For AFROPUNK in Brooklyn, New York, we teamed up with essayist and founder of the online #literaryswag movement, Yahdon Israel. First, we sent him out to poll attendees on their literary swagâa list of a personâs favorite authors and clothing brands. Next, Yahdon spent time reflecting on the weekend. Although a native of Brooklyn, this was Yahdonâs first year at the festival. What he witnessed, however, was something quite familiar. Read on for his thoughts.Â
Before this year, I had never been to Afropunk. And while I was expecting to find myself lost among the purple pouted lips and matching Bantu knots; the lime green cornrows and gold-rimmed decagon shaped sunglasses; and the mint green dreads and blonde goatees there was something familiar about it. There was something familiar about the mothers in tribal face paint, carrying their babies under parasol paper umbrellas; something familiar about the boys who played their African-print dashikis off their IIIs, IVs, and VIs; something too familiar about the shirts vaunting âVery Blackâ and âMelanin Game Too Strong;â and exceptionally familiar was the pervasive smell of shea butter and coconut oil.
On one too many occasions, I found myself staring at people for far too long. Part of the reason stemmed from the fact that I thought I sincerely knew the person. Even if I may not have knew them personally, likes, shares, tweets, memes and hashtags made us kith and kin. I was also trying to figure out if everything I was seeing was for real. If the people with the purple pouted lips, the Bantu Knots, the lime green cornrows, and the tribal face paint were these people all the time? Or were they just doing that because they were at Afropunk? I wondered if the only way these people felt their bodies could navigate Afropunk successfully was by dying their afros pink and wearing dashikis?
In âAlas, Poor Richard,â an essay by James Baldwin that traverses his personal and literary relationship with his mentor Richard Wright up until Wrightâs death, Baldwin writes: âNegroes know about each other what can here be called family secrets and this means that one Negro, if he wishes, can âknockâ the otherâs âhustleââcan give his game away. Therefore, one âexceptionalâ Negro watches another âexceptionalâ Negro in order to find out if he knows how vastly successful and bitterly funny the hoax has been. If both of you can laugh, you have a lot to laugh about. On the other hand, if only one of you can laugh, one of you, inevitably, is laughing at the other.â The âfamily secretâ amongst black people is the visceral knowledge that our bodiesâ survival and success in the world, be it black or white, is predicated on acting, on performing. While it is true that acting and performing concede to the idea that we arenât being authenticâthat we arenât âkeeping it real,â that we arenât âkeeping it 100,ââit is also true that this âauthenticityâ has always come with an asterisk.
When I was 10, I remember hearing a voice in another part of the house. Initially it scared me. And as a child whose interaction with fear was informed by Scooby-Doo and Power Rangers, instead of minding my business, I investigated the fear. Walking closer to the voice, I was able to decipherâbehind the altered-octaves and acute enunciation of words ending in â-erâ and â-ingââthat it was my older sister. What I couldnât decipher was why she was talking like this: âOh yes! I absolutely LOVE working with others! Itâs one of my greatest joys!â âI donât think Iâve ever had an issue with any of my supervisors or managers. They loved meâlike, they just loved me!ââI attempted to signal her but she just waved me offââWhat day could I start? Well if Iâm being absolutely honest, Iâd say yesterday. But since yesterdayâs already come and gone, Iâd be willing to settle for tomorrow.â âOh yes, Iâll be there bright and early!â âThank you so much!â âYes, you too!â âHave a wonderful day! Bye!â
âAlright now, what happened?â
âWho were you talking to?â
âMy new job.â
âWhat new job?â
âThe new job I just got at K-Mart. Why?â
âIâm just tryna understand why you were talking like that.â
âLike what?â
âWith that voice you were using.
You donât talk like that.
You sounded like a white girl.â
âWell this âwhite girlâ just got a job. And itâs not called âwhite girl;â
Itâs called Iâm tired of not having money. Lemme ask you, is it âwhite girlâ for me to cop you some new kicks when I get paid?â
âThatâs not what I was tryna say.â
âSo what were you saying?â
âNothing. Just that you sounded different.â
âWell Imma put on game: When you get older, youâre gonna find yourself doing things you didnât think youâd ever do and only youâll understand why you have to do it. Ok?â
âOk.â
âGood, now bring me something to drink. Talking like a âwhite girlâ makes me thirsty.â
Now I had watched the performances my whole lifeâthe men who cut their dreads and cornrows in order to get a long overdue promotion, the women who usually sported Air Max 95âs, sweat suits and freshly pinned doobies crossing over to pants suits to get a handle on âworking in the city,â the parents whoâd invent outlandish lies whenever company came over (âYou know this rug is from Persia, right?â)âbut my sister was the first person to actually explain to me what the varying performances meant and why they were necessary. The men who cut their hair to make more money and the women who traded their 95s, sweat suits and doobies for pumps, pant suits and professional ponytails, had not been âselling outâ so much as they understood that they had mouths beyond their own to feed. Sure they could leave their jobs because who they are isnât being accepted, but a decision like that would have to operate on the assumption that we live in a world where good jobs sprout from the earth like high cotton; a world where those in the field get to handpick what they want and keep it instead of knowing that whatâs picked is not ultimately theirs, but someone elseâs; a world where our work isnât driven by the whips and chains of others; a world where the spaces we find our bodies in are chosen by us; not for us. To assume someone was âselling outâ was to admit, whether you knew it or not, that there was a larger world that was purchasing the labor of our bodies. Seldom do any of us calculate the second expense; weâre often too busy buying into the first one.
