My Government Means to Kill Me

by Rasheed Newson

The vast majority of us are merely pawns in someone else’s game. Don’t get defensive over this point. Embrace it. Once you do, you can begin to manipulate the board. Positioned correctly, pawns can checkmate kings.

Now, being stalked into a dark corner of a bathhouse maze and submitting to the carnal demands of an aggressive man that you’ve never spoken to might seem like a strange substitute for the teenage mating rituals I missed out on, but it had raw drama every inch as thrilling as schoolyard puppy love.

We are not so narrowly defined as society would have us believe. Yet the limits placed on our appetites, talents, and potential are implanted in us when we are children—too young to recognize the prisons built with words. We could blame it all on our families, but then we’d never find the keys to unlock our cells. The awful genius of our confinement is that we are both the prisoner and the warden. We tell ourselves daily that we aren’t free to do this or that because we are that or this. To escape such limited thinking, we don’t have to look far. The keys are in our pocket.

The answer to a gnawing, central question was made manifest. Why had I always felt persecuted by authority figures? Why did the promises of America the beautiful, America the land of liberty, and America the shining city upon a hill ring false to me? Why didn’t I trust cops? Why did I have no faith in the justice system? It was obvious now. Until Dorothy removed the scales from my eyes, I’d had one hundred ways of asking one thing: Why did I feel hunted in my homeland? Because my government means to kill me. Amen! Amen and glory hallelujah! At last, I could explain the force shaping my existence.

Dale was a twenty-nine-year-old elementary school math teacher from Kansas City. He’d created a couple of fun games that were incredibly effective at teaching fractions to kids, and the notoriety got him recruited to join the faculty at Cathedral Preparatory School and Seminary, a prestigious Roman Catholic school on the Lower East Side. Dale, who was the only Black teacher at the school, was beloved by students and staff until sarcoma appeared on his hands. He confessed to the school principal that he was HIV positive, and the holy priests, compassionate nuns, and enlightened educators of Cathedral terminated Dale’s employment, stripping him of an income and health insurance.