Royal Fanfare

https://www.rapmusicguide.com/amass/images/inventory/13409/The%20Jacka.jpg I remember coming up in the early 2000’s riding down the Foothill strip with a car full of people that ain’t here no more. These people were my cousin’s potnas and I was just with my cousin because he didn’t want to go home, so he spent the night on our couch. My sister had to study and she didn’t like how our 19-year-old energy permeated the small house. It was distracting to her so my cousin called one of his homeboys and he swooped us up. My cousin had hella homeboys back then. Before the court cases, before John George Psychiatric Ward, right after he broke up with his baby mama, but before he played his last season of college football so his eyes were still looking to the future. We hopped in the car headed to Mills Hoagie on Seminary. We busted a left down MacArthur until we got to the light on 73^rd when the driver, some chubby dude that I had never met before but my cousin seemed to know well enough said; “I’m tired of this shit” referring to Yukmouth’s Thuglord C.D. I was kind of pissed because Yuk was running the bay at the moment and The Outro was about to come on which was the hardest track on the album and the dopest autobiographical track ever written.

“Did she leave it in the car blood?” He was digging through the glovebox like crazy looking for something.

“Leave what?”

“The Jack?”

“What?”

“That Mob Figaz CD. The Jacka.”

“Oh it’s under the seat blood.”

He put that CD in and it stayed in. And we listened. And never, as we rode all around East Oakland to High Street to Fonk Town back to 106^th, did we ask him to take it out.

“It’s the Jaaaaack. Yeah I’m a dope dealer and on top of that I’m a liar and a stealer.”

Every now and then I would ask a question about this rapper because, like everyone else in the car besides my cousin, I didn’t know him. As blunts were being passed around that little car in every direction and as girls were being hollered at and harassed like;

“Heyyyyy girl what’s your name?”

I found out he was from Richmond but moved to Pittsburgh. They told me that C-Bo had put him on. They assured me that he was hard and that he wasn’t next but that he was now. The Jacka is poppin right now!

“This shit pound,” my cousin said as he inhaled the smoke. And the more he inhaled the more he seemed to believe it.

“Yeah it do,” I confirmed.

I’ve never smoked but I didn’t need to in order to understand that this man was telling us about our own lives in first person narration. We were enraged by everything. We felt the walls of the trap closing in on us and we were fighting for more time, for more breath, fighting in order to figure out what was happening. Why did failure feel like our destiny? Why couldn’t we push these walls back and be liberated or have someone pull the lever into the off position right before we perished just like in an old episode of Batman and Robin or The Dukes of Hazard or The A-Team or MacGyver or any of those shows when the good guys never die. We were young men, but men all the same and we were beginning to understand that we weren’t the good guys. That millions of people weren’t watching our story unfold in suspense hoping so desperately that we survived, that they refused to go to the restroom because they didn’t want to miss the inevitable escape. We were beginning to understand with every false arrest, with every real arrest, with every funeral, with every ended relationship with a pregnant girlfriend, with every class that we dropped at community college, with every institution that refused to hire us, that no one ever expected us to make it. That wasn’t how the game was played. We were born at the bottom, and we were supposed to stay at the bottom, and never complain about it. And the only power that we ever had was to make our neglected ghettos with Arab owned liquor stores on the corner, and dope fiends tweaking on the sidewalk, and broken shards of glass in the street, seem cool. To play a trick on those who were fortunate enough not to hear men being blown away every night when neighborhoods feuded and go to schools where the ceilings leaked water on your journal in the middle of class whenever it rained, and make them feel like they were the ones who were missing out. The Jacka had put a spotlight on our particular Bay Area brand of misery and made our lifestyle feel glamorous. He had placed us right in the middle of the culture. All of us. I swear. And he never stopped.

I’m the Jack, ice cold mack from the Figaz

Locked in the county, shared my cell with a killer

All he ever said was Jack, I never heard a nigga realer

Fat shout out to the four XIV gorillas

All my niggas doing life, do what I can to make it better

Five years later and of the four people in that car: One of us would be dead, another would be in a mental institution, and one would be in prison. And we rode through town in that little bucket like we knew that the fuse was lit and we had to get it all in before we were blown to pieces. We gigged super hard at every stop light and rolled through stop signs like we didn’t have hella weed in the car and like we weren’t born looking suspicious. It didn’t matter. We stunted like we weren’t poor and confused and like that little car belong to one of us as opposed to the driver’s girlfriend’s mother. Let us tell it we were all bosses and it was nothing to a boss. It was our town; it was our world and somehow we were able to convince ourselves that we had no reason to be scared of what was to come because we would force the ruling class to make room for our greatness.

The Jacka spoke to all the pain that we were trying to numb out. The trauma that we were going through and would continue to go through. And he validated our lives in a way that even our own mothers could not because he was a man. Because he had to struggle mightily to be able to compare the California ghettos to a battlefield in the Vietnam War. He had to have been hated on severely to warn us that we might be the greatest but people will never say it. So we rode around East Oakland feeling like four kings being welcomed into Buckingham Palace and The Jacka’s CD was our Royal Fanfare. By the time I was brought back home it was pitch black and many daps were given before I exited the car. I went to bed thinking hard about the track called, Die Young until I fell asleep. The next morning I woke up and went to Tower Records at Bayfair Mall and bought The Jacka of the Mob Figaz and listened to it nonstop on my way to class.

-YB

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On the wings of Atlanta: Notes jotted down during Jazz Night at Cafe Trieste

Listening to this jazz band it’s hard to conceptualize that this music used to belong to us. Can you Imagine Charlie Parker being as big in the hood as Gucci Mane? Can you see Billy Holiday being as popular as Nicki Manaj? I honestly can’t, because we completely shifted. We gave that up and started anew. For the projects have been lionized while the ghettos are being sanitized—many of them have been completely liquidated.

