America, Bye: Why Black America Is Leaving While Staying

Put

Jimmie Williams joins demonstrators in a protest outside of City Hall calling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign on December 11,
2015 in Chicago, Illinois. A recently released video of the shooting of Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police ofcer Jason Van Dyke
has sparked protests and calls for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign for allegedly trying
to cover up the circumstances surrounding the shooting.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

I was a grad student at the UCLA lm school, getting my MFA in screenwriting, when a consumer-trends company
asked me to work for them. Why did they want me? Well, they advised major corporations on how to best situate
their products for the African-American consumer market, and in order to do that effectively, the company needed
people who understood African-American values and behavior and could turn those factors into macro trends. In
essence, my job was to predict the things black people did today to hint at future behavior and, from that info,
identify the strategies companies should use to reach black people.

Now, Im not going to go into what I told various clients, but if youre black and you enjoy your daily cup of java
from a restaurant with Golden Arches because it seems to speak to you, let me just say: Youre welcome.

Although I dont work for this company anymore, the powers of observation that I learned cant be turned off. My
brain is constantly observing the world from the perspective of African Americans, and each qualitative data point
gets stored, ready to be grouped together as a macro trend or discarded as irrelevant. At some point, the
observations begin to light up, a bit like how John Forbes Nash Jr.s chalkboard lit up in A Beautiful Mind as his
equations began to make sense.

Dont believe me?

Three years ago, I observed that African-American college students at predominantly white colleges and
universities were increasingly unhappy, and campus racism was running rampant. It was little bits of info here and
there, a conversation there and here. Those observations were the catalyst for my new book on campus racism,
Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on Americas Campuses. And guess what? Over 100 campuses
subsequently erupted in protests over campus racism as university ofcials and educational reporters watched,
slack-jawed, trying to make sense of it all.

It wasnt a coincidence.

I may not be Negrodamus, but Negrodamus is denitely my play cousin. Its qualitative analysis over an Excel
sheet full of data points. An educated gut that your mama told you to follow, writ large on a diverse demographic of
40 million black people. In other words, I know black people.

So, as Alton Sterling and Philando Castile became members of the black Twitter hashtag list that no one wants to
belong to, my Spidey sense perked up. Something had changed in the African-American zeitgeist. It went beyond
the usual anger to a whole new place.
If the ve stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, it was clear that we as black
people are rmly at acceptance-level TNT. Not acceptance as in capitulation to white supremacy, but acceptance
of the idea that African America has spent precious brainpower explaining, cajoling, protesting, pleading and, yes,
begging for white America to recognize our humanityand, ya know, that we just might have to stop doing that.

White America aint listening and, more importantly, doesnt care about the pain of black people. In essence, as
TLC once told us, it might be time for us to stop chasing waterfalls.

The way I read it, African Americans around this country recognized that were in an abusive-marriage dynamic
with white America, a marriage in which killing the Tamir Rices, the Mike Browns, the Sandra Blands, the John
Crawfords, the Eric Garners and the countless others is part of the American equation. Until proved otherwise,
such as through a drastic increase in the percentage of police convictions for the deaths of black people, black
people are slowly coming to the realization that the current system of justice is working as it is supposed to for
white America. And thats why we get pushback when we say, Black lives matter. White America says All lives
matter as a way to tell us, Nah, kid. They dont, and they never will.

And while having a black president in the White House may provide us psychological comfort, one of the earliest
exhibitions of white supremacist power in the form of policing came when President Barack Obama had to host a
fraudulent and humiliating Beer Summit between African-American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and
the white cop who arrested him for breaking into his own home. Once that precedent die was cast, African
America was always going to have to be subject to the idea that because police have a tough job, dead Negroes
will be a justiable exchange for letting white police ofcers go home safely to their families. Just the price of doing
business in America.

And as though America needed to bookend that summit with something even more disingenuous, ABC and ESPN
decided to host a town hall meeting on race with Obama. This two-hour embarrassment to serious discourse was
like watching prancing horses dance onstage, with the systemic racism inherent in American policing the verboten
subject.

All through the show, the president bent over backward to keep positing this notion that the police have a tough job
and that black and brown communities need to understand that. He pleaded for members of Black Lives Matter to
express their sorrow when the police are hurt or killed in the line of duty, but never asked the police to do the same
when they kill black and brown bodies.

