You're the not-so-average educated Joe, mean muggin' the formless, intangible blur that is your future. Before you know it, it's time to grab onto that lingering blur and to form it into what you will. You're pulling up your bootstraps just like everyone else, or so it seems. The problem is that as much as you wish to blend in with the masses, invasive thoughts of ineptitude plague your mind as you inevitably realize that, even though the straps on which you pull perfectly match the ones that belong to your fellow neophytes to the left and to the right you, your boots are of a different brand than theirs. They stick out like a sore thumb in a surrounding sea of what you perceive as sameness. In other words, it just so happens that you're a black man in a not-so-black world. Try painting your boots to fit in, and the ephemeral layer simply dries up and withers away.
Perhaps a mother who has seen it all provides you with an endless supply of paint, her necessary keys to success that you have come to know well. She chants, she coerces, she rants: "Tuck in your shirt," "Wear a suit," "Cut you hair," "Put away the do-rag," "Learn to play golf," "Speak properly," and "Take it easy on the hip-hop. It's not going to help you."
"Okay, I've heard you," you think, but then the voice of that cool uncle with the clean dreads sneaks into the picture. He holds a small suitcase and a one-way train ticket to your heart. He comes to dwell deep in recesses of your mind, to remind you to shine "dem" different colored boots and forget the paint altogether as he whispers to you, "Grow you hair," "Dress as you please," "Wear dashikis," "Keep your accent" and "Listen to the music and the poetry of your people."
So what if you decide to push the second voice aside and keep your boots painted, slapping on layer after layer as you scoop self-suppression from an infinite supply you've been collecting since childhood? Would you still be black? Director Kevin Hook's 1991 film "Strictly Business" closely examines this very question.
The film's main character, Waymon (Jospeh C. Phillips), is a black real-estate broker whose only mark of "blackness," as defined by the film, is his skin. He's basically racist, but he shamelessly exonerates himself of all his implicit condemnations of black culture. Juxtaposed with Waymon is Bobby (Tommy Davidson), a black mailman who speaks with an old-school Harlem accent, dresses freely and parties on weekdays. But Bobby also happens to be a college graduate, and he aspires to someday work with Waymon.
Who better than the beautiful Natalie (Halle Berry) to bring these foils together? The two agree that in exchange for introducing him to Natalie, Waymon would get Bobby a job in his firm. The plan was to switch personalities, with Waymon becoming "thug" enough for Natalie, and Bobby pretending to be like Waymon - "whiter than the whitest white man" - to get hired. Predictably, they both end up somewhere in between, easily finding ways to reconcile expressions of their blackness with the demands of newly attained illustrious careers in the firm. How nice. So the answer to the film's central question should be "yes," right?
Not so fast. See, this is the real world. And there again, you stand, looking down at your American Dream-walking boots. Perhaps you smile at a movie like "Strictly Business." And then come to your senses and frown. You make the only choice you have. You lean down and you paint. You paint over Bobby's face until he looks like just like Waymon. Then you paint some more - until all the black is gone.
