EASTER Weekend 2006
does not mean to me what it means to my white counter part
Though in recent years I had not been as ritualistic in my Easter documentation as I had been in most of the previous years. However, in sharp contrast, I would spend a great deal of time developing photoessays that reflected on the past by integrating my past photography with writings. Easter 2004 was commemorated with It Could Easily Have Been Me referring to an incident in Massachusetts where a young black male, Malik Jones, who had befriended white boys, as have I, was shot dead, by the police. The essay spoke to the fact that since 1997 Easter Weekends, in the black community, had often been commemorated with massive anti-police brutality demonstrations, as a result of recent killings. Just weeks after attending the Winter Party in Miami where I'd develop thje documentary Had I Been, in commemoration of Easter 2005 I'd develop the "Easter, Cver the Years, From the Perspective of a Black Man" essay and Pictorial Essay.
Easter, does not mean to me what it means to my white counterpart. And when I say counterpart, I mean white lovers, white best friends, and white colleagues. Many, at least those who've maligned with me, celebrate Easter and most (if not all) holidays ... on drugs ... while policing and overseeing me. Drugs and addiction that they project onto me and in the process use as weapons against black men. So, while black men whose name appears on the BLACKLIST experience forms of racial profiling and racial discrmination that can only be described as negative reinforcement my white counterpart still expects me to 'play nigger' by pretending that our experiences have been same. How could our experiences have ever been the same when, at each opportunity, they lied and would negatively reinforce me.
It was on Palm Monday, 10 April 2006 that when in the process of photographing the MARCC Protest that two white men in a group of mostly black demonstrators who had pushed, shoveled and threatened me with body harm while obstructing my picture-taking, would say to me "We'll call the police. And when they come, we'll lie and tell them that you pushed and shoved us. And that you spat on us!." And when the police would arrive, that is exactly what they did. They lied in the exact same as have my white lovers, white friends and white colleaques lied about me and drugs. It was always on Easter Monday and during the first week after Easter when after weeks ormonths of their drugging and partying that white counterparts would stage catastrophes, based on their lies, that would affect every aspect of my life. While, in the exact same breath, asking of me "What are doing for Memorial Day Weekend?"