I noticed this guy at the Mills College commencement, this morning in Oakland, CA. One of my favorite parts of attending any graduation ceremony is watching the families of graduates watch their own relatives cross the stage to receive their diplomas. This man’s expression seem to hover between pleasure and wonder and pride.

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Spotted at Starbucks off the Dutton/Estudillo exit on 580. Since the drawing is based on a man I saw at a coffee shop, I’m using the texture of a coffee bean sack as the background; and since the Starbucks logo is green and white, I decided to play with different shades of a green from a similar color family. For the record, I am neither a Starbucks fan nor a detractor, though I am always seeking new tips on good cafes with wi-fi and lots of plugs. If you know of any in Oakland, Alameda, or San Leandro, shoot me an email at 8-Rock.com.

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This is a drawing of the man who was kind enough to help me to plug and unplug my laptop at the cafe this afternoon. I used the muted colors to reflect his even tempered kindness.

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This week I’ve been thinking about how little someone’s expression can tell us about what a person is thinking. This drawing, for example, depicts a very tired looking man I noticed in the line ahead of me at Best Buy in Emeryville. Why I first saw him, I immediately wondered what or who had exhausted him so. When I started working on this drawing, though, I was remembered how rarely people are able to interpret my thoughts based on my facial expressions. This drawing is an acknowledgement of and a meditation on what is often a great divide between one’s self-presentation and his or her feelings and thoughts.

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If you’ve had the occasion to get off highway 280 at Ocean Ave in the last couple days, then you know that traffic along that stretch is a complete mess. The right northbound lane is blocked by construction at several key points, and it’s slow going almost all the way to Junipero Serra. I saw the father and son in this drawing standing patiently at the corner of Ocean Avenue and San Benito Way. Yesterday was a beautiful day, and I had the feeling that these men, and many of the other pedestrians walking along that stretch of road, felt a little bit sorry for us drivers, inching along in that bumper-to-bumper congestion. Indeed, they had every reason to pity us. It would have been infinitely more pleasant and probably a little bit faster to be on foot, at least for those blocks between the exit off 280 and the big intersection at Ocean and 19th.

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Bradley, Gaylord’s Cafe, Piedmont Ave., Friday, April 30, 2011.

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It’s a rare occurrence when, in the year 2011, you run into two guys in two different places sporting old school afros that are parted on the side. For some reason, these hairstyles reminded me of the 1950s, and so I combined both of the men into one drawing and dressed them up like the they were actors in a Black version of The Lords of Flatbush.

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When W.E.B. Du Bois writes of double-consciousness (in the first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk), he is speaking of Black Americans’ simultaneous understanding of  (1) how they experience themselves and (2)  how many non-Black people perceive them. This drawing grows out of a recent experience of double-consciousness once-removed. The man in this drawing and I passed each other as we were both walking past the Rockridge Barney’s Burgers, and as I walked by I wondered to what degree the way he carried himself on this street–his expression, his attire, his gait–reflected his awareness of how other people might perceive him. How did other people perceive him, anyway? Did he appear to be one thing to Black people, something else to white people, and something entirely different to Asian-American, Latin-American, and Native-American passers by?

The icons running down the right side of the page represent my own thinking about these questions. What if–in the media, on the streets, and in the popular imagination–Black men were portrayed and understood not as violent and threatening but as peacemakers and protectors? Indeed, the latter is much closer to reality than the former. And our brothers and fathers, our grandfathers and uncles, our teachers and our friends all reflect this truth each day, in almost everything they do.

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To the four men standing outside the Melrose Branch of the Oakland Public Library:

Even from where I was stopped at the traffic signal on Foothill, I could tell you were having a great time. From the expressions on your faces it looked like someone was telling a great joke or a hilarious story; and even though I couldn’t hear a thing you were saying, just your grins and your laughter made me smile.

Thanks,

8-Rock