murdered Deputy Hoyt Teasley during his escape. After terrorizing Atlanta for more than 24 hours, Nichols surrendered peacefully after being surrounded by a heavily-armed SWAT team.
Telephone lines and the internet were overheated during the weekend. And everyone was asking the question remained: Why did it have to be a brother?
In many ways, it is an unfair question. Why should the African-American community feel shame because a person of the same race did something heinous?
At the root of that question is concern over how others, especially whites, perceive African Americans. Historically, there are many reasons for that concern. However, we should be at the point in our growth that we should care more about how we perceive ourselves than how others look at us.
Let’s flip the script. When Ken Chenault became CEO of American Express, I didn’t hear any whites say, “Those Black people sure know how to run major credit card companies.” Similarly, when Stan O’Neil was elevated to CEO of Merrill Lynch & Co., I didn’t hear whites saying that if an African-American can run an investment firms, they can do so many other tasks previously denied them.
If whites don’t look at successful African Americans and then generalize from that, we shouldn’t allow them to look at some of the worst elements in our community and somehow extrapolate that they typify blacks.
It’s untenable to accept the flawed notion that the D.C. snipers or Brian Nichols in Atlanta reflect poorly on black people unless you’re willing to say the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and Timothy McVeigh reflect negatively on all white people.
This is a tricky game, a game that we should not play. Yet, we play it.
I participated in the Region 7 conference of the National Association of Black Journalists over the weekend in New Orleans, and my NABJ colleagues said they are still fielding questions about Jayson Blair, the serial liar who was once at the New York Times. Yet, white journalists aren’t getting questioned about the ethical transgression of Jack Kelley, the USA Today’s white version of Jayson Blair.
Rather than being even-handed, these idiotic generalizations pop up every time something bad happens, such as the murders in Atlanta. When the acts of Jeffrey Dahmer reflect poorly on all whites, then and only then should the antics of Brian Nichols in Atlanta reflect negatively on all African Americans.