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December 1 - December 24, 2016
Then George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. I 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.
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.
In 1994, he told MTV, “We asked ten years ago. We was asking with the Panthers. We was asking with them, you know, with the Civil Rights movement, we was asking. Now those people that were asking, they’re all dead or in jail, so what do you think we’re gonna do? Ask?”
To my newly forming black radical mind, women—more specifically, 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. Douglass’s bravery, Du Bois’s genius, Malcolm’s eloquence, Tupac’s rage. The heroic women existed largely in service of ending racist oppression of the men (Ida B. Wells’s research on lynching) or as a catalyst for a man’s ascendance to greatness (Rosa Parks
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The solution for black women was the protection of black men, to be looked after as if they were prized possessions, rather than as living, breathing humans with thoughts and ideas of their own.
Tupac also gave me an introduction to the differentiation between “bitches” and “women.” It’s the rationale he used to explain how he could produce a song like “I Get Around”—a fun party track that revels in the hedonism that accompanies “loose” women—and “Keep Ya Head Up”—a genuine expression of solidarity with the struggles facing black women, especially those living in poverty. The latter, according to Tupac, were real women, deserving of our adoration and undying love. The former were bitches, and there’s nothing wrong with calling a bitch a bitch.
But even if you allow for the rationale of “calling a thing a thing” to stand, how could men, the oppressive group, claim any legitimacy in defining “bitches,” a term used to describe the oppressed?
I wasn’t totally on board with her politics, but I really liked her smile, and ambition was proving to be more attractive than I once thought.
I brought along my barely read copy of Dreams, thinking Sharita would find it impressive that I owned a book that hundreds of thousands of other people also owned.
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.
What mattered was Obama seeing his audience and them seeing themselves in him.
I thought of all those things, and the fact that in the moment these three approached me, the options for young black men in America were laid bare.
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.
The objective was to always present oneself as being deserving of white people’s respect. 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. In less than two minutes, Kanye went from one of my favorite artists to one of my heroes because he didn’t suppress it. He was young, black, and just didn’t give a fuck on national television.
In fairness, there wasn’t the same expectation for Democratic primary frontrunner Hillary Clinton to make a public statement on Sean Bell’s killing and the subsequent acquittal of the police officers responsible for his death. Obama was the black candidate, even if he didn’t want to be.
“I wouldn’t call it radical,” an anonymous Trinity member told ABC, “I call it being black in America.”
The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning.
Anger by itself is not sufficient. Anger is exhausting. After centuries of struggle, trading anger for hope is the sort of exhalation an oppressed people deserves. The hope of a black president for a people descended from those once held as property is the kind of story to make fairy tales jealous. But when things don’t change, expecting those same people to continue hoping is to act as if those fairy tales are adequate substitutes for reality.
One of Baldwin’s most repeated quotes is: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” That rage can lay dormant at times, but then something unexpected will come along to jar it loose.
Anger is what makes our struggle visible.
Anger is what makes our struggle visible, and our struggle is what exposes the hypocrisy of a nation that fashions itself a moral leader.
Our struggle has inspired oppressed people the world over, because if we former slaves can make the most powerful nation face itself, there’s a chance for everyone else. In a twist, our rage becomes hope for others.
The sketch works because it wholly commits to absurdity, but the metaphor undergirding the absurdity is clear. The racist language is extreme, but 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.
“Jordan was in many ways the fruit of the Civil Rights movement, which reached its apex in the year of his birth,” New York Times sports columnist William Rhoden wrote in his controversial bestseller Forty Million Dollar Slaves. “His right to remain silent is what we won. Jordan didn’t have an obligation to speak up on racial injustices, but he had an unmatched opportunity.”
Jordan became the world’s most popular athlete in the decade after Muhammad Ali held that title. They couldn’t be more different, except in the fact that they were both black men. That isn’t insignificant. They were the most visible black men in the world and used that platform in vastly different ways. Ali spoke to the condition of his people in the United States, becoming an ambassador for human rights the world over while remaining rooted in a black American tradition of resistance. Jordan sold sneakers.
It may be hyperbolic to suggest, as Jesse Jackson did, that Gilbert saw “LeBron as a runaway slave,” but why did he consider it a “cowardly betrayal” for a man to choose where he wanted to work? What’s “shameful” about choosing to be paid for your talents under working conditions that you have a final say over? And can anyone imagine Gilbert saying these things about a white guy?
Their two differing trajectories illuminate two important lessons about how to navigate the economy of commodification: knowing your price and knowing your worth.
LeBron’s ability to choose millions and his voice, and Chappelle’s choice of sanity and independence, are inspiring. But choice is a privilege not afforded most black boys trying to become black men in America. We can’t all dribble a basketball, make people laugh, rap on beat—or write. We don’t all have talents someone, some industry wants to exploit. Most of us have our bodies, our minds if we’re lucky, and a desire to survive against the odds. Choices are a privilege defined by circumstance. In this country, the circumstance is always racism, oftentimes poverty. The two combined strip our
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And while I didn’t exactly find a tribe of kindred spirits, I got to know people based on whether they were kind listeners, had warm laughs and quick wit, and stopped judging them based on whether they also had an unread copy of Wretched of the Earth lying around.
And the hope finally broke when George Zimmerman pulled the trigger and shot Trayvon Martin in his chest. Hope was no longer sufficient. Anger returned.
