Two weeks before the election, I found myself at a family gathering, hoping for a break from the constant political noise. Yet, during every football commercial, either a Trump or Harris campaign ad took over the screen, and I felt the weight of exhaustion settle in. I was tired of the rhetoric, tired of the debates that bled into every conversation. At that moment, I wasn't interested in discussing candidates or policies. We were there to connect as a family, not to let politics divide us. So, I was mute until I could not contain myself. Even as I tried to tune it out, the tension was hard to ignore. Voices grew louder, and I watched as a recently naturalized Black man, someone who'd just earned his right to vote, stood passionately defending Trump. He was so loud that veins pulsed visibly in his neck, spitting and frothing at the mouth, and his words dripped with the kind of frustration that seemed centuries old of Hatered towards himself and women. "Identity politics is losing," he shouted, convinced Trump was the answer. When I asked why he felt Harris was unqualified, his arguments felt rehearsed, like bite-sized soundbites handed down by those who rarely had our community's best interests at heart. He railed against her gender and dismissed the rights of transgender people, claiming they were "taking over." And then, with a familiar refrain, he declared, "My pockets were much fatter when Trump was president." I couldn't help but respond, "Man, that was because we were all locked at home during a global pandemic."
To me, it felt like I was encountering a man who was formerly chained, rummaging through a graveyard of the great mythical American dream and preparing to injure himself At the polls. It felt as if I were watching someone desperately clinging to a broken version of the American Dream, prepared to vote against his interests and those of his community. And he wasn't alone. Later, another family member quietly said that Trump "wasn't that bad" and asked, "How much did your life change?" I responded that democracy is a group project, my niggah, and if you aren't reading for yourself. It was like watching a group project fall apart because too many believed voting was an individual choice, not a collective responsibility.
In that moment, the scene morphed in my mind—a character who had leapt from the pages of an August Wilson play into a figure like Stephen from Django Unchained, only to settle into an all-too-familiar caricature: Uncle Ruckus from The Boondocks.
Uncle Ruckus from The Boondocks is an exaggerated satirical character meant to represent the painful and complex issues of self-hatred and internalized racism. He is an older Black man who fervently denies his identity, espousing highly prejudiced views that support white supremacy. Ruckus takes it as far as to deny his own Black heritage, claiming to have "reverse vitiligo," which he has said has "turned" him Black from an originally white identity.
Physically depicted with an exaggeration: an enlarged belly, sagging skin, and perpetually angry eyes and squinting add to the absurdity and comedy of his tragic character. He is commonly shown in work overalls, portraying a "hard-working" persona, which he believes suits his idealized view of white supremacy. This character happens to be Black but holds immense despise for the Black community and views Black culture and Black people according to deeply established stereotypes.
As a character, Uncle Ruckus is the personification of the most extreme form of internalized racism, which painfully and ironically serves as a signal of the impacts that systemic oppression and self-hatred have on identity and self-worth. With Ruckus, the creators of The Boondocks push viewers into uncomfortable truths about the psychic results of racism cloaked in sharp and dark humor.
Uncle Ruckuses are everywhere, embedded among communities of Black men who have been marginalized, discarded, and numbed by society's relentless cycles of dispossession and neglect. They are men learning to live lives structured by disenfranchisement, men whose inner struggles have been abandoned to walk through life with no sense of any connection to a deeper self or purpose. These are the men who internalize messages of their devaluation, whether through passive reception or active acceptance, allowing their life trajectories to meander from one spectacle to the next high-stakes athletic event to daydreams of someplace far away, someplace where they could finally escape from an imagined world free of labels and limitations placed on them.
These "walking unconscienced" people, rather than finding solidarity and community, have adopted narratives reflecting society's disregard and disdain for them. Instead of resisting this, they turn that energy within and can often be seen embracing ideologies that uphold the very systems of oppression working against them and their communities. They dwell in a space where identity is broken, aspirations are smoothened, and awareness of the agency of self is tumbled towards superficial rewards or external validations.
From the sports stadium to the corporate boardroom, from the bottoms of Bourbon Street to whatever passes for a stage from which people define success in these disappearing days, these are the Uncle Ruckuses serving as metaphors for the psychic toll taken by oppression; men have grown to be a projection of themselves that the society demanded. They are, therefore, no longer just objects of systemic neglect but find themselves active unwitting participants in the perpetuation of that same system: men shaped by a society offering them few spaces for healing and connection, leaving them vulnerable to the cycles of disempowerment masked by moments of temporary validation.
It is as if cacophony upon cacophony of voices masquerading as Black consciousness is coming from every direction, filled with confusion and wreaking havoc. From slick podcasts to a hip form of multicultural churches, where pastors in skinny jeans have proclaimed a gospel of self-focus, often under the funding of White Christian Nationalist organizations, voices proclaim guidance but create fog. Even Black preachers, whose clips are shared for social media hype, are stripped of the nuanced expertise that can further our understanding of the Gospel. It's a landscape wherein even Uncle Ruckus, that tragic caricature of internalized racism, seems eerily present and everywhere.
Two factions make their appearance, articulate against this noise: the dispossessed and marginalized, otherwise known as the "Unheard,"; and the vocal, educated elite, for convenience, called here the "Opinionated Negro." Both reflect a wider struggle for legitimacy in which neither party has its hands on the reins of narrative determination regarding Black identity. The "Unheard" are those whose stories go unnoticed, whose voices rarely make their way toward a platform that respects or values their experiences. Their points of view are tempered in resilience, anger, and a complicated survival that is seldom recognized by the mainstream. Meanwhile, the "Opinionated Negro" has gained those platforms, academia, or professional spaces that give them the legitimacy to speak on behalf of the experience of Blacks in general. This group's voices can sometimes feel removed, polished by privilege, from those raw realities felt by those very same marginalized citizens.
Wrapped up in this ideological battle is the rhetorical question: Whose voice holds matter? Whose story is worth being included in the collective idea of Blackness? This is the tension between the "Unheard" and the "Opinionated Negro," signifying the struggle for legitimacy, where each faction tries to assert a place within the diversified narrative that cannot be easily reduced.
In this complex landscape mirroring a plantation, we must mute the temptation to simplify or silence voices that do not fit one sanitized narrative. Black identity is not some monolith but contains a vast diversity of experiences, traumas, and triumphs. Such diversity surely deserves honoring by our making space for and listening to voices beyond the noise-to the "Unheard" and to the "Opinionated Negro"-while being chided by the important ways each contributes to a more honest and expansive vision of Black identity. It is only in embracing the full range of voices that one can start telling a real and collective story that also honors every voice as part of a shared legacy and an ongoing struggle for meaning, self-worth, and visibility.
The story of Jesus and the man among the tombs gives an exciting picture of what it means to come across someone stuck in a dead space, bound by forces that warp their identity and alienate them from the living. Jesus approaches without judgment; He sees through the chaos and pain to the heart of a man who has been cast aside. He speaks directly to the forces holding him captive, and he realizes that this isolation, this internalized suffering, is not who he is.
Numerous siblings share the plight of being Uncle Ruckuses, wandering through metaphorical tombs with the weight of self-hatred, disillusionment, and rejection propagated by a society that both excludes and distorts them. It is not enough to dismiss or ridicule them; they're our people, lingering in the places that deny them the right to the dignity of connection and belonging.
We hold spaces of healing in solidarity while also examining the existence that total subscription to white hegemonic dispositions is death. We have the choice of either letting those men linger in dead zones of invisibility, surrounding them with community power or being in a position ready to disrupt the forces that have buried them under layers of self-denial and isolation. The first conversation is Aye, my niggah. Is you Good?
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