race | Reggie Marra, MA, PCC

[Part of a series, this essay looks at some current events in the context of Healing America’s Narratives: the Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow — Now available]

The context of each of these “Healing America’s Narratives” posts is the collective national Shadow of the United States, as explored in detail in the book by that name. Briefly, America’s collective Shadow carries at least nine traits: ignorance, arrogance, fear, bigotry, violence, greed, excess, bullying, and untrustworthiness.

These nine traits can be observed throughout history, beginning with America’s three foundational subjugations — of women, Native Americans, and African Americans — and continuing up to the present day with the Vietnam War, post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, expanding inequality, the power of the insurance-pharmaceutical-medical-government-financial-lobbying industry (IPMGFL), patho-adolescent political polarizations, equal opportunity “otherings” of those “we” feel are not enough like “us,” and ambivalence about the planet — which may ultimately render all the other issues moot.

Today’s post focuses on the intersection of three stories that have emerged in March and April 2023:

The shooting in Kansas City, Missouri of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, by 84-year-old Andrew D. Lester: According to the Washington Post, Yarl mistakenly rang the doorbell on the wrong house in an attempt to pick up his siblings, who were visiting a friend. Lester, who is white, who is described as being “visibly upset” and “concerned for” Yarl, and who is being charged, claims to have been “scared to death” when he saw Yarl at his door. Yarl, who is black, was shot twice and is now recovering.
The shooting death in Hebron, New York of 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis by 65-year-old Kevin Monahan. According to the Washington Post, Gillis and her friends accidentally pulled into the wrong driveway while they were looking for a friend’s house. Gillis and her friends never got out of their vehicle and were shot by Monahan from his porch while they were backing out of the driveway. As I post this, Monahan, unlike Lester, has expressed no remorse for his action.
According to the Washington Post, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt called for the resignation of four McCurtain County officials, “county commissioner Mark Jennings, Sheriff Kevin Clardy, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning and county jail administrator Larry Hendrix,” who, while speaking after a public meeting without realizing a reporter’s recorder was still on, “lamented about how they could no longer yank Black people out of the jail, ‘take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a … rope,’ according to McCurtain Gazette-News, which later published a recording online.”

To keep this simple(ish), we’ll focus on violence, guns, and race — each of which plays a direct role in two of these three stories.

Much of the media- and lobbyist-generated rhetoric concerning the two shootings has been on “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” laws, which does need attention and is fine as far as it goes, albeit in a superficial, ignore-both-the-details-and-the-larger-context kind of way.

Here are some details: Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed because the car she was in mistakenly turned into the wrong driveway. Remember the days of sorry to bother you — we’re lost — can you direct us towards… Ralph Yarl was shot because he mistakenly rang the wrong doorbell — thinking it belonged to his siblings’ friends. Remember the days of hi, I’m here to pick up my brother — oh, sorry, wrong address…can you tell me where… Kaylin Gillis is dead and her family and friends will live with the trauma of her death forever. Ralph Yarl and his family and friends will live with the trauma of his shooting forever — as will, it seems, his shooter.

Here’s a larger context: Everyday violence, including, but not limited to, gun violence is America’s normal.¹ Ring the wrong doorbell, pull into the wrong driveway, walk home, go shopping, go to your place of worship, go to school, go dancing, go to a concert, go to work. Risk getting shot.

That’s the guns and violence piece.

I’m a five-foot, six-inch, white-bearded, bald-headed, Italian American. Some would reduce me to being an old white guy, but Ta-Nehisi Coates and I know better. Had I mistakenly rang Andrew Lester’s doorbell, do you think he would have shot me? While I can’t know for sure, I’m pretty sure he would not have. Next question: was it Ralph Yarl’s youth, his height, or his skin pigmentation that most scared Andrew Lester? Some well intentioned folks might actually debate that — with obviously he shot because Yarl was black on one side and because of his age, he might have shot any tall, young stranger who appeared at his door on the other. Enjoy that debate.

