A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

In another single sentence essay, Abdurraqib strikes a confessional tone about his experiences performing Blackness. He does not want ‘to be the kinda Black person that white people drag out when they get caught up in some shit & gotta carve out that wide escape route of having a Black friend” (47). He criticizes white people who try to clumsily and poorly perform Blackness based on stereotypes rather than lived experience. Yet Abdurraqib also turns his eye to Black people’s performance of Blackness, commenting upon the playing of loud music and the rapping of the soft-a n-word. A white kid who grew up in Black areas would be, in some ways, as ostracized as Black kids in Abdurraqib’s almost completely white school—in an effort to call out examples of racism, Black kids name the white boy.

Abdurraqib considers far-reaching impact of the “Magical Negro” trope, dedicating this essay to the multitude of Black actors relegated to playing this role in films from the 1990s and 2000s. As an aside, Abdurraqib shouts out his friend Trey, who transferred to a private Catholic school that had mostly white students and where Trey became a star basketball player.