Joe’s Crab Shack, Mission Valley, San Diego, CA.

***

As Tupac Shakur once famously said to me, “There is no place called careful.” On the one hand, Tupac was right: There is not much room for error in America if you are a Black male in a society ostensibly bent on profiling your every move, eager to capitalize on your falling into this or that trap, particularly keen to swoop down on your self-inflicted mishaps. But by the same token, Tupac was wrong: There can be a place called careful, once one becomes aware of the world one lives in, its potential, its limitations, and if one is willing to struggle to create a new model, some new and alternative space outside and away from the larger universe, where one can be free enough to comprehend that even if the world seems aligned against you, you do not have to give the world the rope to hang you with.”

—Kevin Powell in Who’s Gonna Take the Weight: Manhood, Race, and Power in America

Posted by Ajuan Mance