Still Waiting
Imagine a life of enjoying the small moments — time with family, joy and laughter during a date, the sparks of new love, the tastes of a meal out. And imagine pursuing your passions and joys in your calling simply for their own sake — because they excite you and bring happiness and contentment.
What a privilege to go about your life being able to do so. But what if you have to enter those moments of being or doing through a lens of obligation to a greater cause or a greater good beyond yourself? Whether it be in music, or sports, or film, or faith.
There is so much to pull out from Regina King’s film “One Night in Miami,” based on Kemp Powers’s play by the same name, but for those who stand in privilege, take time with each conversation — between all four individuals, separately between Sam Cooke and Muhammad Ali (in the film still Cassius Clay until the conclusion), Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Malcolm X, on the roof, in the Motel room, in the store parking lot, in the car. Just listen. Then replay the conversations and listen again. And again.
[Note: film details follow if you prefer to watch first]
And that assignment is for white viewers. This world is centered on white joy and thriving — that just come without struggle, without looking over your shoulder, without worry for your family, without concern for your career or livelihood. White joy and thriving is just . . . expected. And you fear losing it — and so “change” strikes fear. You have no idea. I have no idea.
There are a number of discussions so beautifully woven in this film, each deftly delivered, all that can spark deeper, longer conversations. But I want to focus on the one between Sam Cooke and Malcolm X. In a heated discussion between the two, Malcolm essentially urges Sam to use the platform he’s been given through his art to do more for the Black community and movement. He goes so far as to belittle the sweet sentiments of love in “You Send Me,” that he’s doing nothing more than entertaining white masses. That his music is frivolous. Sam reminds how he upholds Black artists even while he performs the art he wants. That work has value as much as Malcolm’s preaching does for the movement.
Malcolm puts on a record with Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” as a song from a white man doing more for the movement as it describes the struggle of the Black community in a way that Sam’s love songs do not. There I flinched. Not at Malcolm — but at the privilege Bob Dylan has to be able to freely speak of societal injustice in his art, in a way that Sam did not. (Don’t miss “has” — Dylan is still here. Cooke is not. And we know why.)
[This working through of thoughts from the conversation between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke is not at all to presume what Black readers should get from the film’s many threaded conversations. This is for us who are not Black.]
Listen to the struggle, the frustration in these conversations. Do you have conversations like this about just . . . living? About just pursuing your career? About enjoying success?
Both men have valid points. It’s deeply important to live our lives for the greater good of all, to bring positive change — and how that work manifests itself varies. And there is absolutely everything right in indulging in all the joys life has to bring and enjoying one’s work and art for its own sake.
Sam should be able to just live, to just be, to not have to struggle, to not have to think about how his art serves his community. But it’s not Malcolm who places that burden on his shoulders of fixing what was broken by design against them. It is white society who grips so strongly to its “supremacy” in all things: culture, art, industry, government, education, joy, and thriving.
We can just be. And it is an injustice that Black neighbors and colleagues cannot, or must be exceptional in order to be respected and valued. Sit on that thought — of what you have without any struggle, of your comfort — and imagine your place in life not being available to you without fear and struggle and obligation.
We who are not Black should be very uncomfortable.
Then I go to my brother
And I say, brother, help me please
But he winds up, knockin’ me
Back down on my knees
Cooke released “A Change Is Gonna Come” in 1964. Fifty-seven years later, it still hasn’t come. This world still revolves around white thriving, white joy, white comfort. We must step aside and follow — if we’re allowed. Yes, a seat at a table we non-Black individuals did not make is what we should aspire and do the work to be welcomed to and given a seat at. And if, or when, we don’t get that seat at a new table, let that be.
Matter is the minimum. Black joy, thriving, and just being — without fear, without exception — is the change that needs to come. And the only ones who should be struggling to bring it are those of us who made that need necessary. It’s on us. And the terms cannot be set by us.
Thank you to Sydney Trent of The Washington Post for sharing this video of students from Dorothy I. Height Elementary School singing Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” during their virtual winter concert.
