In reminiscing about my charmed youth and my ability to hobnob with various black elites it suddenly occured to me that I'm fighting a feeling with Obama.
This weekend I have been invited twice to march for Obama. I have basically ignored those invitations on the basic premise that, despite the fact I'm impressed with his campaign, I'm just not going to vote for him. The direct conflict between 'black' and 'Republican' never quite occurred to me until I thought about it in the context of Michael Bowen, charming young black up-and-comer hanging out with the black elite. Doesn't that sound presumptuous? It does, a little bit, but I know a part of me could work it. And the presumption that I should work it and be an elite black insider with connections to Obama... well that's honestly not irresistible any longer.
I need it not to be irresistible, so I think, does America.
When I was a role-monkey, I got bored kinda quick, but I was always thankful to not be the only black in the room. The more black people were around, I reasoned, the more opportunity I got to be me instead of the black guy representing the race - perhaps somewhere they had never seen black people before on the presumption that we simply weren't good or sophisticated enough. I almost never get that feeling anymore despite the fact that I'm almost always the only black guy. I have felt no self-consciousness about being me, as black as I want to be, since (I'll say arbitrarily, 1986). I kind of forget the feeling. Maybe when I was in Paris and some freaky businessman caught me walking through an alley and thought I might be a puto and invited me to ride in his Mercedes.
But now I take it for granted that I'm me and I can be taken at face value. Sure, I have to wait occasionally for people to snap out of the daydream and deal with me in their face, but that's partially my fault for being so.. un-edgy and Dadlike in my bhudda. But I gotta be me and I have to resist the default solidarity that is enforced by feelings of inferiority and isolation. There's room enough for all of us to do our own thing. And if not, racial unity is not going to solve that problem. Of course I was born in an era where that was not the case. That's why I have to fight the feeling.
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