The Truth Shall Make You Free
I feel compelled to open this particular musing with a begrudging but far-too-belated apology to one Dr. Greg Carr.
You know Dr. Carr. You might be reading this right now, assuming you have no clue who I’m talking about. Yes, you do. Professor of Africana Studies at the Howard University, Dr. Carr is the closest thing to a phenomenon that I experienced during my four years of undergrad, and that includes the time I sat six rows from Louis Farrakhan as a baby freshman, or the time I held court with Michael Eric Dyson, or the time I chatted up a glowing Phylicia Rashad en route to my course on Toni Morrison. (No really, she had an actual aura. It was insane.)
I’m digressing; like I said, I owe Dr. Carr my sincerest apologies. I actively avoided him like the plague for the first three-point-five years of my undergraduate career, convinced the guy was at worst a fraud and at best a disappointment. My cynicism (or hate, I’ll go ahead and cop to it for you) wouldn’t allow me to believe in a guy with a near-perfect campus approval rating; there has to be something we don’t know yet about this guy, I repeatedly told myself as friends would consistently recommend I take literally any of his classes before we graduated. He must be overrated!
As I’m registering for my final semester, I learn I’m short three credits in African American Studies, three credits mandatory for graduation. And I am not exaggerating when I say Dr. Carr’s “Intro to Afro American Studies” was somehow the only option available. Six months away from never having the opportunity again and bereft of most typical Howard undergraduate experiences (I missed Homecoming 2012 — yeah, that one — because I was studying abroad in London, which would’ve been acceptable any other Homecoming except that one), I ultimately reason the least I can do is discern for myself whether or not the hype surrounding Dr. Carr is justified on my way out the door.
Plot twist: the course was incredible. Beyond awarding me an A I’m still not quite sure wasn’t a mistake, I’ve got to commend the guy’s … inexhaustibility. To this day, I’m not certain when — or that — he sleeps. (He tried to explain his daily schedule in class once; it didn’t really follow logic.) A true force of personality, Dr. Carr is so affable and passionate about Blackness that you can’t help but to respect it, and given enough time and access to the guy, the respect quickly transforms into outright admiration. On the extremely off chance you actually have yet to hear a Dr. Carr lecture, here’s two minutes. He is a human ball of fire, coming to burn down your plantations. By the end of the semester, I couldn’t believe I’d waited that long to sit at his feet, or at least in his lecture hall.
Anyways, Dr. Carr broke my brain for the very first time in the earlier days of the course when he explained that most times, “history” isn’t what actually happened.
Excuse me?
In elucidating the distinctions between history, historicity(?), and historiography(?!), Dr. Carr explained that historicity is what actually happened, and history is the account that enters the record books. (Historiography … is irrelevant for the purposes of this conversation.) In other words, history is the narrative of the winners. Not necessarily the true story, but the story the way the victors prefer it told.
Well, why is that distinction important?, you’re pondering as you stroke your chin. (Just amuse me and stroke your chin.) Because! Besides the human memory’s near-hilarious unreliability, the winners are almost always heroic: intellectually superior, morally incorruptible, mighty in valor, and justified in action merely because they didn’t lose. At how many less championships is the Michael Jordan story no longer worthy of a ten-part documentary? I loved The Last Dance and would’ve taken another 100 Sundays worth of Jordan-based content with glee. However, if Michael wins, let’s say, three championships instead of six, he might still be regarded as the greatest basketball player ever, but he’d hardly be considered the prototype, his on-the-court failures of the ‘80s and off-the-court troubles of the early ‘90s inevitably annexing a much larger portion of his career arc. Plus, while a number of Michael’s most notable traits – specifically his competitive streak – have been venerated because of the results, a great deal of his behavior would be considered intolerable in, like, 97 percent of workplace settings. In one of the documentary’s most poignant moments, Michael concedes that his leadership style could be antagonistic, yet he rationalized that it was symbiotic with his winning mentality. But we never hear from the folks that his competitive nature actually did run off the team – or in the case of Rodney McCray, entirely out the league. Michael’s ruthlessness was always best for Michael, and hopefully, should everything break right, that ruthlessness would pay dividends for his teammates too.
Needless to say that The Story of Michael Jordan As Told By Michael Jordan might not be the most reliable. So why massage the truth?
Is it regret? In that aforementioned Last Dance scene, Michael becomes impassioned to the point of tears, as if he in that moment finally reckoned with the ultimate price of his ambition. Was winning at all costs – the championships, the celebrity, the immortality – worth compromising his humanity in the immediate?