Boy you better wash your hands before you touch that food.

There ain’t a clarinet to be found in a trap music beat, not an oboe neither, and there’s barely a trumpet either but it’s all good though. Just because you give a man lean to drink and pills to pop don’t mean you take away his soul. Ain’t no dope in this world that can chase Africa away. Africa is still gone be in your bloodstream. Ghana is still in the bone marrow. Nigeria is still in those hips, and you know Sierra Leone gave you those lips. So when you listen to Future you can hear my past. When you look at Two Chainz you can see Mansa Musa. The Migos could be members of the mighty Ashanti Empire. Up from poverty! Up from the bottom of the boat! Up from being down—you feel me?

We ain’t going back to Africa and we don’t have to because we brought Africa here. You may not be able to see it but you know you feel it. If you stand still for too long it will touch your spirit and make you move. All eyes cast downward—down to Atlanta. Since Outkast, since Goodie Mobb, since The Dungeon Family. Have you seen the show yet? Have you seen what Donald Glover has done? He never stops putting in work and I know that W.E.B Dubois would be proud of the beautiful wings that grew from his most beloved city. I know Dr. King would be proud. I’m not sure they ever seen this coming but the ATL is at the center of the black world, and has been for the past twenty years. The mecca ain’t Harlem, it ain’t D.C., and it ain’t Chicago neither. It is that city within a stone’s throw of master’s plantation and its glory was created by all those negroes that never left to work on the shipyards of California or in the factories of Detroit. All those faithful black folks that never gave up—that never left. And even a few that moved back down. The ones that got educated in the A.U.C. and saw that rich Georgia soil so they decided to plant seeds. This is what the ancestors down there in the black belt must have dreamed of. This is what W.E.B. wrote about when he asked “How does it feel to be a problem?” Now the brothers and sisters down there have created a solution for so many of us. Do you hear the music? Man that right there is slapping! Man turn that up. That’s the ATL.

-YB

Going deep inside of Antelope Canyon

I went to the magnificent Antelope Canyon outside of Page, AZ and while on the tour our guide, a Navajo woman named Lynette, would point out different angles and say "Do you see the burning candle?, Do you see the heart?, This one is called Abraham Lincoln, Can you see his nose and his top hat" but I couldn't see any of those things. The whole time I felt like I was inside of a woman's vagina. I felt very protected and reassured. It was such a revitalizing experience. It was almost overwhelming. -YB

You Hella Pretty

 

She was hella pretty so I told her. I wasn’t trying to harass her or make her feel less than what she is. I didn’t want her phone number and I didn’t want to send her pictures of me aroused in her DM’s. I didn’t want to marry her or one day take her home to my mother either. My statement was not a declaration of the ability of my gaze to validate her beauty because she would have been beautiful whether I told her or not. I was just a black man telling a black woman that she was pretty. I felt like she needed to hear it from me. I felt like I needed to tell her that and she needed to know that I was being sincere. I don’t think she felt that way. I think her day would have gone much better if I would have kept my comment to myself. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye as she walked in the opposite direction and said nothing, and what she said to me is exactly how she made me feel. Somehow I wanted to express to her in a three word ebonical phrase that I had suffered right alongside her and I still faced just as much resistance as she did and yet somehow we both were shinning and she was shining even brighter than me and that I acknowledged this fact, I appreciated her, I honored her, and I never gave up on her. But it didn’t go down that way.

Curse my arrogance for thinking that a complete stranger was obligated to respond to my compliment. Curse my sensitivity for being hurt when she didn’t. Curse my brooding ways for thinking that this non-exchange sums up the greatest problem facing black people in America right now, and that is the tragic hostility that drives the black man and the black woman to hate each other. I love that woman but I fear that all she saw in me was a man that had the power to hurt her. Or maybe she saw a man that was beneath her, or maybe…maybe nothing. Maybe I’m just thinking too hard but I doubt it.

-YB

The Casualties of Masculinity

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/4c/86/60/4c866021e36a669c3b79e00a20b1abbf.jpg Of all the things that my masculinity has forced me to suppress I can never get used to losing things. I can’t normalize losing relationships, losing time, and losing what’s pure. I have spent the better part of my adulthood nurturing a little bird and now it’s ready to fly away. It seems too soon but I suppose I would have never been ready. And now that this bird has discovered her own wings I must watch her flutter with great anxiety, trying to motivate her to go higher only with my words. And it all makes me feel very helpless.

I don’t go to Rolling Hills Cemetery anymore. I try not to look at it from the freeway either. There is too much death in that place. There is too much loss for me. If I were to go there and give everyone their due respect then I wouldn’t have enough for me. Some died violently, some of natural causes surrounded by the rest of the family on their death bed but not by me. I wasn’t there. I can’t take the loss of precious things, I never could.

Then there are the ones that float around me like ghosts, clearly out of their minds. They used to be sharp. They used to be hilarious in the cap session and now teenagers point at them and laugh. Indeed, if they could see what they are now when they were 16 then they would laugh too. Some of them speak to me while others don’t. But we used to talk for hours. We used to get turned down by beautiful girls together and fail the same classes and then talk about how it was all a conspiracy. And now, somehow, I am evil. My spirit has been tainted and I no longer know their language. I no longer see what they can see. I’m not down anymore. Not only am I gone but I have to stay gone. We will never be on the same level again. They live on the streets, oblivious to all judgement and free from all of the rules that confine me. When I try to say more than hello to them it sounds fake. For there is nothing to talk about. There are no more connections and I know that but I am a drug addict strung out on nostalgia.

