I’ve been wanting to write about Marvel’s ’70s comics for a while, especially the ones featuring Luke Cage and the Black Panther. I do it here and there, but never in depth, because I haven’t found a subject that I really want to put my foot in yet. Just a nebulous “Oh I should do this sometimes.”

I started work on a piece springboarding off an excerpt from Grant Morrison’s Supergods that was a good example of what I don’t like to read when people are talking about ’70s comics. Part of chapter 11 is dedicated to what Morrison terms “the relevance bandwagon,” the stream of socially aware or conscious comic books that began coming out in the early ’70s that included books like Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Jungle Action. It’s also the only part of the book where Morrison spends any amount of time discussing black comics characters in detail.

Morrison got it wrong when it came to why those books were relevant and good comics, basically, in a couple of different ways (factually, thematically). He got it wrong in the same way that people keep getting it wrong when they talk about this stuff. He spends more time on that stupid Lois Lane comic where she turns black for a day than John Stewart and Luke Cage combined, right? Which makes the entire affair feel condescending bordering on dumb insulting, especially when he says that Luke Cage “soon outgrew his origins to develop as a rich and enduring character, still central to the ongoing Marvel story decades past Shaft and Jim Kelly.”

Yeah nigga naw, Luke Cage has been rich and enduring ever since page one, panel one. The redemption story sucks because it erases the history of the character and the people who created him. I’m really fond of the Kurt Busiek and Jo Duffy eras, less so the Steve Englehart-scripted issues, but there’s a ton of things in there to enjoy. Not to mention the art teams, you know?

Hiding that history behind the idea that Cage needed rehabilitation hurts comics history. You don’t get Milestone Media without black artists finally getting a chance at the big leagues in the ’70s. Denys Cowan studied at the feet of Arvell Jones and Ron Wilson, among others like Rich Buckler and Neal Adams. Years later, Cowan bugged his friends with the idea that they needed to set out on their own and take full control of their careers. Then: Milestone, a company that focused on representing the world at large, across a wide variety of cultures and orientations and philosophies.

As halting and awkward as Luke Cage occasionally was, it’s not worth losing that history to point out how far we’ve come. I guess it’s a big deal to me because we’ve already come pretty far, and it was ten years before the theoretical redemption of Luke Cage. The redemption story furthers the idea that the mainstream comics industry was adrift when it comes to this stuff until NuMarvel, and that’s just silly. We’ve been better, and then we lost it, and now we’re trying to get back.

But I can’t make this post of mine click like I want to, no matter how clear I am about the component parts of it. I want the Supergods excerpt to be a springboard, not the focus of the piece. “This book doesn’t have it right, and here’s a corrective that can stand on its own.” vs “This guy is a big dumb face who didn’t pay enough attention to this thing I like in his big ol’ dumb face book.” I do care that Morrison got it wrong — it definitely put me off the book, even after a friend was kind enough to get me a signed copy from the UK because I am the BEST FRIEND — but I’m not interested in debating how or why he got it wrong.

That kind of point-by-point rebuttal isn’t where I’m at; it isn’t what I like to do. It makes my text too dependent on his, rather than something that can stand on its own two. I just want to talk about how these colored folks from times past laid the foundation for Milestone or how Luke Cage goes way deeper than “where’s my money, honey?” pretty much from the start of his series. I want to talk about how it wasn’t the social relevance that made these comics so enjoyable and important. The social aspect was important, sure, but that doesn’t mean anything if the books aren’t good. No, when I look at those books, I see a sudden burst of inclusion, not just comics writers exploring politics. Those books gave normal people who were underrepresented in these wonderful universes sudden representation, and it oftentimes turned out pretty well. Marvel especially managed to capture a specifically black aspect of the zeitgeist very well, and married it to their continuity in a way that worked really well. When that got stale, they hitched kung fu to Luke Cage’s truck and pow, they were right back in the thick of it.

So my springboard ended up being a stumbling block. There is no post that’s pure enough, not yet. But I’m used to this. I can’t fold, so I re-up and reload. I’m okay with having ideas that don’t make it from conception to birth. Ideas are cheap. There’s a kernel in my scrapped draft (technically 1.5 scrapped drafts) that I’ll be able to plant elsewhere and let it grow to fruition at some point. Plus, it’s nice to have crystallized those ideas over the course of writing the failed post, but that post ain’t what I need it to be. It’s not what I want, no matter how many words or secret rap lyrics I add to it. One day I’m going to find that trigger and squeeze it and blow someone’s mind, but today wasn’t the day. If you read my tumblr, you’ve probably seen a lot of ideas that didn’t quite go anywhere until months later. Build and destroy, right?

Writing about race is so weird. I often feel like I’m walking on eggshells or tip-toeing across broken glass sometimes, despite how often I’ve done it and how comfortable I feel with doing it. Like, as soon as you acknowledge that race exists and affects things in a positive or negative or in-between manner, armies of dudes strap on their fedoras and get to typing about how it’s not that serious, you’re reading too deep, why you gotta play the race card, chill out, bud, can I call you bud, my black friend lets me call him bud when we hang out, I’m down, brother. Or whatever. This paragraph got weird.

I wrote a thing about Robert E Howard’s racism a few days ago and didn’t say anything about the subtext beyond what like a moderately culturally-aware teenaged black kid would notice, like how power is clearly distributed across skin color lines or how the sexual aspects of a certain story break down and relate to its racial aspects. I talked about things that have been around and part of American culture for centuries, even if they’ve only relatively recently been named and shamed. Basic racial awareness stuff, right, like avoiding “niggardly” because it’s awkward and you’re probably a jerk if you’re intentionally using it around black people or not touching or asking to touch black people’s hair.

Darryl Ayo said “I love when David Brothers explains very carefully and in detail about racist undertones in a work and some commenter is “uh uh, no!!”” on Twitter and I was like pshaw, I got this son, watch me do the knowledge and stunt on these bros… and then some dude told me to keep my emotions and politics out of things I read even if they are by an actual racist because I didn’t do the research and it doesn’t mean anything if he didn’t mean it and I had to slam the comments shut before I lost my doggone mind.

I think that’s part of why I try to keep the tone light when talking about race and comics, because it’s clear to me that it makes a whole lot of people (some people can’t separate what they like from who they are) uncomfortable, even if it’s something innocuous as “this racist guy wrote some racist stuff by accident.” I even brought a couple of gifs out of retirement, even though I don’t really get down like that any more. Keeping the tone light is a defense mechanism, I think, because it lays a foundation for me to laugh it off when things get stupid, as they do 99% of the time. If I poured my heart into something and kept it clean and then some schmuck came along talking about bootstraps, I’d feel much, much worse than when someone takes a lazy jab at a post with a funny gif of Method Man and Redman in it.

But I don’t think trying to lighten the tone actually works like I think it does? It makes me feel like I’m tip-toeing around what I want to say. Which, in turn, makes me think that maybe I should just go in and make things even more plain, because if people are going to flip regardless, why should I stress over how something is going to be taken? I could talk about things like how unbelievably off-putting it is that Brian Bendis and Sara Pichelli’s otherwise divine Ultimate Spider-Man features a black dude named Jefferson Davis, especially considering that the book was sold on the back of its lead being black and latino.

How do you talk about that bout of tone deafness — which should probably be explored at least a little bit within the greater context of well-intentioned tone deafness in the comics community, which I would argue is probably the biggest race-related problem in mainstream comics — without being an unfair dick to Bendis, who apparently named the character after a friend and not the dude who was a scumbag traitor to the Union who took up arms for his right to be a racist and own other people, like that’s a cool thing for people to do? (I went to a school named after Jefferson Davis for a while and basically wanted to die.)

I don’t make a conscious try at it, but I feel like I’m real layman friendly. I don’t talk about privilege or whatever other big words people are using to talk about race and culture. Not because I don’t like them or don’t understand them, but because that’s just not how I think about race. I didn’t go to college for this stuff. I’m either speaking from my own life experiences or those of people I’ve read, known, or respected. Some of it’s book-learning and some of it’s personal trauma, but you know what I’ve found is the most true and most effective when talking about race? Common sense. Racism, as a philosophy and practice, does not make common sense. It makes economic and nationalist sense, but not common sense. So, I’m just trying to say what I have to say in a way that everyone who pays attention can overstand it. It’s complicated, but it’s not complicated. You don’t have to talk about it like it’s astrophysics or microbiology or uh… precalculus. It’s best understood and discussed in basic terms. It’s thorny, I think is the word I’m trying to pull off the tip of my tongue, and complex, but not incomprehensible. “Food for thought, you do the dishes,” like an aight man once said.

