SECTION ONE
sm
COLUMN
NINETY-SIX,
SEPTEMBER 1, 2003
(Copyright © 2003 The Blacklisted Journalist)
WHO KILLED OUR LITTLE SHANI?
OUR YOUNGEST CHILD, OUR BABY. . .WHO KILLED
AMINA & AMIRI BARAKA'S
LITTLE SHANI?
SHANI BARAKA
(Photo by Myles Aronowitz)
Who
killed our youngest child, our baby? Our
little Shani. Every day of her thirty two years whenever I saw Shani Id say,
even as late as last Sunday at Amina's mother's house, "Shani little!'
Playing ball in the backyard, coming home from school, eating a sandwich in the
kitchen or dressed up and ready to go to another demonstration or forum with her
parents. Same thing, "Shani
little!" And she was very little. But that never stopped nothing.
Not with Shani!
But
don't get off the subject. Who
killed our little Shani? Like that
poem the terrorists in the Caucasian crib don't like, WHO? I ask it again in the most humble way. I ask it for her mother, my wife, Amina, for her brothers and
sisters, her aunts and uncles, her nieces and nephews, for all the people who
loved her, all the people who loved our little Shani. For her gay friends and
the straight ones. All us wanna
know who killed our Shanii. And
some of us think we know. But even
more important tonight is Why? Why did something kill our little Shani? As little as she was we know you didn't have to kill her.
Not if some big our bad macho man. Like
one killed her aunt, my sister, Kimako, back in 1983.
Is this some twenty year cycle of horror for our family?
For everybody, that every twenty years some wonderful and surprising
woman gets murdered by some insecure ignorant homophobic Negro Punk (and not the
heavy metal kind)! Perhaps because
we get women pregnant, and when the baby comes, will not marry them.
Maybe because we have left unknown numbers of fatherless children
scattered across the planet. Maybe we have married but betray our wives with Adultery.
So maybe we have more than a clue to Who killed our
little Shani! Why do we think that?
Because it was just such a Negro who couldn't stand non-passive self
consciously Independent Black women. Our
little Shani was just such. So was
her special friend and companion, Ray Ray Holmes.
When you saw one you usually saw the other.
That's why they were found side by side when this Negro Frankenstein
murdered them. You know they didn't
want to die, but even so, from the way it was described, you know Shani probably
told the Negro something he didn't wanna hear.
So he shot her straight in the heart!
I guess he wanted her to be like him and have a hole where his heart
should'a been!
And that's why Ray Ray had two bullets in her, because
when he shot Shani Ray Ray, enraged, must have tried to rip the eyes out his
head, so he shot her two times. NO,
Shani and Ray Ray loved life. All
yall know that. They didn't want to
die, but if they had to die, that's the way they wd have preferred it, side by
side. Like they were in real life!
That's the Who and the How, except about that Who,
there's some deeper
He
was so backward his view was that women had no right to divorce, unless the man
initiated it. So he was actually an
18th century HIN. He also believed
that women had to do only what the man dictated and nothing else.
HIN hates most, aggressive intelligent black women who have some ideas on
their own and openly express them, even in contradiction to HIN.
So that when Shani's sister Wanda wanted a divorce from this HIN, he refused to believe it really mattered. What does a Black woman know? She should have no say in the matter. So HIN
Wanda filed 12 reports with Piscataway police---but she was only a 'nigger' woman
refused to leave even when he was made to.
Wanda
filed 12 reports with the Piscataway police about this black woman-hating man.
Twelve reports. She called
them again and again. But it was
only some nigger woman. What do
they know? We know there is a struggle for women's rights across the US,
but we should also know that black women are triply oppressed by nationality
(race), class and gender. One of
the ugliest examples of this, and this is something Fidel Castro read to us from
a United Nations' report, is that in the history of the United States, there has
never been a single White Man convicted of Raping a Black woman!
In the US there are many Negroes whose minds fit the perpetrator's
description!
And this is the philosophy and attitude that is still
predominant in the US. The
philosophy and attitude that characterize both the Piscataway Police Department
and probably Most Police Departments in the nation.
(Our
hope is that our new Police Director in Newark is working to correct this
hideous aberration. (HIMCN). Imagine
the Police and the Murderer have the same Philosophy.
We know because the 12 reports to the police were mainly ignored.
Even when the HIMCN put a gun to Wanda's head, the Piscataway police ho
hummed and did nothinged my daughter and RAY RAY to their graves.
