Why You May Never See the Documentary on Prince by Ezra Edelman – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
I called Questlove a few months later, to see how it had all settled in his mind. He said he went home that night and spoke to his therapist until 3 a.m. He cried so hard he couldn’t see. Watching the film forced him to confront the consequences of putting on a mask of invincibility — a burden that he feels has been imposed on Black people for generations. “A certain level of shield — we could call it masculinity, or coolness: the idea of cool, the mere ideal of cool was invented by Black people to protect themselves in this country,” he said. “But we made it sexy. … We can take dark emotion and make that cool, too.”
We do make it look cool.
It’s embedded in our psyche, after generations going through the motions, protecting ourselves. We’re protecting ourselves the second we understand how society is with us. History, research? No time. Mask on.
The 2010s have utterly broken us, though. That decade made us simultaneously more prone to use that mask 25/8, and also completely destroyed it. BLM. The biggest protests ever seen since the civil rights movement. Minnesota, where Prince is from. Where they wear masks as well.
The mask of invincibility was worn and recognized by police when they kneeled on George’s neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Police always thinks that black people are invincible, which is why they need to draw their guns or be violent against us in a matter of seconds, no matter the reason.
We’re wearing a mask. A mask of invincibility.
But it’s only a mask. During those protests and in between them, we have put our masks down. We showed our snot. We became balls of despair, wailing. At home, on the sofa. In the street, on a sidewalk. With non-black folks. We fought, we demonstrated. Some became community leaders, masks off, fighting injustice, showing where we’re hurting.
Some were killed. Many —what an understatement, are still hurting, wearing a mask or not.
The mask of invincibility made some black people believe it was real. R Kelly, Jay Z, Diddy. They were indeed quite invincible for damn near two decades. Doing whatever they wanted. Grooming. Abusing. Pushing the limits of black invincibility while society tells us that what they did is only possible with white celebrities. I guess “we” went through the glass ceiling here. Champagne! Black folks near the Big mask of invincibility want it and don’t want it simultaneously. They want safety, which is why they worked for those powerful men but in the end, they know the mask is just a mask. So they close their eyes. We closed our eyes when 28-year-old Jay Z spent a lot of time with 16-year-old Beyoncé. As if the black community itself was a whole mask of invincibility protecting the obviously wrong relationship. We did the same with Kobe in 2004. Or with BLM in 2020. And all scandals from churches to corporations. As if all those abnormal things had been normal.
The mask of invincibility didn’t fit Ta-Nehisi Coates. I feel like we wanted him to wear it and take it to the stage, like George Clinton sings. But he said, I imagine after looking over his family and his life, “hell to the no”. Black folks have been thirsty since Barack left and Ta-Nehisi fits this need so, so well. But he’s a human being who knows atrociously too much about black and non-black History and is thoroughly aware of the mask being fake, distorting people’s psyche to a point of no-return. My man said fuck that. I understand.
So we’re millions of tiny black islands where we put a mask on, temporarily. And then we put it down and cry. The consequence of black women wearing three masks of invincibility at the same time is that in intimacy they shatter and melt.
All my black friends wear the mask at all times. Which is why I don’t want to hang out much. I see the mask, it screams at me. I’ll ask “You good?”, they’ll say “never been better”. Lies. Put the goddamn mask down.
We can’t evolve with the mask on. We can’t progress. The mask is status quo. It’s patriarchy + ghetto shit + money structuring our thoughts. All is well except that nothing is.
The mask is draining. It might be useful sometimes, especially when you want to go somewhere and that society demands your black ass to be wearing a mask anyway, but it’s constantly sucking energy.
If I want 100-year lasting homes and overall things to slow down, perhaps it’s for that: to allow us to put the mask down. For good.
