Paranoia//Am I Okay
On Wednesday, Anthony Ferrill, an electrician at Molson Coors, killed six people and himself in a gun-shooting spree at the Molson Coors campus. I’m from Milwaukee, and this story hits close to home. My uncle works at Molson-Coors and my mom and aunts were tour guides at Miller brewery. I am also sparsely connected to some of the victims, and connected to Ferrill himself in multiple ways. I am left confused about what happened, what we need to do to heal, and how we can move forward.
I was talking to my cousin Dwayne about Anthony Ferrill. Dwayne lives on the same block as Ferrill and his family. We were discussing the Ferrill’s character, which Dwayne described as normal. Ferrill was fond of his dog, a Doberman that he trained well enough for the dog to be off-leash when his street wasn’t busy. He had a daughter and a wife and was friendly with everyone on the block. I asked Dwayne if they ever talked about issues at work, race-related or not. Dwayne said no, and seemed to regret not chatting about it, in the event that he could help alleviate some of Ferrill’s pain. This is a relatable thought, but also provides a helpful point of inquiry: how often do we as Black people air our grievances with other Black people who are not in our close circles? Can we work to find a home in each other?
Fanon’s chapter “The Lived Experience of the Black Man” from Black Skin, White Masks is an internal dialectic in which Fanon discusses the paranoia and sensitivity involved in being Black. Reading this chapter always makes my brain dart to and fro, almost mirroring the very paranoid nature he describes. For instance, he states when confronted by a child calling him a nigger:
“Locked in this suffocating reification, I appealed to the Other so that his liberating gaze, gliding over my body suddenly smoothed of rough edges, would give me back the lightness of being I thought I had lost, and taking me out of the world put me back in the world. But just as I get to the other slope I stumble, and the Other fixes me with his gaze, his gestures and attitude, the same way you fix a preparation with a dye. I lose my temper, demand an explanation… Nothing doing. I explode. Here are the fragments put together by another me.”
Most days, if I’m lucky, I’ll encounter a minor instance of racism, whether it be from a family member, friend, coworker, or a stranger. In the quotidian nature of racism, they most often come in the form of micro-aggressions. I often question whether or not micro-aggressions were actually micro-aggressions, or the person was just being an asshole. Like today, I was standing in line at airport security and the TSA agent looked at my license and boarding pass extra long.[1] She read and re-read my name a few times. Was she suspicious of me or just really thorough at her job? Regardless of the truth, it was a potential micro-aggressive situation that I spent time questioning.
These situations, when piled on top of each other, are exhausting. It’s one thing to go through life simply insecure, questioning whether or not people like you; it’s another thing to go through life questioning whether or not people are judging you because of something out of your control, and that this judgment could potentially prevent you from living and acting freely. It feels like paranoia. You become distended from your body and your consciousness, and your sense of reality is near piecemeal. You end up putting together parts of yourself that were constructed by an impersonal view of you. You are exhausted.
When the news about the shooting initially rolled in, I didn’t think twice about it. Hearing about violence in Milwaukee isn’t new to me (as of August 2019, Milwaukee is the 7th most violent city in the United States). But today, my brother questioned me on whether or not I believe the stories that racial discrimination happened. At first, I was bothered that this is even a question at hand. I became increasing bothered when I logged onto Facebook where I found people questioning whether or not the stories of racial discrimination are true. I don’t understand which appetite this satiates. What will it do for us? Will it give us piece and calm that he had evidentiary and a legitimate reason to kill six people? Will it feed conservative media’s or banal white folks’ desire for the truth of a violent Black brute who wants to act out because he “felt” oppressed?
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote this article documenting their insight into the racial discrimination element:
“About a year ago, the employee said, Ferrill started saying he believed brewery workers were coming into his home, bugging his computer and moving chairs around. ‘I was: ‘Are you serious, Anthony? What?’ We all kind of joked about it, saying we should maybe get him an aluminum hat. Things just started getting weird. But he was dead serious about it,’ the co-worker said.”
Clearly, Ferrill was upset. This narrative is tangential to other stories that folks have shared about Ferrill, including those coming from my cousin and my uncle. To some of his co-workers, Ferrill seemingly said paranoid things. I don’t want us to focus on the details of the racial discrimination in the aftermath of this mass shooting. More than anything, I want us to focus on being sympathetic to this paranoia. I want for us to give each other more grace in times where we may in fact feel crazy. I want for White folks to understand that this paranoia is legitimate. Personally, I sometimes lose direction and focus when faced with a situation in which I am forced to grapple with something being discriminatory or asshole-y. Understanding the complexities of feeling unsafe in your own skin because of your skin is unearthing.
During a MPD press conference today, a journalist asked whether or not the claims that Ferrill acted as a result of racial discrimination were true. These are the questions with which we will be faced as this story develops. We might also ask whether or not the claims of racial discrimination are legitimate. Evaluating these questions are important steps in the narrative of the story; however, I want us to focus on the fact that he felt paranoid. I want us to think more deeply about what feeling paranoid is like; what can we do alleviate each other’s paranoia? How can we create homes in each other? What are some societal steps that we can take to give grace to paranoia?
I don’t think that the paranoia will cease to exist, especially in our lifetime. But, I want us to make it better for each other. Let’s give paranoia grace, time, space, and community. For now, I close with Fanon: “I find myself one day in the world, and I acknowledge one right for myself: the right to demand human behavior from the other.”
[1] My appearance is often mistaken for Middle Eastern or Latina. I roll with it. Surveillance likes neither of these groups, nor Black.
