LEVEL Best Man 2020
The Defiance of Black Joy in an Especially Anti-Black Year
Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
I’ve been thinking a lot about joy lately.
Maybe it’s the Thanksgiving trip I recently canceled. Maybe it’s the constant despair we’ve experienced throughout 2020 — the feeling that we’ve spent a year of our lives suspended between moments of tragedy. Either way, I can’t help but wonder where joy has manifested in our lives, and why, when it finally does, it feels so weighed down and muddy. I’ve been thinking about why joy feels like more than joy and less than joy at the same time. I’ve been thinking about who joy is for and who it’s against. I haven’t felt joyful in my thoughts.
First, let me back up.
There’s a Twitter account called @NoContextDrUmar that happens to be the dumbest thing on the internet. It takes clips of hotep Insta-vangelist Dr. Umar Johnson and posts them, as the name suggests, out of context. They’re all as ridiculous as Dr. Umar himself; I can’t get enough of them. They bring me joy. When I watch the videos, I’m not thinking about oppression or resistance or fighting back against a tyranny that constantly threatens to wipe away my smile. I’m just… laughing.
Despite a pandemic that struck Black communities with cruel precision, the virus in the White House, and months of protesting systemic racism and extrajudicial police violence against Black people, we found joy.
When I sat down to write this, I originally wanted to contend with the idea of Black joy. How finding it in 2020 is an act of resistance, some cementing of one’s right to be happy in conflict with the burden America puts on us for the color of our skin. How happiness isn’t just something we feel, but something we do — actively — to fight off the scourge of White supremacy. But I don’t think that’s quite right. I don’t think that does our search for joy justice.
