Hey Ta-Nehisi Coates. Here’s 3000 words on how to live black and be “un-destroyed.”
I’d like to take the time to publicly thank The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates for lighting a fire under the ass of every single black writer worldwide in 2015 with his masterful new letter-as-book to his 15-year old son about what it truly means to be black in America, Between The World And Me. However, there is a much ballyhooed and oft-discussed quote from Between The World And Me: “In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage,” that I think is antiquated, and ultimately inaccurate for black people to hang onto as a truism for the future.
To paraphrase Prince from his 1984 hit “Let’s Go Crazy,” there’s something else…the future. I’m also here to say that the future is now.
In constructing a world that depends more on online interaction than real-life conversation, a place now exists where, for instance, streaming videos from foreign lands can replace Donald Trump’s crazy talk on the evening news. This is a place wherein someone can do literally anything they want, and if done so in an intelligent and aware manner, can live inside the rules but outside of destruction. In this digital-over-human space, we finally find the “free” and racially desegregated universe that Dr. King, Jesse Jackson, and so many others struggled to define for black people.
It’s damned near 2016. Instead of preaching to his 15-year old African-American son about the perils of having his body “destroyed,” it might be worthwhile for Ta-Nehisi Coates to literally shut the front door to his home, and sit his son Samori down in front of books and a laptop, and tell him to discover what an ideal world looks like to them. Allowing Samori to walk out the front door and actively engage with society on terms that aren’t his own could easily see him destroyed like Mike Brown was after a convenience store run, or, if he’s armed himself with a switchblade in order to stop his own “destruction,” he could end up assaulted in the back of a police van like Freddie Gray. Therefore, the best idea for Ta-Nehisi Coates isn’t to tell his son Samori to fear being destroyed, but instead get him to embrace the limitless possibilities for both something else and something more that leaves him alive, enlightened and un-destroyed. In embracing books and enjoying the Internet-based spoils of the digital age, Samori can live free and un-harmed “within, but without” a white America bent on his destruction.
In using some digital age magic and in being able to use a fertile imagination to create a now completely inhabitable reality, I personally don’t feel that there’s a person, place or thing that’s in any way able to destroy me. In finding myself identifying more with a self-made online, digital and mobile community that minimally deals with a very flawed American society, I’ve successfully found the nirvana of black self-respect and dignity for which so many of my forefathers dedicated their lives.
This all started for me back when I was four years old, but it actually began to crystallize for me the first time I saw 1973-released blaxploitation film The Mack. Goldie runs into his brother Olinga, who says while leading a black separatist meeting that black people need to live in a nation “within, but without White America.” Olinga’s proposition of a society “within, but without white America” gave me a starting point in figuring out how I wanted to live a life with an un-”destroyed” black body.
I grew up in an absolutely and completely all-black neighborhood filled with working class and poor black people who were definitely within a “white America” where white people were richer than black people and also represented those who owned the companies and ran the governments in which black people toiled. But though surrounded by constant reminders that showed otherwise, I never quite believed the idea that “all black people are beneath white people” to be true.
I was blessed to be a young man in Washington DC in the 1980s, an era where a black man was the mayor of the city (yes, I know, but I didn’t know he was a crack addict until long after I was already believing that black people could do anything), a black quarterback could win the Super Bowl, and there were black people in my immediate vicinity that appeared to be ascendant in all facets and aspects of society. Seeing moments like Doug Williams slice and dice the Denver Broncos defensive secondary at Super Bowl XXII inspired me to push away from traditional thoughts about being a black and second-class citizen in America, and discover my own unique reality where there was no push-back to the idea that black people had equality and could ascend undeterred by threats of violence or harm against us.
Super Bowl XXII occurred 27 years ago. 27 years later, we’ve seen the Barack Obama’s Presidential administration, the rise of Kanye West as a universally dominant pop culture icon, and in general, African-Americans being presented as ascendant in all facets and aspects of society. So, while Coates’ statement to his son may be incendiary, it may not be entirely even true anymore. In fact, fellow ascendant great black man Pharrell Williams has stated regarding the modern notion of blackness that “The New Black doesn’t blame other races for our issues. The New Black dreams and realizes that it’s not a pigmentation; it’s a mentality. And it’s either going to work for you, or it’s going to work against you. And you’ve got to pick the side you’re gonna be on.” So, for as much as telling Samori Coates that he could be “destroyed,” there’s an equal argument that says that if he actively engages ideas, beliefs and actions that don’t possibly have “destruction” as the end game, he could easily remain safe and sound.
