The world of Blackness rumbles often but rarely with something like pure joy, If only we could get to Wakanda and vibranium and come at the problems super hero style. We all know it is just a movie, but then again, movies are capable of producing emotional effects that the black as cultural concept and domain cannot.
And though I never thought about it, one of the best things about super heroes is the violence that is uncensored and not considered a character flaw. I mean they hurt people, but only the people who do wrong. It is a world with crystal clear enemies, so unlike the one many of us trudge through. Perhaps a harmless fantasy to be taken lightly, but then again shit is real.
Dare you find someone in the real world with such clear concepts of good evil, you might do best to take head, and distance yourself. The capacity to make enemies can be difficult to manage in personal relationships, and even worse, if someone imagines themselves as a hero they are full of ego and usually delusional.
We might want to be Wakandan, but most times don't want to be black. The sophisticated Wakandans and Hoteps might shout the racist history of the West and our rich history as a reason for pride, joy, and nobility, but it seems paper thin. The best black existence seems to lead towards those diverse places where there are fewer of us. Success in the black is individually garnered on behalf of the whole. It's not as bleak as it may sound, but then again, it is far less than ideal. The truth is if nobody negated us, if nobody enslaved us, we might be known by some other name.
For blackness can easily be the opposite of joy, and requires a degree of acceptance for the downtrodden and triffling nature of our stories. Oppression can easily seem juxtaposed to our very existence. In the Wakandan moment we are freed from such considerations by the rise and falls of the big wide screen. For there we can demand the craft and be a black that is more than the black we confront in our everyday lives. It is simply abstract concept, given birth by the dynamics of White Supremacy. If we are African, then Wakanda is the Africa we would like to have. It is an Africa of the imagination and afro-futuristic enough to contest what we wake up sometimes an imagine as an inescapable reality.
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Wakanda seems like true joy, and true joy cannot be contested. We dream of a world where blackness will be rid of all its negative connotations; but that day has not yet come. Just recently I heard a famous poet speak of "not being a practicing black." Though I don't know exactly what he meant, I suspect that he is distancing himself from the parts of blackness that are difficult to stomach. He wants the world to know he is different. That he is black not black. Truth is, he is probably the same and knows it in his heart. Why else use rhetoric to create the distinction. The market economy of blackness has boomed in the past few years, and the non-practicing blacks get in on the rise in the stock market as much as anyone else, maybe even more.
Of all the enemies you might want to be, you do not want to be the enemy of joy. Wakanda is a throwback image of a blackness that is admirable and sophisticated, and full of corporate gloss where the black can know, albeit for the moment, that it is good. Though simple, everyone knows how hard it is to get there. It is hard for the black to be beyond good, beyond debate. It is hard for the black to be just joy.
It is hard to imagine blackness being so popular and center stage, especially with the rise of Trump. Wakanda seems to be clear evidence of African American progress, but also represents a form of ideological retreat. Retreat and joy would seem to not go together, but they do. For Trump makes the pinnacle success of Obama seem to fade. We know now more than ever, that there are some things that just won't happen. If there is a struggle and a long road, why not take a break and experience a little joy on the road there? Again, joy is without contest. It fortifies and galvanizes.
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In the end, we may remember those final Obama years as a crazy frenzy much like the roaring twenties with capped out stock market values on blackness. A Black President, a Black Protest Movement, and the Black intellectual class moved into a prominent position on the chess board of American politics. Obama could not be denied, and neither could some of the people who looked like him, who like him, were the opposite of Trump, squeaky clean and gentile, went to the right places, did the right things. The coming of Trump was a clear statement about the decline of the market value of blackness. Those who tell you it was predictable did not predict. Many were blindsided, and in those great years preceding had the run of their lives. Acclaim, riches, and access to the political infrastructure and media. If it was predictable and the same ole't shit, then why wasn't it called. Here at Free Black Space we missed it too.
