"Will I Die Before They Get To Know Me?" From J. Cole to Oscar Grant III
"Will I live or will I die before they get to know me? If I go, I know the ones that's pourin' liquor for me ... "
-J. Cole, "Can I Live?" The Warm Up
While rappers from Kanye West to Jay Z have celebrated Obama's ascent to the US Presidency as a victory for black people and for the prospect of democracy in the US, more broadly, J. Cole remains unconvinced that we have entered the age of Hope, as he makes clear on "I Get Up," the sixth track from his standout mixtape, The Warm Up:
We raisin' babies in Hades, where it ain't no Hope...Politicians hollerin' 'bout problems,but I ain't gon' vote. Keep talkin' 'bout Change, we floatin' in the same ol' boat.
Like the Notorious B.I.G. and Nas before him, J. Cole's lyricism centers on the unlikely prospect of individual success in a gothic underworld defined by corrupt social institutions ("like a corpse six feet, shit's deep," "Grown Simba"; "My mind's elsewhere: my mom's health care. To get out this hell, here," "I Get Up"). J. Cole specializes in elaborating an unruly cityscape where death is familiar, making fantasies of bling desirable (where social reproduction lies in the slim possibility that some of the "seeds" he and members of his cohort manage to help produce might survive to see a brighter tomorrow; where he and his peers might live on in legends told by the women they too often reduce to accessories and vehicles for sexual satisfaction, despite the longing they routinely express for a partner who could appreciate the social and psychological suffering that defines their plight). Precisely because J. Cole doesn't consider himself to be much interested in electoral competition or protest politics, I was struck by a single line from, "Can I Live," that echoes ominously in the aftermath of Oscar Grant III's tragic death: "He didn't even get a chance to run before the bullet hit his lung."
In the first few hours of 2009, Johannes Mehserle stood over, shot and killed, Grant, as the twenty-two year-old father lay face down on Oakland's Bay Area Transit platform, while another officer kneeled on the young man's neck. The bullet passed through Grant's torso and hit the ground before bouncing back into his lung, ending his life some hours later. In courtroom testimony, Mehserle maintained that he meant to reach for his taser but mistakenly drew his semi-automatic handgun, although he was wearing his taser on the left side and his .40 caliber on the right side of his body, and despite the fact that the former weighs about half as much as the latter.
On July 8, 2010, Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, marking the first time in the history of the state of California that a police officer has been convicted for shooting and killing an unarmed African American man, although it happens at an alarming rate. What some onlookers view as a just conviction was met with widespread disappointment and diverse methods of protest. Supporters of Grant, legal experts, and grassroots activists hoped the jury would return a verdict of second-degree murder or, perhaps, voluntary manslaughter. But then, Mehserle's defense team had insisted in pretrial correspondence, apparently with far-reaching effects, that the presiding judge should instruct the jury to limit its deliberations to either second-degree murder or acquittal. Even more unsettling, Michael Rains, counsel for the defense, managed to have each potential African American juror removed from consideration for the trial based on the dubious rationale that Oakland's black residents cannot be expected to deliver an unbiased verdict in a criminal trial involving a police officer suspected of violent conduct. The kind of shooting J. Cole writes about (involving miscellaneous "niggas" and rival drug crews) would seem wholly different from police violence wielded by a state employee, except that we are too often discussing "accidental shootings," in either case.
Particularly in the 1990s, when hip hop began to enjoy unprecedented commercial success, rap lyrics became increasingly preoccupied with the violence that derived from urban narcotics firms that used high-powered assault weaponry to eliminate competition from prized blocks and alleyways. While this violence is structural in scope, an offshoot of the dramatic increase in potential profits associated with crack cocaine (which required little investment compared to its promised dividends) was that innocent people sometimes got caught in the crossfire when rival drug crews went at it. Recall: the innocent honor student cut down in a hail of stray bullets became a familiar media archetype during this period.
But, while people easily become irate when faced with the fatal consequences of drug violence, they are not always as outraged by police violence. This tension is especially acute in cases like the one involving Oscar Grant, where suspicion too often falls on the young people who fit a particular profile and not the police officers who exhibit questionable behavior. If lazy law enforcement officials see fit to harass, detain, and abuse young African Americans who are statistically more likely to commit certain kinds of crimes, it's worth asking how we might view and assess Johannes Mehserle's behavior on January 1, 2009 given his own documented history of violence. Here's a Freakonomics question worth pondering: what is the statistical probability that a police officer alleged to have beaten one African American man, Kenneth Carrethers, in an unprovoked attack so severely that he required hospitalization would kill another African American man some weeks later under troubling circumstances?
