My first girlfriend asked me if I cared or cowered when people called me Akon. Facial features and accents being compared constantly. To Stormzy. To Skepta.
It never offended me in the way she hoped it would, rather, it made me scared of what was to come. How simple the black man appeared in their eyes.
When it came to black people, all the audience in New Zealand had was MTV. Music videos. The small percentage we took up in their minds, mere seconds a week, was derived virtually. Never had a touchpoint with black people or black culture unless it were through a screen.
The people who would call me Akon were not racist, and I would never use the term so loosely, because it does not capture the worst fate. They believed that we were, I was, what they saw on the TV screen. Much to the dismay of my girlfriend, I did not react negatively, instead positively.
Positive because a scandal had not surrounded Akon, yet. No mugshot, no court case, no fallen empire. Thank God.
My peers at high school would create a Facebook page dedicated to me. To grow an afro, it needed 350 people. It ultimately fell short by 253 members, for which my parents were relieved. It was very amusing to understand, that for black families immigrating here, this was a common occurrence.
For the adolescent mind, the black kid’s potential first lies in the afro. It was a glaring example of what media had made synonymous with black culture.
My girlfriend never know how to feel in these situations, especially with my tempered response. Her whiteness, to her advantage, had taught her that short-term anger and action resulted in changing the opinions of strangers. There was no need to be polite, in a space where she could fall into the background and rely on another white character to fill the void she left. A negative interaction that she would instigate would have no long term effects on the brunettes in the area. The shopkeeper who she accosted would not even remember her facial features or hairstyle after a month.
I had to, for my life, make her understand that meeting this with politeness is the long term game. Why start to play a chess game, if not for the endgame.
The endgame is what they will go on to believe is my character. If I am capable of rapping and growing an afro, I am equally capable of being a sexual deviant and murdering my best friend’s wife. The athleticism and promiscuity of OJ Simpson from afar is easy to accept should you find comfort in assumption.
If the white people around me believed the positive and flattering stereotypes about black men, I had no doubt that they transitioned their lives, fixed their routines and invite lists around the negatives. Crossing the street and shutting the elevator door was what they allowed me to see.
At the age of 18, I abandoned the endgame. While the aftermath of the BLM protests, 12 months where black trauma and their understanding of it became the metaphorical pride flag outside the beachfront window, the white moderate told me I was tired. That we, black scholars, shouldn’t have to explain ourselves, but on the contrary, I had the intention of educating and explaining myself as I had done for the last 17 years of my life. This is not why I abandoned it.
What it does to ones psyche to see your heroes disgraced is something I have struggled to articulate, until now.
I grew up watching Lil’ Bill and the Bill Cosby Show and had not yet become an adult when I learned he sexually assaulted, drugged and raped over 60 women. From 12 years old, I have watched these black greats, role models, fall down the stairway to heaven; crashing.
Hero after hero. You believe that their actions are within your nature, that you are of it. Since you are of it, this is an inevitability that you be identified as dangerous, a cheater and a deviant like Tiger Woods of Puff Daddy. Should you live, your mental breakdown and all askew outbursts will be top of newsfeeds and talking points at the country club. This is your destiny, should you produce anything worthwhile, you will be ostracized in the future. In the name of progression for the majority.
bell hooks said that if America’s judgement of the OJ verdict was in the name of feminism and protecting women, we would all know her name. But it wasn’t to be. Her claim that it was to create another image of the black beast. Keeping you afraid and forcing me to believe it.
My (former) girlfriend was an amazing woman. I loved her dearly. Even at her worst, I never saw Ruby Franke in her, capable of abusing three of her children in the name of content and salvation. In her bursts of anger, as short as they were, she never reminded me of the men that called me nigger. I had so many other white women on my mind to fall back on and reaffirm me of her ability to provide love, care and security. I fear that behind me, she saw the men that I will write about in this collection of essays.
n: no statues
i. tiger woods
ii. bill cosby
iii. p diddy
iv. oj simpson
v. r kelly
vi. martin luther king jr.
vii. kanye ‘ye’ west
What happens when your childhood heroes continue to be disgraced? What happens when you believed in them so much, you start to believe that their disgraceful behavior is not in your future; rather in your nature?
As always, thanks for your patience. x
— dotcom