Mr. Jesse Williams acceptance speech for the Humanitarian Award walked a fine line that left many people wondering how to respond. In fact, even as the audience applauded, the television viewer could see looks of approval, tinged with some bewilderment and discomfort, even in a crowd of celebrities. I think many in the audience were surprised. Here was this man, who embodies the blended ethnicity of America, lambasting the America that makes his story possible. But why would anyone so close to the line, choose to defend one half of himself at the expense of the other half? Why not choose instead, the path so artfully and tactfully followed by our current President?
Shortly after his speech, many viewers took to Twitter to voice their approval or disapproval, of all or part, of the speech. Predictably, the familiar American dichotomy of thought began to come into focus. We (Americans) do an impeccable job of taking our world, filled with color, and filtering it down to "black and white". Justin Timberlake, who would normally be an accepted and/or appreciated part of the BET audience, found himself being taken to task because he dared to say that he agreed with the speech. The quick-tempered and ill-conceived backlash identified Timberlake himself, as the essence of those who are "extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, black gold..." As is often the case, when anyone wades into the deepest waters that we (as Americans) know, many people are drowned by the glut of thoughts, feelings, and history contained therein. Some JT defenders pointed out that he is from Memphis, TN. Others listed the various entertainers he has worked with and offered as a defense that he has helped to grow the R & B/Rap genre. While those are accurate and admirable cases for sure, I believe they missed the point. Justin Timberlake's defense was written years ago, decades ago; long before Timberlake himself arrived on the scene. The names Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner are his defense. The existence of arguably the most well known Civil Rights speech EVER is his defense. When Martin Luther King Jr. implored us to judge each other, not by the color of our skin, but by "the content of our character", he was speaking of a two way street. Whenever we run to our corners, divide and sub-divide ourselves along racial lines, or any lines for that matter, we abandon our best selves for the comfort of the only history we know.
The speech given by Jesse Williams was heady stuff. Over the course of the uniquely American history of race relations, this topic has been tackled by many well known and thoughtful men: Alexis de Tocqueville, W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Albert Einstein, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and more recently President Barrack Obama. In fact, one could fill a library with all the writings that look at American race relations from various perspectives: philosophical, historical, political, and even theological. Unfortunately, this is the kind of information that is much easier to study alone than to share in large groups. As Jesse Williams no doubt realized, he was indeed speaking a foreign language. Everyone in the audience knew a few key words and phrases, but few have the time or make the time to better understand the complexities and intricacies of the subject matter.
Examples abound, but here are a few that struck me:
1) The reference to strange fruit was from the a 1939 Billie Holiday song which has a long, turbulent history all it's own. From the original writer's life story to the 1978 Grammy Hall of Fame induction, the song's journey is only surpassed in grandeur by it's lyrics and blunt truth. The strange fruit metaphorically hanging from poplar trees in the 1930's was "men of color".
2) The Tamir Rice reference, so close to Tamir's birth date, and the way that it was characterized by Williams, is a debate in and of itself. Categorizing what happened to Tamir as a "driveby shooting" portends a subtle historical reference to the gangland America that most Americans know of only through movies and music. The idea that a 12 year old child could have such an interaction with uniformed police is so disturbing that it forces much of America, but not all, to look away. There are still those who choose to go about the task of excusing even this killing: "he looked older", "we couldn't distinguish between a real gun and a toy", or "the police have a tough job". Shootings of minority men have become so common today, that more people are upset when a basketball player leaves town (see Lebron James or Kevin Durant) than when a man of color, unarmed or otherwise, is shot and killed. Silence is the most common and acceptable response. We can only cry silently, on the inside, so as not to alarm our children or our peers with the intense screams that are echoing through our hearts and minds.
3) "It is not the job of the brutalized to comfort the bystander. That is not our job". The clairvoyance in this passage was and is genius. Why is it that truth must withstand examination from hearsay, conjecture, and often even fantasy? Why is it that reality has to yield the right of way and wait for understanding from those who refuse to understand? Murder cannot be justified by a uniform or a badge. Law enforcement is a job best done at the bequest of the citizenry and those citizens should be made to feel safer by the presence of the law. The irony of those arming themselves against the potential tyranny of their own federal government, while explaining to fellow citizens that a 12 year old being mistakenly shot for holding a toy gun is a fair price for freedom, cannot be easily topped.
4) The back and forth about "brands on our bodies" is nothing short of genius as well. The consumerism that is so much of how Hollywood manifest itself in our daily lives is only outdone by the consumerism that is so much of who "black" America has become. When your past is so ugly that you dare not look at it, dare not speak of it, even while it nips at your heels on a daily basis; life can easily become an attempt to escape into a reality beyond the one that drowns us all. The thoughtful articulation of the "brands on our bodies", which is always the story of the Red Carpet at awards shows, played against the historical reference to "branding on our bodies", which was a literal marking of ownership normally reserved for cattle, but which labeled some humans as chattel, was poignant. That is a story that has been the subject of no shortage of dissertations and books. Any of these three topics could have been a speech all it's own, with countless references to points in history and counterpoints showing the repeating loop that ties 1616 to 1816 and 2016.
