The Phenomenon of the Male Trailing Radical

A Black Lives Matter chapter down the road in Louisiana just printed up a batch of t-shirts with a quote from yours truly in the Huffington Post.

 

Almost two years ago, the Huff Post published a story I wrote about the phenomenon of African-American men being shot dead by trigger happy po-lice across the United States. It provoked a strong reaction from Friends, Romans and Countrymen. 

 

White people, including many friends of mine, were shocked to discover that I possessed a radical voice to add to the debate; black people, who were not friends of mine, and who had come to my views through reading them in the American press, were shocked to glean that the article was written by a posh cracker from England. 

 

"Are you getting a percentage of the profits from t-shirts sold?" asked a local. Nay mortal. All proceeds go to Black Lives Matter. But let me explain the quote and the very black roots of its inspiration. "The black man is no longer invisible..." that bit is a reference to Ralph Ellison's 1952 book, Invisible Man (not to be confused with the H.G. Wells novel from 1897), which concerns the alienation and disenfranchisement of the African-American male in the mid-twentieth century. Ironically, the BLM chapter who printed up the t-shirts, had never heard of this seminal parable about a chap whose skin color renders him totally invisible in white America.

 

"He is a moving target..." now that bit of inspiration was furnished by an old Gil Scott-Heron album, Moving Target which came out in 1982. The African-American man was a moving target back in those days and he is still, unfortunately, a moving target in America today. Same shit different era: not a month goes by in Yankland without another African-American male biting the dust for one ridiculous reason or another at the stop and frisky hands of the nation's cops. Suffice to say, whilst writing the story for the Huff Post at HQ in Atlanta, I listened to Gil Scott-Heron's album on a loop.

 

Where does the bleeding honky conscience of a Male Trailing Radical come from? Blame the parents. And blame the school. I was a pupil at Holland Park Comp in the 1980s and that's where this tendency towards fighting tyranny and injustice possibly hails.  Sometimes it feels like shooting a water pistol at a brick wall, but let's exit with a quote from Ralph Ellison on that very dilemma, "Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat."

 

 

Until next time...

 

The Male Trailing Spouse.