How about an innocent case of misremembering? Like I mentioned earlier, the memory can be fickle; with detachment and hindsight, any of us can convince ourselves we were more heroic or justified in action in those moments of victory than we actually were in real-time. Even with Rodney McCray, Michael surely still believes he was accurate in his assessment of McCray’s talents. Or, at least that he wasn’t wrong. Michael perceived Rodney to be a “loser,” which he was until Michael made him a champion. You’re either a winner or a loser from Michael’s vantage, himself included. Was his perspective necessarily fair? Even Michael can’t determine that one. But consistent? Absolutely. That brutal consistency affords Michael the benefit of the doubt, even now. Everybody knows habitual line steppers don’t do things just to do them.
Or – in more extreme cases – are these “winners” being intentionally deceptive? A few weeks back, when asked how history would weigh the U.S. Justice Department’s decision to dismiss all charges against a man whose guilt was so obvious that even he’d already confessed to everything, department lead William Barr smugly replied, “Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.” Way to yell the quiet parts through a megaphone, Bill.
He smirked, then continued. “But I think a fair history would say it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law. It upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.”
That’s Barr’s Department of Justice, for the record. And he’s only writing his version of history, as he’s in position to do. What does the historicity of things matter to him if he has the power and purview to ensure his version of history suppresses, you know, the truth?
I will be straightforward with y’all: I was not that inclined to participate in this most recent round of protesting.
Currently jobless, insuranceless, 523 miles from my home address, and in the eyes of both a pandemic and a race war, I’d frankly feel like an idiot should I wind up injured or ill when I’m barely holding it together over here. All my parents implored me to stay in the house; they’ve each lost close friends to the virus in the maiden months of 2020. In the first days of the DC protests, friends of mine were peppered with rubber bullets and tear gas. At demonstrations nationwide, journalists and their crews were being deliberately targeted and harassed by police. Imagine having the audacity to double down on police brutality at the policy brutality protests, and to do it all on national television! On the evening of June 1, Barr and Donald Trump sicced military police on peaceful demonstrators so they could so ironically pose in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church – a church Trump has never attended for services, for the record – Holy Bible in tow. How, again, is any of this real?
I contemplated going to these demonstrations strictly to protest, except I knew I’d regret not carrying my professional camera along for a variety of reasons. But, obviously by bringing professional gear, I’m accepting that my camera heightens my risk of peril should shit get real. And beyond the crisis of whether to journalist or not, I’ve been concerned that my history of respiratory illnesses plus my present-day struggles with asthma predisposes me to contracting COVID-19 under regular, non-protest conditions. Since March 11, the only people I’d seen were my girlfriend, my roommate, and his girlfriend, save the scattered masked faces in my neighborhood grocery store and my take-out spot of choice Oohh’s and Aahh’s. (Support Black business!) But I recognize it sort of defeats the purpose to maintain social distancing rules at demonstrations, even peaceful ones. How can you chant at maximum volume while wearing masks designed to limit facial movement? How can a crowd tangibly manifest a united front while keeping a minimum six feet apart? Even if I tried being as careful as humanly possible, would it matter? This virus is ultimately proving to be indiscriminate with its selections, and I am not immune. At least I don’t think so.
Yet I couldn’t help but feel increasingly passive in how I’d personally been protesting mostly from my phone, in awe of my friends taking to the streets while I sat in bed alone scrolling my Twitter feed. I compromised: I’d make the 3.7-mile walk from my Columbia Heights apartment to the Washington Monument, masked up with camera in tow, and innocently capture any images I found especially captivating along the way. It was a sunny and cloudless Wednesday afternoon, not even two full days after Trump’s stunt, and I had zero expectations for my hike downtown. My lone imperative: make it back home in effectively the same condition I’d left.
But about two miles in, I happened across a group of marching protesters, and I elected to join their route for maybe a city block before recognizing they were continuing in the direction of where I’d just come from. I made an abrupt right turn, believing I was back on my path to the Monument. Instead, I found myself steps from the doors of the infamous photo op, smack in front of the fencing Trump installed to further insulate himself from reality, staring directly into the (predominantly Black) faces of the military police commissioned by this administration of cartoon villains to defend and potentially exercise explicit criminality.
Serendipity. And as you can hopefully tell, I’m happy I brought the Nikon.
This protest was peaceful. It was racially and culturally diverse. It was not socially distant, although maskless attendees were atypical if not nonexistent and supplies like water and hand sanitizer were easily accessible. But most of all, it highlighted just how perverse and, bluntly, stupid the tenets of racism continue to be. On April 30, aggrieved by the extent of Michigan’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order, white racists (and yes, I’m very comfortable drawing that assumption) descended upon the state capitol with varying degrees of firearms in an attempt to intimidate somebody important into capitulation, I suppose. Pictures from that day’s scene are plainly outlandish; I have personally been accosted by police for trying to avoid their presence, and these racists got away with deliberately accosting the police, in the midst of a pandemic! That evening, Trump used the platform of the presidency to urge Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer to soften the regulations at the racists’ behest, which would’ve been tantamount to negotiating with terrorists. (Disclosure: Gov. Whitmer instructed one of my graduate courses during winter 2016, well before she announced her gubernatorial candidacy – even if we all had a hunch. My transcript says I earned an A in the course, she was exceptionally kind to me in the immediate aftermath of my father’s death, and I cannot thank her enough for her support during that semester. End disclosure.)