I remember being hurt as a young boy and not having anyone to talk to about it because in my subconscious mind I felt like a man should never allow himself to be hurt and though I wasn’t a man yet I wanted to be one so badly. And then I remember seeing him at school and him listening, like really listening with his eyes and his arms crossed and he—having a far superior physique than mine, though we debated about it all the time—looking down on me with empathy and telling me not to trip and that he had been hurt in the same way. This made me feel like a man. My problems all of a sudden seemed worthy and my emotions had been validated. Then the conversation transitioned into far less pressing topics like an episode of Martin, or a cute girl, or football practice. I never said thank you. I could always come to him and he would never make me feel weak. I never thanked him for it though. Now I lost him. He speaks to himself but he won’t speak to me. Sometimes I try to break into his world with a smile or a question and try to disregard his condition but he never lets me in. Then I stay taking large doses of nostalgia like so many Xanax and like so much lean in my cup, I always drink too much. When I’m high I see that kid who I lost. He was so hopeful and pure. So talented, loving, and incapable of hurting anyone. And then I realize that the day that I lost him was the day that I lost myself. I will never be pure again.

-YB

Chris Brown Vs Soulja Boy May be the Most Important Fight of the 21st Century

The fight between Chris Brown and Soulja Boy which is scheduled for March 2017 is very important from a cultural, economic, and revolutionary standpoint. I’m very excited about this fight and I’m actually contemplating flying to Las Vegas to watch it all go down live in person. And no I am not a 19-year-old woman with a crush on either one of the combatants nor am I a 19-year-old aspiring rapper with a mixtape to sell. I am, however, a witness to the transformative properties of boxing. Here are three reasons why Chris Brown Vs Soulja Boy could be the most important match of the 21^st century.

#GUNSDOWNHANDSUP

The murder rate in predominately African-American communities is disproportionately high. Chicago alone recorded 762 murders in 2016. That’s over two murders a day! It seems as though every dispute—no matter how petty—is settled behind the trigger. Sometimes innocent women and children are caught in the crossfire. This is why we need young men in the ghetto who are full of anger and testosterone to put their guns down, get their hands up and fight. Chris Brown and Soulja Boy had a beef which, according to Soulja Boy, began because Chris Brown found out Soulja Boy had gotten too close to a few of Chris Brown’s ex-girlfriends. And then thanks to Instagram and other forms of social, it got ugly. They went back and forth and Soulja even posted a picture of Chris Brown’s daughter which of course infuriated the R&B singer.

In present day Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, and Houston this is more than enough to justify murder. At the very least Chris and Soulja have enough influence to control any young goon in America to do their bidding. But they have chosen not to engage in a proxy war which would probably bring some form of tragedy to several Hollywood and Atlanta after parties, instead they have chosen to fight one another the old-fashioned way—with their gloved fists. That is admirable. It takes tremendous heart to get inside the ring and fight for three rounds. It does not take any heart to gun a man down or disrespect him on social media.

Boxing ain’t easy

The general public needs to know that just because you won a fight during lunch recess in the 6^th grade, or you used to routinely beat the hell out of your little brother, or you knocked out some loud-mouthed drunkard at the club last week does NOT mean that you can actually fight. The craft of boxing demands skill and not rage. At the novice level an amateur boxing match is three, two minute rounds. Now I want everyone who is reading this to think about every fight that you have ever had. Then think about how long it actually lasted. If you have never participated in boxing, then your longest fight was probably no longer than 30 seconds. My point is that it takes tremendous mental fortitude to go toe to toe with another trained fighter who is trying to put you to sleep for two minutes straight. It will be interesting to see how Chris and Soulja respond when they throw their hardest punch and their opponent is still there and still fighting. The truth is that when we fantasize about fighting our bosses, or the dude that cut us off on the freeway, or the racist snobby lady that makes the snarky passive aggressive comment while in line at the grocery store, it always ends in a knock out. As the fantasy goes; you ball up your fist really tight, reach back as far as you can and punch the shit out of that person. Then they fly in the air and when they finally come back down to earth they are completely unconscious. Then you slowly walk away but not before screaming something like; “What bitch!” “You got knocked the fuck out!” “I quit this job mutha fucka!”

Of course, when you’re in a boxing ring fighting another trained fighter it doesn’t work that way. If you load up on your punches (that is to rear back before you throw) then your opponent simply slips the shot and counters you. Or if you land the shot then your opponent will more than likely step to you and try to land a hard shot of his own. In our violent fantasies, we all possess brutal one punch knock out power but in real life this is a very rare gift. That’s why boxers are trained to throw combinations and then get out of the way. There’s also the crazy amount of stamina that it takes to fight an amateur bout. You have to do some facet of training every single day of the week. You need to spar, run 6-10 miles a day, shadow box excessively, and give up junk food. It will be interesting to see if two young men who drink alcohol, do drugs, and are adored by millions of women around the globe are willing to do what it takes to be victorious in the ring. They won’t be able to take their crews into the ring with them, they won’t be able to call timeout when they’re tired, and they won’t be able to get their trainers (Floyd Mayweather for Soulja Boy and Mike Tyson for Chris Brown) to fight for them. They’ll have to dig deep within themselves in a way that they probably have never had to do before.

Boxing picks up where the negro leagues left off

With all the contributions that African-Americans have made to football, basketball, and baseball the fact remains that of those three major American sport that embody about 100 franchises there is only one team that is owned by a black person. We see African-Americans running, dribbling, dunking, and posturing on television. And we also see them in suits that costs thousands of dollars while fielding questions at press conferences. We know how many millions of dollars they make and we think they are rich, however, one should point out that they make nothing compared to the rich white guy who writes their checks. For all of their fame and endorsement deals they don’t own anything and African-Americans haven’t owned the franchises that they play in since Major League Baseball forced the Negro Leagues to disband.

