I'm Black Ya'll.
I don’t think about myself as a black man. I don’t really consider race. Not in a, “I don’t see skin color,” kind of way, because that’s silly. Our backgrounds, our culture, our upbringing are all things to be celebrated. No, I don’t see race, because it’s irrelevant to me. I am aware of race. I appreciate race. I just don’t think about it. I am aware I’m black. I just don’t think about it. I am, however, constantly reminded that I am black. I am forced to think about my skin color, my upbringing, and how this relates to the world around me. When I am in an English class, and we’re reading literature written by a black person, I become the subject matter expert. I can feel the eyes on me when I speak, the added weight of my words as the only black person in the class. I have wondered how different those classes would be, the things students might say, if I weren’t in those classes. I’ve brought this up several professors, and they all say the dynamic and the discussion is very different with and without a black student in the room. A friend of mine, a white woman, told me that it was “straight up racist” when they were reading…a book whose title I don’t remember. I don’t think about myself as a black man, but my experiences, the news, and other people constantly force me to do so.
I was in the grocery store the other day. It was early and I needed some milk for my cereal, I practically live on cereal, so I got up early, threw on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. I’m normally a button-shirt and sweater vest kind of guy, but not at 7:30am on a Saturday. For most people, a hoodie is just an article of clothing. Something comfortable, something lazy to throw on when they go out, something to protect against the cold, maybe. Most people probably don’t think much about putting a hoodie on when they go out. But when a black man reads things like, “A black man running is suspicious,” because I love to run in my hoodie, or when somebody like Trayvon Martin is murdered because he wore a hoodie and didn’t look like he belonged, he thinks about these things. If it’s windy out, if it’s cold, I make sure not to put my hood up, because I don’t want to send the wrong message. When I’m running to my gym, that’s only a quarter mile from where I live, I make sure not to run when I pass cops, because I don’t want to look suspicious. I think about all these things and believe that it’s not likely that I can get into trouble so early in the morning just going to get some cereal. And when I wear a hoodie, not even with the hood up, and I’m at the grocery store at 7:30 in the morning looking for some cinnamon life, and I turn the corner, not suddenly because I give corners wide berth as I’m clumsy and prone to knocking things over, and a white woman recoils from my appearance, and when I see her take in my size and clutch her purse to her body and jerk to the opposite side of the aisle, I’m forced to think of myself as black. Not only that, it makes me think back and realize this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this reaction, and that something I’d thought was an isolated event, a coincidence, something with no cause, was not at all. I’m forced to think about my appearance. My response, and as I write this, I’m ashamed and sad to say this, but my response is to smile. To try and ease this white person, as if I’m a slave who has wronged massa. As if the way to show this white person that I’m not a threat is to shuck and jive. I’m ashamed and sad, but also mad because I feel like this is how I have to survive in this world. I’ve done nothing wrong except be black and want cereal.
It seems like each day for the past year that I’ve been inundated with stories about how my life matters less than a white man’s. I am friends with lots of people from different backgrounds, with different political stances and leanings, with wildly varying opinions from mine. This is fine, this is the way it should be. That’s how you grow as a person, not by having friends that think only one way, but by surrounding yourself with people who challenge you and the way you think. I believe this and I still do; however, recently, this has had the effect of seeing things I might not otherwise. One friend will post a link or comment on something, and as a result, I see it. Recently, somebody posted a meme that said, “White People – The only race it’s legal to discriminate against.” Another posted on the Black Lives Matter movement and called the protestors, “Thugs,” which is just what many people say when they can’t say nigger. On twitter, the Minnesota GOP account tweeted, “a special session” to deal with the “#negroproblem.” Donald Trump tweeted an image used by neo-Nazis that tried erroneously to claim that black on black violence was the cause of 92% of black deaths in this country. I constantly seeing stories about black men, women, and children abused by people in authority. A police officer picks up a 10 or 11 year old child and slams her down to the ground. A black man with a knife is shot 32 times. A black man is pulled bodily from his car for not showing the proper identification, even though he was only a passenger and did nothing wrong. I see people commenting on the cases of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown Jr., and the general sentiment is that if they had just laid low, respected the law, dressed “less like a thug,” then they would not have died. People are literally saying that being killed by a cop for “being like a thug” is okay. What’s more is the dehumanizing speak that is used when police officers described Mike Brown when testifying. He wasn’t a normal human, no, “he looked like a demon,” and other words that might make one think of the way black men and women would have been described by slave owners. Anything to justify the use of excessive force.