I have a voice and a platform that a lot of other writers who care about black issues in comics don’t. I don’t have the responsibility to write about that stuff, because I firmly believe in doing what I want, when I want, and how I want to do it, but I do have the inclination to do so. I enjoy it, at least at first. It’s like therapy on a budget, and a few people have written in to say I helped them figure things out in their own life, which is awesome/terrifying/awesome.

I really, really care about this stuff. I care about others getting it right and I definitely care about getting it right myself. Otherwise, you get “LOL Luke Cage” instead of treating the guy like his history is as rich as it actually is. Which I think is why I’m so careful and pointed about what I don’t. I’m playing with the cultural equivalent of a loaded gun here and throwing in a bunch of rap lyrics and jokes. But I don’t want people to misconstrue what I’m saying or get it twisted, so I pick my words very carefully. Deliberately. Some people are still going to get hot under the collar, but “fuck boys do fuck shit,” right? I just have to do what I do and keep focusing on getting better at it instead of the dudes who are mad that their favorite comic is pretty crappy when viewed through a certain light.

I think about this stuff a lot. I mean, the REH post I wrote on a Saturday morning because I was bored and felt like it, but the ideas in there definitely percolated for months before I put them to paper. At the very least since I read the first issue of the Conan relaunch. There were six or seven issues out when I wrote a post that mentioned REH’s racism in passing, so let’s call it six months. I notice something, I talk with friends about it, and then I push it to the back of my mind, where the real work gets done, until I have something to say.

Even when I’m shooting from the hip — usually on Twitter, rarely on 4l! — it’s never just to talk or something I’ve only half-examined. I think about the intersection of race and comics so much because I feel like it’s something that is incredibly important that is vastly underserved, or outright mocked, on a mainstream level.

Like, here’s a real life example: I mentioned the gross aspects of interracial (again, genre, not description) porn in that REH post, and the way it plays upon the fear of a white woman being tainted by the black penis. Some of it focuses on the shame of a white guy that a white woman would sink so low, which is the really, really gross stuff, but most of it’s about debasement. “She said her price’ll go down if she ever fucks a black guy, or do anal, or a gangbang; it’s kinda crazy it’s all considered the same thing.” if you need a topical reference and/or a reminder that Kanye’s “Hell of a Life” is a shockingly good song.

Luke Cage and Jessica Jones’s relationship began with rough sex in Alias #1, a Bendis/Gaydos joint. (I swear I’m not trying to pick on Bendis here, I’m just going with whatever examples come to mind and I’ve read a lot of Bendis comics. Probably more comics by him than any other singular author outside of Garth Ennis or Grant Morrison, honestly.) It was intended to show her at her lowest, how actively self-destructive she was being at that time in her life, back before she got married and had a kid with Cage. How do the fans refer to their hookup in that first issue?

“Interracial anal.”

Alias is a good comic. I went from Daredevil directly to Alias and had a grand old time. But how am I supposed to feel about that aspect of the series? It’s 2012, the issue came out in 2001 or whatever, so these jokes aren’t new. And that’s the go-to joke? That’s how people describe that scene? If I tell somebody to read that comic, five’ll get you ten that some schmuck is going to pop up with a dirty joke about it if that person decides to talk about it online. And that’s pathetic.

There’s already something uncomfortable about the debaser being black and the debased being white, regardless of Bendis’s motivations when writing. Bendis stuck the landing on that front in the text, but outside of it? He’s enabled his fans to run with this, make cute image macros out of it, and I’m like 90% sure he’s brought that phrase up in the Powers letter columns himself, though in a self-deprecating way.

I’m not with that. Not at all. I said a while back that one of the biggest parts of being black in America is being constantly reminded that you are black. That’s a clear example. Black is different, black is weird, black must be pointed out when you see it, especially when it contrasts with normal. I mean, white. It makes you feel like you don’t belong every minute of every day, like you’re an intruder in the only home you’ve ever known.

And I’m not even talking about this like I think Bendis and his fans deserved to be nailed to the wall for whatever. That’s not where I’m at, and it’s not how I work. But I do think that not talking about it, not having that conversation, knowing how crappy it makes me and people I know feel, is a mistake. Having that conversation is at least as important as talking about when somebody gets something so right that you’re left amazed. Talking about race can’t be limited to just dudes in white robes burning crosses or racial profiling. We have to talk about the little things and the everyday things, too. “Don’t go to jail unless you want to be Antwan’s wife!” things, or “That’s so ghetto” things. “Storm and Panther only got married because they’re black!” things.

Race is bigger than racism. Racism, as far as I’m concerned, is a small and probably the least interesting part of talking about race.

Why do I write about race? Partly because other people are so terrible or inept at recognizing the impact of race on their life, let alone actually talking about it. When I first started, it was a lark. Then I thought I could convince Marvel and DC to do something other than pander to their audience. Then I realized that was stupid, and I’d be better off just talking about this stuff. I’ll spit hollowpoints at them them when they miss, praise them when they hit, and hopefully someone who reads me will look and go, “Oh, this makes sense” and tomorrow will be a little better.

It took me forever to come to that point, though. I figure it’s obvious if you read my posts from that first Black History salvo on through today. Maybe not. Maybe I’m the only one that pays that much attention to what I do. But I have changed and grown as a result of talking about race and comics.

I can’t really speak authoritatively on the Big Two’s racial issues any more, outside of when they step into a realm where I don’t need deep knowledge of their books, and I’ve more than dipped my toe into spotlighting black creators of all stripes. I just need to figure out where my lane is now, where I best fit in, and how I can continue the conversation.

I want to continue the conversation because it’s too important to leave alone, no matter how much I get down on it sometimes. It’s too important to me to leave alone. I had to piecemeal together black heroes and history as a kid. If I can save someone the trouble, so much the better. I want to continue the conversation because if I won’t, that cuts the number of vocal black people willing to get their hands dirty about race & comics and have a platform like I do by half. It’s me and Hannibal Tabu out here, unless someone’s slipped my mind. (There are no black women at the big sites, which sucks. But I know of one site that’s actively working on it.)

I feel like I needed to say this here so that I don’t need to say it any more. I’m working this out in public. Thanks for following along.

(Luke Cage, forever thugging. The images in this post are two of my most favorite Cage comics. The old, dirty scans are from Essential Power Man and Iron Fist, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials), with words by Mary Jo Duffy and pictures by Kerry Gammill and Ricardo Villamonte. The newer scans are from New Avengers: Civil War, with words by Brian Michael Bendis and art by Leinil Yu. I love that Cage, as a character, is strong enough to support stories of both types, and can be funny without being a buffoon. Luke Cage was created by John Romita, Sr and Archie Goodwin. Thank you.)

I get tumblr questions sometimes, a lot of which have to do with race or racism or people being racist to me because I talk about race sometimes. Here’s anudda entry in the ASK DR RACISM, OB/GYN saga, word to your mudda:

I remember reading something of yours where you mention the racisim inherrent in the work of Robert E. Howard. While I certainly don’t disagree with you, I would counter that the racisim in James Ellroy’s work is much more profound and, in many cases, explicit. Am I wrong, and, if not, how is one case more palatable for you than the other? I’m not trying to call you out or imply some hypocracy on your part, I’m simply interested to read what you have to say about this, if anything.

I sorta disagree with the thrust of your question. Writing racist characters (or “writing racist characters well” to be specific) isn’t the same as actually being a racist who wrote racist stories. Not even close. But, I’ll give this a try, because it’ll let me talk about a few things I’ve been meaning to talk about.

The main difference between the two is the way racism is expressed in their works.

My first thought when trying to come up with an explanation was that James Ellroy is a racism fetishist, but that isn’t quite right. It’s more that he’s into the taboo aspect of racist (and homophobic, and…) language, but also the musicality and rhythms of it. The repetition, the hard consonants, the way the words bend under the weight of someone’s accent. The pleasant menace of a kool, kalm, and kollected phrasing of a bit of bitter baggage on behalf of kharacter konstruction and… uh… another k word.