Fast-forward five weeks and Trump, endlessly empathic to the bigots, suddenly can’t understand the legitimate animus that has activated the Black people protesting across the country. He insists our manner of protest – which is wholly warranted yet seldom requisitely abrasive, at least in proportion – disrespects an innocent man now dead for no acceptable reason, murdered specifically by a crooked cop and broadly by a system that facilitates and sanctions these types of murders. Paradoxically, Trump accuses us of insolence as he himself disparages George Floyd’s humanity, circulating defamatory media regarding Floyd’s turbulent past. He now tweets “LAW & ORDER!” with disturbing impunity as if he’s in the middle of his own personal SVU marathon, and continues to emphasize that police in this country have been the ones treated unfairly.
Tanks and soldiers in full fatigues currently occupy city blocks, as if Black anger is so capricious as to require military surveillance. As I trekked back home that evening, I sought to capture one final picture of this military caravan, amused at the hostility these men were compelled to convey against the backdrop of an otherwise beautiful and serene nightfall. But as I prepared my camera, I began to consider and then fear these soldiers’ hypothetical reaction.
Could the simple action of taking their pictures be considered incendiary? Should I ask their permission to take the photos? Is a Black man approaching law enforcement with a large black object in his hand ever a good idea, especially during a race war?
I did get a picture for historicity’s sake, but I’m almost certain I snapped it on my phone as to not be so obvious, and I had to make do with my angles given the circumstances. These military operations have been strategically installed to elicit fear, to keep us acquiescent if not altogether submissive, to nourish Barr’s bloodlust and Trump’s egomania, to suppress the truth. I still cannot believe Barr came out of retirement for this. After all we’d learned about Trump’s personal requirements for the gig, you’d have to be malevolent to raise your hand to volunteer.
Tanks and soldiers in full fatigues currently occupy city blocks, as if Black anger is so capricious as to require military surveillance.
Last summer, I attended a presentation of Jeffery Robinson’s critically acclaimed Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America. Throughout the presentation, Robinson highlighted junctures in American history – “tipping points” – where we’d have our Sisyphus moment and get that boulder all the way up the hill, only for it to inevitably roll back down. Emancipation, then Reconstruction. Brown v. Board. September 11. Yet since George Floyd’s murder caught national attention, discussions around issues of race and gender have suddenly become much more candid, and seemingly much less ephemeral. White people are willingly referring to American chattel slavery as this country’s original sin. Black women are holding Black men accountable for centuries of misogynoir, our complicity in maintaining a status quo that promises men of any color a certain set of comparative privileges. We may actually be our closest to finally getting that boulder over the hill than we’ve been in this nation’s history. Seriously.
And that is why the concept of historicity has been gnawing at me these last few weeks.
On this day after Father’s Day, here’s a direct quote from Larry Sr. that has served as one of my guiding principles since forever: “If someone ever asks you why you did something and your response is either ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I didn’t know,’ that means I failed you as a parent.”
I was raised to consider the pros and cons of everything, because my dad fundamentally believed in owning responsibility for one’s actions. “You can’t account for everyone else out there,” he’d tell me. “The only person you’re in control of is you.” That didn’t mean he expected perfection, or that I was forbidden from ever making mistakes. Mistakes happen. But if I chose to make a poor decision after weighing the potential consequences, I wasn’t allowed to feign surprise should my poor decision-making backfire.
My upbringing definitely informs why I’ve been so reticent to believe the racist whites and my fellow Black men who’ve articulated in recent weeks that they were merely unaware of the toxicity of their behavior; that, at no point ever – EVER! – did they consider whether our present status quo is the most balanced means of handling, I don’t know, any aspect of the American experience. Or, hell, the human experience. Respecting the dignity and humanity in others is not an academic exercise. Treating folks how you want to be treated is not rocket science. I don’t pretend to be some enlightened superhero who has cracked the code; I too have been complicit in upholding the systems that subjugate our Black women the most, and I know I can be much firmer in helping deconstruct those systems moving forward. But if I, your regular Black guy with a brain, can connect these dots, how could it possibly be so complicated? We can’t claim biological superiority in one breath and affect a level of mental simplicity in the next. I mean, duh?
