Actual Space: An Introduction
“This space–one not for me, but you, dear black reader”
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A few days after the Trayvon Verdict, I was on Google hangout talking to former students of mine about “Trayvoning.” Like me, they were dazed and angry. Unlike me, they didn’t have a single cultural golden era to remember or organic African-American cultural networks to lean on. They had grown up with the successful programs of community policing replaced by such aimless, white hunting expeditions as stop and frisk. They had grown up with local black newspapers decimated, local black radio stations destroyed, and radio programmers and Northwest hipsters consuming and projecting the brutality inflicted on them (the students) more often than not. They had grown up in Black communities that operated in the shadow of the post racial capital of America, a segment of the artistic community so virulent in their belief system that to even mention that black people are beautiful was to risk being ostracized as a militant).
And I had to give them a variable of the same conversations my uncles had with me about lynching and the south. I had to explain to them that the horror of the Trayvon verdict wasn’t the surprise of it, but that it was the largest lynching bee in the history of this nation. That Trayvoning and the gleeful mob of right wingers gloating over the corpse of this young man had its ancestors in the mobs that haunted my ancestors and family. That clichés and internet fables they created and sought to assuage them of any guilt or shame over their reactions were like the clichés and fables mobs used to justify murder, and that moderates used to justify not taking any action against them, and that in 22 states of the union, this was sanctioned under the law.
And from then on my life changed as a writer. I could not engage in the cost benefit analyses I had done before in order to survive in America. My illusions of racial progress were gone and I knew that if I was going to live an ethical life, I had to do what I could to lighten my former students’ load. From that day on, my job was to pass the knowledge that my grandmother, grandfather, aunts, uncles, and ancestors gave to me, specifically the survival mechanisms developed through understanding of self. I might not see the arc turn toward progress in my lifetime, but I will fight every day and live a life that shows how much I fought for this goal.
This space--one not for me, but you, dear black reader--is one way for me to do that. Titled ACTUAL SPACE, this monthly column will be a forum for you to tell your story if you want to. If you are interested, I’ll give you 10-12 questions and you can answer one of them. The questions will cover a lot of topics, ranging from how one copes with being black, what concerns you about race, what you wished you learned, and what gives you hope for the future.
I am looking for anyone who wants to be honest, give their own particular witness, and go deeper within themselves and give me something only they can write. I’m not going to discourage writers from submitting, but I am not going to have any preference either. If you’re black and want to write some real and deep shit, I won’t care about your credentials. I will have a space for you.
Would you like to write here? Do you know some people who would like to write here? Then email me at robert@nailedmagazine.com.
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Header image courtesy of Dean Mitchell. To view an artist feature of his work on NAILED, go here.