Boxing, however, is different. As notorious as Don King is he ushered in a wave of black ownership that is needed not only in sports but in black communities as a whole. Most African-Americans live in neighborhoods that are economically underserved and the few businesses that we do have are owned by Arabs, Koreans, or Pakistanis. One could debate the reasons for this but one cannot debate the fact that it is true. What Don King was able to do was to put on completely black events from top to bottom: from the back of the house to the front of the house. That is to say from the athletes to the executive, which in Don King’s case was always him. By accomplishing this task King cut a hole in the ceiling, a hole which Al Haymon was able to walk right through.

Al Haymon is the manager (but more like a business partner) to Floyd Mayweather and a host of other very talented fighters in the sport of boxing. Like Don King he is from the Cleveland, Ohio but unlike Don King he does not exploit his fighters. He gives his fighters a larger cut of the profits than any other manager/promoter ever has. So much so that Floyd Mayweather once said; “If I would have had Al Haymon from the beginning [of my career] I probably would be a billionaire by now.” Al Haymon promoted the richest fight in boxing history: Mayweather Vs. Pacquiao. And Al Haymon is a black man. It would be impossible for one to imagine a black person or company producing the World Series, the Super Bowl, or even the NBA All Star game. Not only that, Al Haymond refused to allow Pacquiao's promoter Bob Arum, who is white, to get any percentage of the revenue from the fight. That would never happen in any other sport.

Chris Brown Vs. Soulja Boy will be brought to you entirely by Floyd Mayweather’s The Money Team/Mayweather Promotions so in essence to support this fight is to support black business. Black people spend an estimated 1.2 trillion a year on cars, jewelry, hotels, restaurants, and tickets to support sports franchises that do not belong to us. This fight is a rare exception.

As a fan of boxing and as a progressive African-American man that is tired of my culture clinging to the very bottom of American-Society. I’m tired of homicide and black male behavior being synonymous, I’m tired of the high rate of obesity among our children, and I’m tired of other people of color setting up shop in the black community selling us alcohol and inferior goods. Perhaps what I am most bothered by is how so many African-Americans take a natural attitude towards our own self-hatred and oppression. If Chris Brown and Soulja Boy have an intense exciting fight and then hug and show respect to one another after their fight is over, then maybe they will start a trend that will bring together the eight trays and rolling sixties of South Central Los Angeles and the black disciples and gangster disciples of the Southside of Chicago. Maybe young men will learn how to lose with honor instead of coming back to the block with a pistol and shooting at everything moving. If the winner of the fight can have pride and the loser remain dignified, then maybe young black men will choose life instead of death and seek freedom instead of incarceration. Maybe.

At any rate whether on pay per view or at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas I will definitely be watching.

In the theater by my god damn self!

I walk slowly to my seat in the back row with some form of chocolate candy in my hand or maybe an ice cream bar. I sit down with a sense of anticipation that is slightly more than subtle. The lights turn down and I am ready to be liberated for about two hours more or less. I am ready to be overwhelmed by art. The screen is gigantic, the sound is excessively loud and I am in my comfort zone. For I am, once again, in the movie theater by myself.

I see movies by myself so often at this point that it almost feels weird to see a movie with someone else. When I do there’s always that awkward moment afterwards when I have to talk to the person about what I’ve seen as opposed to just thinking about it for hours and hours. And even way before I get to that point I usually have to explain why it is that I like what I like. Why I’m never into Hollywood Blockbusters. Why I like independent movies, foreign movies, documentaries and musicals. Why I want to see Lala Land instead of the new Will Smith movie. Why do I want to see Fences in the theater again especially since I’ve seen the play twice and read it as well. Why do I enjoy seeing movies in Foreign languages that I will never know how to speak. Over the past 30 plus years I have realized that I am very weird. And ever since I graduated from college I have stopped trying to play my weirdness down in order to fit in with other people. Fuck other people. I do things by myself because I love myself and I deserve it. If strange things bring me joy, then so be it. I don’t need anyone to use their mockery or fake interest in an effort to tag along with me. Let me sit down in the very back row gorging on a Toblerone with my feet up all by my god damn self. Let me have my space: please! I promise I’ll be a more sociable person as soon as the end credits roll up.

And then there is the price. In terms of dating if I have to pay $12.00 to get into a movie I really don’t want to pay someone else’s way. Especially not a date. As far as I’m concerned United Artists killed chivalry when they raised the price of a movie ticket to over $8.00. Then once you add the exorbitant price of popcorn and a drink, I’m cool. As a matter of fact, I’m hella cool. I’m not treating you. No disrespect but I would rather sit in my dark lit up place concerned only with the development of plot and an actor’s ability to pull off an accent, not with my finances.

So, when you’re with your crew or your boo and you see me in the back of the theater by myself with my beanie cap down low, don’t feel sorry for me—just understand that I am taking care of myself and self-care is a must.

-YB

The First Time

  The first time she feels comfortable enough to poot in your presence and you realize how difficult it must have been for her to suppress her humanity for all of those months. And then she looks at you with surprise but no hint of shame and the both of you begin to laugh hysterically. For you realize that she can never unbreak that wind and she will never again attempt to live up to society’s impossible expectations of what a woman should and should not do while being courted. From this moment forward you will regard her not merely as a love interest but as a human-being. As your potna. As your homie. You lean over and kiss her softly on her giggling cheek then breath in hard through your nose and you are almost overwhelmed because you know that if real love had a smell then this would undoubtedly be it.

