The purse clutch. Being a fetish. LeRon Barton talks about what it really means to be black in America.
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I talk and write about race, a lot. It permeates every facet of my life. I cannot escape being Black, even if I wanted to. I have always been race-conscious and know who I am and where I stand in the world. However, everything changed for me during the Trayvon Martin trial. I saw not only how much vocal support George Zimmerman received from people, but also how much money was donated to protect a child killer. From that moment on, my world was shaken and I became almost hyper-sensitive towards race. From reading literary greats such as Toni Morrison and James Baldwin to present day brilliant sociologists like Cornell West and Dr. Tommy Curry, I have learned quite a bit about race in America. Along with my personal experiences as a 37-year-old Black man in America, I wanted to share with you 10 unfortunate, but true lessons I have learned being Black.
- Respectability Politics will not save us – There is an unfortunate belief in the Black community that if you dress a certain way, i.e. wear a suit instead of baggy jeans, a v-neck sweater instead of a hoodie, and a collared shirt with a tie instead of a t-shirt you will be immune from racism. This is rooted in a belief called, “Respectability Politics” or “Look at us, we are normal law abiding citizens just like you white people.” Attorney and bestselling author Lawrence Otis Graham famously dressed his kids preppy to protect them from racism, but they were still called “nigger.” A Black man in a suit is looked at the same as a Black man in a hoodie – a threat. Eric Garner is just as dead as Martin Luther King Jr. Speaking of MLK…
- MLK is dead – In many of her essays on race, Dr. Stacey Patton brilliantly remarks, “white America has a necrophilia type relationship with Martin Luther King Jr.” Today America loves to laud MLK and promote his message of togetherness and unity, especially in light of the nationwide responses and protests to police terrorism. However, when King was alive, he was looked at differently. In 1966, two years before MLK was killed, a Gallup poll showed that 66% of America viewed him unfavorably. This is a stark contrast to many whites telling Blacks who want justice behind the murders of Freddie Gray and Mike Brown to “Be like MLK,” and forgive and love everyone.
- The sound of the police – Being pulled over by a police officer while driving is an unfortunate fact of life for a Black person. If you are driving it is inevitable. You can be the absolute best driver: traveling at the correct speeds, using your turn signals properly, and stopping at the stop sign perfectly. However, if you are DWB (driving while Black), you are susceptible to the flashing lights in the rearview mirror. I’ve been stopped by police so many times I no longer question if it is my mediocre driving skills. I know why I’m being stopped. It is what it is.
- Being the spokesperson for all Black people – This is also a regular occurrence in my life. Whenever I am in a work meeting, attend a social event, or any gathering of large amounts of people, I am usually one of the few, if not the only, Black person in the room. It is something that I have gotten used to. With that usually being the case, many whites also feel that I am the “Go-to Black person” or “Black representative” when they are curious about African American culture and stereotypes. You would not believe the asinine questions I get asked; it would boggle your mind. I just politely, remind them that “All negroes are not the same. We don’t all act like the Lyon family from ‘Empire’.” We are not a homogenous bunch. Speaking of that…
- Black people are not homogeneous – When I was younger I used to think that all Black people were aligned together against issues like racism, gender discrimination, and police terrorism, but that has been disproven. For every Cornell West and Jesse Williams who address racism and justice for all, there is a Herman Cain and Dr. Ben Carson pushing respectability politics, side stepping racism as if it does not exist. They espouse “rugged individualism,” a term my father taught me that means only doing for self and not your people. Some Black people don’t have interests in talking and discussing racism, or talking about police brutality. Some don’t even believe it is a problem; case in point a discussion I had with a fellow African American. He and I talked about the murder of Eric Garner. I said, “The police had no right to kill an unarmed man that was not doing anything.” He says, “Well he shouldn’t have resisted.” I replied, “Garner was not resisting.” My then-friend followed up with, “Well, police never mess with me. I don’t give them a reason.” I was shocked and just shook my head.
- The purse clutch – Every Black man has experienced this. You are walking down the street, minding your own business, engrossed in your Beats by Dre headphones and you see a white woman walking near. You smile, not wanting to be looked at as the confrontational or scary Black person, but to her you are anyway and she does the “purse clutch “ (sounds like a dance right? Do the purse clutch!). This is when a white woman grabs her purse in fear that you are going to snatch it from her hands. I have had this happen to me since I was very young. I’ve seen women clutch their purse in the street as I walk by, the movie theater as I pass through the aisle, and the elevator when I get on. It’s as if some believe Black men are all robbers or thieves. I even experienced this with a suit on. As I said in truth #1, it does not matter what you wear, you are still Black. Nowadays I cross the street if I can or if I am in an elevator, I move to the far opposite side. I want to avoid that experience because every time it happens, a piece of my heart breaks.
