Alice’s Fear of Anthony
The Alice Sebold and Anthony Broadwater story is a grim reminder of America’s issue with Black masculinity.
Do you remember when I said, in my last newsletter, that an essay I wrote got k*lled due to reasons still unclear to me?
Well here it is. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Comment, share, & like if it resonates, please. It would mean a lot. <3
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[image credit: Entertainment Weekly]
On November 3rd, I was an intern at a sexual health clinic known as THE place for queer and trans people in my city. As a Black, queer, transmasculine person eager to break into a new field of work, I was eager to work with them, especially because I’d be serving mostly Black queer people.
In a meeting with my new supervisor, she looked over an email I was about to send to a patient. It had “hey hey!” as the initial greeting, a phrase I frequently say in-clinic. I was told that my style of communication was unprofessional.
I have at least eight years of experience watering down Blackness for non-Black people (no matter how “progressive” the space), so my response was direct and delicate. Though professionalism is antiBlackness personified, I replied “I disagree, but okay. I will change it”. Though we both had on masks, I could tell that her face was chalk full of shock. I naively thought, “Surely we can get past this moment”.
Reader, she proved me silly.
On November 25th, weeks after I unintentionally scared some white people, the world learned that a Black man named Anthony Broadwater spent 16 years of his life in prison for raping celebrated author Alice Sebold, a heinous crime that he did not commit. In that time, he was denied parole 5 times for maintaining his innocence. He spent another 24 years on the registered sex offender list, trying to get exonerated from this crime. As I was dealing with the aftermath of the harmless act of disagreeing with a non-Black woman, I read this story and felt physically ill.
It confirmed what I already knew about America: we have an issue with Black masculinity.
As I’ve been transitioning over the past 12 months, I’ve peeped the terror that non-Black people feel when they percieve me as a Black man. I went from “erasable masculine Black woman” to “hypervisible, scary Black man” in every space I dare to enter. I can’t ask for a table, dish out an unassuming grin, give compliments or disagree with someone without being seen as an enemy, as danger, as disappearable to the non-Black gaze.
I thought it was just me — experiencing this violent resocialization, but I’ve since talked with other Black men and masculine people about how they’re perceived. Trans guys, cis guys, studs, butches, and other Black people that perform masculinity in multiple states validated that it wasn’t just me.
This is a perception America has made.
In the US, Black men lead all the worst races. According to recent stats from The Color of Justice, one in three Black men born in 2001 can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Black men are the highest demographic of people incarcerated in the US. They lead in unemployment, homelessness, and substance use prevalence when compared to men of other races. When looking at sexual assault in particular, Black men are significantly more likely to be wrongfully convicted.
Black men lead in races no one wants to win.
As I sat, eating some chips in a conference room at this unpaid internship, I was perceived as disrespectful. So much so that the school over my internship was told I “rolled my eyes” and “was packing up as [the supervisor] was still talking”. So much so that I was called “combative” and “unregulated” for trying to make peace with this woman while maintaining my dignity. So much that “this hurt my feelings” was heard as “I’m unable to take ownership”, “I need” was heard as a demand.
I won’t act like I know what it means to be a prisoner or previously incarcerated, but I do know all too well what it means to be dangerous. Over these 12 months of my skin getting oilier and my body getting hairier, I’ve been accosted, lied on, discarded and made to feel like I’m violent for defending my character countless times. I’ve seen the cutting eyes of invisibility from when I was perceived as a butch Black woman now turned into frightened stares. These twistings of the truth go untamed, and they are not out of the ordinary for Black men and masculine people.
I say “masculine people” because this is not just a Black men’s issue. Though this gender-ignorant world may see me as a Black man, I am a Black, queer, nonbinary person who embodies masculinity. In 2018, scholar Shahan D. Bellamy highlighted the phenomena of Black transmen and (Hyper)(In)Visibility. Though I identify outside of the binary it fits my experience all too well — the world denying trans existence and queer community even treating us as outsiders. Black transmasculine people live with the plague of Black masculinity (a threat in the non-Black gaze) and Black femininity (invisible in the non-Black gaze). “Hypervisibility is an acknowledgment that these experiences are what makes up their personhood, and that their oppressions are always in conversation with each other,” Bellamy said.
I’ve had similar interactions as a Black butch; the only difference was that I was ignored. How do we disappear Black butches, Black studs, Black masculinity in those we percieve as “women” from Black families? From the non-Black field of vision? How do we disappear Black men who do nothing wrong, besides exist?