Ellroy isn’t doing it just because he hates blacks and gays and mexicans and wants a platform to call them whatever old timey words for them he dug or made up. He knows that taboo things tend to be super sexy in the right hands, and he’s aiming to drench you in them and pull you onto his side. There’s something attractive and alluring about his prose, and part of it is due to the nonstop obscenities. You don’t want to be these guys, but you do want to hear their thoughts for a while. Ellroy’s doing magic tricks.

It’s also worth noting — and fiction is the only time this excuse is worth anything, it won’t ever be viable in real life — that the language was a product of the times in addition to Ellroy’s own interest in the language. It’s meant to be racist. Ellroy, at least the Ellroy I’ve read, is writing stories set in our near-past during a point in time in which most people in the USA were either racist or perfectly aight with benefitting from institutionlized racism. If that wasn’t in his work, the books would ring half as real as they do. Granted, there are other ways to go about it beyond Ellroy’s “tossing you in the deep end with your clothes on” approach, but I never got the feeling that he was a racist himself. Great with the language, sure. But he’s writing characters who were racist, instead of espousing racist beliefs himself. There’s even a wide variety of racism in his works, while an actual racist usually just sticks to one school of thought. It would be kinda like a religious fundamentalist writing a novel where she espouses Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Shinto, Wiccan, Sikh, Zoroastrianist, and Hari Krishna fundamentalism simultaneously, you know?

Robert E Howard, though, was an actual racist, him and his boy HP Lovecraft both. Though I guess HPL was so cartoonishly racist that REH just looks sorta like a regular dude standing next to him, maybe. But regardless, he was the type of racist who didn’t understand why a Mexican life was worth just as much as a white life, talked about burning lower races alive as a punishment for crimes, and who treated (or maybe just referred to, he probably didn’t have many black friends and the one he had went blind as a result of rolling his eye so much) people of other races as less than human. So: racist. Wikipedia says “he would be considered racist by modern standards” but that was clearly written by an insecure REH fan. He was definitely, undeniably racist by any measure, and especially the measure that says “being a racist means being a dick to other races.”

So REH’s racism has to be read differently from Ellroy’s racism-fetish (for lack of a better). One is an art thing, an affectation. The other is a straight up and down personal philosophy. What you believe affects what you create. Like for me, personally, my interest in crime, crime fiction, black history, girls with guns, girls wearing hoodies, smoking as one of the coolest acts in the world (thanks, robert mitchum), and so on affect what I put down on the page. if you look at my fiction (the tiny bit I’ve put online), you can connect the dots and begin to go “Oh wow, this guy’s really into weed smoke retracing skylines.” Ellroy’s interest in language and taboos manifests itself with his klear and komfortable facility with klanguage. REH’s racism manifests itself in the themes and specifics of his story.

The launch story for the new Conan comic was “Queen of the Black Coast.” I dug it and wrote about it. BUT when you know that REH is a racist, the story goes from a cool pirate tale to something else, which isn’t actually helped by the art or writing. REH’s racism means that his stories are going to have subtext that you have to explore and consider.

Bêlit is a pirate queen and commands a ship of hardened men who answer to her every word and desire. Pretty awesome idea, very girl power, and super thugged out. It’s the Warrior Queen, right? Red Sonja on a boat, Athena in a jaunty hat and pirate boots. Patty Hearst with the machine gun and beret, only on a boat instead of in a bank.

But the specifics: Bêlit has perfectly milky-white skin, something that was (honestly still is, but let’s not go there) considered the height of beauty. Her crew? A bunch of ultra-black brawny dudes. They’re her opposite, essentially. She is high and they are low, she commands and they obey, she is a steaming pot of sex and they are not. (Wait for that one.)

In and of itself, that isn’t bad. If it showed up in a modern DC Comic, like Africa being ruled by apes or that one stretch where they killed or benched a gang of fan-favorite non-white characters in favor of the army of Stepford Supergirls they got over there, you would just be like “Aw, man, c’mon dudes, you’re better than this.” You could probably roll with it. But if you knew that the author believed white women were greater creatures than black men, it wouldn’t sit so well.

Bêlit is sexy. Her and Conan don’t fall into puppy love so much as tiger love. Their union means terror for everyone else and extreme pleasure for them. BUT Bêlit’s the sole woman in command of a dark crew, which brings to mind one of my least favorite sexual fantasies, that of the black male tainting the white woman with his penis. 99% of interracial (as a genre, not a description) porn plays on this and is pretty gross about it.

The new comic adaptation (and maybe REH’s original tale, but I dunno there) avoids this, though the subtext is definitely there. Instead, I got the feeling that Bêlit withheld herself from her crew, or whatever nice way to say “she isn’t doing it with any of them, to my knowledge” you prefer. Which is interesting, because her crew are portrayed as being totally subservient, which lends me right to another of my least favorite tropes: the neutered black male.

Black masculinity (and femininity, obviously) has been an object of scorn, and occasional desire, to white culture for centuries. Consider your average prison rape joke (strike one), where the rapist is almost always black (strike two) with a big dick (strike three) and the raped is a skinny white man (somebody get this guy outta here). Pull that apart and you get the fear of the black man’s dick.

“Oh, but it’s positive!” you might be thinking. “Having a big dick is awesome!” Sure, okay. But the idea black men have big dicks didn’t come about because white people were like “Whoa! Look at Johnson’s johnson! That’s pretty impressive.” It’s because having a big dick meant you were… let’s call it “closer to nature.” A better phrase would be “more of a savage, closer to an animal than human.” (You can find the focus on black women’s bodies in a similar aisle in your local racist grocery store.)

Taking away the black man’s dick is another way to denigrate black men. (Sidebar: I just had to google the etymology of the word “denigrate” because I kinda laughed at the idea of it meaning what it looks like it means, and one of the synonyms is blacken. Yesssss, I love you, real life. Nothing’s as funny.) Reduce them to jokes or force them into certain roles and you take away their masculinity, which was and is basically synonymous with power.

So: a bunch of figuratively neutered black dudes being lorded over by the whitest of white ladies. Um. Can I get a ruling from our impartial judges?

Thanks, fellas.

And when Conan — REH’s stand-in for what Real Masculinity was all about — steps in, he becomes not just de facto leader of the boat, but Bêlit’s lover, as well. Like, instantly. Right after Conan murders a bunch of her dudes in a fight. They become obsessed with each other, go at it like rabbits, and everyone on the boat is cool with that, somehow. “Oh cool, Mister Charlie, go ‘head Miss Ann. Y’all just have fun copulating while we row to the next city. Rowing so hard our backs ache. But we won’t call OSHA. Sure. Y’all have fun. That sounds great.” Conan sidesteps the subservient gig and goes right to constant sex and planning violent raids. Conan was working there for fifteen seconds before he got promoted to king, and Bêlit actually places him over herself, in terms of authority.

All these little puzzle pieces aren’t too bad on their own, for the most part. But it’s when you put them together that you realize REH is saying something beyond “this is a story all about how Conan’s life got flipped, turned upside-down.” If you look at the hierarchy of the book, you have the unexperienced white man at the top, the experienced white woman under him (literally and figuratively in this case), and the black men coming in a distant third, below sexual notice and entirely without power except in the service of their queen and king’s wishes. Black women don’t exist here, which mirrors an absolutely amazing amount of fiction out there, especially of the fantasy or science fiction variety.

Kinda ugly, ain’t it? And I didn’t exaggerate anything or pull anything out of my butt when doing that summary. The specific stuff is in the comic (I’m assuming Brian Wood altered how the story plays out to make it fit a comic book format but stuck with REH’s basic framework and structure here.) and the themes aren’t stretches at all, so much as “Oh, weird, this story REH wrote lines up pretty directly with several racist ideas???” Hang on, I’ve got some input from our foreign expert coming in…

“Oooh, that’s a bingo! Is that the way you say it? ‘That’s a bingo?'”

Ellroy’s writing about how things were and amping up the racist language for the sake of being edgy and lyrical. He’s making up racist characters and writing about them, rather than espousing a racist viewpoint of his own. I can’t see your average racist rolling as lyrical as Ellroy’s racists, you know? What Ellroy does is not unobscene, depending, but it isn’t as much of a sin as writing a story about a fake place set in the fake past that lines up with your racist ideas and fears. That goes for stories set in a fake future where black people are Coals and whites are Pearls, too.

