By Michael Tyler
I had a meaningful and memorable conversation at a local coffee shop yesterday, with someone I’ll identify as a profoundly aware and grippingly intelligent human being. He self-identified as a twenty-six year old, African American gay man. With him, I had a discussion unlike any that I’ve ever had with anyone else before, as we talked about the intersectionality of recognizing Juneteenth during Pride Month. Yes, let that sit with you for a moment.
He sought me out to speak to, having recognized me from a book he had in his possession. It was The Smallest Spot of a Dot, a children’s book I co-authored with ABC National News anchor and correspondent, Linsey Davis. After repeatedly looking back and forth between me and the top of the table he was sitting at, he held up the book, pointed to the back flap cover photo and asked, “Is this you?” I jokingly replied, “About fifteen pounds ago.”
He had recently purchased the title from a university bookstore nearby, and asked if I would sign it. He was giving it to his six-year-old niece, for her birthday. Of course, I agreed and headed towards his table, only after receiving my order for a double Cafecito, something I find essential for achieving the proper ratio of blood and caffeine, for optimum brain function. Little did I know that sitting down to sign the book would lead to a conversation that lasted for nearly two hours.
Our exchange expanded from the content of the book, which explains an incredible scientific finding from the Human Genome Project, making it understandable to any four-year-old. That finding? That a comparison of any two, randomly selected people in the world would evidence that they are 99.9% genetically identical. To put that into greater perspective, consider that what genetically separates former President Donald Trump from former President Barack Obama is a mere 0.1% difference in their DNA. Okay, take another moment to sit with that.
My new friend shared with me that he wished he had my book while growing up, that it would have made understanding himself and the issues in his life easier and more bearable. He asked me why, in a world where such a truth existed, do we still have racism and homophobia. I said, “The Human Genome Project mapped out our biological DNA, not our sociological DNA. If you want a comparison for that, it’s probably the inverse percentage. There’s a 99.9% difference between like-kind and like-mind.” Fortunately, for the sake of our mutual mental well-being, he was able to laugh at that.
When the conversation veered towards Juneteenth, it also turned towards discussing reparations. I shared with him that I would soon be reciting a poem I had written for an event to be held by the Equal Justice Society, about that very issue. Seeing that I had my laptop with me, he asked if he could read it. I obliged him, but only if he would read it aloud. I wanted him to hear himself, as he digested its meaning. Three times he paused to get a specific understanding about something. Before he concluded, he was wiping his eyes.
An expanded conversation about reparations led to a broader conversation about the struggles of marginalized people. I suggested to him that although social-cultural groups differ, there are undeniable similarities between how people are oppressed and how they deal with their oppression. Then I said something that truly struck him as being simultaneously heretical and revelatory. I said, “One of the problems with the Civil Rights Movement is that it branded ‘civil rights’ as being solely a black grievance, aspiration and enterprise.”
I went on to explain that consequently, entire segments of our nation’s collective population, who were also living with the violations of having their civil rights violated, were not likewise recognized for what civil rights legislation was meant to address. To appeal to him more directly, I mentioned how Bayard Rustin, a pivotal and prominent leader in the Movement, was being denied recognition of his full humanity by many in the black community because he was gay, and that after 1964, he was still being denied in ways that his black heterosexual peers and counterparts were not. That, for example, in 1965 and 1975 and 1995, thirty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Rustin still could not legally marry who he wanted to. Even the Supreme Court settled this issue for interracial marriages, in 1967. To complete the interesting point on the social axis, I juxtaposed this fact with the Stonewall rebellion, which happened two years after Loving v. Virginia was decided.
I also pointed out that because ‘civil rights’ was so branded, the White American, specifically male, majority population did not cultivate a consciousness to consider that civil rights are human rights, belonging to anyone deemed human. Instead, civil rights were relegated to being ‘black rights’ and that like our lives, they still didn’t matter.
Towards the end of our conversation, he asked me what I feared most about the future of social justice and civil rights. I asked him if he knew anything about astrophysics. As his eyebrows furled in complete confusion, he laughed hysterically and said that he certainly knew a lot more about POSE. Then I explained that there is a phenomenon in astrophysics called accelerating expansion, which basically means that the universe is expanding with such velocity that our ability to observe galaxies we now see will decrease in time to being completely unobservable, as those galaxies recede further and further away from our ability to see them.
I used that phenomenon to explain my fear. I said that when I look around me, at the generational loss of history, knowledge and shared experience not being taught and passed on about the civil rights struggles of so many people — those indigenous to the land, women, the LGBTQIA+ community and brown people of every shade, what scares me is that what is known, valued and observable by today’s generation is receding further and further away from all that has occurred, for them to have the society they now live in, albeit still very problematic. Regardless of race, religion, geography, gender, sexuality or political leaning, so many people do not comprehend the scope of progress that has been made and therefore, how much more still needs to be made because their void of history, knowledge and experience gives them nothing to compare to. Consequently, they cannot and do not value and appreciate where we are now, as compared to where we once were, which is exactly why we are so perilously close to seeing all gains and accomplishments move closer, with increasing velocity, towards the event horizon of social collapse. My fear, as I concluded, is that for folks like him and me, much will be forever lost to the black hole of dark intentions, because it will be beyond our ability to continue to see.
When we stood to leave, he said, “The accelerating expansion of civil rights. It’s the opposite of what it sounds like. I have to warn people about it.” That’s what I’m trying to do now, before it’s all beyond our ability to see.