Since so many scholars remain convinced that apathy defines the political ethos of the hip-hop generation, it's worth asking if J. Cole's lyricism might help enrich discussion about the implications the Oscar Grant case will have for people in his demographic category. What does it mean for members of an entire demographic to worry about being murdered in cold blood by the police? What is your perception of politics when you feel like there is little difference in being killed by a stray bullet, a drug dealer, and a law enforcement official? Elsewhere in "Can I Live," J. Cole promises to keep "rhyming until his heartbeat drop[s]" like the "phone" that falls from the hand of his street protagonist's mother "when she heard the news," as he favors lyrics that are riddled with elegies for fallen comrades ("More blacks singin' more blues. More niggas pourin' more brews. Pour dude, he was young, like, twenty-one. Straight up out that city that I'm from"). His swagger is defined by tales of masculine conquest, sexually and lyrically; still, in the aftermath of a fatal gunshot, the characters in his scenes convey an anguish that is even more acute than their audacity:
"Breathe, nigga," his nigga screaming, "Don't you fuckin' leave, nigga!"
He took off his shirt, tryin' to stop the bleedin', nigga
.
One wonders what went through the mind of Grant's friends who watched him plead with Mehserle not to fire, as the Oakland police officer's partner derided him as a "bitch-ass nigga." Here hip-hop meets a different genre of masculine violence, leading us to wonder whether Grant shared J. Cole's critique of Obama. Did Grant help to elect the President who claimed victory two months before he was tragically killed, and who was inaugurated several weeks after his untimely demise? I can't help but wonder whether Oscar Grant shared J. Cole's skepticism, whether he was more hopeful.
And whether it matters anymore.
Michael Ralph teaches in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. His scholarship on crime, economics, political transformation and urban youth culture has been published in Public Culture, Social Text, Souls, Transforming Anthropology, Afrique et Développement and South Atlantic Quarterly.
Read more about the shooting of Oscar Grant and watch the press conference held by Oscar Grant's family here.
Photo by Thomas Hawk.
i enjoyed your use of j. cole's lyrics to discuss the oscar grant case.
sadly, this young man cannot speak for himself any longer; however, the grant illustration above says so much about the hopefulness that others would like to portray of him. a heart on his hat, a big smile on his face, and roses everywhere...
Your use of jcole to talk about the very real feelings of hopelessness for so many marks in an important (and necessary) intervention in the national dialogue that has been dominated for so long by the optimism of the so-called Obama era. While I think its necessary to mark new breakthroughs and changes in our political and racial landscape...I think a casualty of this has been the stifling of voices from people on the margins who matter to our polity.
If we are to work to a more just society...we need to listen to jcole and others like him...even when its hard...even when we dont want to... Not doing so will lead to even graver repercussions...
A compelling reflection on Obama's presidential term and jcole's rap as a lyrical opposition to police brutality - a problem that is unfortunately prevalent and yet largely ignored. As disheartening as jcole's lyrics are, it is hopeful that at least there are pop artists speaking to these kinds of issues, especially when mainstream media gives too much air time to people with a lot of misguided anger and hate.
A compelling post. I'm glad you make the connection to rap radicalism. Some hip-hop artists have been out front with some of the most searing and sophisticated critiques of police misconduct and mass imprisonment, but, with the exception of Paul Butler's book, they're mostly sidelined in scholarly and policy discussions.
Mike, first, congrats on a great post which contextualizes a lot of the hoopla regarding the Oscar Grant case. One point I would call attention to though--which J. Cole speaks to as well--is the need to expand our definition of "violence," especially with regard to the current plight of African diasporic peoples.
In the aftermath of the Oscar Grant saga, popular opinion is still quick to deploy culture of violence (and culture of poverty) arguments, despite the continued disenfranchisement of African descended people in former colonial metropoles and neoliberal exploitation throughout the Global South. In my own work, Slavoj Zizek's recent book on violence (also entitled "Violence") has been helpful in its attention to "objective violence," or the seemingly natural repercussions of our political and economic systems. Beyond the sensational violence of inner city communities, we also observe a moment in which racial animosity is be dismissed on the basis of a reasonable doubt, and forms of exploitation emerge with no clear identifiable agent behind them.
Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, and the recent oil spill are cases in point. Behind seemingly "natural" disasters lie de facto segregation, rapid urbanization, and the sustained underdevelopment of communities of color. I'm wondering how we might place these events in conversation with cases like Oscar Grant, which appear different, but in fact encompass equally "violent" acts.
In addition to J. Cole's depiction of urban despair, his indictment of the nation-state on "I Get Up" is especially poignant, and increasingly common among hip hop artists in recent years (see Lil Wayne "Georgia...Bush" and Jay-Z "Minority Report" and "Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour). Wayne and Jay's responses to Hurricane Katrina and Haiti, respectively, illustrate (in my opinion) a fundamental break from the social contract in the post civil rights era. If we (as black Americans) are not privy to judicial rights (as in the case of Grant) or citizenship (as seen in the "refugee" controversy following Hurricane Katrina), it appears our aspirations to full citizenship--evidenced equally in the efforts of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, and MLK--have failed to come to fruition. To question "whether it matters anymore" is to question equally our chaotic urban spaces and the "promissory note" that even a black President defaults upon.