The black has never been predictive. In fact, part of its definition is to be completely and totally blindsided, to be behind the eight ball, to be chasing clarity. To assert it can be such, goes against the norm, but as academic category-study of the black is somehow connected to the domain of activism and change. There are exceptions like an interview with an African American poet where she expressed surprise at being honored by the black because of "transgressions." Like the poet who suggested, "they were not a practicing black.", the sounding board is some common popular image of the black that is always in flux and to a certain extent dominated by the editors who choose the images we have access to. In both the negative and the positive blackness is a refined thing. What makes blackness unpredictable is our response to conditions with creativity, and a public image crafted by folks who often don't know the nuances of our culture. If they know a good black, the good in that black is to often connected to their image of the universal. It is black they know and have created, sorta like a Wakandan. A knowable thing refined to a perfection that exist outside the racial divide. Education, systems, and employment bring clarity to the black and make it predictable. Our predictability is our capacity to survive in the here and now; our unpredictability is our ability to survive by creating what feeds us.
There is room in the economy even for those who do not profess blackness, activism, or change; because the category exists within the dynamic of American culture, where the major question the larger culture confronts about the black is how it will change. The question can be about personal declarations, but need not be. Black authors who shun being referred to as black, benefit from the market economy of blackness. Though there are more complicated reasons, the easiest to cite is publisher's diversifying their list, faculties diversifying their faculty. In other words, even if you are not interested in being black, you will be managed as a black asset in the larger society. To be predictive about such maters defies the power dynamics and tests the realm of knowledge on the black. For to predict from a position of powerlessness is to risk the tenants of the science one engages. Blackness belongs to the humanities, which is not science. We kowtow to the empire's idea of humanity and attempt to refine it towards a perfection that could co-exist with the empire; but the truth is without the empire's idea of humanity the other concepts could not be used so effectively to wage war and conquest. More simply put the black cannot survive by predicting the end of the empire or a drastic turn like Trump. Obama shows us the black cannot afford to be wrong. The only science under such conditions is waiting to respond, being jet-lagged, contextualizing, contesting after the fact. It is a rhetoric of survival. I also have to add, it is disavowing the very thing that brought you into existence as something less than.
These are the options outside the predictive. In fact, most critiques and positioning makes whites more certain of their supremacy. This is the limit of blackness, but also the ghetto of ideas. While it sounds bleak, its not really that bad. It's just survival and that's not really black -it's just survival. It is easy to be here and confuse the two.
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We began Free Black Space in 2009 as a blog dedicated to all definitions of the black. Our emblems were and still are the barber, jazz musician, and black hair stylist. Our locations are the street corner, the church, the HBCU, the black neighborhood, the barber shop, the salon, and the black bookstore. The last is where Free Black space was born. In 2008, as the country entered its worst recession since The Great Depression, and prepared for the coming of its first Black President, Karibu Books closed.
Karibu epitomized Free Black Space and operated as a place where the full bandwidth of black knowledge could be engaged. Though Free Black Space began a year after Karibu, I was still then in mourning. I truly had no idea how special it was to work with African Americans, surrounded by black books all day. After entering an HBCU and Academic environment without anchor from Karibu, I then realized how much of my intellectual development was fostered by Free Black Space. Though there are similarities with academic environments, there are some important differences. First is the clear sense of democracy. In Free Black Space the democracy was centered in a consumerism that is at the least similar to the current Black Panther craze. Money is somewhere in the mix of Black Panther as it was in Karibu. Yet, the bookstore was much more interactive. People asked questions, shared opinions, balked about what they didn't like, and expressed joy over what they did. Second, the measure of opinions in a way that seems almost in opposition to many of black academic intellectuals, was not based on degrees, books read, and ones credentials; but instead on their presence-their mind linked with their bodies. Folks showed up and verified the best about the black in matters of intellect.
Though simple, in post Karibu time, I have discovered how odd it is to imagine a black success in such a nurturing environment that includes so much of the diversity of African America. Beyond success is the weight placed on our opinions and intellectual decisions. Free Black Space is real.
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Karibu began in 1992 on the streets of Washington and at Bowie State University as an outgrowth of the African Development Organization, and included among its friends at the time Brian Gilmore, D.J. Renegade, and Kenneth Carroll. I will also add Ethelbert Miller, who is everybody's friend, and who received me after my return from New York before I was twenty one and guided me, like countless others, on my path into poetry. He is a lightpost, guide, and mentor for thousands if not ten thousand. I mention these names, because Ta-Nehisi Coates cites them in his Between the World and Me as the people who taught him the ways of the poet.
