Page 16 - FMH7

JONAS CANNON
A while back I was going through this iden-
tity thing. I don’t want to call it a crisis
exactly, that seems like it would be making
it out to be a bit more than it was. I was
just in one of those places where I real-
ize that a lot of the identities I held onto
so firmly as a teenager don’t really matter
anymore. But then it just made me search a
little deeper for what might be leftover.
I remember talking to my friend Osa about a
year ago. A few months before that, I’d read
an anthology of her zine Shotgun Seamstress,
“A zine by, for and about black punks.” It’s
a terrific, insightful zine (ah hell, you
probably know about it already, everybody
does), but it also made me a bit sad. Well
not sad...nostalgic? I don’t quite know the
word. More than anything, I wished that the
zine had been in my hands about fifteen or so
years earlier. Back then, I was looking for
some sort of validation. I could go to punk
shows, listen to punk and hardcore, hang
out with other punks and still feel like an
outsider. Like, hey, I’m here, but I’m not
really part of this group, I’m just the dude
that’s around for validation, to prove that
nobody’s racist here. Nope. Totally safe
space. Diverse, welcoming and everything.
Even if refer to me as Black Jonas behind me
back (was there a White Jonas? Nope. Or any
other Jonas in the group? Nope.).
It wasn’t really just the environment that
made me feel alienated. I brought some of
that baggage with me. For most of my life,
I’d had that feeling that while everyone
was out picking teams (culturally, social-
ly, etc) I was off in my room, drawing and
making mix tapes. Fuck, I didn’t get the
memo. As a result, I had a lot of different
friends, but I didn’t feel like I had claim
to any one identity. Being black didn’t feel
like an identity unless I was with my fam-
ily, or when it was imposed upon me (“I bet
you basketball, right?”). I didn’t identity
as a “person of color” because I don’t re-
member anyone ever using that term until I
was well into adulthood. I probably would’ve
taken offense to it, being so close to the
justly retired term “colored person.” In
fact, the resemblance still makes me uncom-
fortable with the term POC (in the same way
that Hell’s Angels used to refer to them-
selves as the 1%ers—a term that by today’s
context means the exact opposite of what
they intended). At the same time, I couldn’t
shake that nagging feeling that somehow be-
ing black disqualified me from being punk.
But...black punk? Black...punk? If I knew there
were such people out there, if I knew there
was such a term, it might have changed ev-
erything. Instead of this awkward game of
“Is Chicago, Is NOT Chicago!” I might have
thought “I am a black punk. That’s me. Fuck
you all if you don’t get me.” That might
have been something to cling to, knowing
that there were other black punks out there,
that it wasn’t so unusual, that I wasn’t
just hanging out at shows so that random
people could come up to me and suddenly
start up conversations about hip-hop.
Osa, I remember, countered all that with,
“But you know, those are just two words
put together. Just adjectives. It’s not
like a club.” I am punk. I am black. I
couldn’t have ordered a membership card
from an order form cut out of the back
pages of Maximum Rock n’ Roll. I wouldn’t
have been provided a standard issue,
sleeveless denim jacket with patches of
Bad Brains, Fishbone and The Gories. No
entrance into the punk speakeasies hidden
in some hush-hush spot down the street
and deep in the factory district. Nope.
I would’ve just had two words to fit to-
gether, the same uneasiness and the vague
knowledge that plenty of other people out
there were feeling it too.
I know all of that now. Well into adult-
hood, married with a child and a shitty
office job, there are a bunch of adjec-
tives I could cling to. But then, an
identity is only as valuable as the sense
of empowerment it offers you. Father,
Husband, Activist, Black, Male, Zinester,
Punk. They can help give you focus, moti-
vation when you need it. A sense of where
and with whom you “might” belong. But if
you don’t feel any sort of empowerment in
them, you’re just left with that mixed-up
bag of whoever you are, and all the la-
bels being forced on you daily. This is
who you are, because this is who we see.
You are who generalizations say you are.
I have a lot of respect for people that
emerge from adolescence and still feel
a strong claim to their cultural iden-
tity. Ageing punks and queers, I’m al-
ways really happy to meet people who find
strength and pride in their identity. I
know there are others out there, like me,
who feel secure in who they are, yet find
strengths not in that identity but the
actions that proceed them—though all of
us still have to deal with the same shit.
Of all the police officers that have “ran-
domly” stopped me on the street to ask
me where I was going and what I had been
doing that night, my guess is that not a
one of them gave a damn whether or not I
was into Fugazi. “What’s playing on those
headphones, boy? Boogadaboogadaboogada?
Fuck! We’ve picked the wrong guy. So much
for racial-profiling. Clearly this is a
law-abiding citizen. We’ll move along
now. Goodnight, sir!”
I think that’s the struggle so many of
us live with; maintaining that personal
identity while looking beyond the box-
es we’re constantly being placed into.
To hold onto our self-definition when it
seems that every day a comment, a look,
a question is out to invalidate it. Is
that a crisis? I don’t think it’s a cri-
sis, exactly. I hope it’s not a crisis.