- Am I a fetish? – I have this conversation every so often with friends who are in interracial relationships. We wonder, “Is the person with me because they like me or because I represent some kind of fantasy or fetish for them?” I have been on dates with white women and have been told, “I always wanted to know what it was like to be with a brother.” Comments like those and “once you go Black, you never go back” or does he have a BBC (use your imagination) have come up among my friends and I, so a person being sexually desired because of their race is not far-fetched.
- I always feel like somebody’s watching me – I cannot count how many times I am shopping in a department, electronic, and even convenient stores and I am slyly or blatantly followed by a store employee. I could be browsing suits to buy, looking for an iPhone 6, or even a case of the midnight munchies. If I turn around, there is an employee “hanging out” or fixing the merchandise…just in case I have a question. The most infamous time was when I had just moved to San Diego and went grocery shopping. As I was putting items in my grocery basket, a store clerk came right up to me and said, “Yeah that’s right, I am following you. I think you have been stealing.” That was my first and last time ever in that grocery store.
- Just because someone is LGBTQ, that doesn’t mean they are not racist – When I moved to San Francisco, I thought it was a liberal bastion. I heard The City was progressive, that everyone is accepting of everything, and home to a large LGBTQ population. And since the LGBTQ community has been historically discriminated against, I thought they couldn’t possibly be racist. Wrong, so wrong. Many of my gay friends who are not white tell me stories of discrimination and racism in their community. From barring entry into many gay night clubs and bars, being reduced to racial-sexual stereotypes (see #7), and an indifference to the Black and Latino plight. A friend of mine summed it up by saying: “Just because men sleep with other men and women sleep with other women, that doesn’t mean they don’t practice racism/white supremacy.”
- Anti-Blackness in Black communities – I define Anti-Blackness as disdain and distancing yourself from anything that can be considered Black. This belief is held throughout the world. In every ethnicity, the darker the person the more discrimination he or she faces. Unfortunately, this also pops up in Black communities such as Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, and Brazilian, as many will deny their African roots. What many don’t understand is that during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, many boats carrying Black slaves went to other places besides the United States: Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Brazil. Also, I have seen Anti-Blackness manifest in many African communities in the United States. Some African immigrants will try and distance themselves from American-born Blacks, saying that we are lazy, criminals, and have no morals. I worked with a guy from Kenya that when asked about this ethnicity, he would immediately say, “I am not African American, I am African. I am not like them in America.” Darn, even some Black folks in Africa don’t want to be considered Black .
These are just a handful of examples that Black people face every single day. My purpose for writing this piece is not to whine and cry about “How hard Black people have it” but to illustrate how racism impacts our lives. Every day we have to maneuver around racism; there is not one moment of time when we can forget we are Black.
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Interesting that this article came out again, when it did. Just yesterday I was clearly being followed by a department store employee. How I knew? He just happen to be in the same departments I was in. I dress like a slob on days that I’m not working. Paint spattered sweat pans, a very worn sweat shirt. I hadn’t shaved in two days. My hair (what’s left of it) looked as though I’d been caught in a blender. My shoes are deck shoes without laces but are really comfortable. But I’m a 60 year old white guy. Actually I found… Read more »
For some reason the site won’t let me respond directly to your most recent comment, so I’ll just do it in a separate comment. What you doubt is subjective, and as I’ve posted three times now, not relevant to what women can do with their personal property. When you made your comment about women and their rights related to purses, you shifted the topic away from race and toward individual property rights. If you wanted to keep the topic focused on race, you shouldn’t have brought up those rights in your comment to Richard Aubrey. I don’t have a problem… Read more »
Darren,
You come off as a white male that discounts Black people’s claims of racism. We go through this all the time. Sometimes, you just need to listen and not comment when Black people address everyday acts of racism we encounter. It is not about you.
First, I’m actually black myself. I just chose not to mention that because it’s irrelevant to what I was posting.
Second, if you bothered to read any of my comments, you’d notice that I didn’t actually discount any of the claims of racism you made.
Third, even if I was white, the Good Men Project comment sections are for debate. You can’t and won’t shut that down by offering up meaningless platitudes about things “not being about you.”
Number 5 applies to you.
Black people aren’t homogeneous? Yeah, you’re right. Hardly the most astute observation though, anyone could tell you that a group of millions of different individuals is not going to be homogeneous. No group of people on the planet is.