He says,
The art I was coming to love lived in this void, in the not yet knowable, in the pain, in the question. The older poets introduced me to artists who pulled their energy from the void-Bubber Miley, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, C.K. Williams, Carolyn Forche. the older poets were Ethelbert miller, Kenneth Carroll, Brian Gilmore. It is important that I tell you their names, that you know that I have never achieved anything alone. I remember sitting with Joel Dias-Porter, who had not gone to Howard but whom I found at the Mecca, reviewing every line of Robert Hayden's "Middle Passage." (51)
Like much of Coates, the passage reflects a clear understanding of his personal and communal trajectory. One could simply call the concept a shoutout in the spirit of hip-hop, or elevate it to worship of ones teachers. One should also note the almost Taoistic references to the void and the not yet knowable. I would argue what is most important, is the Free Black Space acknowledgement of his intellectual refinement. And to be truthful, Coates is so much Free Black Space, he could probably shout out long litanies of all those who engaged his intellect and helped refine him into his brilliance.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a Free Black Space intellect.
To clarify even more, all of the authors mentioned above, where members of Karibu's Free Black Space environment. Each author did events, Dias-Porter worked at that store, and Karibu helped publish and distribute works by Dias-Porter and Gilmore. If one would imagine for a second that Free Black Space is not real, one need only consider Coates. The Paul Coates family Free Black Space ju-ju exceeds even that of Karibu. Paul Coates is a former Black Panther, former librarian at the Moorland-Spingarn Library at Howard, and owner of Black Classic Press. Ta-Nehisi Coates represents arguably one of the most sophisticated and refined manifestations of blackness ever given/ earning blanket public access.
Another friend, scholar Howard Rambsy, along with others always reminds me that Coates is not an academic. If you've read Between the World and Me, you know this. The portions of the text that read like memoir, clarify his long journey in the hard school of knocks that form the journalistic world.
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Were it not for my imaginary, afro-futurist relationship with China, Taiji, and the I-Ching; I might think something else needs to be manufactured. In truth, it is nothing short of imaginative to suggest that the ancient philosophy (that permeates the present) of another country who rises on the world stage can practically mixed with the knowledge the black has obtained to better deal with our problems and advance our communities. However, the approach is in truth beyond the imagination and the Western idea of the transcendental. The black will continue to work on the problem from within the binary. The black doesn't leave, precisely because of moments like the Coates' moment, where the suffering, joy, and brilliance grant access to popularity and public approval.
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We deep in the black read of the fantastic almost supernatural events of the black in the past, but rarely experience those in the moment. Like many of our heroes, we are challenged by the reality of our predicament and what seems like an obvious insignificance in our everyday lives when we address problems in the black. The Coates moment felt different. It was a great coming, mixed in with the difficult landscape of riots, Black Lives Matter, and a a Black President who had fostered the rise of the good enuff black to dynamic proportions. It is only here, in the face of Black Panther, that I can understand the dominant mode was not revolution, struggle, or we are gonna win. It was much more simple. It was just joy. But to be clear the black as a concept unable to throw off its negative/oppositional center has always struggled with joy. One way to view our history is as chasing joy. Chasing joy, and then the subsequent disillusionment that follows when joy is expressed, when we seem to be back in the same shit. If one doubts the analysis, one need only consider the Coates and African American intellectual response to Trump. Recently, I read the Coates metaphor at the heart of his most recent book is not the Obama years, but in fact Reconstruction. If the metaphor is true, if it actually works, it represents the sisyphean predicament at the heart of African American history in this country. Though we are talking about reconstruction, it seems to perfectly apply to the here and now, Obama, Trump moment.
If there is a difference, it is in the unjoy as path to success. At this point, African Americans are in never-never land. It was hard in the Coates moment to imagine what unsettled me most. The intellect and brilliance where there and clear for all to see. It was hard to determine what was really going on. I consider myself beyond standard hateration. By no means am I immune from jealousy and envy, but I understand wealth enough to understand the difficulty in balancing it; especially for black folks who come from the poor. In classic intellectual fashion, I am very much concerned with the capacity of ideas, words, and work in the black to give rise to a better position/situation for African Americans. I have lived my life in pursuit of such.