Here’s the question we need to explore: what is it about the United States of America, and about the specific lives of Andrew Lester, Mark Jennings, Kevin Clardy, Alicia Manning, Larry Hendrix (and “others like them”)such that Lester would shoot a young, black stranger at his door, and that Jennings, Clardy, Manning, and Hendrix would find it appropriate to share or find meaning in their racist, violent imaginings — especially in the context of their roles in local government?

We need to own our individual and collective Shadows. Land of the free? Home of the brave? A beacon of democracy? Peace loving? Toward a more perfect union? Each of these can be true, especially if followed up with a sincere question and exploration: For whom?

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¹A small sample regarding America’s normal: 2014-2019: 14,515 gun deaths/year avg. (not suicide) = 40/day avg; 23,094 suicides by gun = 63/day; 37,609 total annual gun deaths = 103/day: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ 2014–2019: 45,835 suicides/year avg. = 126*/day: https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcause.html Accessed September 28, 2021. Search criteria was: 2014–2019 / all causes, races, genders and ages. *Due to rounding, the suicides per day on the two sites differ by 1. I used the lower, 125, in the text.

Neil MacFarquhar, “Murders Spiked in 2020 in Cities Across the United States,” New York Times, September 27, 2021,https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/fbi-murders-2020-cities.html

Reis Thebault and Danielle Rindler, “Shootings never stopped during the pandemic: 2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades,” Washington Post, March 23, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/23/2020-shootings/ Accessed September 28, 2021. Gun violence ties directly to the unhealthy masculine: Mike McIntire, Glenn Thrush and Eric Lipton, “Gun Sellers’ Message to Americans: Man Up,” New York Times, June 18, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/us/firearm-gun-sales.html

Photo © by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

[Part of our ongoing exploration of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow, this essay focuses on a school shooting in Nashville and related events in the Tennessee State Legislature that highlight our need for healing. The book is available here.]

On March 27, 2023 a man with a gun killed three adults and three children at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. School shootings — and shootings in general — are, as you know, a regular part of the American landscape.

On April 7, the Tennessee State Legislature voted to remove two of the three legislators who had participated in a March 30 protest at the Tennessee Capitol calling for stricter gun legislation. The two ousted legislators were Justin Jones, 27, and Justin Pearson, 29 — both of whom are black. The third lawmaker, Gloria Johnson, 60, is white.

When asked why she thought she was not removed as were Jones and Pearson, Johnson replied, “I’ll answer your question — it might have to do with the color of our skin.”

As I write this piece on the morning of April 12, Representative Jones was reinstated after the Metropolitan Nashville Council unanimously voted to temporarily appoint him until a special election is held later this year. The Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis was set to consider reappointing Representative Pearson in a meeting at 1:30pm CT on April 12 (today).

The Covenant School shooting and the removal of two young black men from the Tennessee House for protesting in favor of taking action that might limit gun violence lies at the intersection of two of the issues explored in Healing America’s Narratives — our culture of violence and the enslavement and subsequent subjugation of and discrimination against blacks.

No one, anywhere — at least no one I’ve encountered — wants the next inevitable shooting — whether at a school, a dance club, a movie theater, a bank, a concert, a store, a post office, or a place of worship. Yet, enough local, state, and national elected public servants, many of whom count on NRA and gun manufacturers’ and their PACs’ campaign donations, continue to thwart attempts to ban assault weapons, among other gun-safety measures.

America’s collective national Shadow remains grounded in ignorance, arrogance, fear, bigotry, violence, greed, excess, bullying, and untrustworthiness. Ignorance, arrogance, and greed allow lawmakers to prioritize campaign funding over the health and safety of their constituents. Ignorance, arrogance, fear, bigotry, and bullying convinced two-thirds of the predominantly white, Republican Tennessee House of Representatives to remove two black Democratic lawmakers — albeit temporarily.

This is not an indictment of the people of Tennessee. Obviously, many in the state disagree with their elected officials’ ousting Representatives Jones and Pearson.

Still, thank you, Tennessee, for this particular reminder — along with many other daily reminders from states both Red and Blue — of the work we have to do as a nation.

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