Last week, I
interviewed a very important person to speak to the formation of the Black male
identity – my nine year old nephew. Though he is certainly not a Black man yet,
his little brain is already forming around what he thinks a Black man should
be. The interview went as follows:
Me: Nephew, do you know anything
about Trayvon Martin?
Nephew: Yeah, I know who that is.
Me: Well, what happened to him?
Nephew: He got killed.
Me: How did he die, Nephew?
Nephew: Well, Trayvon wasn’t
doing nothing but Zimmerman said it was self-defense. Trayvon only had some
skittles and tea though.
Me: So, if Trayvon wasn’t doing
anything, why did Zimmerman kill him?
Nephew: Because. He’s racist.
Me: What does racist mean?
Nephew: That means he don’t like
Black people.
Me: Well, why are people racist?
Nephew: Because Black people are
different than them.
Me: How many best friends do you
have?
Nephew: I have 3. CJ, DJ, and
Terrance.
Me: Are they Black?
Nephew: Yeah, they’re all Black.
Me: Do you have White friends
too?
Nephew: Yeah, I do. At school, I
do.
Me: Well, are you different from
them?
Nephew: No. It’s not like that –
it’s just that I do different things than them.
Me: Oh, okay – so we are
different because we DO different things. So, what did Trayvon do that was
different?
Nephew: It’s because he had on a
hoodie.
Me: So, if Zimmerman had seen any
other person, like a White person or someone that wasn’t Black, wearing a
hoodie would he have shot them?
Nephew: No.
It is
interesting to hear what my Nephew said. It is even more interesting to read
between the lines of his very pre-adolescent mind. While my Nephew may not know
what the word stereotype means, he seems to already know the basic premise of
what it is. He assesses that racism is based on Black people being different
yet appropriates the difference is tied to our actions. What is more,
intriguing and also problematic, is that he rightly stated that any other
person doing the same thing that Trayvon Martin did (i.e. wearing a hoodie)
would not have been shot and killed. My Nephew realizes that certain bad things
happen to Black boys who wear hoodies – but he seems to think that the hatred
found in racism is tied to the hoodie and not the wearer. His beautiful
innocence has not allowed him to connect the dots yet. But what happens when he
does? When he realizes that the very being of Blackness may trump the things he
does. What happens when he begins to modify his behavior because of his being? Who
will he become as a Black man if stereotypes already infiltrate his
pre-pubescent pores?
In the laws of physics,
one refers to a frame of reference as
a method to represent and measure properties of objects such as their position
and orientation. In
a layperson perspective, a frame of reference provides one with a context, or
basis, in which one can then make proper comparisons and conjectures about an
observed object. In the laws of White men, a stereotype is swiftly elevated and
permeated as a frame of reference by which all subsequent perceptions of Black
men are achieved. From his frame of reference, rooted in White, male normativity,
the White man can comfortably suggest the Black man’s position of perpetual inferiority
and his orientation of engendered criminality. And, while the White man may
rest, the Black man must wrestle – with who he is and who society has created
him to be. James Baldwin, in Notes of a Native Son, goes to great lengths
to accurately describe this ethical tap dance all Black men must tirelessly perform.
The black man insists, by whatever means
he finds at his disposal, that the white man cease to regard him as an exotic
rarity and recognize him as a human being. This is a very charged and difficult
moment, for there is a great deal of will power involved in the white man’s naïveté…the
white man prefers to keep the black man at a certain human remove because it is
easier for him thus to preserve his simplicity and avoid being called to
account for crimes committed by his forefathers, or his neighbors.
And, this is where an American
society’s frame of reference becomes the fiercely entangled framework where
many a Black boy is heuristically lost and even more Black men are heavy laden
with futile resistance begat by lifetimes of foundational reinforcement.
Beyond
the recent inquiry of my less than a decade old Nephew, I polled five more opinions
of Black men, ages 22 to 35, from different walks of life. A junior high vice principal.
An industrial engineer. A medical doctor/surgeon. And two fellow divinity
school students. Out of these five men, all five men admitted to being a cognizant
participant in what they called the game.
The game is the White man’s world, which laid out like a chess board, must be
navigated with cunning strategy and ingenuity by any Black man seeking to
successfully provide, protect, and procreate for himself and his family.
Baldwin affirms this Black-man-code, stating:
I knew very well what Americans
saw when they looked at me and this allowed me to play endless and sinister
variations on the role which they had assigned me; since I knew that it was,
for them, of the utmost importance that they never be confronted with that, in
their own personalities, made this role so necessary and gratifying to them, I
knew that they could never call my hand or, indeed, afford to know what I was
doing, so that I moved into every crucial situation with the deadly and rather
desperate advantages of bitterly accumulated perception, of pride and contempt.
This is an awful sword and shield to carry through the world, the discovery
that, in the game I was playing, I did myself a violence of which the world, at
its most ferocious, would scarcely have been capable…
It is not that I was not aware of
this game – as a Black woman, I must know it and engage in it as well – yet, I
was keenly unaware of its stakes before talking to my male counterparts. I asked
them how continuing to play this game and modify their behavior, based on
stereotypes, to keep the White man comfortable was helping the Black man’s
cause. They all, in a rather matter of fact manner, educated me in spelling out
each of their individual causes to feed their families. In other words, half a
century ago, Black men were united together fighting for the common goal of
freedom and equality and they were willing to lose their lives or go to jail to
achieve it. But, today, in 2013 there is no real unified effort within the
Black community that would serve as the impetus for outright defiance of
society’s rules because the cost would ultimately be the loss of his job and
his livelihood. It seems clear to them that working subversively within the
structures of the White man’s proscription is the best solution to gaining
access to position where he would be powerful enough to effect change for other
Black men and women.
