I remember the first time I watched a black man who looked like me walk across my TV screen. It was the Fourth of July, I was 5 or 6, mouth painted yellow from a deviled egg and wearing an Old Navy t-shirt with orange soda on the front of it.
The movie was “Men of Honor” with Cuba Gooding Jr. I watched as he endured trial after trial, always managing to rise above what seemed like insurmountable odds. And as Robert De Niro stood in a courtroom of military officials pleading for him to stand and take those twelve steps that would allow him to continue serving as a diver, tears began to fall from my face.
I think about that from time to time, when I feel like giving up on something, and I seem to find the strength to keep going.
I know that many of you are already aware of the power that film has, not only on our personal lives but within a culture as a whole. Films create and share ideas with the world in a way that nothing else does. This may sound silly, but at 23 years old, when Hamilton came to Disney Plus, I cried throughout the performance. Yes, it’s a masterpiece on its own, but I’ve never seen so many people who looked like me, sounded like me, had an attitude and grace like me, perform a show like this. It changed me. And as someone who grew up singing show tunes, it was one of the first times in my life that I felt like I was on the inside of something very special.
This is the power representation has for black, indigenous and people of color, and this is why Chadwick Boseman was so important. This is why representation matters. It helps release the mind from our predisposition to count ourselves out or give up to ensure safety. Representation is applicable to almost all disciplines, not just the arts. Research from Johns Hopkins University shows that black students who have a black teacher in elementary school are 13 percent more likely to go to college than those who do not. If they have two, it increases to 32 percent.
“The role model effect seems to show that having one teacher of the same race is enough to give a student the ambition to achieve, for example, to take a college entrance exam,” said Nicholas Papageorge, an assistant professor of economics at Johns Hopkins. “But if going to college is the goal, having two teachers of the same race helps even more.”
I struggle to find the words to describe what an actor like Chadwick Boseman meant to little kids across America, and all over the world, especially to the little black boys who have only ever seen someone on TV who looks like them portrayed as a gangster, slave, athlete or coach. Boseman gave black kids an opportunity to see a black man as a king on a throne, and not a man lying limp in the street after the most recent police-involved incident. Blackness isn’t celebrated in this country enough and when it is, it’s usually served with a side of “Look! One of the good ones.”
To say that Boseman’s lost battle with stage 3 colon cancer was devastating is an understatement. However, struggling in silence is nothing new to black men and women who have created and strived for excellence in the midst of great turmoil. In fact, when you’re young, gifted and black, it’s almost a prerequisite. His dedication to continuing to create throughout his struggle with cancer reminds me of that courtroom scene. This man brought to life Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, King T’Challa. His love for people, family and the craft of film will live on in this world.
Boseman changed Hollywood and inspired a nation to believe in goodness AND blackness, and that one narrative of a black man on a screen simply isn’t enough. There are plenty of stories that still need telling.
Wakanda Forever!
