Another Kind of Brotha

This is my first "official" post, although y'all may have read some of my commentary in the past. I decided to start off this week with a ray of positivity. For those of you members of the BGSA who've been around since '04, you may remember a beautiful young brotha named Ken Eisinger. Ken was a student in the MSW program at Cal and he was also my best friend. Tragically Ken's life took a terrible turn 1 year ago shortly after graduation. After battling Major Depression unsuccessfully for several months, Ken disappeared, severing all ties with family and friends, leaving only a letter of good bye. After months of police investigations we still have not located him, though I have not given up hope. This is a piece he wrote about his experience of being a Black male at the age of 23....I hope you will enjoy it and share in carrying on his memory.

Much love, respect and admiration to all you Black males out there,
Erica


One Kind of Brother, by Ken Eisinger

My consciousness about race in America began as soon as I could read. My mother used to take my cheeks between her hands and say, “Ken, repeat after me.”
“I am a beautiful black boy.”
This was my introduction to race. My mother’s unconditional love behind the mantra I had to recite. My father’s voice quietly rumbling chapters from Malcolm X’s autobiography before bedtime. When I played Star Wars, I was Lando; when I played make-believe, I was John Henry; on Halloween, I was Pharaoh Ramses II. These episodes and many more laid the foundations for my thinking about race. I did not know at the time, but my parents were circling my wagons, creating a firewall. Any parent of a black male child must account for America’s systemic marginalization and ferocious abuse of black men, anticipating perils like police brutality, prison, drugs, teen parenthood, low education level, homicide… Everything my parents did in my early years taught me to view myself as a strong, proud black male. They deliberately equipped me with psychological armor for a merciless gauntlet I would someday have to run. Someday is now.


