When Trevor Noah first took over from John Stewart I thought there was no way he could fill Stewart’s shoes. It took him a while to grow into the role, but he has. I saw this piece last night, and wish it could be seen by every American who buys into the false narrative that there are more black people in prison because they commit more crimes.
I am not a young black male. My first love, in 1963 when I was 18 — and with whom I reconnected in 2015 for one brief year before he died — was a brilliant, charismatic, creative, talented black man who became an expatriate for more than thirty years because he got tired of living the life of a black man in America.
He got tired of the constant daily indignities, of being questioned about his right to walk down the street, or drive a “fancy” sports car, or visit a friend in a rich neighborhood. He got tired of being questioned about his right to pick up a child at school because the child looked “too light” to be his. He got tired of constantly having to prove his right to be where he was, to succeed where he wasn’t supposed to succeed. He got tired of constantly having to fight for the same rights over and over in every area of life.
He had done “everything right” that our country says is supposed to give you access to success and acceptance. Born in Boston to a 16-year old mother, he served his country as a Marine during Korea; he had a great education, including Boston Latin School and Boston University.
When I met him at UCLA in 1962 he sounded like JFK — “paahk the caah in Hahvaad Yaad”— and had JFK’s effect on women. He used to “hold court” in the Student Union where the girls would push each other out of the way to catch his attention, while the boys tried to emulate his style and his cool. (He was my first love at 18, and, predictably, my first heartbreak. I never imagined we would reconnect 50 years later. . . but that’s another story.)
He took part in the Civil Rights movement in 1963-1965, working with SNCC in Mississippi alongside John Lewis and marching with MLK. He endured beatings and clubings, became an award winning photographer and filmmaker, smuggling himself onto plantations to obtain photographs that were published in newspapers throughout the South.
He worked at KRLA news, on The Credibilty Gap and KTTV as a cameraman, and was instrumental in the EEOC’s campaign to open the local LA cameraman’ union to blacks and women.
No matter how much success he achieved within the system he still had to fight each day to maintain that position. He wanted to belong, to be accepted on the basis of his talents and gifts. After the cameraman’s union caved to avoid a lawsuit, as he was celebrating what he hoped was a new victory, he was jumped and beaten by four men, who proclaimed that they didn’t care what the court said, there would be no [racial slur] in their union. The beating was severe enough to hospitalize him.
He’d had enough. In 1975 he bought a sailboat, reached the wrenching decision to leave his job and family and set sail with a bag of groceries (and of course another beautiful woman). He spent decades sailing the Caribbean and Pacific Coast. Like the young black men that Noah refers to, having been subject to multiple injustices by law enforcement, he had little regard for the law that had shown little regard for him.
He became a seafarer and adventurer, sometimes chartering his boat, sometimes acting as a guide to other boats through the Panama Canal, sometimes surviving by smuggling contraband into Florida. He suffered periods of drug addiction, spent six months in prison for smuggling Haitians into Florida (charges dropped for lack of evidence as the Haitians for whom he posted bond failed to show up in court), spent several years living on the streets of Fort Lauderdale, unable to re-enter the “straight” world because of his criminal record.
He survived all of it by framing everything as “an adventure” or “just another experience”. In 1992 he got another sailboat and went back to sea, where he continued his adventures, often single handed sailing at a time before GPS, navigating using the sun and stars.
In 2012, just as he was heading back to the U.S. to try and re-establish a relationship with his children, his boat was boarded by pirates and taken from him in Honduras, where mechanical difficulties had forced him too close to shore.
Around that same time, journalists started looking into the mystery of who had actually built the most famous bikes in the world — the Captain America and Billy bikes built for the movie Easy Rider. They discovered that the most iconic and recognizable “choppers” in the world, (which white men had for forty years taken credit for designing), had been designed and built by a black man working in his back yard in West Hollywood in his spare time.
Trevor Noah’s piece should be required viewing for anyone who doubts the PTSD-type effects that black men (and women) in America suffer from. The constant need to be wary, to expect to hear racial slurs uttered even by those who earlier professed friendship, to never feel as if you “belong” in a society that accepts you only so long as you stay “in your place.”
My other half used to say the bigger problem is not so much “racism”, which is a vaguer concept that invites argument over whether a certain person feels a certain way— it’s White Supremacy — the constant push down to make sure you don’t get too high, so that black people always start with a handicap ,while whites start with an advantage based on skin color regardless of talent or ability.
When we keep beating black people down when we don’t allow them to move freely and compete freely in the country we live in together, when we place them at a disadvantage because of skin color or other characteristics of birth we are robbing ourselves of their talents, their gifts, their artistry, their creativity, their contribution to a better life for all of us.
Listening to Trevor Noah last night I felt Cliff was listening with me. I had intended to simply link to the video without comment, but somehow as I started to type it seemed that Cliff’s story was so apt I had to share some of it.
I feel him close still, always.
I may not have time to respond to comments today but I appreciate any comments, which I will peruse later.