There was a Facebook post that went viral a few months ago. You may have seen it. In it, a black man is pulled over by the police, and he says, “Maybe if you treat police officers with respect, they will do the same to you.” This argument is flawed, I think, because it assumes that everybody who has ever been harassed by an officer was not “paying proper respect.” But more than that, reading this reminded me of some slave literature I’ve read. Probably Frederick Douglass. It seems that there was a popular opinion that slaves during that time actually enjoyed being slaves. If you were to walk up to a slave and ask if they liked their lives, they’d smile and say yes, of course. They couldn’t imagine living without their master. But the book I read told another angle. It told of a white man that walked up to a slave and asked this very thing, and the answer he received was something to the effect of, “Not really. It’s cold, I don’t have shoes, and the sleeping conditions are terrible.” The white man went to that slave’s master to relay this message, and that slave was beaten. Since that was typically the punishment, and lying is usually preferable to pain, many other slaves parroted the belief that they did not mind at all their lot in life. That being a slave was fine with them. The white people hearing this had their confirmation bias confirmed and could go on with their lives feeling like they were actually helping these poor, unfortunate souls. Sometimes I feel like that’s what I’m doing, that it’s what is necessary to live. No, it’s not fine that, once, when I, because I am a kind and caring individual, opened a door for an old white woman, and as she passed me she said, “Nigger,” and it’s not okay that when I’m walking to the comic shop a truck speeds by and yells out the word again. It’s not okay that when I’m in a class speaking about a topic that I become the expert on that topic. It’s not okay that, when I leave, I have to think about the things I’m wearing and how likely they might make me to “look suspicious” in the eyes of the law. It’s not okay. Not one bit. But like those slaves, when that white woman clutched at her purse and swerved to avoid me, I just kept smiling, and on the outside pretended like there was nothing wrong.
I got married recently (yay! :)). We’ve been thinking about having a child. Watching the news, seeing how America is changing, seeing how civil rights are, in my opinion, moving backwards, my wife asked me, “Do you want to raise a black child in this?” Last year, my answer was yes. Absolutely. Now, I’m not so sure. When a child is killed because a police officer thought a toy gun was a real gun; when a black man tells a cop that he can’t breathe and has bones broken; when an entire police force is exposed for planting evidence to convict black men and women they arrest; when an article of clothing becomes a reason to be suspicious of a person of color; when a professor at a reputable college attempts to get in his own home after forgetting the key and has the police called on him and, when the police arrive and is arrested because; when I can’t go to a grocery store, walk down the street, and feel unsafe because “a black man jogging is suspicious,” I can’t say “Yes, absolutely,” with certainty. How do you know if you’re ready to explain to your son that, because of your skin color, you have to act in a certain way so that you don’t attract attention, that you can’t wear certain colors or items of clothing because it will be suspicious. How can I explain to a child that your life experiences will be different only because of your skin color; that no matter the privileges I have worked so hard to gift to you, no matter how intelligent, how respectful, you still need to be careful. Because you’re black. I like to think I can. I hope so, certainly, but I cannot be sure. Just the thought of such a conversation breaks my heart.
So recently, with Donald Trump exposing what a group of white people actually think, I just feel tired, sad, and afraid. I cannot go anywhere without being reminded of my ethnicity. Without being reminded that not long ago, people with my skin color were lynched and burned. I can’t help but wonder why the phrase and movement, “Black Lives Matter,” is controversial. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s what I find myself saying over and over. I don’t know. What can we do? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m tired. Tired of reading about it. Sad because I can’t avoid it. I don’t even know if I should post this to my blog. I avoid politics when I can. Keep my opinions to myself, usually. I don’t know. I feel like I’m rambling a bit now, so I’ll stop. But this is something that I keep thinking about, so I’ll probably post something again in a year. Which seems to be the amount of time it takes for me to make my way back here.
What makes this worse it the media surrounding this violence that has become all too common in America. We recently had a shooting in Colorado Springs. A white man with an ideological difference against planned parent hood shot and killed several people. He was taken alive. The media immediately points out that this man was “mentally-ill,” similar to the man who shot so many in the James Holmes case. Two men that shot and killed people, both taken alive, and the rhetoric turns to how they have an illness. This is in stark contrast to the way many people use these black victim’s backgrounds and upbringing to justify their deaths. Like my experiences earlier, once seems coincidence, but so many times is a disturbing pattern.
