Andrew Anthos, you may have heard is the 72 year old man who was harassed, assaulted, and beaten on February
13th, and died yesterday, February 22, 2007 in Detroit.

A young man on the bus, reportedly asked him if he was "gay," followed him off the bus to his apartment building and beat him with a metal pipe into a coma. At the time, he was helping a wheelchair-bound friend who was on the bus through the snow.

Andrew Anthos had been a fixture in Detroit streets for many a year. Before I had a car, I would see him everywhere - and I do mean everywhere - from the neighborhoods, to Wayne State's campus, throughout downtown and beyond. He was one of those about whom I wondered how the heck they got around so quickly, before I stopped to wonder how I got around quickly enough to see him everywhere.

I never thought Mr. Anthos was exactly Black, and I never imagined he was White.

What I knew of Mr. Anthos, not including his name was that he was a gentle faced man that I saw at least two times a week at bus stops both deep within and at the outskirts of the hood. In bus-stop language, that meant you knew a person - meaning he was cool to sit next to, and would likely keep his eye on you when you whipped around that corner at night.

He walked rather hunched over with short steps, looking downward more than up - and yet always appearing to be concise about his direction. I remember him always looking at me almost from the side of his face - as if he was "just checking." He radiated with harmlessnes.

We all know the old adage that noone is ever safe, and we all have great cause to believe that. But you would think with Mr. Anthos' unassuming presentation one would barely give him such pressurized notice from the beginning.

Years passed before I came across him one day - singing on Monroe - on mainstreet Greektown, Detroit. I was stunned that he sang, and even more suprised at how appropriate it seemed he would sing publicly to the world at curbside. If anyone could get away with it, I guessed he could as he had a much greater than average voice.

As he sang that day, and I stopped for those few moments to listen my thinking about him changed somehow. Being musical, I felt I really knew him now through his windpipes.

But, don't you wonder what Mr. Anthos could have said to keep this man from beating him to life's end? Do you think if he had told him a lie, he would still be alive?

"Hell naw, I ain't 'gay!!'" he might have easily insisted. Would that have provided him permission to share some breathing space with the rest of us until he died of natural causes? Mr. Anthos and I never spoke beyond utterances, and I don't suggest my staccato experiences with him signal what his personality was like, but I don't remember him being an especially verbal man. I have no idea if he was, but if seventy-two year old Andrew Anthos was Same Gender Loving, would the answer, "yes" have kept him from having the answer beaten out of him?

Given it appears Mr. Anthos didn't have much to say at the time, one can presume his assailant wanted to victimize someone - or anyone - before he even came across Mr. Anthos.

Surely he was furious with the world for a thousand irrelevantly credible reasons. And unless he's been living in a cave, he intuitively knew that great orators to small time street corner agents have a couple of groups of people they share bigotries, phobias, hatred and knee slapping prejudices against.

What do forty percent of pimps to the Editor of the Chicago Defender have in common? They perpetuate rhetoric from which deeper more intense bigotries take root, and that provide powerful, drifting sanctions and advisories that Same Gender Loving folk are perfect targets to be rediculed, beaten, or who must after all just need a man.

No matter Mr. Anthos' attractional orientation, we're pretty sure his assailant made a bus-to-curbside assessment of him based upon his outer shell. Folk still don't "get it" that no matter how many "effeminate" men they see, and no matter how many "butch" women seem so obvious - the majority of Same Gender Loving folk still walk, talk, order their food and look just like they do. One would have to beat down an awful lot of heteroexual people in complete error before they got to half of their Same Gender Loving targets.

That said, there has to be a growing, more vocal straight Black presence speaking out on the issue of legal protections for their own skin or kin folk, whichever is more prominent in their hearts and minds. If any group can be allowed to whittle and munch away at our edges - or if violence against one group of us by another is supported with silence - there is no border separating any of us from where that violence would end. And with that, there is no end to our digressing as a people.

It is outrageous in 2007 that a silent Black heterosattractional population has confused their religious or socio-political convictions with whether people should be discriminated against or even whether we should live or we should die.

In the meantime, the media has decided their hook will be that Andrew Anthos who traveled the streets in the depths of Detroit by bus was "a patriot" (who did in fact advocate for the dome of Michigan's Capital to be lit once a year in red, white and blue). Here is Mr. Anthos on that mission speaking to that issue at: Andrew Anthos on red, white and blue dome

♦Had I had the opportunity to chat with Mr. Anthos, I would have vehemently disagreed with all of this red, white and blue business.

♦I can't tolerate polices or the people who perpetuate them that abuse our communities on one hand and neglect them on the other.

♦I am sickened by the Republican Party, and in fact I am nauseated with the maze of a system that perpetually keeps rich, irrational and insane people in power from both parties.

But being an authentically moral person, I still want them to have fair housing, benefits, full health care coverage, not to be discriminated against, assaulted - or worse killed - because I want to see the system dramatically changed for the good of the whole.

What is critical to note is that Black and Brown folk in particular are a doomed lot if we can't find a way to weave our disputes together with our support for one another's wellness and goodwill. Those of us who are Black "social engineers" through wordsmithing or entertainment need to care enough that people who respect them can be apt to take what they pontificate to extremes that mean the difference between life and death for a lot of people. Ironically, Minister Louis Farrakhan has said as much regarding the murder of Malcolm X, which he apparently is only willing to apply to that one solitary event.

As we rationalize what Mr. Anthos might have done to change this man's mind about beating him to death in the cold snow outside of his warm apartment - it's fair to say the question is not about him.

The answer lies within many of us.

One need not be special to go along with the thin grain in the wood. But, it takes courage to turn our boat around and drive it against heartless, misguided, destructive, exploitive currents that we all need to know could just as easily sweep people you love away with its waves.






Reach out to Terry Howcott at terryhowcott@terryhowcott.com


Copyright © Terry Howcott, 2007

Photo Credits:

---

HEADER

"Proud Woman," Courtesy of: African Millennium Foundation, www.african-millennium.com

"Agave2." Courtesy of: John Villinski, Abstract Southwest, www.abstractsouthwest.com

African “Egghead” and Black Man in White
Courtesy of: Gene Pearson, Gene Pearson Studio, www.genepearsonsculpture.com