And though joy is laudable, it is also difficult to manage. Somethings are simply not joy. Even the move towards joy can easily be infected by a range of other emotions that lurk within us, as a result of repression. But there was almost pure unjoy clouding the Coates moment. To be clear intellectual enjoyment is different from true enjoyment. Ask any intellectual what they think of your cheap poetry, hip-hop, or singing voice, to be clear. There is a range of craft required to manage or elicit the emotions of people with art, and there is also a range of craft, required to produce an intellectual argument capable of changing and transforming the world. Coates is an excellent example of unjoy in the black that is accepted by the rest of us as joy. Wakanda is a representation of joy in the black, that intellect cannot destabilize. We desire a perfect world and realizing that will never come, can at least settle for a perfect story Wakanda.
When a man is lauded and respected for capturing the mood of a nation and clearly stating he fears for the life of his child and doesn't imagine himself as capable of protecting him, there's some unjoy in the moment. But the black will take that as success. It is in the slavery code. We begin in the land of unjoy. Our critiques of others are often centered in their joy or celebration that ignores our condition. Frederick Douglass' speech on the Fourth of July is perfect example. It is easy for America to celebrate as we contemplate the core of meanings in the world. I mean what does it mean, if folks is celebrating a holiday, which was contradictory for us to celebrate.
I guess the other thing is joy is to be shared. There are certain American joys we can not unify with the knowledge in our heads if we know the black. If one takes the Fourth of July as example, one has to ignore much to be able to pop fireworks, bar-b-que and the like. The black is just as good as America at such joy. We can be happy and celebrate such moments without thinking about it too much. The skill set is an important part of our survival and in line with what is expected of us.
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Folks want to be happy and, in the case of Black Panther, there seems no reason no one should not be. Black Panther is black cast, dark skinned folks up in Hollywood in abundance, Kendrick Lamar on the cut, Africa via Wakanda, and from what I have heard the complexity of the black predicament rendered in an imaginary metaphorical land complete with a full budget, mass distribution, and the clarity of success. It is also Black History Month, which is traditionally a money making time for those who proscribe to the black three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. A good professor friend of mine used to call it get paid month for black intellectuals. The black deserves money and publicity. The black deserves to get paid and make money; and again Black Panther is all that.
For many, the black bookstore world I lived in for years, where I was known to sport a dashiki or two, and go into odd diatribes and strange debates on the condition of the black could be a lot like Wakanda-imaginary and unreal, futuristic or retro. Take your pick. To be certain I was always less than heroic, nowhere near superhero.
(Note if one is to be imaginary, one should be superheroic and larger than life. Shit is real; and the imaginary in everyday life can easily be looked upon as a disconnect and impracticality. Black can easily be accused of that.)
In our tiny lives, matters were pretty close to life and death too. Read Simba Sana's Never Stop, which chronicles some of the Karibu story, and also includes his description of his odd life as a bookseller struck between two divorces, a quest for the true meaning of love, and a bankruptcy aftermath that at one time ended him up in a jail cell for not paying child support. Though, we also gotta say, part of Karibu's problem was we didn't quite have the budget for the real life and death confrontation. Skinny budget, I ain't got no money, seems to always be in the backpack of the black. Many of us struggle with resources and doing it right, but what's most important is Karibu had its own version of black joy. Our customers loved us. They were diverse and many, and we stocked the full range of black intellectual diversity from children's, to super serious nationalism and Egyptology, urban fiction and Color Purple.
There's no spoiler here, and by spoiler, I mean no place where we would suggest the joy is too euphoric or out of control. To speak of joy without sharing in the joy, is to not understand the limits of audience and how the world works. Joy is to be shared, and if you not down with sharing it, you should move on, or keep your mouth shut. It is the last statement, which I have witnessed a few times in the Black Panther media blitz, that convinces me this is special moment.
In this case, someone who tells you to be joyful, or don't spoil my joy; is fundamentally different, from someone who could care less about the movie. Black Panther is part of the black in real and insignificant ways, and people fencing off the territory are doing what they do for the rest of the black. They are protective.
