The Fight Is Real
Uncharacteristically boisterous laughter echoed off the walls of my largely empty office on a fateful Monday afternoon as my young student regaled me with his latest epiphany: “Y’all’s fight must be real!”
He had arrived in my office despondent and perturbed. His petite frame, always in motion, was especially restless that afternoon. Although he wasn’t initially in the mood for a session, his reticence was quickly forgotten as the retelling transported him back to the football field for the previous Friday’s game. His team, mostly composed of students of color, was approaching the end of their season with perhaps their worst record yet. This last match was versus a much better, and predominantly white, opponent against whom they stood very little chance of winning. Still, they were hoping to at least save face. However, it became clear soon into the game that the opponent was looking for a perfect season and had decided not to allow them to score–but not through better or clean plays. The parents contributed by hurling insults and racial slurs. The referees cinched the deal by calling every possible infraction, real or perceived, and applying the most severe penalty at each instance.
Surprisingly, the most upsetting aspect of the event for him wasn’t that he had been treated with such vitriol. It was that his treatment that evening was what is usually reserved for black people, and it stung. The realization that such indignities could be perpetrated against a Latino, opened his eyes to the extremity that must be the lot of black folks.
In the United States blackness exists in a realm of its own. It’s a state of being. A state of “otherness.” James Baldwin described this phenomenon in a 1971 interview with Nikki Giovani that to white folks being white is being civilized; thus being black is inherently uncivilized. Blacks in predominantly white workplaces can attest to the reality that being at the table does not translate to having a voice. If you do have a voice, it is usually in a narrow sphere, and venturing beyond that arena is met with bemusement, if not ridicule, and the unspoken–though sometimes spoken–message that it isn’t your place to critique what has been deemed good. You are a one-trick pony: “shut up and dribble”.
This construct of blackness as one-dimensional is well illustrated in a scene of the film Twelve Years a Slave where Solomon Northup explains to his captors how to construct a raft. He is sharply reprimanded by a farmhand, “Are you an engineer or are you a ni**er?” Though these specific words may no longer be explicitly used, the question continues to be implied in many board and conference rooms across the U.S. Most recently during 2008 elections, the former senator Harry Reid was quoted as describing then candidate Barack Obama as “light skinned negro [without] the dialect.”
Chris Rock joked in 2018 that no white person would trade places with him despite his millionaire status. The sting of that joke is experienced everyday by educated and affluent black folks who must bear being undermined and disrespected on an almost daily basis; a reminder that no level of education or achievement can dilute the stigma of being black in American society. This brings to mind the arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at his Cambridge home after a neighbor called the police to report a burglary in progress. After the incident came to light, to the embarrassment of the Cambridge Police Department, it was intimated that Dr. Gates was uncooperative during the response, prompting the officer to complete the arrest. While I can certainly imagine becoming upset at being confronted at my own door, I can’t help but wonder just what about the gentleman-scholar supported the notion that he might be a burglar. I for one cannot imagine him in sweats and a hoodie (which has been branded the uniform of black criminals). Nor can I fathom him slipping into Ebonics out of frustration. But he is black.
Sadly, black reality in the U.S. isn’t orchestrated by the white majority alone; other minority groups have tacitly endorsed the dehumanization of blackness in a strategic and self-serving about-face. For instance, the Police Department of Biscayne Park, Florida, came under scrutiny in 2018 for civil rights violations after its officers pinned a string of burglaries on a black teenager. The Department, almost exclusively Latino in its composition, had earned recognition in 2013 for achieving a clearance rate 100%. Upon further investigation it was revealed that they had attained such a record by routinely framing unsuspecting black people from surrounding towns. Among their victims were many Haitian immigrants who were subsequently deported as a result of the trumped-up charges.
The double grief of my young client’s rude awakening is that he had embraced his lesser state in our society. In addition, the same racist beliefs that he encountered on the field were palpable in the very building where we both sat, but had become so familiar that he overlooked them. Even more egregious is the fact among those who witnessed it, some will write it off as an isolated incident and others will deny it altogether. Racism continues to exist because the majority of good, kind, well-meaning people allow it. They do so by giving the benefit of the doubt to those who perpetrate it. They condone it in their consideration of the “intent” rather than the “impact” of demeaning, oppressive and inhumane behaviors and policies. They propagate it by endorsing such policies in education, government, law enforcement, healthcare, housing, business, and across the public sphere. When the majority remains silent on issues that undermine and erode the very humanity of a whole race, the majority is complicit.
The fight is real because the effects of racism are deadly. They are evidenced when sick black folks are refused access to care during a pandemic and are forced to die at home; when the mentally ill are sent to jail rather than treatment; when conditions majorly affecting black populations are denied research funds; when black youth are denied a good education in underfunded, overcrowded schools; when the belief that excessive force must be used against black folks because they are super-strong super-predators, be they a bathing suit-clad teenage girl or a 13-year-old boy, in order to maintain order. The fight is the daily mental, spiritual and physical onslaught a black person confronts for simply having been born black. The fight is for our humanity.
Sheila LeGrand is a licensed Psychotherapist residing in Massachusetts with her black husband and their three black sons.
Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.