When Common dropped Black America Again on Friday, Vulture published an interview with the Chicago rapper that said his 11th album was “perfectly timed for release on November 4.” I’ve turned that phrase over in my head ever since. What makes a recording that’s meant to become part of peoples’ lives “perfect” for a single day? Why should an album that recalls centuries of injustice only hold our attention during an election cycle? A work of art that means to hold us accountable for the systemic racism that continues to cripple America’s minority communities should fuel political action beyond November 8, right?
I don’t know how many times my stomach flipped in that moment. Since then I’ve thought about what made a stranger think this was a reasonable thing to ask. I’ve thought about my white skin, my blue eyes, and my hair, which has lightened in the sun since I was a kid. I’ve thought about my dad’s dark brown curls, which in old photos form a large bulb just above his forehead—the most obvious sign that he’s Jewish. My grandfather had the same hair—he emigrated from Poland to Israel (when it was part of the larger British Mandate of Palestine) roughly a decade before Hitler swept through Poland. I’ve thought about how many of my grandfather’s siblings and cousins never made it out of Poland, and how many of them surely died in the Holocaust. I wonder how many of them had his hair.