But the joy was not the pure joy of exuberance. A story of not being able to protect your son and the tragedy of the black body, though celebrated by the society as one of the most amazing literary achievements of the new century is also tinged with the sadness and the bitterness of the black. The spectacle is beyond irony. The Coates brilliance and joy is marred by the dirty deeds he must speak. We can be inspired, but there are limits. The hopelessness contrasts with the success that send us back towards silence.
Trump makes it even harder to imagine things have gotten better since the Coates moment. Reparations was the joy of sophisticated analysis and important cog in the wheel in the long journey. Reparations was black mind think tank, free black space intellectualism breaking into media spotlight as though analysis and policy under the first Black President mattered in ways that it seems they now do not; and the Baltimore Riot summer was the perfectly engineered moment that seemed to bring issues to the forefront. It wasn't simply joy, but also the time for joy. A time to rise up. Though most of that seemed undone by the Trump election. Trump seemed to publicly trump the joy of our forward progress.
If then, we stood on the brink of an activism that could speak truth to power and was mustering the power capable of transforming the landscape of the America; we are now in a distinctly different place. The true Black Lives Matter upswing was a combination of forces. Videos and wide public support, a Black President in office, and the Baltimore and Ferguson Riots sparked the air with a sense of activism we dreamed about. The blackness of that time was legitimized and center stage in a way that now seems like a far off land.
Just recently, in the aftermath of the Black Panther/Wakanda joy, I saw an announcement that Coates is now going to write Marvel's Captain America. I will tip toe quietly here and say, Captain America is just a Comic book, as much as Black Panther is just a comic. It must be so, for given Coates critiques of America and white men, we must draw clear distinction between the imaginary and the real-or at least attempt to balance them. One of the most powerful connotations of Coates' membership on the Marvel team, is the true authentic Black Panther legacy of his father. Though it is not definitive, one cannot deal in matters of the black or mention black panthers, without conjuring the idea of Huey P. Newton, guns, and the revolutionary organization that began in Oakland many years ago. The same can be said for Captain America, who in Marvel land is a clearly patriotic representation of American defense of the world's freedom. I am sure some of the Marvel heads may take issue and cite some issue or episode in the archives that contradicts this. I am much more simply dealing with joy and the winds of society. No doubt, some may suggest that I am being anti-intellectual. So be it. We are happy Coates gets to write Captain America. For real. For real.
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Recently, I read a Coates article about Kanye West, which I am developing a more sophisticated response to. In the article he speaks briefly about fame, popularity, and wealth. He even mentions the responses from members of his writing community that seemed to contradict the reception he imagined receiving.
Indeed, it is difficult to be a celebrity anything; and maybe that much harder for a Free Black Space Intellectual. The gap between a possible success in the here and now for ones ideas, and the success of the larger movement of the people is difficult to negotiate. Malcolm and Martin's insane pace, busy schedules, and tragic ends are the best examples for me. Though there is also Huey or even Tupac as additional examples. Success in relationship to the Black and our forward movement is often strange.
In response to such potential contradictions, many Free Black Space Intellectuals are underground. Many ideas of practical progress contrast with public debate with white intellectuals or the espousing of positions that do not bring immediate change. And though Coates is younger than me, and I consider him a part of my generation; I am clear that he may be able to see some things I don't. Trump convinces me it is less likely than I suspected at the beginning, but still there is a chance.
But the truth about Coates, and Brian Gilmore always reminds me of this, is his intellectual, honesty, brilliance, and passion. In some ways the narrative arc of his life established reads like the standard American journal: a highly individualistic Were it not for science, one might be able to argue that America is nothing but lies; but science clarifies on the basic most fundamental level. One need not add the strange mix of Christianity, God, and country that in spite of its mistreatment of many is the humanitarian fabric holding the larger structure together. Though Coates comes from a Black intellectual environment he has goutlier, from the school of hard knocks, that gives credit to a tradition of renegades who have come before him. His innocence, or some might say naivete, are all at least noble; and most likely much more, and the complexity is mostly an extension of his success and not an inherent flaw. In the end, I would argue, that America has embraced him for these qualities as much as his critique or the absolute brilliance of his work. The easy way to explain this is to imagine all the great basketball players who don't make the NBA. Success in America for the black has never been solely a question of brilliance or worthiness, there are other things at play.