The main point of Jesse Williams speech, from my own perspective, and one that I think was lost on much of the audience, was when he spoke of "this invention called whiteness". If there were one thing in his speech that deserved and cried out for further examination, this was it. While the Twittersphere and Social Media were aglow with high levels of debate, argument, and race shaming on both sides; the debate was woefully short on any mention of this concept of "whiteness" as an invention. Which it is, along with it's counterpart, "blackness". Both are social constructs which make no sense and have no meaning beyond race, and more often than not, racism. During America's darkest days, no pun intended, we allowed ourselves to be divided. From the same caldron that gave us the Klan, came a decree that if someone had a single drop of "black" blood in them, they were forever to be considered black. From this idiocy, we attempted to construct separate society's for "white" and "black". We made rules about who should live where, who should eat where, who should drink where, and who should do all things commensurate with living freely where. Even though we (Americans) have fought wars together, sent men to the moon together, and accomplished all manner of great things together, we cannot seem to think beyond this false construct of "black and white", which was detailed to the nth degree after the Southern Reconstruction in a period commonly referred to today as "Jim Crow". Time and again, the idea of "black and white" has shown itself to be nothing short of lunacy. Yet, when someone dares to stand up and point this out, it literally falls on deaf ears. As both sides took sides, they both failed to see that the days of debate over "black and white" harken back to a time period we have spent the better part of a century trying to escape.
At some point, this all ceases to make sense, like when the past president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had his genealogy profiled and was found to have 18% African genes and more than 80% genes from other places (mostly European). My math tells me that Ben Jealous is so many other things before he is "black". Most importantly of all, he is American. It is only through our mental gymnastics and unnecessary daily work to remain separate that we make sense of the nonsense. However, in America all those other things cease to matter. They are all drowned out by a matrix designed to separate us based on some silly paradigm of "black and white".
2) The Tamir Rice reference, so close to Tamir's birth date, and the way that it was characterized by Williams, is a debate in and of itself. Categorizing what happened to Tamir as a "driveby shooting" portends a subtle historical reference to the gangland America that most Americans know of only through movies and music. The idea that a 12 year old child could have such an interaction with uniformed police is so disturbing that it forces much of America, but not all, to look away. There are still those who choose to go about the task of excusing even this killing: "he looked older", "we couldn't distinguish between a real gun and a toy", or "the police have a tough job". Shootings of minority men have become so common today, that more people are upset when a basketball player leaves town (see Lebron James or Kevin Durant) than when a man of color, unarmed or otherwise, is shot and killed. Silence is the most common and acceptable response. We can only cry silently, on the inside, so as not to alarm our children or our peers with the intense screams that are echoing through our hearts and minds.
3) "It is not the job of the brutalized to comfort the bystander. That is not our job". The clairvoyance in this passage was and is genius. Why is it that truth must withstand examination from hearsay, conjecture, and often even fantasy? Why is it that reality has to yield the right of way and wait for understanding from those who refuse to understand? Murder cannot be justified by a uniform or a badge. Law enforcement is a job best done at the bequest of the citizenry and those citizens should be made to feel safer by the presence of the law. The irony of those arming themselves against the potential tyranny of their own federal government, while explaining to fellow citizens that a 12 year old being mistakenly shot for holding a toy gun is a fair price for freedom, cannot be easily topped.
4) The back and forth about "brands on our bodies" is nothing short of genius as well. The consumerism that is so much of how Hollywood manifest itself in our daily lives is only outdone by the consumerism that is so much of who "black" America has become. When your past is so ugly that you dare not look at it, dare not speak of it, even while it nips at your heels on a daily basis; life can easily become an attempt to escape into a reality beyond the one that drowns us all. The thoughtful articulation of the "brands on our bodies", which is always the story of the Red Carpet at awards shows, played against the historical reference to "branding on our bodies", which was a literal marking of ownership normally reserved for cattle, but which labeled some humans as chattel, was poignant. That is a story that has been the subject of no shortage of dissertations and books. Any of these three topics could have been a speech all it's own, with countless references to points in history and counterpoints showing the repeating loop that ties 1616 to 1816 and 2016.
