{"id":3958,"date":"2013-08-08T01:00:40","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T08:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodletters\/?p=3958"},"modified":"2015-01-16T15:47:29","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T22:47:29","slug":"black-boy-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodletters\/2013\/08\/black-boy-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Boy, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One of my boys is reading Richard Wright\u2019s Black Boy<\/em> for his English class this coming semester.<\/p>\n

One of my sons has already read the book, and in a couple of years my daughter will read it. They will see that it was published in 1945, closing in on seventy years ago. They will see how hard it was to be a black boy in the United States back in 1945.<\/p>\n

I was never assigned Black Boy<\/em> in school. As a matter of fact I cannot remember being assigned a single black writer until I took an African American Literature elective in college. I was raised in a place that was not only lily-white, but white with a red neck. Black people did not willingly venture up the Elk River.<\/p>\n

In an autobiographical sketch, Wright speaks of the \u201cdread of being caught alone upon the streets in white neighborhoods after the sun has set.\u201d He says, \u201cWhile white strangers may be in these neighborhoods trying to get home, they can pass unmolested. But the color of a Negro\u2019s skin\u2026 makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what it was like for a black boy back in 1945.<\/p>\n

In 1955 a black boy named Emit Till from Chicago made the mistake of whistling at a pretty white woman in Mississippi. White men dragged him from his cousin\u2019s house in the middle of the night, strung him up in a barn, beat him, and gouged out one of his eyes. He was defiant, cursed the white men who tortured him. So they shot him dead, tied a seventy-pound fan to his neck with barbed wire, and threw his carcass into the river.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what it was like for a black boy in 1955.<\/p>\n

In the early nineties I attended a conservative Evangelical school in Virginia. More Koreans\u2014actually from South Korea\u2014were present than African Americans. I became pretty good friends with two black students in particular. One was from Nigeria. The other was from here in the US. His name was Hiawatha.<\/p>\n

I wanted to understand Hiawatha\u2019s experience of the world, and he was happy to try and show me. He told me to watch how people reacted to him, and I did, hanging back so that the reactions wouldn\u2019t be mitigated by his being with a white guy. Indeed people gave him nervous glances in convenience stores. The young white girls at school gave him wide nervous berth in the hallways. I was astonished. Hiawatha shrugged it off in weary resignation. He wasn\u2019t suggesting activism; he just wanted me to know.<\/p>\n

Hiawatha was appointed president of the graduate student body after the elected president was deemed unfit to serve (a whole different set of issues). A charismatic presence, Hiawatha was invited to speak all over the south. He was extended an offer to come on staff at the seminary after graduation.<\/p>\n

We discussed it, and he eventually said to me, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be their token black.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cWhat are you talking about? They love you over there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah?\u201d he said. \u201cLet me try to date one of their daughters.\u201d<\/p>\n

What would it be like to live your entire life with this? I don\u2019t know. I think of the Langston Hughes poem \u201cA Dream Deferred\u201d:<\/p>\n

What happens to a dream deferred?<\/em><\/p>\n

Does it dry up<\/em>
\n like a raisin in the sun?<\/em>
\n Or fester like a sore\u2013<\/em>
\n And then run?<\/em>
\n Does it stink like rotten meat?<\/em>
\n Or crust and sugar over\u2013<\/em>
\n like a syrupy sweet?<\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe it just sags<\/em>
\n like a heavy load.<\/em><\/p>\n

Or does it explode?<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what it was like in 1993 for an educated, well-dressed, well-spoken black man. Twenty years ago.<\/p>\n

After the man who shot the black boy recently was acquitted, a young man named Matthew Simmermon-Gomes<\/a> blogged with barely-suppressed outrage that he knew, \u201cwhat it\u2019s like to be a Trayvon Martin. To be suspect. I do know what it\u2019s like to be followed by staff in a nice clothing store; to be stopped by police for walking down the street; to endure the thousand micro-aggressions and the hundred fearful looks.\u201d In short, he knows, \u201cwhat it is to be a person of colour in a world that privileges whiteness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ahmir \u201cQuestlove\u201d Thompson (Roots drummer and Jimmy Fallon bandleader) blogged, \u201cthe overall<\/span>message this whole Trayvon case has taught me: You ain\u2019t shit. That\u2019s the lesson I took from this case. You ain\u2019t shit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what it\u2019s like in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n

The majority of the people where I grew up, and a large percentage of my family and acquaintances from my past there, are vehement in their justification of the man who shot the black boy. They just as vehemently insist that it isn\u2019t really about race. It is about their right to carry guns, to be free to protect themselves. In some mysterious way it is about being a good American.<\/p>\n

I want to shout, I want to argue. I want to delete them. I know that there has been an ocean of ink spilled on this already, and many people are sick of it. But I can\u2019t get rid of this sick feeling in my heart every time I see something else about the case. I feel like I need to speak about it to those people who come from the same white place I did; then I think I know the one thing I can confidently say to them.<\/p>\n

In his post, Mr. Simmermon-Gomes said that what he wanted white people to understand is that, \u201cThis is not about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is right.<\/p>\n

What I have to say is just this: Shut up. Black boys are trying to tell you something, have been for a very long time. Shut up and listen.<\/p>\n

Vic Sizemore<\/a> earned his MFA in fiction from Seattle Pacific University in 2009. His fiction and nonfiction are published or forthcoming in Story Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, PANK Magazine, Pembroke, Saint Katherine Review, Rock & Sling<\/em> and elsewhere. An excerpt from his novel The Calling<\/em> was a finalist for the Sherwood Anderson Award; other excerpts from The Calling<\/em> are published in Portland Review<\/em> and are forthcoming serially in Connecticut Review.<\/em> His short story \u201cHush Little Baby\u201d won the 28th New Millennium Writings Award for Fiction. Sizemore teaches at Central Virginia Community College.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my boys is reading Richard Wright\u2019s Black Boy for his English class this coming semester. One of my sons has already read the book, and in a couple of years my daughter will read it. They will see that it was published in 1945, closing in on seventy years ago. They will see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1060,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[425,298,399],"class_list":["post-3958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vic-sizemore","tag-current-events","tag-race","tag-racism"],"yoast_head":"\nBlack Boy, 2013<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of my boys is reading Richard Wright\u2019s Black Boy for his English class this coming semester. 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