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Of course, there is also the predicament of the black in Coates. The black cannot be famous, stellar, or celebrity on its own. When Free Black Space began, I imagined that some growth similar to Karibu could be spawned by entering the digital age with a simple blog. Like Coates, I knew the poets he mentioned and many others. The changes in digital technology, the coming of Amazon, and the bankruptcy of Border's books and music clarified the dangerous terrain for those dealing in literary production. A simple blog, much like a simple vending stand, seemed the answer.
But there, as always, was the unpredictable in the mix. The success we see in black authors of today is a result of market forces that would have been difficult to predict. I had predicted an inversion of the street life phenomena in the works the shift, imagining that any shift would make independent African American literary institutions more profitable; I underestimated the Obama moment.
The black intellegentsia is much more fond of recasting the past, than predicting future. I agree, and am all in. For to predict the future with intellect and force, is at the least revolutionary. Activism is not. My disagreement with revolution may be a bit nuanced from the average African American radicalist, though it doesn't make a real difference for most. My opposition to revolution is first murder, something I wasn't put here to do; and second, the use of aggressive force towards a resolution of our predicament. If we return to the quote above, Coates' mention of the void and the not yet knowable gets close to a more Taoistic yin approach, which I believe perfectly explains the contours and trajectories of the black. Though it must be said, the use of Chinese philosophy to explain American or African American phenomena is light years ahead of where we are now. And maybe not light years, maybe a few decades or a hundred. The suggestion that a philosophy predating Western Civilization, accurately explains the phenomena of the black exceeds even the radicalism of the most radical among the black. Our approach to such explanations, is that perhaps it is gimmick, get-aheadism, escapism, or mere charlatanism. People imagine a serious discussion of China is simply what black people have done with white people all these years.
Yet, to be clear, if one were to weigh black intellectual celebrity success and activism in relationship to what most African Americans deal with on a daily, the same accusations can be made. Free Black Space intellectual production might as well be pure rubber plants on the Western Coast of Africa, vibranium, or some rare metal whose manufacturing makes it valuable. Black intellectuals are manufactured within a colonial apparatus and infrastructure. The literary success, the extraordinary literary success of black writers during the Obama years makes this evident.
The problem of course, is not that this occurs. Industry is necessity, not ornament. Something must be done. If one studies Karibu, a small black bookstore with six locations, started with just five hundred dollars, and dedicated to information by and about the black; one might begin to understand that the sophisticated approach is not simply a get rich quick scheme, but a refined approach that has been tested. Karibu's failure is as specific as its victories. Failure of course casts a giant, dark shadow, that seems to swallow almost everything up. In other words, I understand why some would be confused. But failure and hopelessness are not the same thing. What are the differences between failure and the struggle reinventing itself into new forms must always be contemplated and meditated.
I have already said it, but will say it again. Another major question is how good Obama was for what I call the market economy of blackness. Obama shifted the definitions and forces within blackness in ways that it will take years to clarify. It seems Coates is beginning that process in his most recent work, whose title refers to Eight Years W Were in Power, as actually being Reconstruction, not the Obama years. If this is true, the metaphorical similarities create as much gloom and despair as the public declaration that he cannot protect his son.
In my experience with blackness, the idea of spoiling some joy in relationship to the black is a rarity. The idea of protecting a black film made by Hollywood even rarer. I grew up in the X-Days with X hats and Spike Lee's Malcolm X. There was much debate and little protection. Knowledge seeking get it right black folks usually launch the attacks. Part of what I sense from the Black Panther moment is the allowance of joy. The right to be happy, because it syncs with an intellect that knows what right thinks. Joy does not require intellect, but for many in the black, it seems necessary. Experts in the black often have the image of being the original spoilers of all joy. It is hard to reconcile all the left out history, false tropes, and our difficult time in America with joy. If many of the folks who are black ain't really down with the black, some of it legitimately has to deal with what we call the absence of joy.
