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

by Mychal Denzel Smith

when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. It started with a 911 call on the night of February 26, 2012: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about. . . . He looks black. . . . A dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie, and either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes. . . . He’s just staring . . . looking at all the houses. . . . He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male. . . . Something’s wrong with him. Yup, he’s coming to check me out, he’s got something in his hands, I don’t know what his deal is. . . . These assholes, they always get away.

It’s a story as old as America itself. It’s a story about black men’s inclination toward violence, our reliance on animal instincts, our general unfitness for civilized society, our preference for death and destruction.

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

For the rest of us, Trayvon Martin became another of our martyrs. His name became a rallying cry, his Skittles a reminder of lost innocence, his hoodie a symbol of resistance, his family a living memory of what American racism steals from us.

One of the more pernicious effects of racism on the psyche is the constant questioning of one’s worth and purpose. It can be almost as debilitating as death. Almost. I don’t wish to make these things seem equivalent. I have my life; Trayvon does not. But the source of my guilt is understanding that American racism will take some of our lives while holding others of us up as exemplars of success, providing the illusion that there is an escape. It places us in the unenviable position of wishing that our martyrs could have survived to become tokens.

We resist this conversation because black men and the culture they create so easily become scapegoats. Without nuance, it very quickly turns toward a blaming of black men for the existence of misogyny, homophobia, and the rest of those American problems, not a careful examination of how black men can experience or contribute to these forms of oppression. And 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.

I knew Malcolm was a threat—my second-grade classmates’ tears taught me that—but when I finally came to understand why, I held the threat close. The threat represented a truth I had, to that point, failed to see. 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.

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.

amalgamation

ambivalent /amˈbivələnt/ I. adjective having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone • some loved her, some hated her, few were ambivalent about her • an ambivalent attitude to technology.

disappointed in someone or something that one discovers to be less good than one had believed • the minority groups were completely disillusioned with the party.

reprieve.

cadence

commiseration.

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 it.”

repudiated

The symbolism of Obama’s success became a cudgel against discussions of persistent racism in housing, education, and health care.

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.

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

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.” But that anger has not only drawn attention to injustice; it has driven people to action, sparking movements and spurring them forward. At the very least, the public expression of black rage has allowed communities and people who have felt isolated in their own anger to know that they are not alone. 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. 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. We almost gave it away.

Enigmatic-Comedy-Legend.

but ownership beats out labor every time.

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.

blithely

mettle

In sports, where the personality and wallets of team owners are as much a part of the game as the players on the field, that dynamic is more pronounced. Our social contract defines athletes as well-compensated pieces of property, not workers with rights. For black athletes, this calls back to an ugly history.

rhetorical device,

hyperbolic

ostentatious

Black men can celebrate themselves. LeBron saw Kanye, too. This is why the Michael Jordan model has been comforting to America, especially after the disruptive 1960s and ’70s era of black athletes. The endorsements were meant to buy silence. Jordan took the money, played the game, and sold the sneakers. LeBron James has taken the money, played the game, sold the sneakers, and refused to shrink. Visible black men no longer have to be silent. LeBron saw Kanye, too.

nexus

Their two differing trajectories illuminate two important lessons about how to navigate the economy of commodification: knowing your price and knowing your worth.

some industry, is always ready and waiting to exploit us. It appears innocent enough at first. They even convince us that the arrangement is beneficial for everyone involved. But once you realize what’s happening, that they aren’t sacrificing nearly as much as you are but somehow receiving a larger portion of the spoils, and you confront them about it, they’ll try to convince you that you’re crazy.

once sold you on the relationship with promises of wealth, they now threaten you with poverty. And they’re willing to employ depraved measures in order show you just how bloody life is without them. When you recognize this, you have to make a choice: fight or run.

But choice is a privilege not afforded most black boys trying to become black men in America.

Choices are a privilege defined by circumstance. In this country, the circumstance is always racism, oftentimes poverty. The two combined strip our choices away to the minimum.

ambivalence

erroneously

apathetic,

I wonder sometimes if that had to with who the Jena Six were, or who they weren’t. A few of them had juvenile records. And they weren’t innocent boys who were caught at the wrong place at the wrong time and just happened to fit the profile. They had actually jumped their classmate. Additionally, much of the original reporting that prompted the anger, connecting this fight to the nooses and a “white tree,” later proved unreliable. In 2011, Stanford Law School professor Richard Ford told NPR’s Michel Martin that “the Jena 6 protests were focused on a bad example of a real problem.” The real problem remains the way America’s so-called criminal justice system thrives on taking black people away from their communities and locking them up. The real problem has been the ways “tough on crime” and “zero tolerance” have translated to more arrests and longer prison sentences. It is a problem that black children at younger and younger ages have come into contact with police and the “criminal justice system.” But Ford was wrong in suggesting the Jena Six were a bad example of these problems.

For public relations purposes, it would be ideal if every victim of injustice was a person of unimpeachable character. If everyone was caught at the wrong place at the wrong time and was a rebuke to racist descriptors, half the work of reclaiming the victim’s humanity would already be done. But the system isn’t filled with a bunch of doe-eyed innocents, and that doesn’t make them any less worthy of justice. They shouldn’t be discarded as people on the basis of their mistakes.

recompense

Obama needed to be Michael Jordan: amazing and black without reminding anyone he was black.

“I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. . . . When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me,” Ralph Ellison wrote.

self-aggrandizement.

To write about Trayvon Martin was not just about expressing sympathy to his family, but dealing with how America created the nigger. The nigger is America’s greatest asset and its biggest fear. The nigger represents the bottom, from slavery to incarceration, America’s most reliable source of exploited labor. 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

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.

it was a message: Here is your punishment. Here is what happens to American niggers who don’t stay in their place. And that message creates a desire in the rest of us niggers for the relative safety offered by choosing the invisibility that comes along with being a cog or killer.