There is Nothing "Authentic" about “deadbeat dads, rappers and crack”

A brief reflection on Cord Jefferson's newest film, "American Fiction."

For total transparency, I am neither a movie critic nor a person pretending to be; instead, I am just an Afro-Latina compelled to reflect on a movie that visually expresses the quiet dialogue so many of us have with our culture and those surrounding it.

Cord Jefferson’s feature debut, “American Fiction, " portrays the conversations happening in the minds of White people and the eyes of Black and Latino people. For the White population, we miss the mark of a whole person. We show up as portions of ourselves, as stereotypes, as statistics and as one depiction of the smallest form of existence. Never leading up to the full realization that Blackness can not be measured on some scale - unable to quantify the measures of how Black we are or how unBlack we are. For many, the stereotypes of Blacks and Latinos are what create conversations about movements and progressions. It's an insult.

“They are poor, so how can they learn to read?”

“Dr. King was great, and his loss left them lost.”

These reasonings and attitudes about forcing us into a conversation we are not having create a false illusion that somehow we are the subjects of a pity party - receiving hand-me-downs and broken shoes as gifts simply because it is assumed we do not have them. While statistics reflect a disproportionate disadvantage for Blacks and Latinos in a myriad of ways, we can not discredit the statistics that reflect that authenticity doesn’t derive from “deadbeat dads, rappers, and crack.” (A line said by Jeffrey Wright in the movie as he explains to the publishers that his book (a fake book) has all of the elements of Blackness - “deadbeat dads, rappers, and crack.”) If the lens is only hyperfocused on the negative aspects of the Black and Latino experience in America, then isn’t that in itself racist? To associate the culture with only pain and suffering is to say that we have never experienced joy, happiness, success, fulfillment, and advancement as a people. It keeps us in a box of harshness, never letting us soften to allow others to see us as whole.

During slavery, we were accounted for as three-fifths of a person, and not much of that narrative has changed despite our actions leading us to places that were our ancestors’ wildest dreams.

In “American Fiction,” Thelonious “Monk” Ellison played by Jeffery Wright, is a struggling Black writer and academic frustrated with the rejections of this finely written literary work. His work, consistently placed in the “African American Studies” sections of bookstores, despite the topics deriving from mythology and none from the Black experience, adds to his angst against the world that decides how he shows up. “The only Black thing about this book is the ink,” he tells a bookstore clerk as he moves a stack of his books to a more appropriate shelf. His frustrations leave him determined to mock the writing that the market demands. As a joke, a middle finger to the publishing world, and a nod from his publisher to “write something Blacker” he writes a trash fiction crawling with Black stereotypes, belittlement of the culture, and a one-viewed perspective of the Black life. To his surprise, the book is an overnight success with major offers, proving his point that the only Black experience that others want to identify is the one of distress and misery.

Our pain does not define us. We are more than the stories of slavery, of the abuse our women have endured, of the dismantling of our freedoms, and the intentional criminalization of our men because only we can determine that pain is not at the center of Blackness, and we have.

Without giving away too much, this film is a satire on the stereotypes that shape the representations of Black Americans and about the consistent attempt by us to maintain high-standards in a world that continues to only reward stories, arts, and works that maintain the low-standards of pandering. It is a story that highlights a Black character like Monk as whole even integrating a snob approach to concepts on class and race (as Monk states in the film, “I do not see race”) and living a lifestyle that confuses mainstream America. He is a representation of the varying aspect of Blackness and debunks ideas of living a “white life” all while infusing the generational pain that circles us.