Black Panther like Coates seems to be supreme "authentic black", and Black History in the moment. In the now, it seems to have as much hype and zest as Civil Rights, the African American museum, and Harriet Tubman. In similar fashion to Coates, some of the joy is engineering. A Black History month release is a hip tactic. The point, to be clear, is not that the designation is absolutely correct; but more importantly, the designation operates as currency that helps bring money, prestige, and status. If one is in possession of it, one gets to operate in sync with black history in real time. And Black History seems to be the best of the black.
Some of the particulars of the phenomena may be connected to the digital age, social media, and the like. Academics and intellectuals, who prior to this, seemed to be conjured outside the trend, can now become the trend. Amazon was a bookstore because educated people are more likely to engage the net. The net works via, reading, searching, researching and is connected to the trends of educated people who believe in authenticated knowledge. The internet facilitates a democracy of knowledge.
But back to joy. We should all be happy, because joy juxtaposed to blackness without the drama or clouds in the sky is a rarity. Before Coates was Obama's election, which was the first step in such a rare joy; and to be truthful, Coates' step into the arena still had the tinge of Black Lives Matter and black folks being murdered at the hands of the police. In Coates' there was some riot smoke along with disgruntled citizens who in spite of its success, could not find joy; not even in the victory of his success. Even more saddening was his son's place in the narrative and the essay. In other words, even though Coates' brilliance and eloquence inspired us, the presence of his son, as a symbol of future generations, and the proposition that things have been jacked up for a while, and would continue, for a while; could dampen our joy.
At the least Black Panther euphoria is struggle not struggle. African Americans struggling to get some equal protection under the law can produce joy along its timeline, but it cannot be joy. Part of the struggle is some destination that will produce more joy. We call it struggle because it perseveres and trudges through some hardship that is at least metaphorically the opposite of joy.
Granted not everybody is happy. I have seen some critiques and encountered them in close quarters. I even have my own, but the exuberance of the moment makes it clear, it is not time to discuss them. I have even noticed a critique of those who are not happy or joyful. Though this always occurs, there is usually some debate; whereas here-things seem clearly stated in the positive.
The last point is odd, in reference to TaNehisi Coates in particular, who has some of his success hinged on the despair of a world where he cannot protect his son. Some of his song, and the part of his song that makes some of the powerful outside of the black submit to his genius, is the negative the black can be expert in. In some ways, it is unthinkable that a well-educated, successfully raised, African American man of Mr. Coates stature by the time he wrote the book, would say publically that he could not protect his son, and how fearful he was of the police actually hurting him. In this way, Coates with an uncommon brilliance, voiced the concern millions of black parents have.
I need more hands to count on my fingers the number of African American authors who have been catapulted into celebrity writer status in the past few years. Years ago, when I met Dorothy West before she died, she said the Harlem Renaissance fascinated her, because they were just people. Many black writers of today, will no doubt feel the same way. The Coates joy was not about the negative image he put forth, but about his success. For writers in particular, this success is awe inspiring. When I spoke to an elder member of the activist, writer, black publishing community, ironically, on the night of Coates' book release, he assured me one of the benefits of Coates' success would be more success for other black writers-though he mentioned males in particular. If we were overjoyed about Between the World and Me, it was because Coates had almost graduated into myth. Though he was dealing with the dirty deeds and mess of the black, the blood and guts of black murder, the fear in our households, and the pressures of that activist moment; there was joy in the galvanizing.
The Black Panther moment seems to represent a similar galvanization with a more complete joy. From what I understand it is a finely crafted movie, which among other things counts among its cast and workforce who helped to produce it, many brilliant minds. The Marvel world begins in childhood. It is one of the reasons the franchise works so effectively. Like Star Wars, those who experienced the comic as a child can count that experience as precious memory. As with Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman, or Harry Potter, children who experience profound pieces of art return to that art later. They feed their children that art.
Black Panther has taken things a step further..
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In the end joy in practice may be different from a movie. Sooner or later the black has to deal in that. For most a blackness that can be entertainment and paid for and absolutely enjoyed via narrative arc will always be the most memorable and accessible. We need that. I'm down with it.