The gob of spit that killed our little Shani motivated
by the same philosophy did just the opposite, he murdered our little Shani and
Ray Ray because they were Black, because they were women, because they were
workers, because they did not live off stocks and bonds and other people's
misery. But he also killed them, shot our little Shani and her companion Ray
Ray, because he believed they were gay, he hated them because he thought they
loved each other and this fake human with the mind of a nasty gob of spit on the
floor felt that it was wrong for these two women to love each other, to want to
be together rather than with him or with other men, black or white, like him.
So this homophobic male chauvinist Negro hated them even more for that. For what he saw as a crime, being Gay, and rejecting his
sorry Ignorant and very dangerous homophobic male chauvinist self.
I imagine, particularly when he burst into the house where the two
sisters, Wanda and our little Shani lived.
And anybody who really knew Shani know exactly what Shani would have told
him. Straight up.
Right in his face. Like she
did to her brothers all those years she played round ball in our back yard and
perfected her game.
Who
killed our little Shani, a dangerous psychotic Negro murderer who was anti women
anti anti-?black women, that's what we mean by Male Chauvinist.
Not just the word, but the most dangerous example of it, its not quite
human personification. What killed
our little Shani? What killed
Newark Public Schools little Shani. What
killed the little Shani who was all city point guard at University High School,
the little Shani at Johnson C. Smith University the Most Valuable Player and
best Point Guard in the CIAA the little Shani who was an honorable mention
member ofthe Eastman Kodak All-American Team. 1993 Co player of the year, who
still graduated Magna cum Laude, with honor.
Both the Who and the What that killed our little Shani, are deadly
chauvinist homophobic murderers. As
persons or philosophies. And little
Shani and Ray Ray's murders confirm this.
When the Piscataway police did nothing, they say they
could not set the restraint order against the soon to be ignorant Negro murderer
because they could not serve him the papers. Which is like saying we couldn't catch the murderer because
we couldn't catch the murderer.
"Well, what line of work are you in", says
our little Shani's father with his jaws tight.
You can't be policemen!"
"Why didn't you do something when she filed those
reports," says our little Shani's mother with tears leaping out of her eyes,
both fists balled tight?
"I
called you over and over, flied 12 reports, a restraining order and you did
nothing? So why are you here
now?? screams the tortured now hysterical sister.
"My sister and Ray Ray already been murdered!"
Now this ugly thing is loose somewhere among us. "
Vicious and dangerous with the stink of a dying punk. Not only the actual ignorant negro homophobic male chauvinist
black woman hating murderer, as a person, but as an idea, a philosophy, an
ideology, roaming though so many minds, not merely the dangerous nut in the
white house who despises most people, because most of the people in the world,
as DuBois said, are colored people. Who
slanders and lies about and invades other peoples countries just like the sick
Negro we gotta find and lock up did, who robs them destroys their houses and
murders them . The sick thing in the Caucasian crib has excuses for his
invasions and robbery and murderers just like this sick homophobic mail
chauvinist negro we still got to catch and arrest, will have.
Excuses why one put up the confederate flag. Why the Negro think it's all right! That's national chauvinism or racism. Why Jungle Jim opposes Equal Rights Amendment for women's
equality in DC and Cheetah, his murderous Negro mascot carry it out with
violence. Why the reefer in the
white house opposes Gay marriage and the killer roach we got on the run opposes
it with murder.
Who killed our little Shani, What killed our little
Shani."Our little Shani who just came back last week as head coach of the Newark
track and field entry and guided our children to a perfect score and a gold
medal. Our little Shani who was
assistant coach to Joanne Watson on the victorious Malcolm X Shabazz State
Championship team?
Why would anything want to see our little Shani like
this? Shot straight in the heart by
some hideous madman, mindless soulless heartless like a poison glob of spit on
the floor? Our little Shani adored
and respected by her team mates, and now by the students at Vailsburg middle
school where she teaches English and Science, and her own kind of thrilling
discipline on the basketball court. For what reason, tell me Why, and Who would
want our little Shani dead. And her
Closest soul mate murdered along side her.
Who and What and Why wd some evil thing want to slaughter our little
Shani who was loved and admired and was a role model of intelligence, skill and
discipline?
The epistrophe is a story about our little Shani ,
Newark's little Shani, which will tell you something about her charismatic
personality of an understated pride, from skill and grace achieved by labor, the
discipline and intelligence, of the athlete scholar, the sensitivity of self
consciousness coupled with that Brick City self determination.
So one night at the end of the year when Shani was at University High,
with a 22-2 record won the city and county and so got to play for the State
Championship against Red Bank in Red Bank.
There were perhaps fifty of we black parents who went down to the game.