Thoughts on being a young, black man in America
Twenty-three years later, I’m beginning to wonder if other people’s parents gave them the “black is beautiful” pep talks. I am struggling to come to grips with an ugly reality: being a young black man in America means negotiating the perpetual expectation of negativity, failure and death. What’s worse, far too many brothers are buying into ideology that leads to jail or the grave.
Because I am young and black, I am presumed to plumb the depths of the human capacity for base, animalistic behavior. From media, friends and strangers the message comes through loud and clear: I am seen as an inarticulate, unintelligent, violent, crack-dealing, weed-smoking, sexist, materialistic, adulterous, dishonest monster from a broken home in a poor neighborhood until proven otherwise. The breadth and depth of my stereotype are disconcerting, and I’m wondering where my place is in a world that sees only one kind of brother.
Ok, let’s establish the cultural script. Think Birth of a Nation. Think Black Boy. Think Tupac and DMX. The set of attitudes and behaviors young black men are thought to possess is one of America’s most distinctive and enduring icons. But for me, it is far too narrow. See, I’m not a thug. I’m a college graduate from rural Minnesota who plays Kirk Hammet guitar solos. I don’t fit the image, but no one can tell that by looking at me. Enter my everlasting paradox: a continuous reconciliation of the who-I-am with the who-you-think-I-am.
I am not a criminal, yet cops stare me down and follow my car all over town. I am not a thief, yet plainclothes security guards follow me around department stores. I’m not violent, yet a businessman who bumps into me on a crowded bus is so terrified, he almost weeps trying to apologize. I’m not a convict, yet when my job takes me to the courthouse the staff always assumes I am on trial. I don’t use drugs, yet downtown, people are always asking me for weed. When one is starving for positive affirmation, insanity becomes a very real and present possibility. If everyone expects me to behave like an animal, is that then what I am?
Expectation is significant because it is permission. The above situations send one message: be a criminal. This goes on all day, every day. Be a criminal. Be a criminal. Ubiquitous expectation becomes a palpable force, a concrete pressure. Cops and clerks don’t care that I am a waste of their time; all they see is black skin, which they equate with criminal intent. Every time someone assumes I am amoral or violent, they socialize me to behave in exactly that way. And since I get pre-judged no matter what I do, what incentive do I have not to fit into my stereotype? Each assumption contains the seductive validation and encouragement to tap into my worst impulses toward corrupt, amoral behavior.
Consider media representations of young black men for example. Nowhere is the “thug” image more reinforced than through music, movies and TV. During the average day, I will see a handful of music videos, telling me we are materialistic. I will see a couple of commercials for black movies, telling me we are inarticulate and unintelligent. I will see a news report about a rape or a murder, telling me we are violent criminals. I will hear several rap songs where the rapper proudly details how he slept with some “b*tch,” telling me we should treat women like garbage. I might see some talk show where the black male guest cheats on his girlfriend, telling me we are unethical. None of this is me. It never was, it never will be. I don’t want any part of it. I stand on the sidelines, while my brothers get brainwashed, and turn my back on my stereotype.
Tragically, ideas that are proposed innocently enough in a music video have the potential to shape the self-image of entire generations. Of all the stereotypes in America, none are so precisely designed to obstruct social maturation as the expectations (or lack thereof) placed on young black men. A young brother who hears the song “All About the Benjamins,” by Puff Daddy, and embraces the ideology of drug money and gang affiliation, is on the fast track away from school and towards the block.
Every young black man has an inherent desire for positivity, health and happiness. Drug dealers want security. Gang bangers want stability. But these young men’s environmental messages urge failure and self-destruction. Gradually, as the exterior messages outweigh the interior messages, the battle for self-definition is lost, and another kid gets swept away in the conformist hordes. According to the Hennepin County African American Men’s Project, in Hennepin County in 2002, “black men 18 to 30 were twice as likely to die and 27 times more likely to go to jail as their white counterparts.” This racial disparity is partially caused by the messages the black kids receive from their environment about their outlook on life and the monstrous pressure they are under to conform. So limited are the possibilities for black male behavior that even I — who did not grow up in the ‘hood, and have the coping skills of an adult — feel the powerful pull of street culture.
The key to survival as a black man is being able to decipher our cultural script — rip it apart — and to pick and chose which actions represent the best of black culture and which the worst. Keeping a mental filter going all day is exhausting, but the alternative is to be a statistic from the Hennepin County demographer’s office. And while school and the professional world do not guarantee a happy ending, we all know how the street life ends up.
Around the time I turned 20, I had an epiphany. I realized that while broken English and menacing scowls did afford me some small cultural capital, the realest power I had was to chose for myself how I would portray myself to the world, and that behaving in the opposite of my stereotype made people squirm exponentially more than my thug routine ever had. Rare is the person who voluntarily can conceive of an existence beyond what has been expected of him all his life. Breaking old habits seems easy compared to creating new ones out of thin air. Defining myself has been the hardest and most rewarding thing I have ever done. Letting go of the familiar is terrifying. Being an individual is exhausting. If you are too tired or too scared, you won’t budge. But if you do, new worlds open up, you see new horizons.
Today, I assume a “buffet table” approach to my own culture, selecting only those items that are positive displays and leaving the rest alone. I pretty much make up black-maleness as I go along. I emulate Christopher Priest, Aaron McGruder, Alexs Pate, Randall Keenan and Ellis Cose. Borrowing pieces from these guys, I am working on a new image of a young black man. If society is forcing me to become a law unto myself, it will be one of intellect, spirituality and wholeness. The seeds my parents planted have sprouted into maturity and self-awareness. And, one day, when I become a father, I will look deep into my son’s eyes and make him repeat after me:
“I am a beautiful black boy.”


References
John Henry, Ramses II
Birth of a Nation, Black Boy, Tupac, DMX
AfAm Men’s Project
“All About the Benjamins”
Christopher Priest, Aaron McGruder, Alexs Pate, Randall Keenan and Ellis Cose
©2001, Kenneth B. Eisinger