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When the grief of history
is a part of a burden, the pain of now becomes keener
and the action more urgent. "Black death" has been in this
country for more than 400 years. We know how Elijah died and
the knowledge is unbearable. It's time for a "reckoning."
"Dear Emmett Till," it
hurts to know that if you were a boy today, your life could
be taken as easily as it was in 1955. Maybe not the same
way, but taken nonetheless and the fact that it happens is
something most white folks don't see. We need all eyes
opened
When George Floyd died, it
echoed what happened to you, "dear Eric Garner." You said
you couldn't breathe; Floyd said he couldn't breathe.
Neither of you were real troublemakers, but both of you
called out in pain to the "blue plague," and lost your lives
anyhow.
Why is it that Black women
are victims, too, but we don't talk about them quite as much
as we do Black men? "Dear Breonna Taylor," there's irony in
the fact that you served as an EMT but the city you served
gave you no justice after you died. "Dear Hadiya Pendleton,"
we can't use "cancel culture" as justice. No, "dear Sandra
Bland," we must eliminate "white comfort" before we can end
the lack of knowledge that contributes to the end of Black
lives.
As you may have guessed –
especially if you've read any other works by author Michael
Eric Dyson – there's a lot to unpack inside Long Time
Coming.
It starts without
preamble, as Dyson dives straight into his series of letters
written to Black Americans whose deaths demand a reckoning
with racial issues. This abruptness is unusual in a work of
nonfiction, and it forces readers to pay immediate
attention.
Though there's a lot of
repetition from story to story here, each chapter examines a
separate aspect of racism by speaking directly to a deceased
individual while also referring to another. There's an urge
embedded in this, to understand each issue before
dismantling it, and to see how it matters. Readers may also
find Dyson's choice of subjects to be interesting; there are
other victims of racial violence he could've picked, as
evidenced by his long list of names, each of which begs to
have their own stories told.
Perhaps the most crucial
thing about this book, though, is that it's not so much for
Black readers as it is for White ones who metaphorically
started school late last May. Respectful discussion,
soul-searching, urgency: if that's what you need, Long
Time Coming delivers.
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