Seeking Readmittance

  I write through my struggle. I make sacrifices so that my urge to create can come back to me. It shouldn’t take a bullet in the brain of my childhood friend for me to write. It shouldn’t take depression or any other extreme circumstance. There should be a normalcy to when I create, if not an obsession. This should not be painful. This should not be like a bullet in the head. It should be like a meaningful kiss with your eyes open, it should be about waking up feeling secure in what you are, it should be like pulling over to talk to that cute girl and knowing that she’s feeling you before you even ask for the number, or like a sideshow on 106^th and Macarthur. Like joy in the place of poverty, you feel me?

I’m not losing my voice. Two 19 year olds were murdered in the streets of North Oakland this past Monday and now is the time to Lift Every Voice. Perhaps I have become complacent in my position outside of the trap. I work, I take care of my daughter, I sleep, I workout. I’ve allowed myself to become numb. I’ve allowed myself to believe that murder, or the threat of murder doesn’t effect me the same way it did when I was trying to find my place in the world. I’ve allowed myself to believe that I have found my place in the world. How could I be secure in a place that is not creative?

I’ve been dead and now I seek readmittance into the world. I am ready to be possessed. I am the mule that Zora spoke of.

-YB

Was

I think about her more now that she’s dead than I did when she was alive. I think about the disoriented look on her son’s face as he walked in and out of her funeral service. I think about how goofy she was a teenager. How annoying her laugh was, how pretty her face was…I think about the word was. How hurtful the past tense is when referring to young people that you love.

I did not think about her when she was alive. I had not seen her in at least 15 years. In fact even when we attended Junior High School together we were never super close but I never thought that death would reach her before her 35^th year. I never thought that I would have to use the word was when referring to her. And now I kind of want to see her. I want to tell her not to trip, that things will be ok, that she is loved. And then I’m torn because I feel really fake. If she were alive and I happened to see her I would never think to share anything beyond the exchange of basic pleasantries. I probably would have no idea that she was contemplating suicide but then again, I would never ask.

It’s shameful what death reduces us to. It’s shameful how a person has to die in order to be heard sometimes. Often times when a young man is murdered and waiting to be pronounced dead his cell phone is jumping. Everyone is calling, texting, and sending dozens of messages that all seem to say, “are you ok?” But he isn’t ok. He will never be ok again. Then they DM him and send him friend requests and favorite his tweets and finally they make a memorial on a street corner and everyone has a party in his memory—but he is dead. I could never understand why we disregard the living only to celebrate the dead. Yet here I am. Mourning the tragic death of a woman who I wasn’t even close enough to know was suffering.

I am somewhat obsessed with her now that she will be forever in the past tense.

I find myself becoming less approachable, less tolerable of other people. The memories that I have of her are ever present and I can’t stop thinking about what her future may have been. I post about her. I cherish memories of her that I didn’t even know I had when she was alive. Like that time in the 8^th grade when she was my girlfriend for two days and we broke up because I had hard rumors about her “going with” another boy (which were later revealed to be untrue). Little silly things come into my head that make me acknowledge once again to myself that she is dead. Her body has been reunited with the earth. And then I slowly attempt to rise out of bed, though I never seem to get enough sleep.

-YB

To be black and homeless in Oakland

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”

-WEB Dubois

I find it fascinating that a tent city has popped up in a city where just last year Uber paid over $24 Billion to purchase a building that will serve as a major corporate headquarter for them. In 2013 Oakland was voted the most exciting city to move to (http://www.movoto.com/blog/top-ten/10-most-exciting-cities/). There are new restaurants opening up all over the place, billion dollar housing developments are being constructed (China Basin), there seems to be money coming in from every direction, and in the midst of this enormous economic boom there are whole families living on the streets.

This particular homeless encampment really struck me because it exists directly across the street from the very church where I was baptized. In Oakland I have seen groups of homeless people live under bridges and alongside freeways but never on International Boulevard, which is a major thoroughfare in both Oakland and San Leandro. This leads me to believe that the homeless situation is getting worse. It also leads me to believe that as long as techies are moving here from around the country and billion dollar startups are investing large sums of money in the Uptown area that no one cares about homeless black people living out of tents in Deep East Oakland. I’m not sure what exactly needs to be done but I’m not going to act like this isn’t happening in the city that shaped the man that I’ve become. So I guess the question is; what are we going to do?

The unanswered questions of suicide

Today I saw a poster-sized portrait of a stunningly gorgeous dark-skinned woman as it sat perched atop a very generic looking off white casket. I saw this while in a large church with well over 500 people in attendance (I must say I went to this same church on communion Sunday four days ago and there were more people in there today than there were then). The beautiful lady who was the subject of the ceremony was once very loveable. As an adolescent she was very loud, very goofy, very blunt—in essence she was very hood. As an adult she made a living applying make-up at the mac store in San Francisco. She was 33 years old, and she shot herself in the head.

She left behind two sons. She had the eldest with a young man who I played Pop Warner football with, went to school with, and in our early 20’s we worked as skycaps together at the Oakland International Airport. In 2012 this childhood friend was shot to death during an alleged traffic dispute in West Oakland. In 1996, however, we were all good kids trying (and some succeeding) to be bad at King Estates Junior High School. That’s where their relationship began. He wanted to be way harder than he actually was and she wanted to have way more attitude than she actually did. He was the only one that could handle her (I, like so many others, tried and failed). So it worked for them.

