"Ain't no man or woman, no beast alive that can beat me, cause I was born to fight" -- Tracy Chapman
There are few phrases that manage to connect with my synapse loop and cascade my eyeballs into a backwards roll like 'self-esteem'. When I grew up in the 1970s it was called 'ego' even though it was more like monsters from the id. We called it the 'bogard', but that's a long story. Actually, it's not. You see as young men we were raised to be good sports and to compete. Compete HARD. And if you weren't competing against your toughest rivals, then you weren't actually competing. We called that 'chickenshit'.
Sometimes I wonder, but only in the past couple of months when I have been compared to Morgan Freeman by several waiters and strangers, if I am in the first generation of African American men to reach maturity without possessing a sense of utter defeat. It's nowhere in me, I assure you. And I've always known what it looked like by looking to my parents and family elders. Although when the song 'Sister Rosa' became very popular, I didn't get excited about revisiting her heroism and myth. I already knew a grandmother who would not take guff from anyone, white or black, much less some cracker ass bus driver. In short, I have managed to keep my balls in place, and yes I take it for granted.
My dignity has come at a price, a price I was willing to pay and take pride in. I have often said that I have never been anybody's 'fair-haired boy', by which I mean in my life I've only gotten one or two scholarships. Never more than $10,000 worth. I've never had a financial sponsor. I worked for everything I got. How American is that? And I've paid more back taxes and legal fees than a little. But I've never had to wrestle for my self-esteem, and I certainly never came to expect that I would get it from movies or television. I always had books and my own imagination working with the power of ideas.
So this afternoon, I saw a headline saying 'Marvel's Black Panther Marks a Major Milestone', and it almost sounded like the ghost of T. Coates when I read:
Those of us who are not white have considerably more trouble not only finding representation of ourselves in mass media and other arenas of public life, but also finding representation that indicates that our humanity is multifaceted. Relating to characters onscreen is necessary not merely for us to feel seen and understood, but also for others who need to see and understand us. When it doesn’t happen, we are all the poorer for it.
Aww. I used to think that it was a waste of money for any television producer to tell the stories of the Brady Bunch. You see I had black authors to choose from. All of them in fact. All of literature from Mark Twain to Arthur C Clarke to Richard Wright to Jean Toomer. I read The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew (a little) and Danny Dunn without shame. I knew the little world of my neighborhood. I was destined to compete with everyone in the whole world. I wasn't chickenshit. So I read everybody's playbooks. After all, they were free. I had my library card. I would go to the Baldwin Hills Public Library on La Brea and check out the books with the rockets and the cars of the future. I just knew I was going to get a Fierbird III when I grew up. And why wouldn't I? I was going to grow up.
Somewhere around 1990 just before I turned 30 I was painfully reminded that everybody wasn't ready to fight for things that made sense. There were people standing in 'a cipher' bobbing their heads to Public Enemy thinking that the story of an ex-con was the light at the end of a dark tunnel of black life underground in America that had yet to see the sun. And I pitied the man who didn't know his father or found nothing to respect in his own family or neighborhood. I felt sorry for the man who felt an obligation to kill for his block, but was afraid to look for a job where he might face rejection. I listened with hard eyes to the man who wept in sympathy for the debilitating anger of Chester Himes. Every time I think of Chester Himes, I think of a drunk man throwing empty gin bottles out of the window of his tenement window hoping to hit the policeman, but ducking behind the curtains in case he actually does. I was reminded that everybody doesn't know the sound of the righteous drum, and maybe they heard it but stood up against the wall anyway, afraid to dance. Never learned to swim. Can't catch the rhythm of the stroke.
I was unleashed. I did all the things. And I moved to the Big Apple and stood in the shadows of the Colossus, and I was humbled. New York humbles men. But then I realized the NYC didn't understand what was going on in LA. Not at all. The New York Times blasted this congressman named Bruce Hershensohn as if he were running the state of California. So I started reading the Observer. I went another way, unashamed of my path. And I watched all the kids wear their X hats backwards waiting for Spike Lee to once again Do the Only Thing, because the Jews couldn't do it, and a black man needed a black movie made by a black man to truly be a black man. But I was already there and I didn't need the movie. I already read the book seven years before.
And I realized that the man on the street needed those television producers to tell the stories of the Brady Bunch. Because if my name was Joe Smith and I looked like an ordinary whiteboy, who actually gave a shit about me? I'd have to prove myself against all the other whiteboys, because there is nothing that matters less to a whiteboy than another whiteboy. James Baldwin wrote that. Who made Holden Caufield into somebody? A bunch of anonymous chickenshit whiteboys and their sorry parents, that's who. And Bill Clinton got elected because he went on TV, like he was dancing at the Cotton Club. Looky looky who has got soul! And I realized I had to get out of the street. I raised a family in the suburbs. Some in the South. Most on the West Coast. And I've watched the generation watch me watch TV and I wasn't taking it seriously. But now the expectation is that everybody has to have their own blockbuster movie superhero.
There's something strange about needing superheros and watching superhero movies in peacetime. The President said that America should have a big ass military parade. I thought about it, and it occurred to me that it's about time we stopped looking at Russell Crowe and Bruce Willis and bushy faced actors portraying Navy SEALS getting shot. Could we actually face the faces that march for once? The actual soldiers? Could we stop producing Brady Bunch stories and stop merchandising snapback ballcaps for once? Could we just for a moment or a generation if it's not asking too much, stop depending on millionaire producers to tell the stories we so desperately need for our self-esteem? Or is it too late for that?
I used to get 1000 hits a day on this blog. A decade ago it was poppin' off. I don't need the hits. I'm happy to have self-published. All of this blog never cost more than $2,500 to produce, and it's all still here. Comments and every word. Free. But now people speak in emojis. It's never to late for people who were born to fight. So these words are for you. You're not alone. And I'll go watch Black Panther and be entertained, but I won't need the fulfillment, and I won't need to wait for the next superhero story.
So let this be my black history story. Look at all of the heroes in the Tracy Chapman video. They didn't need an injection of multicultural vitamin M administered to them in their safe spaces. They didn't need warning labels on their food. They didn't express themselves with cardboard and Sharpies. They didn't beg you to like them or say something comforting in the comment section. They weren't chickenshit. They didn't squabble over slights and insults. They had dignity because they grew it in themselves, and they proved it every day to everybody. They competed HARD. That's a history worth remembering and replicating. It takes character. It takes you understanding the price of dignity.
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