Excerpted from:

INVISIBLE MAN, GOT THE WHOLE WORLD WATCHING: A Young Black Mans
Education (Nation Books, 6/14/16)
Introduction
I dont remember what I was doing when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. Im sure I
was watching the All-Star game, as I had done since I was a kid even younger than Trayvon. I
may have even made a snack run to 7-11. I almost certainly was tweeting, or at the very least
reading Twitter. I may have been on deadline and convincing myself that watching the game
wasnt procrastinating but all a part of my writing process. I was probably stressing about money.
I probably wasnt thinking about dead black boys.
Ive had the opportunity to do a number of things Trayvon will never have the chance to, and the
guilt of that weighs heavily on me. Everything Trayvon did that supposedly justified his death -wear hoodies, walk to the store at night, buy Skittles, have tattoos, smoke weed, be suspended
from school -- I did. I could have been Trayvon. So many of us black boys trying to become
black men in America could have been. Knowing that made his death that much harder to
stomach.
One of the more pernicious effects of racism on the psyche is the constant questioning of ones
worth and purpose. It can be almost as debilitating as death. Almost. I dont wish to make these
things seem equivalent. I have my life; Trayvon does not. But the source of my guilt is
understanding that American racism will take some of our lives while holding others of us up as
exemplars of success, providing the illusion that there is an escape. It places us in the unenviable
position of wishing that our martyrs could have survived to become tokens.
I tried to imagine who Trayvon would have been on February 26, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and
beyond. The things he would have seen, the world he would have known, how he would have
created himself. When youre introduced to a martyr as a result of their death, they arent a
whole person. They are a name and a story. They are a set of symbols and projections. Their lives
are flattened for our consumption, and whatever attempts we make to remind ourselves of their
humanity are no substitute for the face-to-face interactions well never have with them.
Theres a particular pain in that realization when the martyrs are as young as Trayvon. I didnt
get to know who Trayvon was, but as a seventeen year old he probably hardly knew himself. He
liked football, Lil Wayne, airplanes, and taking things apart to put them back together, but he
never got the opportunity to ask himself why. He never had his assumptions challenged, never
had his worldview shattered, his heroes humanized, or his morals questioned. He never had to
confront his own bigotry or his complicity in different systems of oppression. To ask who he
would have been on February 26, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and beyond is try to fill in the gaps
where only experience can be the guide, and George Zimmerman took the opportunity for
experience away from Trayvon on February 26, 2012.
Trayvon Martin was a seventeen-year-old black boy in America. White supremacy tells a lot of
lies about seventeen-year-old black boys who grow up in America, but we cant escape the fact

that those black boys absorb a culture of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, class-based
elitism, self-hatred, violence, untreated mental illness, and a host of other American problems
that translate differently when experienced through the lens of American racism.
I dont want to appear to be tarnishing the image of Trayvon Martin, a black boy I never knew.
Theres an almost instinctual desire to protect our martyrs, so many of them being young black
men viciously maligned in life and unable to escape the barbs of racism in death. If we dont
rescue their narratives, theyll forever be remembered only to the extent that white supremacy
lends them any humanity. But we do a disservice to our martyrs by imposing perfection upon
them. We do a greater disservice to ourselves, the survivors and potential tokens, by not honestly
reckoning with who our martyrs were and who they could have been.
We resist this conversation because black men and the culture they create so easily become
scapegoats. Without nuance, it very quickly turns toward a blaming of black men for the
existence of misogyny, homophobia, etc., not a careful examination of how black men can
experience or contribute to these forms of oppression. And the more the image of black men is
connected to everything wrong with the world, the easier it is to justify killing us. Racism comes
to be seen as a natural reaction to the existence of black monsters.
Who would Trayvon Martin have been on February 26, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and beyond?
The short answer: he would have been a black man in America. The long answer involves
figuring out exactly what that entails.
I was twenty-five years old when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. I hadnt prepared
for life at twenty-five, having believed at different points of my life that I wouldnt make it that
far. I could have been Trayvon, or any number of nameless, faceless black boys killed by police
or vigilantes, by other black men or themselves. Twenty-five was a relief and a surprise and
opportunity. I would be afforded the time to create myself that Trayvon wasnt.
I didnt know how to do that. Or, I didnt know how to do that and become a healthy and whole
human being. It seemed that every black man I witnessed attempting to create himself came
through to the other side broken. They walked through the culture of misogyny, homophobia,
transphobia, class-based elitism, self-hatred, violence, untreated mental illness, and other
American problems and emerged as living proof of the lies white supremacy tells about black
boys and men in America. I was doing the same, because I knew no other way.
Then George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. I looked at the face of the boy who became a
symbol and wanted more. I wanted more for him than the choice between martyr and token. I
wanted more him than eulogies and praise songs. I wanted more for him than just an opportunity
to create himself. I wanted for him, for all the Trayvons in waiting, a world where they didnt
have to grow up broken or not grow up at all.
I wanted to figure out how to create that world. I looked at my own life and asked how I made it
to twenty-five. I asked who influenced me to think the way I did, what events had been most
important in shaping my worldview, who and what challenged me to see it all differently. I asked
myself: How did you learn to be a black man?

Then I wrote down some answers, for the martyrs and the tokens, for the Trayvons that could
have been and are still waiting.