I, personally, don’t get down with REH’s prose. I dig Conan comics, especially the Kurt Busiek/Cary Nord joints, but his racist undertones combined with his so-so writing means I can keep my distance. Lovecraft is the same, only even more terrible at putting words in order. But the only time Elder Gods have really worked for me is Hellboy so that was an easy decision to make, like giving up brussel sprouts or any exercises that make my abs hurt.

Racism is a taint. It’s a lot of things, but in REH’s case, it’s a taint. It’s a mud puddle that you stomped in right before going into your friend’s house, and you keep leaving behind little bits of proof that you were the one that made a dumb decision. You’re mucking things up for yourself and making it hard for people to like you. I don’t know if this metaphor works but it was real important to me that I make it at 0800 on a Saturday morning.

-Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city is out today. Amazon’s got the regular version of good kid, m.A.A.d city for five bucks. You can also get the deluxe edition for ten bucks, which includes three extra tracks (“Black Boy Fly” is heat and shoulda been on the album) and a digital booklet. You should buy this album. I preordered the vinyl, which I feel like was a great idea, now that I’ve heard the album. I dunno if it’s a promo or what, but Lamar’s debut album Section.80 is $5.49 right now, and that’s great, too.

–good kid, m.A.A.d city opens with a prayer played off a cassette tape and spoken by young men. “Lord God, I come to you a sinner and I humbly repent for my sins. I believe that Jesus is Lord. I believe you raised him from the dead. I will ask that Jesus come to my life and be my Lord and Savior. I receive Jesus to take control of my life and that I may live for him from this day forth. Thank you Lord Jesus for saving me with Your precious blood. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”

It’s a common prayer. It immediately put me in mind of Yasiin Bey, bka Mos Def. He opened Black On Both Sides (and his other albums) with the phrase “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.” It means “In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the most Merciful,” and it is an expression of faith on the part of Mos. It’s always delivered in his own voice, almost a whisper. (You’ve heard Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” probably — “Bismillah” is used there, as well.) It’s Bey giving thanks and publicly expressing his beliefs.

Kendrick’s is different. It’s recorded, which is already one step of separation from Kendrick-the-character and Kendrick-the-artist. The men are unidentified and speak with no real intonation, two more steps of separation. It’s rote. It’s men at church going through the motions. It won’t make sense until you finish the album.

–good kid, m.A.A.d city has a lot of skits, which puts me in mind of Prince Paul’s near-flawless A Prince Among Thieves. Sometimes it’s Kendrick’s parents calling to ask about their van, sometimes it’s him talking to his friends. Sometimes it’s something more violent.

But the skits work. Instead of being speed bumps, they aid the album into sounding like a cohesive work, rather than a collection of songs. They provide a narrative, or at least a through line, from song to song. It enhances the songs, rather than getting in their way. It’s probably half as good on shuffle, but as far as skits go, Lamar has the right idea.

The skits bleed back into the songs and vice versa. Sometimes a line of dialogue kicks off a song, and sometimes a bit of dialogue recalls Lamar’s past work. They don’t feel like they’re just skits. They’re connective tissue.

Tracks 1-10 form a story that ends where it begins. The last two tracks, “Real” featuring Anna Wise of Sonnymoon, and “Compton” featuring Dr Dre, are a… coda? An epilogue? Something.

-In thinking about it, it’s structured similar to A Prince Among Thieves, too. We start on Y, then we see A through Y, and then we catch up with Z. “Pain” segues into “How It All Started” which leads up to “You Got Shot,” and then we get the cruel finale of “The New Joint (DJ’s Delite)” b/w “A Prince Among Thieves.”

good kid, m.A.A.d city goes from “Sherane a.k.a. Master Splinter’s Daughter” to “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe,” and then leads you through “Poetic Justice” before the cycle completes four songs later on “Sing About Me/I’m Dying of Thirst.” “Real” and “Compton” are the outro.

Less cruel and more uplifting than “A Prince Among Thieves,” but still similar in structure. Hook, then pull back, then stack tension until it’s too late to turn back.

-Son, there’s even a freestyle skit that’s explicitly presented as Kendrick Lamar rhyming in his homey’s car! Remember “What U Got (The Demo)” with Breezly Brewin and Big Sha?

My heart done hardened, ready to put the world on a milk carton
Fuck it, no one else deserve to live
I done gave all I got to give and still ain’t got shit (What?)
So who mad? You grab and ransom
And I’ma pierce his soul and touch the heart of his grandson (oh shit!)

I’ve been wanting to jack “ready to put the world on a milk carton” for a story or SOMEthing since 1999, man.

Anyway: parallels!

-Rap is influenced by real people living real lives, and then those same people allow themselves to be influenced by rap, creating a cycle that feeds on itself. Put differently, Cam’Ron didn’t invent “pause” or “no homo”, and Kanye didn’t invent “ham” or “cray.” But, after Kanye, a lot of people who aren’t from the south like to talk about going ham. After Cam, “no homo” became a phenomenon. It doesn’t take much for an idea to go global.

At one point on good kid, m.A.A.d city, Lamar and his friends take inspiration from a Jeezy song. “Last time I checked, I was the man on these streets,” Jeezy says. Lamar’s boy, in response, says, “Yeah, yeah, that shit right there. I’m trynna be the nigga in the streets.”

Rap album feeding on a rap album feeding off real life feeding off a rap album.

Trap or die.

-On “Sing About Me,” Lamar takes on the role of the sister of Keisha, a woman he talked about on “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)” on Section.80. It’s the kind of song rappers make about how it sucks to be a lady. He name checks “Brenda’s Got A Baby,” you know? It’s a good example of those types of songs, probably on par with Lupe Fiasco’s “He Say She Say” or that verse out of “Kick Push II.” Patronizing, right? But in a way that makes me just feel like I get it, even if I don’t particularly dig the execution, rather than frustrated. His heart’s in the right place.

But on “Sing About Me,” Lamar directly addresses himself by way of the role of Keisha’s sister. “What’s crazy was, I was hearing about it, but doubted your ignorance. How could you ever just put her on blast and shit, judging her past and shit?” and later, “You lying to these motherfuckers, talking about you can help with my story. You can help me if you sell this pussy for me, nigga.”

“Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)” was bleak and direct and sad and maybe leans a little too far toward victim blaming and not enough toward… anything else. It’s cool to see Lamar self-correct, explicitly self-correct, himself on wax. And then the next verse is a rebuttal to the sister, of sorts, as Lamar explains where he was coming from. No easy answers. That shows a thoughtfulness and fluidity that I really dig.

-Fluidity: good kid, m.A.A.d city doesn’t sound like Section.80 much at all. Lamar adopts multiple flows and crosses a broad range of subject matter over the course of good kid. It’s not as stridently focused on life as an ’80s baby like Section.80 was, but it’s just as sharp.

Lamar trades the post-Reagan Era trauma of Section.80 for life growing up in Compton on good kid, and it totally works. They’re two of a kind, as far as subject matter goes, but it gives each album a different texture. Section.80 is borderline funereal at times, a checklist of horrors and injustice. This one is more even, less focused on the foibles of a generation of young men that learned how to do everything spiteful and more focused on just how they live their life.

I mean, son made a song about peer pressure in 2012 and it’s subtle in all the right ways. That’s dope.

–good kid, m.A.A.d city is an ill album. I ended up preordering the vinyl, just going by how much I liked Section.80 (it hasn’t left my iPod, Schoolboy Q’s Habits and Contradictions neither). I never do that, but I felt strongly that Kendrick Lamar would come through. And come through he did. It’s an album, a proper, listen to it front-to-back and let it simmer, album. Upbeat enough that you could spin it at a relaxed party, but down enough to spark deep thoughts. (Those voice mails, boy.)

-I’ve been thinking a lot about how little black boys grow up lately, in part because of real life and the Little Brother documentary project. What goes wrong, what goes off, and what goes down to make a good kid into something else. All kids are good, but it’s the poison we put in them that screws them up.

“Compton, USA made me an angel on angel dust” kind of sums it all up, in a way.

-I like this outro from Section.80 even more now, because good kid, m.A.A.d city builds on its blueprint:

“See a lot of y’all don’t understand Kendrick Lamar, because you wonder how I could talk about money, hoes, clothes, God, and history all in the same sentence. You know what all them things have in common? Only half of the truth if you tell it. See, I spent twenty-three years on this Earth searching for answers ’til one day I realized I had to come up with my own.