There were no Newark Public Officials with us.
We sat across the gym from maybe 750 to a thousand
mostly white Red Bank parents, students and rooters. In the last quarter the game was close and Shani was doing
her stop and fake and spin and pass or shoot number. She was the point and the shooter, at times; she had the
whole thing in her little Shani hands.
Then Red Bank, called time, the coach's face had grown
a little Red too. And off the bench comes a girl, at least two by three times
Shani's size.This player's gig was to play left and right and middle tackle on
our little Shani. And us fifty raised all the Bricks out our enraged Brick City
Parent Mouths. Our Little Shani's
mother was coming out the stands screaming, "you hit my daughter again I'm
gonna break your ... I guess it was neck!" So that didn't work, so when the
whistle blew Red Bank had two new players on the court with striped shirts and
whistles. And every time our little
Shani would do her spin and stop and dagger pass or twist and shoot number the
stripes wd blow their racist whistles. Everybody
there should have dug what was happening. Certainly
we fifty did and kept up the screaming.
But the whole thing made Shani mad, so mad, that she
started crying. weeping those big dangerous little Shani tears.
So in an instant she was back all the way at mid-court, and she started,
play after play, running back & shooting threes from there, so far back they
shd have been fours. Bam. Bam.
Bam Again, weeping and probably saying some little Shani
"trash" talk (they call it now for the American TV audiences).Boom.
Boom. Boom, again.
And the whole place caught on fire.
Boom, she said from even further back, Boom, Boom again.
And we were right there, but them striped whistles cut our little Shani
and all the rest of University down, so they could claim yet another empty
racist victory. You
A young lady, a one time team mate of Shani's, told me just about a day ago, that our little beautiful daughter, mostly very serious but, when she smiled it could light up any place, told her
Shani
reminded both
Amina and Amiri of
Amiri's murdered sister, Kimako
often about her Aunt, my sister, Kimako, how she got
murdered by some Ignorant Negro Male Chauvinist Homophobic maniac, who tried to
rape her and enraged by Kimako's also being gay, took the knife she raised to
try to defend herself from her hands and used it on her, stabbing again and
again until she fell dead, so disfigured by that knife, my father fainted at the
morgue, and had to have the coffin closed . Like Shani, Kimako was an artist, a
dancer and an actress, she was black, small and like our little Shani, Gay.
Shan! reminded both my wife and me of my sister.
And Shani apparently had very deeply identified with Kimako, asking Amina
many questions over the years about her. The
way she was murdered. How I had
felt about her being Gay. But I
never knew that she believed she would die the same way!
Murdered by a homophobic Negro maniac.
She said she thought about that all the time, and the last time Shani
told the girl she thought such a thing would happen to her soon!
My God! My
God! So when we talked to our Black
Mayor and our Black Police Director, our Black Politicians, our prosecutors from
Piscataway, our Black and White policemen. We said, you gotta find this maniac now, right away.
You see those young people sitting up and down the street, on our stairs,
in our house, calling every minute. Well
they and we and many, many people in this town want you to find this murderer
now, today, in a minute. Because if
you don't these children will try to bring their own kind of justice.
Which might end their lives as well.
This is a mostly Black & Brown City.
A Black Mayor. A Black Police Director.
Elected by the people of this city or appointed with great expectations
from those people. To them we say,
it is your job, which you have sworn to us to carry out. That is why I have told all these snarling young folks and
growling not so young ones to try to be cool, though this thing has hacked us to
the bone, has shot us, like Shan!, directly in our heart.
The heart of the people and city of Newark.
You must find this maniac very soon, that is your job, that's what you
are paid by us what you were elected by us to do.
But if you do not do it, and do it soon, then people
will get angry past angry. And some
of them, especially the young ones might also lose their lives to the same
killer. And if that happens, no one
will have to campaign against you in the next election and you or, you will have
campaigned against yourself! If you
let the murderer of our little Shani get away anarchy will break out in this
Brick City of ours. And you will be
cursed and screamed at and finally pulled down!
Because there is no way we, I mean the parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, colleagues, teammates, students or the youth coached by our little Shani, whom the Mayor will posthumously designate as "A Newark Hero" for her stunning work and first as a Head Coach, of guiding our children to victory in San Francisco, just a couple of weeks ago at the International Youth Games. No, we Will Not allow our little Shani to be murdered none of us in this city of our little Shani's birth, our own mostly working class, mostly Black & Brown City, We will not allow it! And we will not allow you to permit it. Not to our little Shani or to her heart's companion, Ray Ray. Not anywhere! Not Now. Not Ever! ##
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