Nevertheless, I do recognize that it can be difficult to recognize your role in perpetuating systems that predate our grandparents’ grandparents – and even them, too. On the June 3 episode of Flying Coach, hosts Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll spoke with cultural critic Gregg Popovich about the American education system, and how much of American history has been omitted from your everyday textbook; Kerr acknowledged he hadn’t learned about the 1921 Greenwood Massacre until Andre Iguodala mentioned the tragedy to him in casual conversation, and Kerr once studied American History at the University of Arizona. According to “Teaching Hard History: American Slavery,” a 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center report, only about 8 percent of high school students surveyed could identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. NPR’s Peter Sagal openly pondered “how [he] could have grown up with an excellent education and still have known so very little of the actual history of Black people in this country,” and the replies to that thread are inundated with similar experiences. I think back on my own educational experiences, first in super-predominately Black Detroit for the totality of my primary education and then at two distinct suburban Detroit high schools, and I realize I hardly learned about the actual history of Black people in this country myself. I even took a class titled “Civil Rights and Race in America” my senior year! In all fairness, my ultra-conservative high school even offering that class was radical at the time. But with hindsight, the class was far too complaisant to be offensive. At age 17, we didn’t know any better questions to ask, and we weren’t being pushed toward any sort of confrontation with the assigned readings. My most controversial takeaway that semester was more people should’ve listened to Malcolm. How provocative.
Similarly, it’s not like these schools spend too much time explaining feminism, or womanism, or misogyny, or misogynoir; in fact, if my memory’s not failing me, there’s not much in these textbooks about the existence of women at all. We learn about women’s suffrage, or at least that American women were granted the right to vote via the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and that’s essentially it. I seriously cannot remember another moment in women’s history that was given even a passing mention in any of my pre-college courses. (I submitted an extra credit report on Eleanor Roosevelt one time in seventh grade if that counts. Shoutout Mrs. Vaunado.) And even that suffrage moment was presented as the culmination of the woman’s fight for equality; we never learned about the prolonged suppression of the female vote even after those rights became constitutionally bound, or of the distinctions between race and sexual orientation within their movement.
Therein lies the importance of historicity: it represents a universal truth, and therefore completely shatters the myth of white supremacy. And if we are truly that close to winning, to actualizing real systemic change, we must begin preparing now for the responsibility – and the power – of writing history’s next chapters.
As is the case with all these historically American systems, educational curriculums nationwide will require an absolute overhaul if the whites now willing to relinquish their privilege are serious about infrastructural reform. I recognize the impracticality of trying to teach every significant moment in United States history over a nine-month school year, but there certainly needs to be a recalibration of what’s important, or an extrication of Africana and women’s studies from general American history and into separate, mandatory courses for high school graduation. I can’t say with certainty the Greenwood Massacre is one of the fifty or so most important moments in the history of this country. But, objectively, I would’ve preferred learning about the history of 1921 Tulsa or the role of Black women during the Harlem Renaissance instead of why kidnapping became a federal crime in 1932. Unless I wind up on Jeopardy! someday, I have not a clue when I’ll ever need to recite that information. And it likely won’t be then, either.
Dr. Carr’s already laid the foundation: back in 1999, as the School District of Philadelphia’s First Resident Scholar on Race and Culture, he led the curriculum design for the African American history course required for Philadelphia’s public high school students. The results must have been resoundingly positive over the course’s first two decades considering Dr. Carr has been invited to present his curriculum work in Salvador of all places, not to mention countless locations domestically. If the Salvadorians believe they can glean from Dr. Carr’s research, local municipalities can surely use Dr. Carr’s model as a prototype for the future of their public educational systems. For proof: the District of Columbia will implement their African American and cultural studies course into schools districtwide by fall 2022, and Dr. Carr has been heavily involved in the curriculum development. Back when I was advocating for Black public education full-time, I admittedly focused largely on access, ensuring the equitable distribution of resources to children in inner-city schools. Now I recognize that revolutionizing what’s being taught is just as important as who gets the teaching. Ignore the fact Dr. Carr told me those exact words six years ago. Sometimes you’ve got to come to certain realizations at your own speed.
Therein lies the importance of historicity: it represents a universal truth, and therefore completely shatters the myth of white supremacy. We may actually be our closest to finally getting that boulder over the hill than we’ve been in this nation’s history. And if we are truly that close to winning, to actualizing real systemic change, we must begin preparing now for the responsibility – and the power – of writing history’s next chapters. But we can’t use abuse that power in the way of those in the past who sought to maintain it by any means necessary. We now have the opening to meld history and historicity, to ensure that future generations receive a comprehensive and unvarnished accounting of America’s past, to maturely and at long last discuss the chronic repercussions of America’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade.
I’m ready if America is. And this time around, I’ll gladly bring the Nikon. For historicity’s sake, of course.