I’m the “Everybody Black” Cheerleader
By: W. Island
Tags: Culture, Black Women, BlackLivesMatter

And I’m proud of it

Issa Rae let the cat out of the bag at the Emmys last year when she said she was rooting for everybody Black. The look on the host’s face was a cross between shock and awe. But Issa in all of her Black girl magic just said what the rest of us Black folks were thinking. In a country where Black people are maligned, disenfranchised, segregated, discriminated against, the last hired and first fired, I want every Black person to win. I’m the “everybody Black” cheerleader.

And like Issa, I got it bad. I’m not just rooting for Serena Williams to wipe the smug look off of Maria Sharapova’s face with one of those 100+ mph serves. I want to see Serena blow Sharapova off the court, sending her back and forth across the baseline so many times Sharapova quits mid-match. I want to see Venus win (against anyone but Serena, that’s my girl). I even root for Sloane Stephens. I root for them all.

It’s March Madness and I root for the team with the most Black players. I wanted University of Texas to win (they’re out), not because I’m a fan of the university but because of their Black coach, Shaka Smart. Any coach with a name like Shaka has my support.

I was rooting for Issa at the Emmys and Viola Davis who must have known people like me were rooting for her because she rocked a giant Angela Davis afro. I cheered for Sterling K. Brown, and his Best Actor win for his weep-fest performance in This Is Us. The Best Supporting Actress category had three amazing Black women, Samira Wiley, Uzo Aduba, and Thandie Newton. I wanted one of them to win- though none of them did.

On Monday morning, after the release of Black Panther, I checked to make sure the movie killed the competition. Not because I have some stock in the company that distributed it (Lord, I wish I did), or know any of the actors personally (Michael B. Jordan please call me) but because I am so excited to see a movie directed by a Black man with a majority Black cast make millions. I sat through movies with no faces like my own for years so it was time to see a movie with a Black cast that was big and splashy. No offense to movies like 12 Years A Slave, but it was also nice to watch a movie with Black people without crying through an entire box of Kleenex, while the horrors of slavery played across the screen.

I watched the Oscars for the first time since 12 Years A Slave was nominated just to see if Get Out would win anything. I wanted Mary J to win for Mudbound and Octavia for the Shape of Water and cheered when Jordan Peele won Best Original Screenplay. He was only the fourth Black person nominated in that category in the 90 years of the Academy Awards. And not surprisingly, many of the voters in the Academy said they couldn’t watch Get Out and that Get Out wasn’t an Academy Award level film (Three Billboards Out of Missouri was Academy level even though it could have easily been an episode of In The Heat of the Night).

There is a reason there is still the First Black person to win this and the First Black Person to win that in 2018. When you hold the majority and are at the top, it’s difficult to share the spotlight, the money and the power that goes with it. Black people are still fighting for just a small piece of the pie. Actually, we are still fighting for a piece of the crust.

So until there is a level playing field, where Serena isn’t accused of being angry when calmly answering questions, where Black Panther isn’t the first Marvel superhero movie with a predominately Black cast, and where there is another president with a name like Obama, I’m shaking out my pompoms.