Nineteen Fifty-Six Vol. 2 No. 5

JA’QUACY MINTER
WHEN AMERICA CATCHES A COLD,
THE BLACK MAN BREATHES HIS
LAST BREATH
A PERSONAL NARRATIVE
60
I
heard a saying the other day that when America
catches a cold, the Black man catches the flu and I have
never been the same since. After hearing this saying, I
began to dwell on how I got here and the amount of work
that I would put in; trying to run away from that flu, not
knowing that I was running myself into my own casket. I
know you’re probably thinking, “damn is this nigga about
to talk about his near death experience?” Well, don’t
worry, I’m not. But, I will talk about how I was so busy
running from what I had assumed was the flu, the fear of
not succeeding, that I could not see what the real sickness
was. The risks I felt obligated to take in order to succeed
in a society that does everything in its power to stop me.
For most Black men, they experience this “flu-like”
phenomenon in the everyday big boy workforce but for
me, my “workforce” was competitive speech and debate.
This is part of the story where you can laugh if you’d
like because things are about to get really dark from
this point on...no pun intended. Yah know I don’t think
people get it at all, the pressure that comes with being
a Black competitor in speech and debate. The amount of
work it takes to drop your ebonics. The amount of work
that it takes just to walk up in front of a room filled
with mostly white competitors. To pour your heart out
to a panel of mostly white judges and hope to God that
their support is not pseudo and that they are there for
you. That they want to hear your story and not the story
that institutionalized racism has created for them. But
the hard work doesn’t stop there and shit, if i’m being
honest, I don’t quite know where it begins.
I remember the first day I held a balck book in my hand.
The color of its skin reminded me of the weight that the
stories inside of it would carry. A weight heavy enough to
break the stigma; to demolish every building in my path.
My stories carry oppression and pain and power and the
ammunition to shoot bullets through the glass ceilings
that were made to incase me and place me on display to
be the “good Black” the “proper Black” the Black who’s
“not like the rest of them.” But sometimes I feel as if
forensics isn’t the only thing to blame for my assumed
“assimilation.” I received so much backlash for attending
a predominantly white institution and competing on
a predominantly white forensics team Even before
forensics, I wasn’t like the “rest of them.” The other
Black boys wore football cleats, I wore dress shoes. They
spoke like a “nigga” where as I spoke “white” as my peers
would say. I always felt white and I hated that feeling. It
removed so many of my experiences that Black boys are
supposed to experience. There’s a picture of me from my
first speech and debate tournament that always makes me
feel something. I was wearing a purple dress shirt with
a Black suit that was composed of two different Blacks.
What the hell was I thinking? Yes, you can laugh here.
Anyways, when I examine this picture, I regret not being
able to travel back in time to notify younger me about the
amount of work that it will take for a heavyset Black boy