Yesterday evening I heard professor Charles Ogletree (Harvard Law Professor) speak at Loyola University. His book The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America is a must read- A real eye-opener for me considering that at one point I really wanted to believe that we live in a post-racial America. It's simply not true. I don't know if I wanted to integrate so badly that for a long time I didn't see the obvious but the cold truth is that Black, Latino and men of other ethnic groups are disproportionately stopped, arrested, jailed and branded with a criminal record. This is not a Black American problem it’s an American problem. To sit back and live in a society that perpetuates such ignorance and in the same breath call ourselves the greatest country in the world is preposterous. My generation, our generation are sometimes like sitting ducks. Here we are, unconscious, bewildered, making a little money all while getting duped. My dad, your brother, his cousin, her uncle ... I don't know many families in the African American community that has not been touched in some way by this justice system. Like many - I too don't want to keep recalling the past, but on the real (seriously)...let's deal with the present - and presently there are 68,000 black men in jail in NY.
And now here I sit on the morning following a very moving documentary based on Professor Ogletree’s, I felt an intense surge of the “all-too-familiar” pain that makes itself known in the middle of my chest from time to time. It’s not a sharp intense pain liken to a physical ailment, but an empty thud that thumps and thumps at my soul. My thoughts were continually moved to thoughts of the women left behind through all of this tragedy. It was all too much, when at the end of the documentary the images of Trayvon Martin flashed across the screen and weeping mothers, fiancés and family members while Michael Jackson’s song “Gone to Soon” played in the background. As a woman, a cousin, a friend of a friend an American – I cried. I cried for the women, for the hundreds of thousands of black men in jail in this country and more importantly for the soul of America.
As I sat and continued to listen, I reflected on the “In Black” exhibit from earlier this year. I remembered that while the women who exhibited in the exhibition focused on spirituality, artistic development and intuitive gestures related to the creation of art- the men focused on social issues, specifically issues that related to being a black man in the U.S.
The pieces were moving, subliminal renditions of the psyche of a black man in 2012. I think that Ayo Scott’s piece “What Good is Being Black?” posed a question that Kenneth Scott’s piece “Desired” so poignantly answered. Both pieces are just a microcosm of the daily interplay of what hundreds of black, latino and men of other ethnic groups must wrestle both in reality and subconsciously when confronted with identity issues when examined through the lens of the “All American Man.”
The Presumption of Guilt in the words of Professor Ogltree is too but a microcosm of what is going on nationwide. The unspoken pain of the women left behind, the moving testimonies of African American artists in their work and the crisis of a nation under siege by its own transgressions is more than enough evidence that now is the time for our nation to move on from a horrible past to a future full of hope.
As I sat and continued to listen, I reflected on the “In Black” exhibit from earlier this year. I remembered that while the women who exhibited in the exhibition focused on spirituality, artistic development and intuitive gestures related to the creation of art- the men focused on social issues, specifically issues that related to being a black man in the U.S.
The pieces were moving, subliminal renditions of the psyche of a black man in 2012. I think that Ayo Scott’s piece “What Good is Being Black?” posed a question that Kenneth Scott’s piece “Desired” so poignantly answered. Both pieces are just a microcosm of the daily interplay of what hundreds of black, latino and men of other ethnic groups must wrestle both in reality and subconsciously when confronted with identity issues when examined through the lens of the “All American Man.”
The Presumption of Guilt in the words of Professor Ogltree is too but a microcosm of what is going on nationwide. The unspoken pain of the women left behind, the moving testimonies of African American artists in their work and the crisis of a nation under siege by its own transgressions is more than enough evidence that now is the time for our nation to move on from a horrible past to a future full of hope.
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