It worked up until they finished high school and had a son together. Then they split a few years later. While he and I were working at the airport I told him that I bumped into the mother of his child. He asked me how she was. I didn’t really understand the question. I responded with, “Cool I guess.” And then he began speaking to me about her mental illness. I laughed in shock because he presented the information as if it were funny. And not because he thought the mental deterioration of his high school sweetheart was actually humorous but because it was the only way that he could convey such painful information to another man without revealing that it hurt him (because no man in our town ever wants to be considered soft). After that conversation I never heard anything about her again until I got the news that she had committed suicide.

It always struck me as being extremely superficial when tragedy befalls a woman and people say, “but she was so beautiful.” As if pretty women are above pain. As if their lives are meaningful only because their faces look good. But in this case I get it simply because suicide is so ugly. And suicide via a bullet in the brain is even more hideous. It is such a brutal way for a woman to leave this earth and it leaves so much confusion. The pastor responsible for giving the eulogy struggled to find his position on the podium, but he finally gave a speech suggesting that because the deceased had the lord in her heart she would enter heaven—or something like that. At any rate it made the hundreds of people in attendance feel good. Perhaps it will offer comfort to her two boys in the years to come. I suppose that was the intent. But hers, as well as all other suicides leaves one indelible question imprinted in my mind; Why they do that?

Suicide is a selfish act. And I say this knowing that schizophrenia is more common than people may think, that deep depression often times goes undiagnosed, and that the stigma surrounding mental health is extremely pervasive in the black community. I also say this as a man who is trying very hard not to pass judgment. But I am a human being and this unspoken sentiment has been growing in my brain like cancer. The very thought that has been pulsating in my consciousness is this: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO SUFFER—especially if one was born into blackness. By this rationale I could not help but to look down upon her as a quitter. I stood there in that sanctuary as one man fighting against many. For it appeared as though everyone else had made peace with her decision. I didn’t. I don’t.

It makes no sense to blame the dead for being dead. There is no way for her to wake up and assume responsibility for her actions, or to apologize to her boys for that matter. When I looked at the scowl on the face of her oldest son who walked in and out of the church trying to make sense out of the situation and attempting to understand the gravity of how this moment would change his life but not being able to comprehend—it bothered me so deeply that I found myself cursing his mother in my head. Why? Why she do that? How could a woman who spent so much time in church let the devil catch up to her?

At some point toward the end of the service the pastor told everyone in the sanctuary who had been touched in a positive way by the beautiful dark-skinned woman with the ebullient personality who now lay stiffly inside of her casket to stand up. The whole sea of us stood up tall. Then he asked us to applaud and show the lord some praise for allowing her to touch our souls. We did just that. It was a glorious moment because we loved her. We loved our friend despite all of her flaws because we saw our own flaws in her. People cried, people shouted, and people rejoiced and as I clapped loud and steady I questioned her in the afterlife. Didn’t you know that we loved you? Don’t you know how much you’re hurting us right now? Why? Why you do that?

-YB

Micah X. Johnson American Sniper

His name was Micah X. Johnson. He was a man who was upset at the recent murders of Philando Castile by police officers in Minnesota and of Alton Sterling by police officers in Louisiana so he himself killed five police officers in Texas. Or at least that’s how the story is being told at this moment.

Micah X. Johnson was a 25-year-old U.S army veteran who was enraged and did not wish to march, or rally, or block the freeway, or boycott. He wanted to kill. He wanted vengeance. And with this very natural—if not immoral as well as hypocritical—human reaction to feeling victimized there comes tremendous fallout and an almost unprecedented feeling of shock. The fallout because no one wants to align themselves with a murderer, at least not with a television camera and microphone in their face. And the shock because as afraid as the power structure is of black men no one ever expects black people to actually fight back. So on the rare occasion when this does happen it feels as if the moon has risen in the morning and the sun has burned brilliantly through the night. It appears to defy the laws of the universe as they were taught to American blacks.

For we have always taken the trauma that we have endure out on ourselves by ingesting various poisons that temporarily make us forget that we are treated worse than animals. And we have always taken it out on other black people by physically, mentally, and verbally assaulting those nearest to us. But almost never do we raise a hand to the police officers that have the power to kill us with impunity. Instead we break down and implode. Well Micah exploded. Just like when “wild Indians” would kill white settlers for squatting on their land in colonial America and the white man would come back and kill twice as many of them. Just like when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which led to the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just like after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 when the U.S. waged war on Iraq. Micah X. Johnson—no matter how disillusioned, no matter how psychotic, no matter how ungodly—wanted for his people, what the white man naturally receives everywhere on the planet. He wanted to be acknowledged as a man. Not as some thing that you can beat up for fun and murder for sport. He wanted police officers to know that there will be consequences for their actions in this lifetime. Micah stood up and now he is dead. Apparently blown apart by a bomb sent to him electronically by the police via a robot.

Alas, it would be as unscrupulous to celebrate the actions of Micah Xavier Johnson, as it would be to lionize a killer like Christopher Scott Kyle. Only the totally depraved would do such a thing. However one should never be afraid to understand the motivation of another human being. For a man that may die for a cause that you do not believe in is still a man. If we truly wish to evolve as a species then we must be reasonable in times of extreme trauma and a heightened sense of pain.

-YB

All year long I waited for summer

All year long, like a child, I waited for summer. Now I find that June has brought only heat and very little warmth. I search for purpose amidst confusion. I constantly resist taking a natural attitude towards systematic destruction. They attempt to destroy the structure and the soul, the church and the congregation are aflame. I stand alone always isolated and barely sane. I count money that I don’t have, I check-in with the dead, I kiss perfect memories throughout the night. I get high on nostalgia like so many pills. I’m addicted to escaping traps that I have already transcended. I play games like a child. I listen to Nina Simone on vinyl like an old man. I miss her like a fool. I am poor like the uneducated. I stand all alone like the completely misunderstood.