Ryan: I naturally appreciate the link you draw between different kinds of structural violence (police brutality, the Hurricane and Flood that was Katrina). One can only wonder if rappers will soon start rhyming about the BP oil spill -- and what they would say if they did.
I am even more intrigued by your reference to "violence with no identifiable agent" since I have been thinking about the relationship between errors/accidents and legal liability. The same day I posted this, I discovered a brief commentary on the Freakonomics blog which celebrates this nation's unique appreciation for "mistakes," "errors," and "accidents" http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/the-united-mistakes-of-america/; yet, certain kinds of accidents (teen pregnancy, innocent victims of drive-by shootings) become the basis for judgments of moral worth, while others (environmental hazards, bad stock investments) are frequently read as the inevitable effects of corporate growth strategies that ultimately benefit us all, even if they injure and kill a greater number of people. Naturally, it's even trickier when the group liable for a mistake in judgment that produces structural violence (U.S. Army corps of engineers, police officers) are state employees ...
Powerful post on a topic all too often ignored by most mainstream media.
A question: where are intellectuals (West Coast and otherwise) in all of this? One of my first introductions to Black British cultural studies was attending a people's tribunal following the killing of Stephen Lawrence in London. Lawrence was stabbed to death while waiting for a bus in 1993. Five (white) suspects were arrested after the killing of Lawrence (who was black), but none were convicted.
The people's tribunal I attended received a great deal of media attention and certainly played a role in bringing allegations of racial bias within the Metropolitan police force to the attention of a broader public. Eventually an inquiry headed by Sir William MacPherson concluded that the police force was characterized by "institutional racism." This inquiry in turn led to the passage of important reform provisions in the Criminal Justice Act of 2003.
All of this to say that intellectuals in the UK played a really important role in challenging and transforming the criminal justice system. Perhaps J. Cole's sense of despair and nihilism is a product of the lack of such interventions in the US? While citizen oversight of the police is clearly important, I don't think it's forthcoming unless new protest tactics are adopted. Street demonstrations may not be the best formula to leverage such change at this junction.
But this is really phrased as a question rather than a critique. I simply don't know what's been going down on the ground in Oakland. I'd love to hear more about the politics of protest there, and about what anti-racist activists on the East coast might learn from such work.
I also want to add that I agree with Ryan and Michael about the forms of structural violence to which communities of color are subjected in the U.S. Last month I attended a meeting of a group on the North Shore of Staten Island - a community populated predominantly by African Americans and Latin@s that has just been nominated as one of ten national environmental justice showcase communities by the EPA. Sounds like a good thing, but what it really means is that every kind of toxic contaminant you can imagine is present in the earth, in the water, and in the air of this community. The people are literally being poisoned - not quite as immediate as the fate to which Grant was subjected, but every bit as deadly.
Picking up on the thread of structural inequalities paired with Ashley's point about the presence (or absence) of West Coast (or otherwise) intellectuals wrt the Grant shooting and subsequent trial:
To Mike's pointed use of J. Cole's lyricism, the incident exposes not a single pattern of structural inequality but rather the series of intersecting, overlapping, and complicating patterns that mean a figure like Grant can simultaneously worry about "being murdered in cold blood by the police...killed by a stray bullet, a drug dealer, and a law enforcement official?" (MR). What does it mean for such multiple modes of
structural inequality to converge on a single outcome, likely death? We have neither the political nor analytical resources to adequately frame appropriate collective action in the range of spheres implicated by an incident like this.
I'm also constantly struck by the politics of technology in cases like this....it happens a train station, there is confusion and debate about the technical similarities between a taser and gun (as though it would be a perfectly acceptable outcome to fire the taser), as well as about "protocols", and of course the video-witnessing that simultaneously enables the incident to be brought to public attention and that places the witness in the position of observer rather than actant. These features re-appear in many incidents of police brutality but what I wish we had a better way to talk about here, is how the politics (and hopes) of collective action brought about through media networks fail or succeed, particularly in the cultural geography of the Bay Area? Here media plays a very different role than it did in late 1990s Los Angeles. And yet, an incident that brings forth echoes of the same structural inequalities between communities and law enforcement take place on the back porch of the Silicon Valley, where the utopian promises of technological innovation and production hold out hope that in a networked world, there will be checks on such brutal violent excesses. How should we make sense of that? One wonders what J. Cole , much less West Coast intellectuals, might have to say.
Mike, thanks for lending your words to, and making space for, this discussion.