I’ve actually been ascribing to the beliefs of those like Pharrell for quite some time. As a four-year old, I was an only child who was oftentimes left alone for hours in front of TV screens and reading books. I lived in a rough neighborhood, so I never went outside to play and interacted with other children. I’ll not leave my own failings on a “rough neighborhood,” though. I’ll also admit to being a rotund 125 pounds in the fourth grade and still not very good at making friends. But, for the purposes of this article, I was safe and un-”destroyed.”
My only friends, and what largely became the society in which I felt most comfortable, was the one inside my own head. There, Hulk Hogan and The Iron Sheik were next to Michael Jackson and Prince, plus The Cat In The Hat, Papa Smurf and the Gummi Bears were all there, too. In fact, if you asked me to seriously tell you who my first girlfriend was, I’d happily not blink and answer “Smurfette.” She was the prettiest of the Smurfs, and in my head, I didn’t want to live in the apartment in which I was raised, the rambler in Fort Washington where my favorite cousins lived, or even in my godmother’s house with a pool in Oxon Hill. No, I wanted to live in Brainy Smurf’s mushroom and save Smurfette from Gargamel.
By 1990, I was attending a largely white middle school in Washington, DC and began to learn the tremendous benefits to being a black kid who didn’t really identify with much of anything happening in a typical “black” reality. I spent the summer prior to seventh grade watching a steady stream of MTV, and found myself far more excited to watch hair metal videos than rap clips. Somehow, I thought that watching these metal videos would help me plug in better at a nearly all-white private school. Intriguingly enough, I got to school in the seventh grade as a fan of Motley Crue and Skid Row, and found many of my white classmates raving about black rappers Public Enemy. Sure, I was aware of who they were. However, it was amazing to see how my white friends related to their pro-black messages and to get my first significant exposure to the group through their eyes. It’s an altered perception, yes, but when all of my perceptions by that point were so profoundly different, I didn’t really care and my idea of what my alternative reality could be evolved profoundly.
However, at some point, my mother yanked me out of my alternative universe for a bit, and I learned the lesson that there is an awkwardly imbalanced “balance” between living in your head and living in actual reality that needs to be reached to find some semblance of mental and physical health. For those of you likely fearing that a diet of PewPewDie gaming clips, ratchet trap videos, Marc Maron podcasts and reading the Bible as literature (for instance) will turn Samori Coates into, as I was for a time, a friendless fat kid with minimal skill at social interaction — no worries. By the 7th grade, because of my mother’s proactive nature, I was a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do who could run two miles without getting winded and yes, even had a few good friends, too. Presuming that Samori Coates will be afforded the same opportunities I was for athletic activity and attempting to engage socially with others, he could be both healthy and progressive, too.
After accepting everything that I was exposed to —and in doing so not separating it by “stuff black people like and do” versus “stuff white people like and do,” but instead by “carefully selected people, places and things that inspire me,” race and any notion of a society defined by any sort of physical thing that I could touch or feel ceased to to exist. From the age 15–30, I got pretty lost in attempting to discover who and what would constitute my alternative (and largely online) reality. Occasionally I’d drop down into the “real” world to do things like graduate from high school and college, plus join the workforce. However, all I really wanted to ever do was find a way to leave the “real” world behind.
If Samori Coates were to heed my advice, there would probably be a moment in the midst of doing all of this where he’d get confronted by “blackness” and that notion of “black body destruction” and he’d believe that living in this “artificial” world is crazy. For me (as likely would be for him) that moment came in college, where I was a civil rights activist who pushed for greater black and minority representation in regards to applicant acceptance rates for people of color. However, at the same time that I could march around campus and scream “97 percent white just ain’t right!,” I could just as easily be seen making out with Caucasian females at weekend keg parties, too.
As I did, this imagined Samori’s probably going to have to hold back the tears when he receives notes in his student mailbox challenging just how “black” he really is. In my alternative reality, as would be his, too, the necessity for increased racial representation will be completely separated from the idea that he potentially finds Irish and Italian-American girls hot as hell. In a world where race and culture are already well-balanced and equality was commonplace, the idea of being ostracized for seemingly confusing social choices (having mainly white friends yet playing the most gutter rap music as a DJ on campus radio, listening to The Carpenters as study music and oftentimes carrying around a copy of the book Black Power as a sign of accepting some tenets of black political and social militancy into) will feel really agitating and a “destruction” of sorts will occur. However, when he doubles down and begins to search deeper into himself and the internet, he (as I did) will absorb less of those criticisms and actually felt safer in his own skin.
