Day: September 25, 2016

Young Black Men are dangerous.

There, I said it. That is what generations of media socialized people have been thinking, right? Young black men–hell black men in general–are dangerous. Black women are brash and loud and believe themselves to be queens. I’m not making this up. Someone is making this up. No matter how you personally feel about back people it is difficult to deny the optics of an entire century. Only in the last twenty years are we seeing black men seen on screen as leading men and heroes nearly as often as they are portrayed as gang bangers and thieves. Back in 1996 the top film was Independence Day, in which Will Smith played on the stereotype of the street smart black man done good to help spawn a new generation of black heroes who were at once black and only moderately stereotyped (note: He played the same exact dude in Suicide Squad). Down at #17 on that list (imdb) is the next time you even see a black person on screen and that is in the film A Time to kill where, “A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the K.K.K.”

Yep, a film where a dude avenges the rape of his daughter sparks the rebirth of the K.K.K. Nowadays we call that trope ‘Taken” and we don’t have the gravitas and racial discussion. We just say, oh he handled what he had to handle.

I don’t think black men are as dangerous as the myth perpetuates. Yeah, I am a black man and yeah I can walk through the hood and not expect to get shot straight away. But I can’t walk through a small town in the south and not expect to get shot straight away. The difference is we call the people in the hood predators.

All people are dangerous. We just spend our time focused on the black ones.

Building a life is tricky work. This is made all the more difficult when you realize you don’t even know what that term means. If you define a life as a routine during which you form long-lasting relationships, interact with people outside the home, and grow, I don’t know that I have really had ‘a life’ since college. I was married for 14 years, most of which were spent under the haze of childrearing and commuting. I suppose that was a life of sorts, but not of any sort that meets the definition of what I think I am looking for now. I am told that this is supposed to be sad information. To live the last two decades without actually having a life or more than a handful of genuine friendships to show for it does seem a bit odd.

I have Facebook friends, some of whom read this blog. I have work friends. I think. There be daggers in several smiles. I don’t have a great deal of neighborhood friends. Once I tried to make a friend–a guy I thought was pretty cool, but I got divorced and suddenly I was the guy people thought was a bad guy or a quitter or just didn’t know how to deal with. I watched the sympathy card pop up for the ex and the majority of my female friends abandon me, replacing genuine warmth with toothy smiles and empty talk. Most of the husbands came around, but there is still a distance there–the space that builds when you know you aren’t going to be invited to any of the get togethers.

Beyond the one, I don’t have what you would call ‘daily friends’. I have a woman in my life who is like a sister to me and a man who, blood not withstanding, is my brother. These are not daily friends. They are family. One I try to see weekly and the other must realize by now I am allergic to phone calls.

What all of this adds up to is a lack of life. What I do on a daily basis is hang with my kids. I coach, I play video games (often alone and after they’ve gone to bed). I form bad habits, stay up too late, and get ready for the next day. It is a was of existing without actually moving forward. It should both terrify and depress me, but it doesn’t. I have never thought long term–not even sure I know how. Instead I live in the moment, mindful and joyful of where I am at.

It isn’t a life, actually. It is a collection of happy seconds strung together like a flip book of a good life. It is what I have and I want more. Trouble is figuring out how to do that and what it looks like.