‘Took a breath and let him pass’

I’ve been listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “American Skin (41 Shots)” over and over since linking to that song the other day. Springsteen has added it to the set list for his current tour, playing it in Tampa, Fla., last week and dedicating it to Trayvon Martin.

The song was written after the killing of Amadou Diallo in February of 1999 by New York City police officers. Diallo was unarmed. When he reached for his wallet, four policemen shot him 41 times.

Springsteen first performed “American Skin” in concert in 2000, and it sparked a controversy when he arrived in New York for 10 shows at Madison Square Garden:

The song, “American Skin,” has been criticized by Police Commissioner Howard Safir and Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, who has urged New York City officers to boycott Mr. Springsteen’s concerts.

… The “41 shots” Mr. Springsteen sings about refer to the number of bullets fired at Mr. Diallo as he stood in front of his apartment in the Bronx last year, and it includes the lyric, “You can get killed just for living in your American skin.”

… Mr. Diallo’s mother, Kadiatou Diallo, has said she took the song as a sign that people cared about her son. But police officers, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mr. Safir have frowned on it, suggesting that it is wrong to condemn the officers who were acquitted of murder and other charges in February.

Keep in mind that Safir, Lynch and Giuliani were all talking out of their backsides at that point. They hadn’t heard the song, they just knew it had the words “41 shots” in it, so they lashed out against what they presumed was some kind of Commie-hippie anti-police anthem.

They didn’t know, or care, that the first verse of the song was written from the perspective of the police officers who carried out that shooting. They didn’t know, or care, that what Springsteen was saying with the song was clearly and vividly the same as what he said about the song: “The idea was here … here is what systemic racial injustice, fear, and paranoia do to our children, our loved ones, ourselves. Here is the price in blood.”

The white officials offering their knee-jerk condemnations of the song wouldn’t have understood that explanation. “Our children”? “Our loved ones”? From their perspective, this song was about their children and their loved ones:

41 shots, Lena gets her son ready for school
She says “On these streets, Charles
You’ve got to understand the rules
If an officer stops you, promise me you’ll always be polite
And that you’ll never ever run away
Promise Mama you’ll keep your hands in sight”

The song I think of as a companion piece to this one is from Springsteen’s 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad. “Galveston Bay” tells the story of two Gulf-coast fishermen, both veterans of the Vietnam War. One is named Billy Sutter and one is named Le Bin Son.

Billy has been steeped in that same “systemic racial injustice, fear and paranoia” and he’s been taught to view Le Bin Son as a mortal enemy whom he’s vowed to kill.

Here’s how Springsteen introduced the song before one of the first times he performed it:

There’s always, particularly during an election year, there’s always, uh, somebody out there trying to scapegoat somebody else for what they perceive is right or wrong with the country. And it’s always somebody whose, skin is a little different color than theirs or who speaks a little differently or who’s from some different place. And you’ll hear all these, you know, “America for Americans” statements and, and you know, like we all, you know, were, were, uh, were here in the first place. So I guess, um, this is a song, at the end of the Vietnam War, a lot of the Vietnamese refugees ended up down in Texas because, there was, there are parts of it that was very similar to their home. And they went into the shrimping business and there was a lot of tension between the Texas Gulf fishermen and, and the Vietnamese refugees. And this is a song called, uh, “Galveston Bay.”

OK, maybe we’d better just let the song speak for itself:

Billy stood in the shadows
His K-bar knife in his hand
And the moon slipped behind the clouds
Le lit a cigarette, the bay was still as glass
As he walked by Billy stuck his knife into his pocket
Took a breath and let him pass