Stumbled on this this thought provoking piece and I think it is well written but probably misses the mark on how difficult things really are for black men. The women, they, I think are treated differently, and I hope better. And a lot of things depend on the part of the country you are in, of course the part of town. But we are a long ways from racial equality in the USA. The blacks get it the worst probably, but the people from India, the dark colored people from Mexico, the native Americans. They all have to deal with… Read more »
Thank you for reading the piece.
First off, all of these truths apply to all Black people, not just men, not just women.
Secondly, why are you talking about people in India and Mexico?
This piece is centered around Blackness, not any other group.
Racism/white supremacy attacks us all, but I cannot speak for them because I am Black.
Finally, it does not matter what part of the country you are in, if you are Black you will face these truths.
There is just as much racism in the south as there is in the north.
Good for you to talk about your experiences. Good for us to read and learn and have insight and hopefully some empathy. Although I believe all of what you are saying, let me give you some advice which it has taken me a long time to learn and which I still need to relearn at times: Refuse to be a victim. As you say, it is what it is BUT keep your self-respect, be assertive about what has happened but then keep moving forward with dignity and with SELF-CONTROL. Do not let others demean you and where you want to… Read more »
Hi jp,
Thank you for commenting on the article.
As far as me being a victim, I am far from it. What I have illustrated is what Black people face on a daily basis. This is not to say, “Woe is me, feel sorry for me.” This is just to show the reality of being Black in America. I succeed in spite of all of these challenges.
Thank you very much! Please keep up you amazing work!
Thanks for sharing LeRon! Sorry you, individually and as a group, have had to put up with so much. I hope that the universe somehow… someday (sooner rather than later)… can make it up to you and all those like you who have been victims of racism. #BlackLivesMatter!
I appreciated reading the author’s perspective. It was a little sobering to read it. I can’t possibly appreciate or understand the cumulative effect of these experiences, but they must be immense and suffocating. No doubt they influence the author’s views and thoughts heavily. By his own admission, he is hyper-sensitive to racism. All that said, I hope the title is not true. By that I mean, does the author believe these are the top ten things that it means to be black in America, or are these the top ten negative things? Put another way, is there nothing that is… Read more »
Xavier, Herman Cain and Ben Carson, and the like, are either in denial and/or trying to gain a higher status of acceptance by disassociating themselves from their own ethnicity, as if that was possible.
My dear brother, thank you for your words, especially the comments about the LGBTQ community. Regardless of what many would like to believe, being Black still trumps most social situations and interactions.
(Continued). I know you all are followed in stores. They also followed me because I was a 30+ year old white woman who liked to dress in old jeans. For whites, clothes can make a difference. I’ve also been followed many times in big box stores as elder white woman driving a an electric scooter in store. We are followed because we fit some demographic that steals. Blacks are stopped because of race.
Problem posting, I’ll keep it short. Good list. Trayvon Martin was eye opener to whites as well. Thought we had moved beyond that amt of racism. Feedback on purse clutch: many urban women do that for everyone, even older white women (almost robbed by them twice). Feel bad it hurts you all, for good reason.
Dear Leron Barton, I was in the middle of a lengthy response to your article and somehow it was deleted. I am hoping you do not get my partial response as it will not make sense and can even be misinterpreted as I was unable to finish. I have run out of time at this moment, so instead of writing it out again I will just share, I appreciate your writing and your willingness to talk about your experience as a Black man and racism. I think racism is a challenging subject for both black and white folks to talk… Read more »
The author’s premise is that these “purse clutch” incidents are based on nothing. Not on purses being snatched, not on the knock-out game….
WRT the last sentence: Do you think the Africans are completely without valid reasons?
Hi, I am the writer of the piece. Thank you for reading it. I have two questions:
Are you saying that (white) women have the right to clutch their purses because of the so called “knock out game?”
What do you mean by “Africans are completely without valid reasons?”
Women have the “right” to do whatever they want with their purses. It’s their property.
You totally missed the point.
Comments like yours are the reason why I write pieces like these, because whenever one talks about racism, there is always a pushback, like what you just did.
And you totally missed mine. It wasn’t about your feelings on race, it was about your comment on women’s rights related to their property. And like I said, women have the right to do whatever they want as it relates to what they own and their feelings of safety. Your comments on race are irrelevant to that right.
Also, what you call pushback I call debate. Don’t post about sensitive topics if that’s not something you want to see.
Darren, What I am trying to illustrate here is that I doubt a white woman would be clutching their purses at the sight of a white male. But with Black men, it happens all the time. This conversation is about race and it is centered around race. It seems like every time a Black person expresses his/her discomfort about racism in America and points it out, there is someone such as yourself saying, “Well it is not about race” or “She is a woman, she can do whatever she wants to do with her purse.” I face racism everyday, don’t… Read more »