While perusing Al Gore’s creation for interesting reading material I came across this article on Gawker entitled, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance, by Kiese Laymon, now an English professer at Vassar. In this article, which happens to be an excerpt from his upcoming book, On Parole: An Autobiographical Anti-dote to Post-Blackness, Mr. Laymon recounts his past experiences with guns, both having them pulled on him and the few times he pulled them on himself, while living in Central Mississippi.

Well one particular idea stood out to me while reading: the concept of Black men being on parole in America. Just like a jailed man being paroled, he constantly has to be on his P’s and Q’s in order to maintain his status quo as just another person living life in America.

Mama’s antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom; it’s to insist on excellence at all times. Mama takes it personal when she realizes that I realize she is wrong. There ain’t no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival.

The idea of living free versus living to survive is obviously not a new concept to most Black men. In some way, shape, or form, most of us are told that your goal in life is to survive because the system is rigged from jump. Sure many of us manage to live happy and successful lives but there’s still this undercurrent that you’re never really living life as a free man. I know people that still refuse to wear jeans during casual Fridays just to make sure that they’re not giving the “white man” any ammunition. It’s also the same reason why so many of us code-switch when talking to our bosses versus when we talk to our homeboys. Since most people do tend to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, our parents often told us to make sure that you never left a trail of smoke.

Just ask Vincent Gray in DC, who no matter if you think the “man” is out to get us all is still leaving a tremendous trail of smoke in his wake anyway.

Back to being free. Based on this knowledge, we’d all truly be on parole. Much like the author, it’s hard to feel like you live a life that’s policed by the policies and, basically, whims of the white power structure. So how can any of us truly be that free?

Which leads me to the other point, as a Black person in America, can you ever be truly free? Is survival really our best bet to find happiness? And if so, isn’t that depressing? That means that no matter what you achieve in life, it all came at the expense of one’s own freedom and was achieved via not pissing off or offending the parties that could take all of your hard work and piss it away at a moment’s notice. Which was the point of the article (in some ways). The author spent an awful lot of time trying to provoke the bear, so to speak, full well knowing what the consequences could be and when the power structure, in his case Milsaps College, got the chance to screw up his future, they took it by suspending him for a year for taking a book from the library that he did not check out (even though he returned it the next day).

I like to think and believe that I have the ultimate control over my life and the choices that I make in life. But is that optimistic? Or even realistic? Or are all of my choices inherently rooted in my desire to just survive and make the best of the options I have knowing full well that it can all be taken away so quickly. So, is my best option to not give anybody any chance to take it away from me? I think that’s the lesson my father spent so much time trying to teach me. But where’s the freedom in that? Hell, are we still just trying to get there?

Granted, this is all a bit existential. Or perhaps just rhetorical since I’m sure a large portion of us would believe that we are free and nobody controls what we can or cannot do. Maybe that’s true. I don’t know.

I’m just thinking out loud I suppose.

Also, I realize that this is clearly a struggle that’s not confined to just Black men. This could definitely impact anybody who’s trying to get out of a hole or make it in a world that just doesn’t seem inclined to allow it to happen.

So I ask, what’s the more realistic goal: survival or freedom? Is freedom fully possible? Are you living free or just surviving?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

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