Happiness is a Black Man? Longtime L.A. Poet and Writer Says Yes - KCET
Harris is a longtime L. A. poet and writer (he prefers the term 'cultural worker') who five years ago posed a simpler version of this question to himself: what is a happy black man. The question launched a Tocquevillean journey of intellectual and existential inquiry that produced a video series in which he queries other black men on the topic, and a book, " The Black Man of Happiness ," that Harris published last year. It's a warm, freewheeling but pointed mix of essay, memoir, poetry, political analysis, and historical rumination held together by the urgency Harris lends to this singular question about black men and happiness. Underneath it is a deeper question about why, in a country predicated on the pursuit of happiness, black men and happiness feels like such a contradiction, like two elements of math that don't belong in the same equation. After laboring at the bottom of American society for so long and embodying the larger black struggle for equality that continues right up to today with the anti-police brutality movement in Baltimore and elsewhere, black men as a cohort would seem... Too, a country that consistently dehumanizes and de-dimensionalizes black men has little reason to ponder their psyche, especially their penchant for happiness. He admits to being happy, but not "happy-go-lucky" -- an image associated with black folks that to him is superficial, mostly a mask that obscures real feeling and thwarts true. Source: www.kcet.org