I’m not on the outside looking in. I’m not on inside looking out. I’m in the dead fucking centre looking around.

You ever seen a newborn baby kill a grown man? That’s an analogy for the way the world make me react. My innocence been dead. So the next time I talk about money, hoes, clothes, God, and history all in the same sentence, just know I meant it, and you felt it, ’cause you too are searching for answers.

I’m not the next pop star. I’m not the next socially aware rapper. I am a human motherfucking being over dope ass instrumentation.

Kendrick Lamar.”

BET Awards/Prez Debate crossover: Romney & Obama give a freestyled speech on their positions in B&W shakycam while DJ Quik does table beats

— david brothers (@hermanos) October 16, 2012

Biden/Ryan serve as weed carriers/hypemen. Biden throws a chair halfway thru, causing a brawl. Ryan gets on youtube to complain/defend later

— david brothers (@hermanos) October 16, 2012

HUGE Romney gaffe as he stutters while looking for a rhyme for “All I’m saying is the government has too many major figures.”

— david brothers (@hermanos) October 16, 2012

Even HUGER Obama gaffe when we find out Jay Electronica wrote his whole speech.

— david brothers (@hermanos) October 16, 2012

Obama shows up on stage wearing Bush II’s Reagan chain, mean-mugging like “Do something” RT @kennybloggins hermanos Who takes who’s chain?

— david brothers (@hermanos) October 16, 2012

Jay-Z is in the crowd watching the debates. He signs Romney to Roc Nation, but is like “Yo, you need to drop Amil before this deal is done.”

— david brothers (@hermanos) October 16, 2012

Obama, incredibly, dodges Kanye’s invite to GOOD Music, instead joining a revitalized Boot Camp Clik. “I like the freedom and Sean P is ill”

— david brothers (@hermanos) October 16, 2012

Canibus is freestyling a new constitution in the parking lot. Papoose looks on, ready to deliver his take on the Gettysburg Address.

— david brothers (@hermanos) October 16, 2012

@hermanos Ron Paul signs to Death Row Records, claims to poised to creep while the rest of the candidates sleep on November 6 #stillrelevant

— Chris Eckert (@kennybloggins) October 16, 2012

Birdman, unimpressed by Obama’s speech, rubs his hands in a disappointing manner. “What happened to that boy?” he mutters.

— david brothers (@hermanos) October 16, 2012

@hermanos “prprprprprprprpr,” he adds

— Gabey M (@theindigi) October 17, 2012

DMX, already shocked that someone named BARACK is president, claims nobody is named Mitt, pistolwhips three bystanders, flashes fake badge

— Chris Eckert (@kennybloggins) October 16, 2012

Word on the street is that the Big Pun hologram went off without a hitch… and then went off. The night is young, and the Big Pun hologram is already fighting and hiding his gun. The debate moderator is bugging, screaming, “Who the FUCK invited Pun?!”

I wrote a thing for ComicsAlliance about Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, and John Romita’s take on Spider-Man. It’s the most amazing piece of writing about comics you’ll ever see in your entire life, even if you live to be two hundred years old. It’s life-affirming and revitalizing. It’s incredible. It’ll make your teeth whiter and clear up your skin. Here’s an excerpt that I’m going to use to spring off into few more thoughts. Prepare yourself — I don’t want you to get hurt when you fall out of your chair in amazement after reading this.

But it makes sense. I figure somewhere around 50% of you out there remember being a teenaged boy. Do you remember that thirst for being seen as a man? Being seen as self-sufficient, cool, and intelligent? Showing the world that the you inside your shell was just as cool as the coolest guy in school, if not cooler? That’s where Spider-Man begins, from that position of deep longing and thirst. He wants to be seen a certain way.

You can see it in how Spider-Man behaves. Keep in mind that Peter Parker was a teenager when he became a hero. He doesn’t know how to be a man. He simply hasn’t had the experience yet. But, he suits up anyway, and he pointedly takes the name Spider-Man, which is a statement in and of itself. And how does Peter Parker, 15-year-old boy, act when he pulls on the red’n’blues?

He acts like a hero. He doesn’t show fear, not usually. He treats his villains, a surprising number of which are double or triple his age, like peers. He condescends to them. He quips. He acts like a man. And he saves the day. He’s acting like a hero, he’s emulating his heroes. He’s pretending, back in those early days. He’s not Spider-Man yet. Spider-Man isn’t the true Peter Parker. It’s just a face he wears sometimes.

I really dig this aspect of Spider-Man’s origin, the idea of superhero as performance. It reminds me of masculinity as performance, and of how rappers amp up what’s perceived as real in an attempt to keep it real. But it also reminds me of my other favorite Marvel dude who started out pretending to be a hero, Mister Carl “Welcome to Harlem, where you welcome to problems” Lucas, better known as Luke “I get the boosters boosting, I get computers puting” Cage. Here’s his superhero origin:

The stuff about Spidey playing a role is an implication, something I can read into the text fifty years later. I have no idea if it’s Lee & Ditko’s intended reading or not, but it works out shockingly well thematically and mechanically. But with Cage, well, the acting is explicit. “Yeah! Outfit’s kinda hokey… but so what? All part of the superhero scene. And this way when I use my powers, it’s gonna seem natural.”

I love that Cage only ever put on a costume because it’d let him do what he needed to do, not because he wanted to be a cape. Cage became a superhero not because it was the right thing to do, but because it’d let him live his life how he wanted to. It’d let him get revenge on William Stryker and use his powers in public. Doing good wasn’t an afterthought, but it definitely wasn’t the first thing on his mind. He needed a way to fit in first, right? So he appropriates superhero iconography to buy legitimacy and freedom.

It reminds me of a couple other things: code-switching and protective reactions to racism. Code-switching is maybe easiest described as the difference between how you talk to your friends and how you talk to your parents. Or you can just read this bit from Dave Chappelle’s episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio, which I edited from a transcript of the episode:

Lipton: Now don’t make fun of me– that when you play white dudes, your speech is pitch perfect, which led me to realize that either one of you could, if you wished, speak that way all the time. In other words, is it a matter of choice?

Chappelle: Every black american is bilingual, all of ’em. We speak street vernacular, and we speak job interview. There’s a certain way I gotta speak to have access.

I had a conversation with someone the other day about baby names. I was trying to figure out a nickname for a certain name, and I tossed one out there. She said that sounds “a little hood.” Her logic was that “hood names allows people to perform preconceived ideas.” I rejected that idea on the basis of the fact that people will form preconceived ideas about you even if your name is John Smith if you don’t look a certain way, so why not make your own way from top to bottom?

I tend to think of code-switching as a negative, a way to fit into a society that doesn’t like you. What’s cool about this Cage origin is that it uses code-switching not just as a way to fit in, but to get over. Cage knows that he’s behind the eight ball in more ways than one. He’s a fugitive from the law, but there were also only so many opportunities for black dudes of a certain type.

So what’s a fella with newly-hardened brown skin to do? The only thing you can do: you find some way around the rules. If you can’t use your powers in plain clothes or get a straight job, then you do something that lets you do that. In the Marvel Universe, you throw on a costume and you come up with a gimmick. You find something that’ll let you get by. More generally, or maybe more specifically from a black American point of view, you find something that’ll let you get by in a white man’s world. (Crack rock, wicked jump shots, telling jokes, putting on a dress and making million-dollar comedies, rapping, underground railroad, enlisting, whatever.) You do what you have to do.

I like this aspect of Cage, though I can’t remember if it was ever tackled explicitly after this scene. But I always liked the idea that Cage just kinda fell into superheroing, instead of setting out to become the next Captain America or Black Power Man. It lends a certain flavor to Cage that isn’t there for a Spider-Man or Captain America, an edginess and realness that I can appreciate and recognize. It feels like a real life phenomenon heightened and translated for a superhero audience.

It’s cool to look at this and then check out Cage these days, where he’s almost completely eschewed the visual trappings of superherohood and just does his job like he wants to. Cage reached the point where he doesn’t have to act a certain way to get access or dance for his dinner. He can just do what he wants, when he wants, and his stature is large enough that nobody can hold him back.

I said years ago that Luke Cage is the American Dream. Still true.