I smile easy. I cry hard. I speak well. I die. I wake up. I sleep not. I am in constant pursuit of inconsistency. Could you tell her that I’m looking for her? The next time you see her could you tell her please? No. Nevermind. Again I am content. I just forced myself to remember the misery. It’s very foolish for a man to want what people believe that he should have. Only a coward would let someone else define what happiness should mean for him. And so I move forward corrupted by my past. I sleep with ghosts. I pray to god. And I feed on my inability achieve serenity.

-YB

Notes on The Fire at 73rd and Macarthur

I sat in Eastmont Barbershop for hours as a young boy. Looking out of the window while waiting on the best fade in town. I stared out onto 73^rd and Macarthur Boulevard at all of the Cougars and Mustangs, Chevelles, Novas, and Cutlasses that were coming from the carwash on 90^th and Mac and gearing up to hit the Foothill strip. They would rev their engines up until the 73^rd light finally changed then they’d peel out down the block. This was back in the 90’s when the Foothill Strip was two lanes and everyone who had access to a car from all parts of the town would ride it every weekend all the way to Lake Merritt. It started right there on 73^rd and Mac. 73^rd and Macarthur is the gateway to Deep East Oakland going one way and the start of the Foothill strip going in the opposite direction. It lay right in the center of the largest black community in Northern California. It’s a major thoroughfare. It’s important. And now as of yesterday morning the whole block has been burned to the ground.

As I look at the changing demographics in the area right above Macarthur Boulevard and to a lesser extent below it I suspect, no I know, that it’s a blatant case of insurance fraud. A few blocks down on 77^th and Macarthur there were also a few businesses that were burned under mysterious circumstances. Someone is reaping the money from this destruction while local children must endure a neighborhood that looks like present day Damascus. These building will remain burned out until enough white people move into the neighborhood. Then they will buy it and then this community will go the way of West Oakland, the way of Brooklyn, the way of Brixton, and the way of D.C. And all things poor and black will be shipped off to a suburb 50 miles away.

To love a ghetto as much as I love mine may seem oxymoronical to an outsider. I love the way we struggle. I love the bluntness and the humility of hood life. I love the pride of the people even though it is far too often misplaced in street corners and cars and gang signs. I love the blackness. Much more significant and perhaps much more telling, however, is this fact: I love my hood because my hood is all that I know. I’ve gotten degrees and come back here. I’ve gone around the world and come back here. I’ve taken a chance with a woman or two but always I’ve come back here. And now as I look at 73^rd and Macarthur the only thing I see is my childhood all aflame and my heart in ashes. The invaders have made their move and indeed they have left their mark.

-YB

I like the dancer

 

On her profile picture there is an image of a newborn babe; her 2^nd child in three years. This child is light in complexion just like his mother but bares the eyebrows and nose of his darker skinned father. I scroll through her pictures, liking many of them, as a means of catching up with her. I haven’t interacted with her page in years. I haven’t seen her in much longer. I met her my first year of graduate school. She was an artist and I was an artist so we clicked. She was into black consciousness as was I. She was a dancer though who performed in front of hundreds of people in the theater while my craft required that I sit alone in a dark room with my laptop and brood for hours at a time.

I liked her. She was very refined and at times she could be distant but there was nothing arrogant about her. She just moved through the world like dancers tend to do, she was so obsessed with her next move that it often times caused feelings of unease in the people around her. Shortly after graduate school I clicked on her page and found out that her relationship with her longtime boyfriend had ended and she wasn’t taking it well. That summer I saw her at the Juneteenth festival in Berkeley. She was by herself. I was with my mother and daughter. I slipped away from them to speak with her and her face looked even more pensive and weary than it did on her selfies. I came on to her strongly. I asked her what she was doing for the weekend and suggested that we kick it. She said no. Actually she said that she was trying get herself together or she wasn’t ready, or some crap like that but all I heard was no. Then my daughter spotted me and she noticed how much my child had grown and said as much. Shortly after that the conversation was over. She moved away to Texas and that was the last time I saw her in real life.

But now she looks so happy and I feel so ridiculous. Her man wears a proud yet goofy smile as he holds their child. He is tall, his posture is erect, and he possesses an enormous inner-confidence. The photo garners 217 likes including mine. And it’s funny when I think that I was so delusional as to believe that I could have made her that happy. I could have tried but I would have failed and she would have ultimately moved on to someone like the man that she is now married to. I realize six or seven years later as I have become more comfortable within my own flesh and more aware of my limitations, that I was never meant to dance with her. Just as she was not born to share my lonely darkened room and transfer all of her inadequacies to the written page. No. All I can ever do is like her. Like her photos, like her comments, like her memes, like her videos and like her life. All while hoping that one day when she’s really bored she’ll click on my profile and like me back.

-YB

Am I an Opressor? Notes on the murder of Janese Talton-Jackson

A few months ago I was on BART headed to San Francisco when a gorgeous young black woman stepped onto my train. She knew she was gorgeous too, as did everyone else on the train that evening. She had a brightly colored flowing scarf wrapped around her neck and lipstick that made her lips look wet and loud, reminiscent of a jolly rancher. She was a bit of a contrast in terms of style. She was like a mash-up of India Arie and Trina with her conscious side just barely beating out the ratchet. I dug her from a distance.

Every single passenger in our car, male and female alike, stared at this sister and then quickly looked away. They tried to remain focused on their newspapers or the old structures that passed right outside the window barely lit by the streetlights. The gorgeous young lady also tried to pretend as if she was completely engrossed in the screen on her smart phone but every now and again she would look up to see who was looking at her. I was looking. I swear I wasn’t looking harder than anyone else but I was definitely struck by her beauty. The sister saw everyone else looking at her and appeared to be charmed. She saw me looking and became uncomfortable, if not agitated. I could almost read the frantic thought that pulsated in her head: “Please don’t talk to me. Please don’t try to talk to me.” We were the only two black people on the car.

