Quote of the Day: Ijeoma Oluo

"Fear not the thought that right now, you could be contributing to the oppression of others and you don't know it. But do not fear those who bring the oppression to light. Do not fear the opportunity to do better." -- Ijeoma Oluo "So You Want to Talk About Race"

The Color of Destruction and Power

It must be uniquely difficult to be a Black Man in America. He is not seen as having a family, but as being a threat, a walking, breathing cornucopia of violence, lust and theft. Everything you have, we are told, will be taken away by the Black man if he comes near. He will take burn your home, steal you money and screw your women as he passes by. We are so threatened by adult Black men as a culture that we feel justified in shooting them, caging them, rejecting them.  When a Black man comes into the office, we subconsciously clutch our wallets or purses a little tighter, pull our children a little closer, find a reason to have him leave or to leave ourselves. For those of us in the dominant culture, we might only feel that way once or twice, if ever, but for Black men, they feel it everywhere they go -- it is in the air they breathe, and it smells of mistrust and ostracization.

And Black communities don’t provide much solace. Even at home they are suspect, given the label of ne’re-do-wells, junkies, baby-daddies. The American Black family in the twentieth century and thus far into the twenty-first, has formed around the absence of the Black man, coming into its own as best it could with their adult men behind bars or dead when they weren’t running around with the gangs that would seal their fate.

Is it any wonder that Black men, and the adolescents who look up to them, adopt the cool pose? Stripped of economic and educational opportunities, unable to secure housing for themselves let alone for a family, they are seen as parasites on the women-run Black community. How attractive it must be to take the accusations and condemnations and make them claims, reveling in the destructive power that every Black man carries with him, no matter where he goes, even when he sleeps. I imagine a hurricane reveling in the destructive power and glory of itself, sweeping all before it, laying waste to the little people with their little buildings and crops and schools and cars and laundry on the line as though life is normal, ever, anywhere, as if it ever could be, laughing in pure joy of unleashed power, never apologizing.

When we crafted this hostile narrative of destructive power, we left the Black man only one option for defining himself in relation to society and the world. America in the twenty-first century can do better, but only if we hold our eyes firmly on the truth and acknowledge our role in the violence that continues without much to hold it back, pervades every aspect of civilized interaction, from the manufacturing floor to the classroom to the boardroom, survives us all, generation after generation.

All of us have reparations to make to the Black man, those of us in the dominant culture and those in the Black communities as well. We owe Black men a safe space to release this image, to lay down the tools of destruction and relax out of the cool pose he has adopted for survival. We owe it to each other to change the narrative to one of inclusion, trust and the real possibility of being husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, instead of rapists, thugs, killers, junkies, and thieves.

White Folks Love Morgan Freeman

White folks love Morgan Freeman. He is soft-spoken, melodious, lean, and carries himself gently. One can relax in his presence; he is the antithesis of the angry black man.

But you have to know that, for all that he sees the weight of centuries of Black masculinity on his shoulders, he rages too. He has to have days where he seethes that the roles he takes are encompassed and circumscribed by larger obligations to reshaping the roles that all Black men take, participating in a new way of showing men of color. And then Driving Miss Daisy comes along and we’re right back where we started, feeling comfortable seeing the Black man as a kind and gentle servant.

I want to see Morgan Freeman playing a character where his kindly black servant, possibly as a librarian, is actually a cover for his absolute, no-holds-barred martial arts badassery. I want to see him ripping everyone off, regardless of color, caring only for the green of hundred dollar bills or the pristine icy sparkle of diamonds. Gold is too cliche for this vision. I want to see a flat-out dangerous character who just happens to be a Black man, a man who passes as the easy and gentle neighbor, kindly and helpful, the Ted Bundy of espionage, possibly corporate espionage with lots of technical elements that most white folks don’t understand in the first place but that is usually relegated to the Asian kid, sometimes fetishized as the Asian chick.

I want a society wherein everyone is safe and accepted enough that I’m not culture jamming by casting a Black man as this or a white man as that or an Asian as the other. I want a society that is a true meritocracy, but that has a minimum security guaranteed for all, not because we are weak and pathetic, but because it’s right thing to do, because all people deserve security.