Here’s a quote Billy Tucci is using to promote his new comic, which is all about (and sponsored by) private military company Blackwater:

Like most people, all I had heard or read concerning private security contractors was that they were reckless cowboys whose actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were considered almost criminal by the media who weren’t there.

Mmmm. Here’s the key phrase: “by the media who weren’t there.” It’s a dog whistle. It’s meant to discredit any naysayers by painting them as lying liars. It’s a variant on the old “You can’t judge it if you haven’t tried to do it” thing people use to silence critics. This one is just specific to soldiering. Which, okay, I’ll believe that. I’m from a military family. My granddad served in Vietnam, my father in Gulf War I. I get it, I respect the sentiment. But I respect it when it’s an honest sentiment, not something being used to protect a company that raped and murdered its fair share of people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the “almost criminal” things the lying media reported on was the time the company murdered seventeen innocent Iraqi civilians. Or the time that someone in the employ of Blackwater checked out 200 AK-47s from an armory in Afghanistan and signed his name “Eric Cartman.” Or the time that a Blackwater got drunk, wandered outside, and shot a bodyguard of Iraq’s vice president dead and was then spirited out of Iraq, avoiding being charged by the Iraqi government. Or the time they shot and killed a family traveling to Bagdhad, including a nine-year old boy. Oh wait, my bad. What actually happened is that they opened fire on the minivan, killing the boy. They shot his mother in her back as she bent to shield her 3 month old daughter. The 3 month old caught a bullet to the face. Or the times that Blackwater kidnapped Iraqi nationals for “extraordinary rendition.” That’s code for torture, if you aren’t aware. Ooh, or the fact that they probably kidnapped Iraqi girls, brought them to the Green Zone, and made them give blowjobs to the contractors. Ohhhh, hang on, here’s a video of Blackwater contractors running over an Iraqi woman and then gunning it to get away. Go to around 2:30 to see the impact.

Whoops! Ha ha. Guess you had to be there? Like the media wasn’t, those lying scumbags.

Tucci’s comic, The Blackwater Chronicles, is yet another attempt by this raping, murdering, horrible company to rehabilitate its image and erase the past. A prior effort included an Xbox 360 video game where you play a set of heroic (white, of course) contractors in Fake Arabia. The game was awful, of course, and former Blackwater top dog Erik Prince described it as being “along the lines of kids running around their neighborhood playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians.” My favorite of their efforts is changing their name from Blackwater to Xe and now to Academi. Two name changes since 2005? Nice one, bro. That fills me with trust and forgiveness.

These people are war criminals. They aren’t subject to the same rules and regulations as the actual US military, and they are free to do whatever they want, apparently, and get bailed out by their political friends. Y’all hear that John Ashcroft is on the board of directors for Academi? Ha ha, that can’t possibly be significant. Ex-Blackwater vice chairman Cofer Black is Mitt Romney’s “special advisor” on foreign policy issues.

Blackwater is what happens when you turn war from an evil into a business enterprise.

Thank goodness we have a brave soul willing to tell us the TRUE story about how Blackwater is actually a hero to millions, the force we need in these fallen times, a strong bastion against the forces of terror. Thank goodness we’re going to get an action-packed, exciting comic book about these boys, the boys who do what we can’t because it’s the right thing to do.

There’s definitely a vital and harrowing story to be told — a true history, not a eulogy/corrective/hagiography sponsored by Blackwater and its goons — lurking around Blackwater. I like reading about war. I like war comics, too. One of my favorites, one of the hands down best, are the Sgt Rock comics by Joe Kubert and Bob Kanigher. There was this little tag they put in the comics. It said “Make war no more.” I first saw it as a kid in the tattered Sgt Rock comics my uncle gave me. I didn’t get it then. But I grew up. And I read.

The point was that even when war is necessary, or you are forced into action, it isn’t something to celebrate or glamorize. It’s something awful. It’s something unforgivable. It’s something that causes untold levels of misery for everyone involved. It saps the innocence from young boys and turns them into something else. It destroys families, both on the front lines and back home. It makes an entire country complicit in war crimes. The only people it benefits are the people who make money off misery.

Did y’all see Oliver North pimping the new Call of Duty at E3 this year?

This is the world we live in. This is the stuff we expect to entertain us. We have to do better. We owe it to ourselves and our children to do better. Blackwater literally got away with murder, and now they’re trying to paint themselves as heroes, a roving band of do-gooders. The Merry Men, who are unfairly maligned by the media and haven’t left a trail of broken, raped, wounded, and murdered bodies — American, Iraq, Afhgani, and otherwise — across the Middle East.

We’re America, right? We’re supposed to be better than these scumbags. We’re supposed to be the ones in the right. But here we are. And here they are, selling their own story to us using code words like “controversial and dangerous lifestyle.” We keep enabling monsters to get away scot-free and make a fortune. We keep letting these bastards win.

Do you know why Blackwater is controversial? They’re controversial because they murdered people whose only crime was being near Blackwater when their people were drunk and trigger-happy. Not because the media lies about them. Don’t fall for their okey-doke.

Fuck Blackwater and fuck this comic.

This Trayvon Martin thing has crawled all the way under my skin. In part because it’s an absolute travesty, which I feel like is obvious to anyone with two eyes and half a brain. But really, it’s because I’ve heard this song over and over again, ever since I was a kid. “Say sir when speaking to authority figures, keep your hands out of your pockets, look directly into their eyes, be respectful, do everything you can to make sure that my firstborn son doesn’t come home in a pine box because people can and will hurt you for no reason past your skin color.”

One of the biggest tragedies in the Trayvon Martin case isn’t that he was hunted and murdered and his killer will probably get away scot-free. It’s that a mother and father lost their son for a senseless reason, and now their son is an idea. He’s a cautionary tale. He’s a prop for someone else’s argument, and will be until the end of time. He’s not even a statistic. At least with a statistic, it’s anonymous and eventually fades into nothing. An idea is inescapable. People are already taking that boy’s name in vain, using his photo and name however they wish and to prop up whatever point they have to make. I’m probably guilty of it myself, just by writing this paragraph.

There’s a lot of Brothers boys. My little brother is 22. My littlest brother turns four this year. I’ve got close boy cousins that range from 10 to 18 or so. I’m slimmer than most of ’em, but we’re all pretty tall. Tall enough and black enough to be threatening by default, to know not to mouth off to the police, to know how many black people are in a room within seconds of walking in, to knowing exactly how angry we can get in public before we become a Problem. It is what it is.

None of us are innocent, despite what we might tell our parents. Stories like Trayvon Martin’s, or Sean Bell’s, or Kathryn Johnston’s, or Oscar Grant’s prove that the first thing people are going to do when I get shot is look at what I did to deserve it. Not even in a funny Richard Pryor, “It oughtta be against the law to make a motherfucker want to kill you,” sort of way, either. I mean people are going to go out and look for the things that I was involved in that make me less of an innocent, and therefore more worthy of being killed. He smokes weed? Probably a drug dealing thug. Oh dang, he has a tattoo in Swahili on his arm? Is that gang-related? Did he hate white people? Is he a radical black nationalist? Came from a single parent household, huh? Got up to hoodlum stuff while he was overseas? Let’s find some old girlfriends, what do they got to say? What’s with those scars up and down his arms? Have you seen his iTunes? Did he buy all this murder music? I made a joke the other day that my library is 1/4 drug dealing music, 1/4 drug using music, 1/4 murda muzik, and 1/4 love songs. Pick your proof. Build your picture of me.

Right now, Reuters (and the New York Times, and other outlets) is reporting that Martin was suspended from school for ten days because they found a baggie that might have at one point contained marijuana in his backpack. It didn’t have weed in it, mind. It might have. It’s irrelevant to the case, but there’s an intimation there, a hint that Martin wasn’t just black, he was black. Aggressive. Angry. Whatever stereotype you choose to fill-in to his blank so that you can make an informed decision on how to feel about him getting shot after buying candy and tea during the All-Star game. Since he had maybe smoked weed at seventeen years old, several weeks before he was tracked and murdered by a guy with a gun and an inflated sense of his own authority, he had maybe had it coming. After all, drugs, right? Something something gang banger something. Rap music.