Maybe this is where political correctness within the Black community stems from - a desire to change, but never offend, the world from the inside out, rather than the outside in. But is this even attainable? It seems feasible. Obey the rules. Play the game. Work your way up. Once at the top, make decisions to uplift others who look like you. Yet, I must argue the truth stated by Audre Lorde which says, "...the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change" In this effort to overcome racism and, simultaneously, understand his true self, the Black man is left with the perilous task which indicates he must come over who the White master's intended him to be and stand under the weight of a society that would rather he bow down.
It was his necessity, in the words of E.
Franklin Frazier, to find a ‘motive for living under American culture or die.’ The
identity of the American Negro comes out of this extreme situation, and the
evolution of this extreme anxiety in the minds and the lives of his masters
Therefore, it is the moral obligation of the Black man to
divorce himself from the facade of imitation of identity and, instead,
completely marry himself to the ferocious inspiration to identity. This means that he must allow each of his
experiences, whether bad or good, to work in and through him both restoratively
and retroactively. For without willingness to undergo journey, there can be no
rupture in the disk of a crooked, American vertebrae.
James
Baldwin, perhaps prophetically, speaks very candidly about an incident he had
involving a White female waitress after being chased by an angry mob of White
people. He ducked into a restaurant, only to be met with another refusal to be
waited on because he was Black. He describes this instance as one in which he
was ready to kill this woman to assuage the rage burning him inside:
…I had been ready to commit murder. I saw nothing very
clearly but I did see this: that my life, my real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might
do but from the hatred I carried in my own heart.
Baldwin introduces rage as if it
is another person who might be living inside of him, and, possibly, inside of
every Black man. I think immediately to Aaron Alexis, the Black man who is also
the recent Navy Yard shooter. Alexis claims to hold “the delusional belief that
he was being controlled or influenced by extremely low frequency
electromagnetic waves.”
With mass shootings on the rise world-wide, observing the past 30 years of
occurrences, approximately 67.5 percent included White male shooters. In
addition, there is a strong correlation of mental health issues plaguing those
responsible for mass shootings with approximately 63 percent having a history
of a mental illness.
Yet, the Office of Minority Health has published some harrowing data about the
demographics of African Americans, confirming that Black people living below
the poverty level are three times more likely to report psychological distress,
Black men and women are 20 percent more likely to report having serious psychological
distress than White people, and the death rate from suicide for Black men was
almost four times that of Black women in 2009.
I do not know Aaron Alexis. I have only ever seen him on the news or in the
newspapers. But reading Notes of a Native
Son begs me to ask if Mr. Alexis even knew himself? James Baldwin discusses
his father’s death and is saddened because his Dad never knew that he was
beautiful – he just knew that he was Black. Do Black men, who allow rage to
engulf them, know who they really are or that they are lovely and beautiful,
not lewd nor beastly. It is unfair to judge Aaron Alexis without knowing him,
his identity, or his humanity. In the words of Baldwin, “thou knowest this man’s fall; but thou knowest not his wrassling.”
I am forced to admit that just as my own brother could have been Trayvon
Martin. He could have just as easily been Aaron Alexis.
An old hymn
says, “There are some things I do not know. There are some places I may not go.”
One thing my Dad always taught me was to never venture into a place you cannot
handle. I do not know that I have ever really stopped to consider the peculiar,
particularity the Black man finds himself smashed in limbo between; and, I don’t
know if this is a place that I would want to handle.
At the root of the American Negro problem
is the necessity of the American white man to find a way of living with the
Negro in order to be able to live with himself… the white man’s motive was the
protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to
establish his identity.
I would be interested to engage
and research Black men (and women as well) who have lived, are living, or have
a predisposition to mental illnesses. I have never flown into a rage or wanted
to murder anyone or anything (besides insects and rodents), but there is a very
present reality that the weight of the world can trigger an imbalance in the
mind that the Black community has not been open enough to talk about nor treat
effectively. I fear our Black men are becoming the disposable by-product of
constricted demands and constant setbacks.
As
for me, I plan to translate what I have learned from the prolific James Baldwin
into a personal space that includes the Black men who are in the sphere of my
influence. It occurs to me that I have fallen victim to aiding and abetting the
mass assassination of the Black man’s morale – maybe not intentionally, but
rather ignorantly of how my voice, my desires, and my actions could be further
alienating or beating my Black counterparts. It is my hope to affirm you and,
to this end, I write this letter to all my sons, nephews, brothers, fathers,
husbands, and friends:
Dear Black boy/man,
I realize that every day, when
you leave home, you put on your armor.
To protect you. Shield you. And,
perhaps, even keep you warm. The world is cold – you know this firsthand.
I know that America never meant
to be your friend; and because of that, you have a hard time knowing how and
when to trust, live, and be.
When you return home, I do not
want you to feel as though it is necessary to leave those guards up. Those
guards that you must employ while navigating the game in a White man’s land.
Instead, let down your guards.
Your sarcastic tone. And your well-used defense mechanisms.
Here, at home, you are safe to
cry. You are safe to laugh. You are safe to be scared, from time to time.
You may enter into my prayer
closet with me. And pray to a God who understands you.
You can leave all your pieces,
your pawns, your rooks, and your bishops, in the car.
Here, at home, we are the King
and Queen, who answer to no one but the Divine.
I will never overlook you. Look through you. Or look upon you with hatred.
I will ever look to you. Look for you. And look like you, fearfully and wonderfully made.
I will love you. I will challenge
you. And, I will push you for better.
I will harness all the freedom I can muster. And liberate you from the outside world, if only just for a little while.
Most of all. Maybe…no certainly,
I will carve out a space for you to simply be you. Black man. Forever powerful.
Eternally beautiful. Into Paradise, everlasting.
Gratefully yours,
SRH
