50 Shades of Black & Forgetting How to Ride a Bike

"**50 Shades of Black & Forgetting How to Ride a Bike**" is an open letter by Lupe Fiasco, posted to his Instagram account on October 17, 2015. Divided into three parts, he discusses the issues concerning unity within the "modern black community" and their many different living and lived experiences. He concludes of cultural norms versus the status quo, their contributions to the hegemonic culture, and adds, "Might be time to start forgetting how to ride the bike and remembering how to walk in the same direction. Together."

## Part 1

50 Shades of black & Forgetting how to ride a bike

A letter.

P1

The modern black community is not unified. This is because, from my agile POV, the historical black experience is not unified. The modern black experience is an ever growing sea whose inhabitants are as exotic and functionally diverse as the non-metaphoric sea and its non-figurative underwater inhabitants. Overlapping and non-binding cultural treaties with the various peoples, times and environments the black community has encountered are kept sacred, even if outdated, by the sheer tyranny of nostalgia. Antique codes, sometimes abundantly foreign, are meticulously restored to former numbers matching, showroom floor glory only to be gawked at by aficionados who find superficial usefulness in the ineffective and obsolete technologies of yesteryear. These codes are then thrust upon the current generation like a heavy costume where functionality is suspended for expression's sake. As one tries the work of assembling a common black experience from the historical record the prime motivation and objective for such a pursuit slaps the face like a winter's hawk...for what exactly? The answers to this come hot and heavy: Internal economic stability. Cultural sovereignty. Political solidification. Moral rejuvenation. Intellectual productivity. Social security. Mental and physical wellness. Environmental sustainability. More can be added and some listed above are merely subordinate predicates of more primary actions. Meaning if you have one you will automatically have the other. Or so we hope. Or so we think. The assorted goals of the black community populate a wide range. Every now and then one emerges from the bush and gains prominence and captures the imagination sector wide and, if it's a passion project, will be sent to the intellectuals or political elite to be translated into policy and to be further along subjected to the will of the electorate. Arguably, since the modern system of legislation can only absorb and transact technical code and not passionate prose the goal may lose its distinct exotic and exciting flavor as it is made more palatable for universal tastes via the expert filters of a few.

## Part 2

And then...we wait. Sometimes the goal which we feel so desperately is a prime initiative is declassed to 3rd or 4th level subordination in terms of its universality by policy makers and we are told that there is a more primary universal issue that if satisfied first will bring about the state we seek in due succession. It will trickle down as they say. In short as we seek to enforce our specific cultural identity we are counterattacked by the false universal identity of the mass. The black is diluted as opposed to concentrated. Micro dilutions takes place as well as municipal, county and state regulations are tuned to the specificity of the area thus making black in Mississippi vastly different from black in California and both are falsely universalized at the federal level as "black in America" which, back to macro dilutions, also stands in very stark contrast to black in Nigeria. This ebb and flow of relevance has some predictability to it. But not mystical predictability in terms of seeing future events but in terms of seeing that these current events are really the same past events that have never been solved and are not really "happening" in real time but more correctly that they have already "happened" in time. This is "the cycle" which so many speak of in and about the black community. Identical circumstances yet in foreign times. To live comfortably in America one must privatize ones cultural extremities and concentrate them to singular days of public exhibition. As assimilation is a combative process one who seeks calm passage must surrender the martial arts of their original culture and accept the mass culture as primary practice. The black community is rampant with cultural extremities. From prosperity based Christian theology to Kimetic science to revolutionary black nationalism to Bloods & Crips to The Nation Of Islam. The single uniting principle that all these groups share and also the more moderate and benign associations that fill in the gaps between them is establishing a local cultural norm in opposition to the status quo. A status quo whose goal is the dilution of disparate cultural primaries into privatized superficial subordinates.

## Part 3

However in their defiance to the norms all these groups contribute in their own specialized ways, sometimes very abstractly, to the expansion of the dominant culture which is well aware of the cyclical nature of non-unified, multi-perspectival communities. This next statement is definitely a giblet boggler and will sound really stupid because it's redundant AF but it's not meant to be a solution but merely food for the contemplative thinker. Alrighty here goes nothing : the problem with the black community is that we have too many problems! Said it. Meant it. Moving on. We take the isolated to be symptoms of the systemic and the systemic to be signs of the isolated. We want public and universal solutions to hyper local cyclical problems even though universal solutions means dilution of individual local expression...or do WE? Or is it just THEM? Or is it just YOU? Or maybe it's not you its just me??? It is very tough to think about but some of these cherished cultural cycles we are riding on may not be suited for the roads ahead. Might be time to start forgetting how to ride the bike and remembering how to walk in the same direction. Together.

Sincerely,
Wasalu "Lupe" Jaco

## References

1. ↑ "Lupe Fiasco (@lupefiasco)". *Instagram*. October 17, 2015.