Why I Enjoyed the Alabama Brawl

This *is* a spiritual piece

Ernie Barnes' "Sugar Shack" classic was updated by Premi Sterlin to reflect the Alabama Brawl.

Why did I enjoy the Alabama Brawl? Here's the thing; there are too many white people who want us to give way, docile, rather than sharing space with us, civilly. I cannot count the number of times my body space was violated simply because I stood in a space where a white person decided they wanted to be. In airports, I wear my backpack on my chest to preemptively buffer against people who don’t want to share the corridor. In subways, I learned how to stand with my elbows out and my knees soft and flexible, so I could create a barrier for men who liked to shove their arms into my breasts during rush hour. Once, my husband body-checked a man for shoving me as I simply stood inside a Roman pharmacy.

Our parents and grandparents had to step off a sidewalk if a white person approached or risk being beaten or lynched. Our grandmothers never felt the protection of femininity while walking amongst white people; white women exploited them and white men assaulted them. This easy, presumptive white sprawling did not stop after the Civil Rights Movement. We witness it on city streets, in restaurants, airplane queues and absolutely in the suburbs today. There are white folks who believe our spaces are theirs to invade. Carolyn Bryant walked so Karens could fly.

And so, on August 5^th, when an Alabaman white man could not abide the reasonable request of a Black security guard to move his lil boat so a huge riverboat could dock, that white man decided it was more reasonable to assault the security guard than to move. This man is clearly accustomed to disregarding Black bodies with no consequence. He wouldn’t be taking orders from no n!@@er.

He leapt at the security guard and soon had the support of several other white men and women who took turns overpowering the lone guard. Curiously, they all thought it was more reasonable to jump the security guard than to pull their friend off of him.

What they didn’t know is that they would not get away with that; not that day.

I wish I knew who to credit for this; but I salute them.

Black people mounted up like Avengers: Endgame, running and even swimming to the security guard’s rescue. And yeah, violence was the answer. Lots of it. The group of people beating up the security guard soon found themselves besieged and overpowered. Then they found themselves in handcuffs on the dock.

The default for American society is that white comfort is equated with innocence; uncontested and protected by law enforcement and social mores—especially if the aggrieved victims are Black. Not that day, honey. It was surreal and celebratory to see privileged white people actually experience the consequences of their actions. We were all witnessing the social version of Haley’s comet.

The reason so many Black people (including me) celebrated the brawl is because we have all had experiences where we had to either move out of white folks’ way or bear the consequences. We are taught through pain that white comfort trumps logic, civility, common dignity, or mutual benefit. Segregation is an extreme example of this, of course. Sundown towns still exist (and are celebrated by mediocre contemporary country artists to this day, apparently). Even outside of sundown towns, residents of cities, suburbs, and hamlets all over the U.S. are all too eager to surveil Black people who, in their little brains, couldn’t possibly live in or visit their dwelling places. White folks are quite comfortable letting Black folks know that they don’t belong. Too often, white discomfort leads to Black harassment, arrest, or death in these scenarios. White discomfort is weaponized against Black people, by design, with awful regularity. In order to survive, too often we have to absorb. We have to move.

We are so used to walking that tension of protecting ourselves and also staying under the radar of violence while absorbing indignity. It’s exhausting. That’s why it was so gleeful to see a Black man protected from white-privileged assault by a collective of Black people who stood ten toes down in their determination to defend with their fists, with folding chairs (that one brother went a bit too far, in my opinion, but I get why), and also with memes, soundtracks, and cleverness. We’re so accustomed to being compelled to forgiveness in the face of insult (ask Jamie Foxx), injustice (waves hands at SCOTUS and every cop who murdered an unarmed Black child, woman, or man), and violence (see the aftermath of Dylan Roof’s murder of the Emmanuel 9, for just one example). It felt good to see a fair fight for once.