This happens every time. It happened to Oscar Grant, it happened to Sean Bell, it happened to Kathryn Johnston (who was 92 years old when she was shot and killed and had officers plant drugs in her home), and it happened to Shem Walker. Remember that guy? He came home to his family’s house to find a suspicious stranger sitting on his stoop. Knowing good and well that nothing good will ever come of that, he told the stranger to move on. The stranger had earphones on and didn’t hear him somehow. Walker went to remove the man physically, for obvious reasons, they got into a fight, and then the stranger pulled a gun and shot him in the chest. The stranger, of course, was an undercover cop, waiting out a drug bust down the road. In the days and weeks after the shooting, we found out that Walker used to be a convict. Why? Because… because, man, just because. Because that somehow has something to do with him not wanting some suspicious dude on his mother’s porch. Son was 49 years old, I don’t know how old his mother was, and he was killed for doing exactly what he should have done in that situation. He was killed for being a good son. But he went to jail once you know? Never mind whether or not he was reformed. He was a convict.

Martin’s story — all of these stories — is a reminder. It’s a reminder that you have so little control over your life that who you are doesn’t actually matter. All that matters is what other people can make you into. You’re not a person, not in the end. You’re just a thing to be used and discarded, no matter how good of a guy you were, no matter how cute your daughter is, they’re going to find something on you and that’s going to be that. Sorry, but Mister Charlie needs grist for the mill.

It’s depressing. I’m depressed. I’ve had a hard March. I’ve been pretty much checked out, if we’re being totally honest with each other. It took me several days to realize that I almost actually died when I had my bicycle accident on 02/29. If the lady behind me hadn’t hit her brakes coming down that hill after I wiped out and savaged my knee, I’d be done. Zipped up in plastic, when it happens, that’s it. The month that followed has been positively absurd with the number of things going wrong, breaking, and whatever else. (The month isn’t over yet and there’s good odds I’m due one more poor turn, ha ha!) I’ve been bummed for weeks, running as fast as I can to stay ahead of the devil, and this Martin thing is like… it’s cold water to the face. It’s a “Welcome back!” from reality, where America chews up and spits out the ones who need it most, where life isn’t fair and you were stupid for thinking it was fair in the first place, where being black makes you a target to the people sworn to swerve and protect and a threat to everyone else. Reminds me of something Sarah Jones once said. “It is the thickest blood on this planet/ The blood that, sprays and spills in buckets/ soaks and stains the nightly news, but fuck it/ A colored life still ain’t worth but a few ducats.”

And it’s racism. All of it. It is unquestionably, objectively racism. It’s not some guy going out to lynch nigras for looking at white women, but that’s not the entirety of what racism is. Racism is a system. Racism is a way of thinking. Racism is subconscious. Racism is an entire country being trained to suspect an entire race of being shifty, lazy, or suspicious by default. I have to prove that I’m not a threat? How about I make America prove it doesn’t want to murder me, since there’s way more precedent for that than some skinny kid being a savage. If I have my hood up and I’m not smiling because I’m having a bad day, I’m a threat, someone to make you clutch your purse or hug your girl closer. I’m a thug? C’mon son. I’m just having a bad day in the big city. Get real. You’ve been trained to see brown skin and go to “Threat!” first instead of “Person!” You’ve been brainwashed.

The craziest part of this brainwashing is how a very basic situation has been twisted into something incredibly ugly. An unarmed child is shot and killed for doing nothing but walking home by a man with no authority who had been told to stand down by the police. This is cut and dry. You can look at this and go, “Oh, that’s a tragedy.” But because the kid was black, because everything is ultra-politicized, because racism is so ingrained in the DNA of the United States of America, this is somehow a controversy. I repeat: an unarmed child was shot dead by a grown man. This is one situation that everyone should be able to understand. It’s a nightmare scenario for every family ever. And yet… the news is telling us that the child may have possibly been a thug, a drug dealer, a hoodlum, a monster, as if any of that has anything to do with why he got shot. There are people out there actively digging up (incorrect) dirt on Trayvon Martin as if that matters at all. He’s a… I don’t even know, a point in a long-running argument, an abstraction about the evils of black youth.

The flip side of that coin is that “Black people are cool now.” Saving them, at least.

The past few weeks have been pretty bad for trend hopping. There was the Kony 2012 crew getting up on their white horse and riding into Uganda by way of Youtube so they could… make Joseph Kony famous? That guy is personally responsible for the dislocation of millions, the murder and rape of thousands of children, and worse. Guess what: he’s plenty famous already, and your idiotic, soundbite-ready youtubes aren’t a help except to people whose idea of activism is turning their location on Twitter to “Iran.” Trayvon Martin has given plenty of people a chance to beat their chest, including a bunch of Occupy Wall Streets advocating violence at a peaceful march. Geraldo is off somewhere telling black people how to live their lives. Everyone is all choked up at black men and women sharing their stories of racism and appalled at the world we live in. Everybody’s got a cause, everybody feels bad… I’m not without sin myself, this essay is proof positive, but I can’t tell you how depressing it is to see my white friends suddenly discover police brutality (hey there, occupy wall street), or racism, or realize that every single one of their black friends has a bunch of stories about times that their race negatively affected their lives. It’s so obvious to me, and it sucks and is unfair that even support sometimes feels like an attack. Where have you been that you didn’t notice this until now?

The experience of being black in America is one of being constantly reminded that you are black in America, with all the drama that comes from it. The preferred term online amongst… whoever for black people is People of Color, or POC. I hate it, because yo, first, everyone has color, and second, how about you don’t define me in opposition to somebody else? I feel like that should be a basic human right. The right to not be not-White. It’s basic things like that that are what I mean. I can’t escape the fact that I’m black and have built-in baggage, even if I wanted to.

A post-racial society is a myth, and everyone who claims to be color-blind is an idiot. Race is inextricable from our daily life, for better or for worse. That’s part of why so much of my comics-related writing has revolved around the intersection between black people and comics. It matters to me, on a deeply personal level, and I’m trying to figure out how to make that come across, from my first stumbling and clumsy steps to the targeted icepicks to the neck in blog form that I wish I was better at using today. I can’t not think about it, because almost every time I read a comic, I’m reminded of it.

I’m constantly being reminded of the fact that I’m black and how terrible being black can be almost every time I take in something. Music, movies, real life, love, friendship, whatever. It affects everything. You can’t be race-blind. Not when every movie with a black star is the tipping point for black cinema, or when the cool new way to say a woman has a nice butt online (“DAT ASS!”) is explicitly satirizing somebody’s fake idea of a black rapper (specifically Rich Boy), or when a discussion on white British soul singers somehow turns into a referendum on who “owns” a certain type of music. Not when, in America, white is always going to be treated as the default. There’s gonna be that twinge, that feeling of “Oh, this is talking about me or people like me,” and it’s stupid. It’s absolutely stupid.

And black is beautiful, man. I wouldn’t trade being black, being who I am, for the world. But, boy would I love to jettison some of the baggage associated with it. I don’t like looking at Trayvon Martin and seeing me and my brothers and my cousins. I don’t like talking to the homey Cheryl Lynn and having her point out that at a certain point, the light goes out in the eyes of little black boys, and then realizing that there’s a reason I stopped smiling in every picture I have of myself past a certain age. I don’t like realizing that every connection I made to a popular character comes via metaphor or inference, rather than actual fact. Real life is hard enough without that baggage.

With it… well, life goes on regardless. Trayvon Martin has graduated to being a symbol, rather than a person. He’s a chess piece to be used to show that black people are horrible, that police brutality exists, that kids these days are a problem, that the news media is broken and corrupt, that America eats its young. In death, as in life, he’s treated as something less than human. It’s incredibly unfair, and there’s no solution on the horizon.

Someone on Twitter, I forget who (sorry), posted a link to “Shit White Girls Say… to Black Girls,”, and this video had me laughing hard at work.

With a few exceptions (“Jews were slaves, too” & “My grandma hates collards” mainly, ’cause what kind of monster hates greens?), I’ve heard all of this, despite not being a black girl. This is one of those “So funny it’s true!” videos, and its jokes have plenty of bite. I keep my hair super short in part because some white people LOVE to touch black hair, like it’s catnip or magical or something. (It isn’t. It’s just black. And mine.) If I say no, you can’t touch my hair, then that’s… I don’t even know, playing hard to get? “Your mouth says no but your hair says YES YES YES TOUCH ME TOUCH ME?” And I mean, I’m a grown man with a good aight job who’s self-sufficient, and people still pull that. I had a mohawk for a couple months in late 2011 (word to travis bickle) and it still happened. C’mon, son. It’s always so awkward, too, because nobody means nothing by it but it’s enraging and then you’re taking things too seriously and you gotta loosen up, your hair’s cute, i just wanna touch it and–

Don’t even get me started on afro-fetishism (it’s not that cool of a hairstyle, y’all, especially after you put your hands in it) or calling black folks some variety of chocolate or other brown foods as a romantic thing. Really? Are you twelve?