You see, African Americans watch black people get shot and killed on camera on the regular, and were supposed
to suspend our intelligence and believe that it was just a bunch of bad apple cops who were making all the good
cops look bad. Bad cops whod go on paid administrative leave after killing black people. Bad cops whod have
the full support of their police unions. Bad cops whod have the so-called good cops walk out in offense when
athletes wore a T-shirt afrming the lives of dead black people. Black folks were just supposed to take it.

Nah, son. Its a sham. And black folks know its a sham.

African Americans are tired of explaining. Were tired of explaining an easy concept like #BlackLivesMatter and
then having white people go, But but what about Chicago and black-on-black crime? Its an insult to our
intelligence to explain the nexus between lack of educational opportunities, economic deprivation, housing
discrimination, and the ooding of drugs and guns into our communities to people who dont give a damn about
any of that.

Jimmie Williams joins demonstrators in a protest outside of City Hall calling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign on December 11,
2015 in Chicago, Illinois. A recently released video of the shooting of Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police ofcer Jason Van Dyke
has sparked protests and calls for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign for allegedly trying
to cover up the circumstances surrounding the shooting.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

The fact is that most of white America has a mental block that it cant get past when it comes to recognizing the
humanity of black people. Theyll proclaim to the high heavens that theyre not racist and that they love everyone
(including all the purple people!), but when it comes to systemic racism and xing the institutions that
disproportionately affect black people, theyll turn around and say, But why would you want to focus on that?

Maybe it stems from the fact that we came to this continent as chattel slavery, human pack animals that were
supposed to work until we died, and nd freedom in heavena segregated heaven, I presumejust like the
cemeteries. Centuries of looking at black skin as being worth three-fths of a white human beings has had a
psychological impact not just on the black people who are unfairly burdened with that sophistry, but also on the
white Americans who grow up thinking that their lack of melanin gives them a two-fths superior advantage that
any Negro can achieve, if only he or she works a little harder.

Black folks see through thishave always seen through thisand thats why we ght against it. Oh, sure, we have
the occasional black country music singer who knows that if you wanna boost those sales numbers, all you have
to do is create a benign-looking video in which you give black people instructions on how not to get killed by white
police ofcers. His hustle, which is as old as minstrels, plays into the white supremacy notion that if blacks simply
played within the box, theyd be ne. It plays well for the country music audience hes trying to reach, so expect to
see him gracing the stage of the Grand Ole Opry, at the expense of the humanity of black people. Its a trade-off
some are more than willing to make. But for others? Acquiescing to white supremacy aint in the cards.

Black folks are talking about leaving America. That its time for a divorce, an annulment, something that would
allow us to escape from an America thats quite literally trying to kill us. Some writers have humorously declared
that black people should hold a referendum like the United Kingdoms Brexit, and have a #Blaxit from America,
taking Beyonc and our potato salad with us. Others, like Melissa Harris-Perry, write poetically about their own
private Walden, a mental space that they and other African Americans struggle to visita place of peace and
tranquillity, where we can pursue our own happiness.

Traditionally, African Americans look backward, to a time when strife pulled us together, for inspiration. The Red
Summer of 1919, when thousands of African Americans were slaughtered throughout the country, helped beget
the owering of the Harlem Renaissance. The strife of the civil rights movement gave rise to Black is beautiful,
and a rejection of European values. So what will it be this time?

My powers of prognostication have limitations, but I already see an increased emphasis on supporting long-
standing African-American institutions. I predict that youll see money being deposited in black banks, more
students applying to HBCUs, a reverse gentrication of traditional black neighborhoods and an increased
emphasis on patronizing black businesses. But in reality, African Americas future is probably being crafted right
now by the dreams of a 14-year-old black girl in Chicagoa teen who is going to spark a revolution within African
America that will dene us in exciting and new ways.

That gives me hope.

But for now, I predict that African Americans are in a state of transition. Were now in a space where were about to
put up mental and physical walls between white America and us. Its a rational reaction to an America that says
you dont matter.

If you know the secret password, the head nod, the correct seasoning on the food, youre all good. If not, oh well.
Dont try to Rachel Dolezal us; thats not gonna work this time. For African Americans, the straps of the mask are
going on extra tight, but with a message that tells white America, Go back to the world you built for yourselves
and leave us alone. And if you miss us, talk to your friends who dont believe in our existence, and talk about how
you feel that loss. How you miss our genius in your lives. Because we African Americans are fed up. Weve been
told so often that we dont matter, so excuse us if we believe you. Watch as African Americans increasingly turn to
one another and say, Not only do you matter, but I love you.

And thats the ultimate repudiation of white supremacy.