-
Prelude: The Barbershop
- Wayne State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
While sitting in the only black barbershop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the morning of writing this prelude, trying to think of the best way to acquaint you with what this book is about and who I am as the author behind it, I was struck with just how different I am from a lot of other black men, and yet again I was compelled to acknowledge my desire to be like them. The men I observed walked with that lanky dip I wish I could perfect; they talked casually but passionately about sports, basketball especially, with the deep resonance that reverberates in my hungry ears. Many spoke a spicy black lingo, the hip linguistics that even white kids from Iowa crave.The men wore pants that sagged. Their feet were adorned with the latest two-hundred-dollar sneakers endorsed by Allen Iverson or Shaq. Their self-assurance made me want to mimic them, to give a gender performance that would say unequivocally to everybody—white folks, black folks, everybody—that I too am a black male with balls. That’s part of why I was at the barbershop —and to get that fresh bald fade, one of the trendy hallmarks of black masculinity. However, because this barbershop is located smack dab in the middle of Mostly White, Iowa—a state that unapologetically leads in incarcerating black men—my vicarious revel in black masculinity was prelude The Barbershop XI PRELUDE / XII sobered by the statistics: while only 2 percent of those who live in Iowa are black, blacks comprise 25 percent of the state’s prison population .1 Thus in addition to enchantment, I felt a conflicting fusion of fortune and tribulation—fortune because my language and demeanor often mark me as educated, separating me from those who exemplify the stigmatized (and paradoxically romanticized) black male profile, and consequently excusing me, though certainly not always, from the plight that follows that image. I am troubled because the black men who suffer most from the educational and judicial systems are poor, from the underclass, from the ghetto, like me. And although many flee the big city, looking for a small haven in mid-America, they sometimes find that their situation gets worse. I both identify with their predicament and disidentify with it because I am and am not exactly one of them, and both do and do not want to be.2 To embrace my blackness, my heritage, my manliness, I identify with men who represent the ghetto. I no longer want to deny my class background or the racial experience associated with it. I identify to belong. I disidentify to escape racism, to avoid the structures that oppress black men. But I also disidentify to retaliate against black men— to punish them for what I perceive as their efforts to disown me. This ambivalence provokes me to imitate and just as often to dissociate from the black men I envy. Both efforts fail. Neither alleviates my racial anxiety. Instead, they heighten the angst I experience. As a result I am hyperaware of how masculine I am (not) and how black I (don’t) act. I can’t neatly explain why my visit to the barbershop brings all this to mind and spurs my unease. I mean, the barbers are only courteous. They take me ahead of clients who come less frequently. They even call me sir, although I’m not much older than they are and tell them to use my first name. Still, I can’t shake the way I feel. For although I know that some of my discomfort is self-induced, a consequence of not conversing much with the barbers and their customers about their racial and gender performances and not allowing them to give their take on mine, I also know there’s reason for my worry, that my experience is not unique.3 Shelly Eversley aptly summarizes part of the reason for my concern in her book The Real Negro.4 Offering an anecdote about the time [3.238.228.191] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:59 GMT) THE BARBERSHOP / XIII she felt uncomfortable in a black barbershop in Baltimore, Eversley concludes that the barbershop is “a racial and cultural distinction” from the university campus, the site where we both trained as intellectuals and currently work as professors (2004, 80). Because we participate in both sites, we suffer from the conflict that exists between them. So in order to get along on the (white...