I’m sensitive. I willingly admit that.

I’m still a bit scarred from my undergrad days at a PWI. That’s my truth and I feel the need to share that as it was during this time that my faith in the power of words and the arts in general to produce actualized societal change was truly tested. It was during this time that I found myself increasingly intertwining my art with my politics. Recently, I’ve been feeling the need to keep the two a bit more separated.

Let’s get into it.

Donald Glover’s/Childish Gambino’s “This is America,” has now become the number 1 song in America. I only watched the video once because for me once was enough.  Glover is talented, and one watch was enough for me to see that this is the marriage of art and politics done right. It mesmerizes. Even after seeing a Black person being shot so very, very carelessly. I still enjoyed the cheeriness and dancing of the children. I was hypnotized as we all often are.

I have since then had multiple conversations about “This is America” with friends and acquaintances from a variety of backgrounds. Most people like the video. Coincidentally, most of my friends would probably identify as one of the following: liberal, progressive, or independent/(not in need of a label to define their socio-political views which really just include, in what I imagine would be their own words, “being a decent human being”). Whatever be the case, love it or hate it, it seems most everyone agrees the video is doing something noteworthy, maybe even applause worthy. It’s important.

Indeed, Black Trauma is a topic for the ages. It is not in anyway a novel thing. When I encounter comments about the importance of Glover’s work, about how he is shedding light on a conversation that needs to be had. I think about how long we have been having the same conversations about the mistreatment of Black folks in America, how the nation was built on the normalization of mistreating Black people, and how we still to this very day shy away from having sincere conversations that lead to actualized change for Black people in America.

It isn’t that we shouldn’t celebrate. Perhaps it is just that all of us, the liberals, progressives, and nameless alike ought to look at what it is we’re celebrating and why it is we’re celebrating it. As I have sought to make clear, Donald Glover’s “This is America” music video is not novel, in the same way that the exploitation of Black Trauma for financial, political, or social gain is not new. There is a reason why “Roots,” “Django Unchained,” and “12 years a Slave” are widely successful major black films. Films that are also promoting a necessary conversation. And yet, for a very long time, films like these were the only kinds of majorly successful black films among diverse audiences, seeming to promote the idea that these were the only necessary conversations worth having with respect to black people. They are not.

We need films that promote conversations about the Black condition in modern day times as well: gentrification, school to prison pipeline system, mass incarceration, gun violence, colorism, black identity politics, higher education for black people, the lack of reparations, and the list truly does go on and on. However, the kinds of conversations we have about the lives of Black folks don’t often reflect the complexity of our reality. Tough shit.

When black artists discuss the plight of Black folk in ways that are more than just mere trauma porn. More often than not, that shit does not get the clout, appreciation, and accolades it deserves. The Receipts: Beyonce’s Lemonade snubbed of Grammy for Album of the Year 2017 (and yes, I’m still salty about it).

The video is not giving rise to some untold, un-championed plight of a suffering people.
I have a strong suspicion that the world already knows. Hyper-visibility of black folks does not allow us to go unnoticed. Our hyper-visibiltiy in a world plagued by white supremacy gives rise to a simultaneous sensationalization and devaluation of blackness, and therefore our struggle existing as black folks in the Land of the Free.

Truthfully, I do not know that I trust Glover’s intentions. Since the rise of BLM, new-age activism, and wokeness, black issues have been trendy AF! Tie this in with the overbearing need for non-black folk to feel down, or woke, and one must realize they are striking gold with a video like this. Glover could very well, as many believe, be catching on a bandwagon. It’s worth a mention, but it still doesn’t change the fact that he has put a piece of art together (Side note: The music industry nowadays is so complicated that I’m a bit wary of attributing it’s genius to any one person).