Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education

by Mychal Denzel Smith

Black men’s humanity only need be invisible to you, so you never question where these stories came from and why they exist.

One of the more pernicious effects of racism on the psyche is the constant questioning of one’s worth and

purpose.

When you’re introduced to a martyr as a result of their death, they aren’t a whole person. They are a name and a story. They are a set of symbols and projections. Their lives are flattened for our consumption, and whatever

attempts we make to remind ourselves of their humanity are no substitute for the face-to-face interactions we’ll never have with them.

If we don’t rescue their narratives, they’ll forever be remembered only to the

extent that white supremacy lends them any humanity. But we do a disservice to our martyrs by imposing perfection upon them. We do a greater disservice to ourselves, the survivors and potential tokens, by not honestly reckoning with who our martyrs were and who they could have been.

the more the image of black men is connected to everything wrong with the world, the easier it is to justify killing us. Racism comes to be seen as a natural reaction to the existence of black

monsters.

looked at the face of the boy who became a symbol and wanted more. I wanted more for him than the choice between martyr and token. I wanted more for him than eulogies and praise songs. I wanted more for him than just an opportunity to create himself. I wanted for him, for all the Trayvons in waiting, a world where they didn’t have to grow up broken or not grow up at all.

How did you learn to be a black man?

Academic excellence was the biggest part of being “twice as good”

But the right kind of black. The successful, respectable kind of black. The kind of black that was “twice as good,” that made itself known and then faded. The kind of black that would allow people to just see a man.

to say what it was about Malcolm that filled

He was a student first, devouring every bit of knowledge that he could, and a teacher second, imparting his hard-earned wisdom to a people rejected from formal schooling. His uncompromising truth-telling

Malcolm taught us that white supremacy was the enemy of self-love. He preached pride in our blackness as both a birthright and a tactic against

an American system of devaluation. And he was killed for it.

Black on Both Sides was like a religious experience for me. He was talking about the theft of black culture, corporate greed, racial double standards, the oppression of a police state, addiction, practical

street survival tactics, and self-worth.

black women—had a way of existing without being present. It’s a natural result of consuming history and culture through the fables of masculine triumph. The centuries-long battle against American racism had been handed to me inside the framework of black male defiance.

The black man needs to start today to shelter and protect and respect his black women!”

I spent my childhood passively absorbing white supremacist ideas of my invisibility, then unconsciously shrinking myself from the world. Everything I read, listened to, and learned validated my right to existence as a black man in America.

Hope is a muddy concept, but one that can foster innovation. Despite a Hobbesian belief that life is naturally “nasty, brutish, and short,” we strive to create the best versions of ourselves because there exists an indistinct possibility that we, through will and creativity, can alter that reality. But we need something, or someone, to help us believe that the effort will be worthwhile.

Malcolm was in his DNA—perhaps not the same way he was in mine, but he was there.

Hurricane Katrina was the first instance, in my lifetime, where our national conversation on race had to concern itself with questions of inequality, poverty, and government neglect. It provided a visual representation of what I understood intellectually—years of divestment, legal discrimination, and inattention to the plight of black Americans had led to a crisis. And it was infuriating to witness.

James Baldwin wrote in “Notes of a Native Son,” “There is not a Negro alive who does not have this rage in his blood—one has the choice, merely, of living with it consciously or surrendering to

flummoxed

I was being groomed to be a credit to my race, and a large part of that meant the rejection of the stereotypes imposed on our psyches, that of the Angry Black Man chief among them. Nearly every black elder in my life stressed how important it was to keep my composure, whatever the situation, because being labeled an Angry Black Man was a punishment

akin to death. It would make white people uncomfortable, garner me a reputation as difficult to work with, stifle my professional opportunities, and ostracize me socially.

Anger belonged to thugs, menaces to society. I was to be a member of the talented tenth, and therefore my anger needed to be suppressed.

Black rage has long been a political tool. It has been used against us, but it is our anger, historically, that speaks to the core concerns of black people in America and provides a radical critique of the system of racism. Black rage announces itself at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, and says, “Ain’t I a woman?” Black rage stands before hundreds of thousands at the Lincoln Memorial and says, “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” Black rage says to the Democratic National Convention, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Black rage says “Fuck tha Police” and “Fight the Power.” Or “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Anger is what makes our struggle visible.

redemption. Anger is what makes our struggle visible, and our struggle is what exposes the hypocrisy of a nation that fashions itself a moral leader. To rise against the narrative and expose the lie gives opportunity to those whose identity depends on the lie to question and, hopefully, change.

the speaker has no ability to discern its truth because he literally can’t see the world around him. How does he know black people “think they’re the best dancers”? Someone had to tell him and he had to accept that as fact. It’s how racist ideology is passed down. But when Bigsby finally learns that he is black and divorces his wife for being a

“nigger lover,” his hatred has been internalized to the point that he turns it on himself. It’s a heady bit of comedy that could have been trapped by the need to shock, but it’s Chappelle’s genius that conveys the layers of the message in between gut-busting one-liners about “niggerdom.”

This is true of all artists who make deals with large corporations, but when you’re black in the entertainment business it comes with a reminder of the historical theft of your people’s labor and creativity from Pat Boone to Vanilla Ice. Everyone has been able to profit from black genius except the actual black people responsible for that genius.