Her body language hurt me and my attitude immediately became morose. I did not want to talk to the young lady. I did not want her phone number. OK maybe I did want to tell her she was beautiful but I was not going to harass her or compromise her regality in any way shape or form. I did not understand why I caused her so much consternation and how was it that she seemed to want the attention of everyone in the world except that of a black man. I did not understand. But now after the murder of Janese Talton-Jackson I get it. It makes sense why the young lady sat as far from me as she possibly could and why she all but ran off the train once her stop came. For I have come to realize that as far as she is concerned, I am her oppressor.

Janese Talton-Jackson was a 29-year-old mother of three who was murdered last Friday morning in Pittsburgh, PA because she would not talk to a man after leaving a bar. Apparently his ego was so fragile that after being rebuffed he felt the need to shoot Janese in the chest. Both Janese and her murderer are black.

This is why so many of our women fear us. Why they see us talking amongst ourselves on the corner and cross the street. This is why we say hello to them and they say nothing. This is why young black women would rather fall in love with one another than to let us come anywhere near them. This is why so many of our women hate us.

I think about how I respond when I am walking down the avenue and I look up and see a police car. Or when I’m driving down the street and see a squad car in my rear view. I get nervous even though I haven’t done anything because I know that the police have the power to harass me anyway. That they can take away my dignity for their amusement. That they can beat me up because they don’t like my attitude or that they could even kill me. For one to have a forced interaction with the outside entity that has power over one’s life is always visceral and intense. Janese Talton-Jackson chose not to have this interaction and was killed for her decision. In the same way that Oscar Grant was killed. In the same way that Trayvon Martin was killed. In the same way that Laquan McDonald was killed and in the same way that Mario Woods was killed. Janese Talton-Jackson was murdered because she had enough pride to resist.

If only coming to terms with Janese’s murder was that simple. The fundamental difference between her murder and the murder of black men at the hands of white male authority figures is that Janese’s murderer will spend the rest of his life in jail while police officers routinely kill black men without consequence. However even as I live in this truth I am still left to ponder the questions; To what extent are black men the oppressors of black women? And to what extent do black women have the right to be deathly afraid of us? I know not the answer and I have no solutions. I do know that the young lady on the BART train was a stunning example of flawless three-dimensional art. Her surface was impeccable but on the interior she was wounded. If I could I would apologize for all of the pain that black men such as myself caused her and pray that she could internalize the message. And If I could I would bring Janese Talton-Jackson back to life and tell her that she was beautiful and assure her that I wanted nothing in return.

-YB

The Christianity of Tupac Shakur

  As I listened to the song entitled “Blasphemy” by Tupac Shakur I found myself thinking about how much of a Christian the man truly was. “We probably in hell already/ our black asses not knowing/ everybody kissing ass to go to heaven ain’t going.” Pac was a pastor preaching to an unsaved congregation in a manner that they could understand. He encouraged young black people to change our conditions here on earth as opposed to waiting for a paradise that was not promised to everyone. Tupac also instilled the significance of spiritual reformation “Do what you gotta do but know you got to change/ try and find a way to make it out the game.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQDD5VfAnFI

And after listening to this track for probably the 5,000th time and hyper-analyzing the lyrics I became downtrodden and embarrassed. I was ashamed to be a part of a culture that worships the THUGLIFE tattoo on his stomach while ignoring the holy cross that was permanently inked to his back. Twenty years after the man’s death and we still refer to him as a thug, a rebel, the GOAT, a hothead, and a real NIGGA but we never refer to him as a devout follower of Jesus Christ. For how long will we allow the media to tell us what to think about our prophets? At what point will we seek the truth for ourselves?

-YB

East Oakland Rain

Rain speaks to me. Rainfall creates a mood, a train of thought, a release from the cool Northern California monotony. Cars swish by and I don’t want to leave my home. I don’t want to open the curtains. I don’t want to text anyone back. Rain tells me that it’s ok to be antisocial.

I live in my head. I breathe in nostalgia. I spend the majority of these winter days trying to make sense of this confusion. Trying to create solutions for a problem that I have yet to identify. Trying to avoid cliché’s while trying to arrive at inner peace. My bible has fallen to the floor. I haven’t picked it up in weeks. My future is frightening so I disappear into old things. The truth has become so distorted by the lapsing of time that often times I forget how destructive these things were to me. I lose the same race every night. I lose it in my soul.

In between raindrops I smile. While it is pouring, and only while it is pouring, I allow myself to cry. I cry for all of my mistakes. I cry for the dead. I cry for my inability to make things right. I cry to remind myself that beneath all of the masculine ideas that I have learned, I am still a human being.

The rain gives me an excuse to have pity on myself and to analyze the miserable side of being alone. And that being that so many people that I once loved, and even more importantly, that once loved me have moved on to happiness. They’ve moved on to engagements and husbands and children while I continue to move back to nostalgia. The days when I kissed them and left them where they stood. The days when I gave them just enough. The days when I thought they would always be there for me to come back to. The days when I thought that I had it like that. I don’t. I never did. Now all of these thoughts are inappropriate and all of these memories are painful. Just like the childhood memories of playing football at recess, goofing off in class, and getting the phone numbers of cute girls with friends that are no longer living. More dead memories.

I contemplate all of the false steps I have taken to get me to this point. I am astonished at how blind I had to be to have gotten so lost.

-YB