Living just enough for the city...

I spend my days on a campus that would put most arboretums out of business. The air is clean and [even when it's not summertime] the living is relatively easy.  Even though my immediate surroundings are lush and worry free, I obviously never loose sight of who I am...a black man  in America.  I don't wear it pinned to my chest like a military ribbon or even under my shirt to be revealed as I emerge from the telephone booth. But in the immortal words of Popeye, I am's what I am's.

To me, that carries with it a deep context that I celebrate and honor daily in many ways.  I live my culture, my heritage, my blackness if you will, out loud through my physical presence, expressions, intellectual contributions and thousands of ways that provide meaning to me.  These are the things that define my difference. I've been fortunate enough to have a similar daily walk for many years now, as professionally, I've always been in these types of environments.

I've recently grown weary of the switch that happens when I leave the confines of this world and step in to a world that has no use for depth, meaning or context.  When I wait for a train, when I walk through city, when I just live my life I get treated the same as I did 20 years ago.  Back in the day I'm sure that I, like millions of young black men, carried myself in a manner that reflected how tough we wanted to seem. The streets were like a training for the "phony tough and crazy brave." Sure we all wanted to tout how real we kept it, but in those quiet moments, no one wanted to be that. It was a survival skill.

The Fugees said,  "Just walkin' the streets death could take you away. You're never guaranteed to see the next day."  My cohorts and I truly believed these words, even before they were made immortal on the biggest hip hop record in history.  No longer am I that kid.  My life is completely different than the days when I had to constantly be on alert for the various snares of city life.  These days I walk the about feeling great.  I say good morning to complete strangers on the street, hold open doors for old ladies, skip down the ave to the beat of the music in my head and it's glorious. What I've found is the world hasn't caught up with the song that I'm singing.

White folks still react to me in tailored Hugo Boss suits, the same way they did when I wore back when I wore saggin' Hugo Boss jeans.  Black folks are equally suspicious. On one hand, I'm a wardrobe change away from being able to play my old role on the street, but on the other hand, there's something different.  People see it in your eyes.

I'm not hurting anymore.  I'm still angry cuz I never got my forty acres, but it's not at the fore front of my consciousness.  I'm still real, perhaps realer than I ever was, but definition has expanded.  I've got a big social and professional circle that surrounds me and fulfills me in so many ways. Yet, I feel like a perpetual outsider when relating to the gen pop.

How is it that as a successful black man, I feel like more of an outcast than I was as a borderline delinquent? It goes back to my original premise: this world (read USA) has no use for depth, meaning or context. A box for everyone and everyone in your box.  The quicker we can figure out what you are and put you in your proper place, we can go back to ignoring you, fearing you, hating you or what ever the appropriate interplay between our box and yours is.