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

by Mychal Denzel Smith

vis-à-vis

Black women have always been on the front lines and behind the scenes of the fight for racial justice in America.

There was no wall-to-wall cable news coverage or burning of any CVS stores after the Detroit Police Department’s Special Response Team invaded the wrong home and shot a sleeping seven-year-old, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, on May 16, 2010.

The playgrounds and basketball courts gave me the language. Anything and everything that was undesirable we called gay.

One of the privileges of not being a part of a marginalized group is believing you can set your own benchmarks for bigotry.

There, again, is that awkward phrase, “come out.” A society promotes a uniform identity for every person, pushes those who don’t conform to that identity to the margins, then asks for a declaration of their otherness. As reward, those who “come out” are called brave, positioning everyone who hasn’t as a coward, and yet they are still denied their full rights, their newfound bravery their only comfort.

But what we haven’t done is consider that “family” does not have to look like a husband-and-wife turned father-and-mother, with a hierarchical structure that places the husband/father in the position of leadership, his word the final say in any decision making.

myopic

semblance

Black people pride ourselves on the fact that we have survived in America despite having every form of violence inflicted upon us. We’ve made it through slavery and lynchings, rape and Jim Crow, poverty and police dogs, fire hoses and jail cells, and on the other side have raised families and created culture that’s emulated (and stolen) the world over. With every odd imaginable set against us, we have persevered through the strength of our collective will and faith in Jesus. But neither our will, nor faith, can adequately heal the psychic wounds of that survival.

“The violence done to black boys is the abusive insistence, imposed on them by family and by society, that they not feel,”

admonishing

“politics of respectability.”

The idea being that if black people were able to disprove the racist stereotypes of black inferiority by being citizens of the greatest moral regard, the institutions of racism would no longer have any basis for their standing. “Fight segregation through the courts

The most famous example of the application of this philosophy in black liberation activism is the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rosa Parks became an emblem of injustice not only by virtue of her exemplary courage, but because it would have been more difficult to rally support behind Claudette Colvin, the unwed pregnant teenager arrested for refusing to give up her seat nine months before Parks. If part of the argument against racism were to rest on black people’s moral authority, the fifteen-year-old Colvin couldn’t become the face of the movement.

it is believed that if you behave “properly,” dress “well,” speak “correctly,” get the “right” education, and listen to authority, whatever racism that does exist in the world will not be an impediment to your success. If you adhere to the rules of society, your race will not matter. It’s only when we live up to the stereotypes that we limit our opportunities.

This isn’t just a diminishment of the impact of racism, but a misreading of how racism operates. There are no traits that are inherent to blackness that then become the basis for oppression. It’s the other way around. The system of racism invented, and continually adjusts, the rubric to justify its existence. Whether we’re talking about the idea that enslaved Africans were a less evolved form of the human species and therefore better suited to field work, on down to identifying who is and isn’t a thug based on their fashion choices and patterns of speech, the underlying context is that black is other. Thug is black is nigger. America is nothing without its nigger.

operates. There are no traits that are inherent to blackness that then become the basis for oppression. It’s the other way around. The system of racism invented, and continually adjusts, the rubric to justify its existence. Whether we’re talking about the idea that enslaved Africans were a less evolved form of the human species and therefore better suited to field work, on down to identifying who is and isn’t a thug based on their fashion choices and patterns o...

We shouldn’t be seeking the respect of an unjust system that will not respect us on the basis of our humanity alone.

We make a grave mistake every time we invoke the history of oppression to diminish the reality of racism’s present. Progress is real, but the narrative of progress seduces us into inaction. If we believe, simply, that it gets better, there is no incentive to do the work to ensure that it does.