The main point of Jesse Williams speech, from my own perspective, and one that I think was lost on much of the audience, was when he spoke of "this invention called whiteness". If there were one thing in his speech that deserved and cried out for further examination, this was it. While the Twittersphere and Social Media were aglow with high levels of debate, argument, and race shaming on both sides; the debate was woefully short on any mention of this concept of "whiteness" as an invention. Which it is, along with it's counterpart, "blackness". Both are social constructs which make no sense and have no meaning beyond race, and more often than not, racism. During America's darkest days, no pun intended, we allowed ourselves to be divided. From the same caldron that gave us the Klan, came a decree that if someone had a single drop of "black" blood in them, they were forever to be considered black. From this idiocy, we attempted to construct separate society's for "white" and "black". We made rules about who should live where, who should eat where, who should drink where, and who should do all things commensurate with living freely where. Even though we (Americans) have fought wars together, sent men to the moon together, and accomplished all manner of great things together, we cannot seem to think beyond this false construct of "black and white", which was detailed to the nth degree after the Southern Reconstruction in a period commonly referred to today as "Jim Crow". Time and again, the idea of "black and white" has shown itself to be nothing short of lunacy. Yet, when someone dares to stand up and point this out, it literally falls on deaf ears. As both sides took sides, they both failed to see that the days of debate over "black and white" harken back to a time period we have spent the better part of a century trying to escape.
At some point, this all ceases to make sense, like when the past president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had his genealogy profiled and was found to have 18% African genes and more than 80% genes from other places (mostly European). My math tells me that Ben Jealous is so many other things before he is "black". Most importantly of all, he is American. It is only through our mental gymnastics and unnecessary daily work to remain separate that we make sense of the nonsense. However, in America all those other things cease to matter. They are all drowned out by a matrix designed to separate us based on some silly paradigm of "black and white".
How I love the sweet irony of my own family reunions. On my mother's side we have people of all hues represented. We find variations from light to dark, as well as differing eyes and hair. In a world of normalcy and logic, we would seek to know and understand how that came to be, but in America we are all relegated to our "blackness". Any discussion of our ancestry, which does not begin and end in Africa, is wasted, because "Jim Crow" told us 100 years ago, that part of our history was not "real" and cannot be recognized. We were instead given to being "black", and later "African-American". Titles that separate us "to infinity and beyond" in the minds of those who refuse to see that "we" are more like "them" than "black and white" might indicate. The logic of placing African before American and allowing it to stand for generations, for those who have fought to defend America, but never even visited Africa, is lost on me. Maybe next we will be the Non-American, Americans. Makes perfect sense, Right?
Even as a child, when I and my siblings, marveled at the brightly colored eyes and hair of relatives both close and distant, while attending family reunions on my father's side; the work had begun. While my childhood friends were excitedly becoming Italian and Irish and Argentinian and Columbian, we were reluctantly becoming "black". A description not derived from a region of origin, or shared characteristics, or even genealogy. In fact, a description absent the basic curiosity that most elementary children express. Ours was a description absent any true meaning, like that of an erased blackboard, which once contained both problems AND answers.
It was very early when I refused to be that , and four decades later, I am still refusing. Refusing to lump together histories as diverse as Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Sudan, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic into a single word: black. Refusing to lump together experiences from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Washington D.C., Kentucky, New York, California, and literally all of the 50 states into a single word: black. Refusing to replace the diverse backgrounds of Michael Jordan, Sammy Davis Jr., Serena Williams, Jimi Hendrix, Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson, Al Green, Barrack Obama, Sam Cooke, Tiger Woods, Otis Redding, Lebron James, and millions more into a single word: black.
We cannot go back in time and change our language to recognize the history and diversity lumped together by hatred and/or laziness. However, that does not mean that we will not have to reconcile our "made up" reality, which we sometimes fight so hard to defend, with the coming realities of genealogy and science. One day very soon, we will be forced to acknowledge that 49.9 and 50.1 were never so far apart as to have required the labels "black" and "white". At that time, someone will stand up to say "one drop", out of literally thousands of drops, is an insignificant and meaningless fraction. Until then, Jesse Williams speeches will have to suffice.
It was very early when I refused to be that , and four decades later, I am still refusing. Refusing to lump together histories as diverse as Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Sudan, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic into a single word: black. Refusing to lump together experiences from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Washington D.C., Kentucky, New York, California, and literally all of the 50 states into a single word: black. Refusing to replace the diverse backgrounds of Michael Jordan, Sammy Davis Jr., Serena Williams, Jimi Hendrix, Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson, Al Green, Barrack Obama, Sam Cooke, Tiger Woods, Otis Redding, Lebron James, and millions more into a single word: black.
We cannot go back in time and change our language to recognize the history and diversity lumped together by hatred and/or laziness. However, that does not mean that we will not have to reconcile our "made up" reality, which we sometimes fight so hard to defend, with the coming realities of genealogy and science. One day very soon, we will be forced to acknowledge that 49.9 and 50.1 were never so far apart as to have required the labels "black" and "white". At that time, someone will stand up to say "one drop", out of literally thousands of drops, is an insignificant and meaningless fraction. Until then, Jesse Williams speeches will have to suffice.