Weâre made aware of and live, as a matter of survival, the reality of Zora Neale Hurstonâs sentiment, âI feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.â To feel most colored when you are thrown against a sharp white background is to discover, almost by accident, that color has weightâand you are to carry it. It is to find that you are the only one fielding questions from white friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and significant others about how your hair resists gravityâs pull; if you know the person you just nodded at; why you can say âniggaâ and they canât; whose approach to racial justice you preferâMartinâs or Malcolm; and what you think any and every time other black bodies are bumped off by the boys in blue. To feel most colored when you are thrown against a sharp white background is to be outnumbered, outmanned and an outcast. And how else do you survive these spaces without acting that you donât feel most colored against a sharp white background? Without acting as if there is no sharp white background and no color thrown against it? How else do you survive this without shaving your hair so close to your scalp, you forget you have any? Without refusing to reciprocate the nod that you knew was for you? Without chiding black people for their use of the word ânigga?â Or without deciding that maybe Mike Brown didnât have his hands up; that Sandra Bland shouldnât have been talking back to Brian Encinia; or that Dejericca Becton had no business at that pool party? How else do you survive these spaces without performing? How else do you survive these spaces without denying yourself? Without turning yourself into someone even you canât recognize?
This is the reason why, as Baldwin observed, we watch each other in white spaces long before we speak. Weâre trying to figure out do I really know this person? Or do I just think I do? To see someone is to be able to separate the performance from the performer; that the absence of the nod, for example, doesnât necessarily mean the absence of recognition, but the presence of something far more menacing. Whatâs more menacing is the visceral knowledge that white spaces have always been suspicious of the assembly of black bodies. White spaces have always regarded such assemblies as âdangerous,â as âthreatening,â and as the âfinal cutâ to their ability to be the ultimate movers and shakers of the world. Anyone with a black bodyâor a body other than whiteâcan tell you it is their body, their person, and their livelihood that ultimately suffers when white spaces feel threatened.
So much of what informs the tepid interactions between black bodies in white spaces is the anxiety of recognition. Itâs not just one black bodyâs recognition of another that threatens white spaces; itâs that these white spaces are unaware of the nature of this recognitionââHow do you know each other?â And being caught unawares makes white spaces aware that something has occurred without them. That there are things about their own space they donât know about. The knowledge that recognition at this level can get black bodies in trouble, fired, jailed, and killed, has kept the black body reeling. That knowledge has never allowed for any of us to admit, even to ourselves, when weâre performing or when weâre just being. And ultimately, that knowledge has never fully allowed us to see each other.
A week before Afropunk, I had met up with Rikki Byrd, the editor at SCULPT, to talk about what I could possibly bring to this essay. Before reaching the cafĂ© where Rikki was, I had been signaled by a black womanâhair natural, prints Africanâand asked if I was âhere for Afropunk.â âHereâ was a meeting having something to do with the impending music and cultural festival. Although I knew this was not the meeting I was supposed to be a part of, it interested me as to how that woman knew, without necessarily knowing, that I was âhere for Afropunk.â I think back now on what I wore, how I looked: Long plaited dreads that ombrĂ©d blonde then brown ends; a wide-brimmed Homburg; an American flag bandana fashioned around my neck to resemble an ascot; a grey âBrooklynâ sweatshirt from the Brooklyn Circus; a wide-cuffed pair of A.P.C. jeans; and a pair of blue and white pinstripe Louboutinâs, replete with patent leather white toes and red velvet quarters. In retrospect, if I had been going out of my way to not look like I belonged at Afropunk, I had failed. I didnât fail because I had been trying to fit in to Afropunk before I got there; I failed because I thought there was a way to succeed not looking like everyone else. I failed because I thought there was a way to say Iâm here but Iâm not a part of this. But by the very nature of going, I was already admitting my complicity.
I was admitting that I wanted to see the purple pouted lips and matching Bantu knots; the lime green cornrows and gold-rimmed decagon shaped sunglasses. I was admitting that I wanted to see the mint green dreads and blonde goatees; the mothers in tribal face paint, carrying their babies under parasol paper umbrellas and the boys who played their African print dashikis off their IIIs, IVs, and VIs; I wanted to see the shirts vaunting âVery Blackâ and âMelanin Game Too Strong;â and I especially wanted to wake up and smell the shea butter and coconut oil.
I wanted to go to a place where being and performing were one in the same. Where Iâd have to stare at people and ask myself: Are these people wearing dashikis because they feel like have to? Or are they wearing them because this is what theyâd like to wear all the time but because theyâre shades in the white worldâs shadow, theyâre unable to? Are these women who are allowing their nipples to peek through their tanks doing so because this is the space where they feel itâs safest to do so? Where they feel like they can do without their breast being groped and grabbed by some nigga telling them, âWell you shouldnât have your titties out if you donât like the attentionâ? What if the men, women and children are professing their love for melanin because even they forget how much theyâre taught to hate it and wearing shirts that say âVery Blackâ is a way to remind themselves that theyâre supposed to love themselves? Maybe none of the peopleâor very few, anywayâactually come here for attention. Maybe they come because theyâre tired of being shaded in the white worldâs shadow. Maybe they all come because they want to be seen and recognized, and loved without fear of having to worry about what will happen to their bodies after. Maybe they come because they want to be reminded of all the things they forgotâas I did.
Photographs by Adrian O. Walker for SCULPT
SCULPT x #LITERARYSWAG: @Yahdonisrael reflects on @Afropunk in this in-depth essay. Images by @aoctaviusw For AFROPUNK in Brooklyn, New York, we teamed up with essayist and founder of the online #literaryswag movement, Yahdon Israel.