At times, it has been derisively referred to as “slacktivism,” the idea being that it requires no effort on the part of would-be activists to show their support. You no longer have to sacrifice in order to feel like you’re helping the cause. All anyone had to do was change their social media profile picture to them wearing a hoodie, or put #Justice4Trayvon in a status update, and suddenly they were the movement. Our grandparents risked life and limb in the streets, were beaten by police officers and other defenders of white supremacy. We just clicked “like” on Facebook.
But that overlooks how powerful the image of people wearing their hoodies in solidarity could be. And that not everyone is physically capable of marching and protesting. And that social media is not meant as a replacement for direct action and civil disobedience. And that without social media, we likely would have never heard of Trayvon Martin in the first place. Without Twitter, news of Michael Brown’s body lying in the street decaying because Officer Darren Wilson killed him and the police couldn’t be bothered to move him wouldn’t have penetrated outside of Ferguson for days, weeks, or ever.
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To be a writer is to bear witness; to be a black writer is to bear witness to tragedy. In order to be honest and good, this is something I can’t escape.
The nigger generates profit that America feels no obligation to share. The nigger is reminded of its position at the bottom by being shuttered off in the worst neighborhoods with the least amount of resources, while being told to be grateful for America’s benevolence. And so long as the nigger exists, America can say to its other exploited populations, “At least you aren’t the nigger.” But every now and then, some of America’s niggers get it in their heads that they deserve the right to walk free in the world. They start believing they are worthy of being treated like humans, with dignity and
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More often than not, the violence is slow and undetectable to those who aren’t niggers. The niggers go to dilapidated schools. The niggers don’t get tested for certain diseases when they go to the doctor. The niggers breathe the most polluted air. The niggers work longer hours at more strenuous jobs for less money. But sometimes the violence is more direct. Sometimes a George Zimmerman kills a Trayvon Martin.
as I heard five- and six-year-old marchers chant along that “black lives matter.” What they would know, regardless of the political outcome of the movement, was that someone thought their black life mattered. Thousands of people had come to their hometown to stand with them and assert their right to live free. That is a revolution in itself.
Black women have always been on the front lines and behind the scenes of the fight for racial justice in America.
It was black women on Twitter who pushed us all to pay attention to the stories of Rekia, Renisha, Aiyana—and Trayvon, Jordan, Michael, and all the rest. It was black women organizing the early vigils and protests while the Sanford Police Department couldn’t decide if shooting an unarmed teenager warranted an arrest under the laws they had sworn to uphold. It was black women who claimed the streets as their own and led the marches and protests against police violence. It was black women who nursed the wounds from rubber bullets and cared for those who had breathed in tear gas. It was black
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But such is the story of black women standing behind and by black men through the most challenging parts of our existence, and black men looking behind and beside ourselves and not seeing black women standing there.
We don’t even have to ask black women to sacrifice for our survival; they do so without formal request. In turn, we dismiss the concerns of black womanhood as trivial or divisive, failing to see black women’s pain as real or in need of our attention.
We recognize the detrimental effects the War on Drugs has had on black men and our interactions with the police, but there’s no similar discussion about the ways the criminalization of sex work is a pretense for police harassment of black women, black trans women in particular.
So we poured all of our intellectual and activist energy into saving black men. In the process, we haven’t just ignored the way that white supremacy killed Rekia and Renisha and Aiyana, and all the other names we refused to learn: we have excused the violence black women face from black men.
Yates expressed the concerns of generations of black women who have stood on the front lines for black liberation, only to go home and have to fight for their own private salvation.
We have used the same violence America used to turn us into niggers, and remind us we are niggers, against black women, and then we asked for their loyalty. And against the logic of self-preservation, they have given it to us. We use our anger at the state as a justification for the violence we enact on black women, then tell them not to hold us accountable until we have defeated racism.
Unless we recognize that liberation for black men based in patriarchy and male dominance is liberation for no one, least of all black women, but not for black men either. It turns us into the very oppressors we claim to be fighting against. It makes us deny parts of ourselves in service of an idea of masculinity that does more to destroy than build.
Complacency is easy, and when we aren’t the Chris Browns and Bill Cosbys of the world, it’s hard to see why change is necessary. But we have to ask ourselves: Is that enough? Is it enough to not beat a woman unrecognizable? Is it enough to not drug and rape dozens of women? Is that the bar we want to set for our humanity?
These aren’t gendered behaviors, but they take on a different resonance when it is men doing the lying, manipulating, judging, and silencing within the confines of a patriarchal system. It’s another layer of destruction when it is black men doing the omitting, deceiving, exploiting, and ignoring of black women who have always fought for them.
And black gay men were not who was envisioned when black communities started to bemoan black men’s condition as an “endangered species.” We haven’t developed a script for dealing with the violence inflicted upon them because we still haven’t gotten to a place where we can fully see them.
I found homophobia reprehensible. But even that was less about embracing gay people’s humanity than it was standing in opposition to the conservatives and Christians who had made denying gay people rights part of their agenda. I knew only that if they were for it I had to be against it, and vice versa.
But I’d also made the mistake of defining homophobia—a term that suggests fear of homosexuality—as something external. I wasn’t afraid of gay people, or of witnessing expressions of same-sex attraction. I was, however, afraid of someone believing I was gay.