This chick saying “______ is soooo ghetto” and “Hollerrrrr” had me in stitches. It’s a dead on impersonation, and the ghetto one is a particular pet peeve of mine. It’s pretty screwed up, if you think about how that word is used and the perception of who is in the ghetto.

I’ve been following this documentary series called Little Brother for a while now. It’s composed of several interviews with young black boys from pre-teens on up. The producers talk to the boys about their life, basically what life is like. It’s counterprogramming, I figure, for black pathology, which teaches that black boys will be dead or in jail by 25, are crack babies, are savages, will stick you for your purse in an elevator, wants your white daughters, and on and on. It starts at the top, really, with “What’s wrong with the black community?” before trickling down to “How will black women date if all the black men are in jail?” to “Let’s completely ruin the perfectly useful phrase ‘down low’ so that we can push a paranoid and probably homophobic trend, also, how will black women date if all of the black men are secretly gay?” to “Why are black teens having so many babies?” and then on down to “Seriously though, black boys will rape and murder you just for living. Hide your daughters.” Talib Kweli had a good line in “Astronomy (8th Light)” that took a while to sink in for me. “Black like the perception of who on welfare.”

It’s an old and poisonous lie, and one we still haven’t gotten rid of. It’s taken new forms, too–Herman Cain is cooning his black behind off in order to convince the white people who will make or break his campaign that he isn’t like the dangerous black people, look! he hates Muslims, too! “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?”

This documentary hits close to home for me and probably a lot of other people, because you grow up seeing this on the news (this is back when the news was true), reading it in text books, and hearing warnings from teachers and/or DARE cops. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t actually true because you had no way of knowing better. You assume that it’s right, and maybe you start living your life accordingly, because that’s how you’re Supposed To Be. You get boxed in.

Personally, I grew up fatherless. My mom took me to the YMCA or the sports league on base so I could play basketball and soccer. She was a social worker at the time, so she saw the worst of us. I taught myself to shave, which is still one of my least favorite things to do, cut my hair, and talk to girls. I had to guess at what makes a man, or try to glean secret truths by watching other people. It was confusing and frustrating, and the sort of thing that everyone probably goes through. You’d never know it, though, because who’d talk about it? “Hey man, what should I say to Terra?” “How do I shave?”

This documentary is really interesting. I like seeing black boys getting a chance to talk about what they like and don’t like, how and where they’re growing up, and how they relate to their family. It’s nice to see them talking about what love feels like. It’s nice, I guess, to see a confirmation that I was normal, everyone I knew was normal, and things are probably gonna be okay.

The trailer:

I got an email this morning letting me know that Little Brother is airing on TV tonight. It’s showing on the Documentary Channel.

Don’t miss the U.S. National Television Premiere of Little Brother: Things Fall Apart on Documentary Channel, tonight at 8pm EST/PST with a repeat broadcast at 11:00pm EST/PST.

Subscribers of Dish Network (Channel 197) and DirecTV (Channel 267) across the United States will be able to watch the broadcast.

If you’re like me, though, and you don’t have that channel, you can check it out on Amazon. Little Brother: Things Fall Apart is available for seven day rental for $4.99.

I feel like this project is pretty important. It’s a humanizing effort, a reminder that these boys are no different from anyone else. They weren’t poisoned from birth.

Give it a look, if you’re curious.

The opening to Nas’s “Proclamation (Nigger Hatred)” is killer. It’s what sold me on his (aight to good) untitled album back when it was still called Nigger. The Malcolm X quote, the Paul Mooney joke (“White folks made up ‘nigger’ and don’t want me to say it” is endlessly funny to me for some reason), and Nas’s quiet, subdued flow… it’s haunting. It’s Nas at his best, kicking something conscious but jiggy. There’s no complicated wordplay here, either. It’s just straight spitting. Honestly, “Proclamation” has the perfect sound for sad black music in the 2000s, doesn’t it? I dunno. It’s spare and sorta menacing because of it, but melancholy, too.

The video for “Be A Nigger Too” starts out with “Proclamation” and it’s the perfect lead-in to the video. “Be A Nigger Too” is a montage of… it’s just people, really. Military cats, families, fights, slave times, robberies, awards, everything. There’s a lot of actor cameos in there, too. It’s a snapshot of real life. It’s a solid video, but there’s one part that gave me goosebumps back when I first watched it.

At about 3:50 in, the video slams to a bassy pulse and the slave times are juxtaposed with scenes and faces in the modern day. It’s drawing a direct line from one to the other. That’s pretty powerful, but then it flashes back to black and white and it gets really crazy.

This kid, a teenager I guess, wakes up out of bed and grabs his uzi off the dresser, and runs up on a white man outside. The kid is mirroring Nas’s rhymes–“Wake up in the mornin’, shake my third leg in the toilet/ Uzi on the nightstand, I’m the man you go to war with/ Not the man you go to war against/ patience, I’ll get you / if that means I can’t sleep a whole year, I’ma get you”–but what got me was when he flipped that classic Malcolm X pose, with the M1 by the window. The posture is different. Malcolm is alert and watchful. The kid is waiting, but hiding. There’s a reason for that, I think.

The thing about the Malcolm photo is that it’s iconic. It’s burned into the psyche of so many people. It’s a symbol of black power, black masculinity, love, and a lot of things. It’s a man making a conscious decision to protect his family from those who would do them harm. It’s the idea that meeting violence with violence is not something to be ashamed of. It’s something to avoid, but when your back is against the wall, you need to be ready to put someone down. It’s an acknowledgement of the danger of speaking your mind, but an affirmation that you must speak your mind, no matter the consequences. It’s huge. I can’t even begin to really wrap my mind around it.

This kid with the gun is the opposite. It doesn’t mean any of the things that the Malcolm photo does. Instead, it’s a failure. It’s born not out of power, but out of fear. The kid isn’t there to protect anyone. He’s a predator. He wants revenge, not freedom. Or maybe he wants freedom, and the only way he knows how to get it is via revenge. Offensive action.

There’s something about kids with guns. I have a mild obsession with child soldiers. I’ve probably spent entirely too much time reading about the Lord’s Resistance Army. Limbaugh defending the LRA to score points against Obama actually made me wish that Limbaugh was dead. I don’t–that’s not the type of emotion/response/political discourse that I like, but that was my gut reaction. “How can you defend these people?”

(digression)

I’ve read stories of heroic kids fighting at Stalingrad or wherever and dozens more besides. All of them gross me out. I feel like when you hit the point where a kid has to pick up a gun, or is forced or coerced to do it, there’s been a complete and total collapse of everything that adults are supposed to do. Children are supposed to be protected from that sort of thing.

So this kid picking up the gun, briefly emulating one of my most favorite photographs, and then inverting it… that grabbed me. It grabbed me by the throat and threw me off a roof or something. It’s intense, and it really heightened how I feel about the song.

The video’s a bit overlong (a third song? credits? really? wrap it up, cousin, i got places to be), but the first four-five minutes are nuts. It’s a perfect marriage of imagery and lyrical content. It’s not just someone performing a song very well (as in the video for the stellar “Bridging the Gap” with Nas’s father), or a sorta concept-y thing (“Hip-Hop Is Dead” goes hard), or flossing as hard as they can (“Nasty”, which had me as soon as Nas said “I come from the Wheel of Ezekiel to pop thousand dollar bottles of Scotch, smoke pot, and heal the people” and I was REALLY into it when he said “Bet a hundred stacks, niggas’ll run it back/ Just havin fun, I ain’t even begun to black/ Light another blunt in fact, haha…”). I like all those videos a whole lot, and to be honest there’s not a lot of difference between a concept joint like “Hip-Hop Is Dead” and “Be A Nigger Too.” I feel like the difference is that the marriage between audio and visual is much stronger in “Be A Nigger Too.” “Hip-Hop Is Dead” will exist, and knock, forever, without the video. The video’s well done, but not essential. The video is essential for “Be A Nigger Too.”