Author’s note: This is a work of fiction. The only thing real about this story is the music.
The face is a canvas. A mold shaped by emotions and experiences. One look at a face and you can see everything there is to know about a person.
But not everybody is given the benefit of expression, those with a sufficient amount of melanin are often considered faceless, sixty percent human. They are labelled ‘super predators’ and ‘welfare queens’. They are denied fundamental rights such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. They are the invisible class of society.
To be invisible is to be forgotten and remembered at the same time. It is to exist in the collective imagination both as a non-entity and a being capable of superhuman feats. The more invisible the person, the more ‘threatening’ they become.
What does it cost to see a person? To treat them as someone with intrinsic value? Nothing and everything.
The invisibility that runs through the music of Quincy Hanley is the same invisibility that Ralph Ellison wrote about. It’s a generational curse that has possessed this land since 1619, when those forcibly brought here had their culture and identity taken away. Their names, replaced with those of their owners. Their ancestry, washed away at sea. Their legacy, exploited under the thirteenth amendment.
There are those who have called for history to be forgotten, for the slate to be wiped clean, made blank. But the slate is marked with centuries of cotton and blood, it is cracked with cries of those in watery graves, the sins of this nation’s forefathers can never be erased and this is the reality that we all to have face.
Further Reading
[1] Brit Bennett, Tamir Rice and the Color of Fear, The New York Times Magazine
[2] Zandria Felice Robinson, The B-Side of Blackness, The Believer
Further Watching
[1] Blank Face LP (Short Film): Parts 1, 2 and 3 (2016)
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