At some point, I emerged one morning from a night of being submerged in creating my idyllic digital life and when I headed into “the real world,” I was yelled at by a boss for not caring about my job, saw a plane hit the World Trade Center and then promptly get stuck in a three-hour traffic jam near the White House. It’s at that moment when you question is occupying space in such a destructive reality not just for black people, but everyone, even worth it?
By 30, I’d pretty much laid the groundwork of creating a sustainable online reality, and now at 37 I’m living and succeeding in a world I’ve been building out of my head for almost 30 years.
Sadly, it appears as if I’m alone here, and other black folks are lagging behind white folks in discovering the magical power of living “within, but without White America” that the digital age offers. 2014 Pew Research Center data shows that as compared to 87% of white people using the internet with 74% having broadband access, only 80% of black people polled use the internet with 62% having faster broadband online access available. As well, 56% of African-Americans have internet-equipped smartphones.
Here’s what black folks are missing out on:
- I now don’t work in an environment surrounded by white people, black people, or if I so choose, any people at all. All of my work is done online. If I absolutely, positively demand social interaction, I happily pay a monthly fee to sit at a coffee table at the Gallery Place We Work co-working space in DC. Come see me. The cup of coffee’s on me.
- I have a plethora of streaming entertainment options that allow me the ability to really not care a whit about Empire, Scandal, the “whip,” the “nae nae” or any other broadcasts or cultural movements that define black America at present. Living in a world where I can watch Narcos on Netflix, enjoy the best of South Korean culture via YouTube-aired “Eat Your Kimchi,” watch as many hours of The Smurfs episodes, The Mack, and classic pro wrestling as I want without having to interact with anyone, I’m quite happy, and no matter how much Twitter and Instagram tell me I’m missing out, I’ve created an alternative thing that I believe to be as much, if not more entertaining (and culturally enriching, too).
- I’m able via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and social media to have active and stable friendships not just with people I see in real time, but also with a literal world of others, where I actually get to have intellectually stimulating conversations, sometimes on a daily basis, via shared articles and memes.
As long as I pay my bills on time, and, in moments when I actually have to leave my figurative Smurf mushroom universe and interact with “reality,” just not break any laws or cause a panic, I’m set. Modern society has availed me all of the tools to keep my black body far from “destroyed,” and for that, I’m glad. If this sounds like some sort of ode to respectability politics, it’s not. Black people, white people, hell, ALL people need to get to a point as a culture where we stop dwelling on this destructive past (and present), cut all ties with it, and boldly step into the future. We’re at this point where we ABSOLUTELY must do a 180 on everything and just kinda hide out in the margins for a bit. If searching for those margins, they’re all quite present in a world where we talk more online than we do in real life, using the online space to learn decorum, patience and an increased social sensitivity and awareness not present in real-time.
In an ideal society, the work that Martin, Malcolm, SNCC, the Black Panthers, Jesse Jackson, the Rainbow Coalition and President Obama have done would ultimately equate to a world where blacks and whites living together peacefully in society could exist. However, when Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and so many more are beaten and murdered, this isn’t the case. In the face of these non-ideal conditions, the time has come to discover a solution that doesn’t end up with more black bodies being destroyed. Is my idea of grabbing pieces of the physical world and snatches of the Internet, then combining them into one unique alternative reality the best solution? Maybe. All I know is that my black body isn’t “destroyed,” and that maybe the black bodies of others don’t need to be destroyed, either.
I hope that Ta-Nehisi Coates has allowed his 15-year old black son the ability to watch a steady diet of cartoons and pro wrestling, given him hundreds of books to read, and dared him to dream the most amazing dreams possible. As well, given that the aforementioned Pew data says that 98% of blacks polled between the ages of 18–29 have smart phones, maybe get Samori Coates an iPhone 6, too. In letting Samori float away from this oh so fucked up American society in which we live, he’ll easily escape destruction.
A special thanks to Random Nerds’ Bryce Taylor Rudow for the editing assist on this monstrosity. You’d be crazy to not check out the site he edits here.
