jennings rampage

An open letter to Corey Brown.

Dear Corey,

I don’t know if it makes sense to thank you for taking the full verbal assault you did tonight from the two men who were offended that you and I used the word “nigger” in the context of our escalating game of offensive jokes with our friends tonight. But you immediately stood up and took full responsibility and insisted that you were the only one who said it and I stood there and said nothing. I feel horrible for the insults and threats you endured, and more horrible that you accepted it as a fact of your life as a black man.

The men who stood screaming at you certainly wouldn’t have found our jokes funny even if they had the full context, so I can’t dismiss the whole thing as a simple misunderstanding. Each word in our language has no more weight than each of us gives it, and those men clearly give that word more weight than any other. It was terrible judgment for me to use it in the first place, and I know that because had I seen any other black people in the emptying bar I wouldn’t have, and only minutes before, when I made a joke about standing up to go rape a woman (which also made sense in context), I made certain to mouth it to another guy at the table to avoid offending the women in our company (since rape is another one of those things that’s hard to find the right context for).

I know it was best for me to keep quiet, no matter how much I wanted to say something as simple as, “sir, I believe you’ve made your point, my friend has heard you, and there’s no need for anything more.” But something so emotionally charged can’t be diffused with a trite plea for rationality, so it was best that I did nothing. And as much as it hurt me to watch you stand there and absorb their tirade, I know it was best that you did just that, since there was nothing at all you could have said to calm them down.

I was so upset by seeing you attacked like this that a part of me wished it had been a simple fistfight — at least that way, I could have taken the lumps I earned, and I could have come to your defense like you deserved. Instead, you had to look straight into the eyes of a man who would only threaten violence, refuse to accept any other solution, and had to ask if you were black. I found that particularly galling, but I’m sure it was neither the first nor last time you had to deal with any of those things, either. I’m sorry for that, too, for what that’s worth.

I can’t pretend to understand what it’s like to be anyone but me, and I can’t apologize for that because it’s true of everyone. In circumstances like these, it seems to compound the problem by making assumptions about what anyone’s motivations were, but I got the impression that your attackers believed us to be a group of spoiled rich white college kids letting our racism show because we believed we were safe. They happened to be wrong, but their perception wasn’t unreasonable, and had it been true, I’d have said the attack was justifiable. That’s how thin the line is, and I can’t pretend to understand what it’s like to live it every day. I’m sorry it happened, and I’m sorry that it had to turn out how it did.

I’m too blinded by my anger at those men and at the society that makes their snap judgments usually correct to begin to draw conclusions or lessons from this. The weird thing is, I never say “nigger,” I know people who do and I refuse to tolerate it, I was raised by a racist stepfather and I refuse to tolerate any of it. And the one time I said it, I was reminded why I never do.

Take care, my friend, and continue to be the change you want to see in the world.

Scott