I think about the inconvenience of our existence coupled with the pileup of inequities that lead to poor choices. I think of the Emmett Till’s, the Central Park Five’s, and all the Black men perished who didn’t make poor choices. In Broadwater’s case, the only thing he did wrong was be a Black man that day. I think of the truth, which is that Black men are discarded so often that nobody with privilege to do something about it bats an eye on any old day in America. I think about how a white person’s interference is what exonerated Anthony Broadwater.
Until Tim Mucciante — a white man with more money and access — hired a private investigator to look into Broadwater’s bogus conviction, nobody was interested in Broadwater’s exoneration. He would’ve spent the rest of his life being a felon, a man who did an unspeakable thing with no job/relationship/life where he didn’t have to disclose his previous incarceration. I think about the truth, which is that there are many other stories that go viral, don’t have a famous author or have a white protagonist. How many Black men & masculine people do we have in the prison system simply because they were around a non-Black person that deemed them unsafe? How many people can disappear until we don’t have enough Black fathers, brothers, lovers, friends in this nation? How long can we live in a world where Black people need white people in order to right violent wrongs?
When will we not be wronged?
I am a survivor of sexual assault, so I don’t take lightly the terror of that experience. As your mind processes that truly illogical experience, assault can warp your perception of reality. Sebold herself said she was a “traumatized 18 year-old rape victim” in her statement, and though I believe her here, I also know that there is a legacy of Black men being falsely accused of sexual assault by white women. Given the fact that she could not identify Broadwater in a lineup, one could see that there was a margin of possibility that — even as she was traumatized — she could have recognized that Broadwater did not do this.
Instead she locked up a Black man. Sebold contributed to a legacy America buys into every time another one of us lives.
When my new supervisor was faced with the music of her misreadings, and when she was told plainly by me that her behavior was anti-Black, she decided to badmouth me in reviews. Her “pro-queer and trans” superior did all but fired me after, so I went to HR in hopes that I could get some guidance about it.
“So I said how it made me feel in a meeting, and they both responded to me— “
“Well, they have a right to respond.”
“I know, and I didn’t say they didn’t. What I was going to say is….”
Again, I was seen as unreasonable. Again, I needed to be corrected because my truth was incongruous to their ideas about me. Shortly after that call, my supervisor was told the call happened and chose to resign from supervising me. I was also told to “work from home for the rest of the semester” in efforts for us to not share space.
Black men and masculine people are aggressors before we are seen as human.
I didn’t have a white person — not even the one whose job it was to help — invested in saving me, so I had to leave. This is what America does to us.
If there was any doubt in your mind about me or Broadwater, you should reconsider your truth. Sebold and many other people in these states are dead-set on one of us being behind bars, and we should tell the truth about it. I am not a victim, so much as an example of America’s issue with Black masculinity. I, nor Broadwater, nor any other Black man or masculine person deserves another day on this earth where people view us as guilty.
What did we do wrong besides exist? How do we live with it, the truth about what anti-Blackness and anti-Black-masculinity has done?
The truth is, I worry that I will disappear everyday. Whether it be by the hands of the police or someone sitting on a bench at a park, there is always that margin of possibility that I will look too much like a criminal, too much like danger to someone. And I carry that with me in every interaction and phrase that I utter to a non-Black person. Even with self-correction, ideas that have nothing to do with me appeared; if I didn’t choose to resign, if I showed up to the office to pick up my supplies I had a right to get, if I was even more (justifiably) upset in my initial interaction with this new supervisor, would I be here today?
We deserve better. Black men and masculine people deserve sovereignty and safety. We deserve to be kind, to disagree with someone, to even mess up without having our lives taken and being seen as discardable. Black masculinity isn’t synonymous with violence. Black men trying to exist next to you isn’t a cause for concern nor a right to disappear them with the violence you THINK they possess. I don’t need to be reprimanded for being myself.
No matter where I am in America — queer/Black/trans-friendly or not — someone can decide that I am unsafe and have me disappeared, never to be heard from again. In too many Black families in America, there is a silence, tombstone, or a collect call where a man or masculine person should be. Do you feel that power in your hands? Do you know, even if you’ve spoken with integrity and are a “good” privileged person, you can do this to me?
The only power I have is my truth, and I’m using it to speak with you. Are you questioning what you know to be true?