‘Black Body Language for Dummies’

How not to miss the subtle non verbal cues of black distress in uncomfortable white spaces: even when we stay courteous.

The White Lean In or Casual Shoulder Hug is (Almost) Never Safe nor Innocent for a Black Person. Here, take a look at this interview. It’s Barbara Walters, with the artist formerly known as Prince. The episode aired 2012 on ABC television talk show, The View. The short clip is available here: Barbara Walters Meets Prince on The View

One widely noted example of how black people react when white people passively aggressively invade our bodily spaces is when they touch black hair, to ‘see how it feels’ (read, I’ve heard you’re so different from me I just want to confirm for myself just how exotic & unrelatable you are, like all those wild safari animals on National Geographic…) Insert long suffering eye roll here. Make it gracious.

Why is Prince leaning further away, as the famous interview host is leaning in? Apart from Ms Walters history of toxic interviews with other stars like Diana Ross or Michael Jackson, which could have made Prince wary, and he’s very perceptive, it’s also usually never okay when a powerful white person leans in to your space, and touches your body in a reassuring way.

We’ve seen this commonly with former president Trump for example. He was a very handy man. It was always obvious it was a passive aggressive gesture, knowing his antecedents. But what about when the power gap is not so apparent? What about if said white person has a nice image, with no other history of extreme touchy-feely habits like grabbing the (insert inappropriate 5 letter word with falsely feline alternative meaning).

Especially when the subject is black, casual breaches of interpersonal space are often a way to forcefully override the subjects visible or expected hesitancy, soothe away their apprehension, lure them to relax and open up while the powerful white person primes them for further manipulation. Usually the smiling leaner later on makes them say or agree to something against their better judgment or best interests.

The tools to take with you as you proceed to analyze are first, the power balance. In the Prince/Walters encounter, he is a celebrity with a story to sell versus a big brand interviewer with a platform that sells stories. Stories can be used for or against you, much like in a court of law. They are usually used against, in the general tradition of tabloid media.

Ms Walters in particular has a repetitive history of manipulating interviewees into awkward statements. It may be that awkward statements are what makes interviews sell, as in the general tradition of tabloids.

The other tool of analysis is that there is a racial power dynamic, between a white person and a black person. This racial power dynamic is rooted in historical exploitation, and has nothing to do with the present socioeconomic status of the individual black person.

Over time, black people have learnt to be careful or circumspect in white spaces, because there have been many times when such an instinct was required in order to simply stay alive.

Call it a survival instinct?

This tool of analysis will come in handy when we consider the lean in, later. The lean in only matters because there is a power dynamic at okay, and a natural hesitancy is being overridden by a show of excessive familiarity.

Final tool of analysis to take with us is the perception of black intelligence. One should never have to spell this out, but if you know the historical dynamic of racism, you already understand that it starts with assumptions.

For racism to be implemented interpersonally or even in subtle structural microaggresions, the white cohort has to assume that the black person has a type of humanity that is less equal.

No matter what the black person has achieved personally, they are always less than the least white person.

That’s the starting principle. You can’t be racist to your equal.

Now, one way in which black people are generally assumed to be less, is intelligence. One measure of intelligence is whether or not parties can speak on equal terms, or if the white party feels compelled to ‘tone down’ the information by a cooing voice, or a more friendly body language, anything to soften the perceived communication barrier and ‘help’ the black person ‘come up’ to understand.

You will notice white people in a genuine attempt to be understood by black listeners may pick their words more articulately and slowly, as if talking to a child. The thing to think about is that the black person never complained that they lack the ability to hear or make sense of talk. It was an instinct on the part of the white person, probably from an inherited tradition of pandering to uneducated slaves, who are stereotyped as speaking in wannagonna Ebonics and never completing full sentences. So out of empathy for this perceived handicap, the white person goes the extra mile, and coos and chooses words, self-aware in that moment they are speaking to a different class of human, with presumably more challenging communication needs.

Now this whole business about “talking black” or “you sound white” (i.e. surprisingly well-read, intelligent), brings us to the one thing most white people overlook when they casually predict the intelligence of their black listener. Nuance.

In white culture, it is assumed that the black mind cannot make sense of anything unless it is elaborately presented, spelt out.

We are not expected to be calculating, or perceptive, or think in the abstract. Literally, black people are not expected to make sense of a Picasso, to notice the delicate play of sunlight through autumn leaves, play an instrument or have a taste for classical music. By extension, no matter how exerting, culturally black art forms are considered of lower intellectual value. The same art form on a white platform automatically gains value again. Think Tiktok & it’s record of cultural appropriation, called digital blackface, or how sculptures from perceived heathen mumbojumbo African cultures acquire sudden artistic value when stolen and exhibited in European museums.

The average white person would be shocked if we exhibited something like a sixth sense for example. Even the ordinary 5 senses are assumed to be too sophisticated for us.

This observation, that white people do not expect black people to be capable of detecting or using nuance, is more important for me as a Yoruba speaking person. The Yoruba language, spoken for many millenia throughout the west coast of Africa, and now also in many countries in South America & the Caribbean, has over 50 million speakers.

Image: Professor Sophie Bosede Oluwole, of the University of Lagos, was the first Nigerian to bag a PhD in Philosophy. She died aged 82 in 2018.

The chief cultural concept of Yoruba culture is ọmọlúàbí. It is like the Ten Commandments of Yoruba. The concept refers to a person who is well born and well raised. Good character, social graces & an educated mind are highly valued in Yoruba culture.

To interact without ọmọlúàbí traits is anathema, and families actively cultivate character from childhood. In the context of this discussion, one expectation of a well born, well raised child, is the grasp of nuance. Yoruba think it is a shame if everything has to be completely spelt out before you pick the message. You can say the 6th sense is a cultural superpower with us.

One principal proverb states, àbọ̀rọ̀ l’ànsọ fún ọmọlúàbí. In other words, we only need to say in part, the well born well raised child has the wisdom to deduce what is fully intended.

This gift of deduction or instinct is also my biggest weakness in western culture, because white people assume my default state is a stark, low mentation. I have been in many situations where they over explain simple things. I have been asked whether I know where Spain is, and the person proceeded to pull up a map. In a restaurant, I have been asked if I know ketchup, and the waiter proceeded to explain the tomato wonder to the doctor.

I have been asked if I know ketchup, and the waiter proceeded to explain the tomato wonder to the doctor.

White people don’t expect me to be the knowing kind. It gets worse because 9 out 10 white people are far less educated than I, yet I have to constantly deal with the casual effrontery, sometimes insinuated, sometimes expressed. They don’t know that I am the Father of Insinuation & Nuance. I know things before they’ve been spelt out. I can calculate your move before you’ve made it. I read your body language. Within the first 5 seconds of seeing a person I can write a half page about them, and I’m unlikely to be wrong.

Apart from culture, training & personal instinct, there’s also my medical education. There is such a thing as history taking, in which a doctor listens to a patient’s story & deduces the steps to an informed diagnosis. Even outside clinical settings, I’m a doctor in the streets. Part of our clinical exams was to observe a patient before they said anything and predict useful clinical information that could be confirmed later in conversation.

So anyway you look at it, culturally or by formal education, learning by nuance is the least of my challenges. Yet, like I said, it is my biggest weakness in white spaces where everyday the people I meet take it for granted that I don’t know things until they’ve been overtly manifested.

By extension, this oversight explains one reason why white people generally deny claims by black people that racism was experienced. The assumption is that unless the experience was overt, like a KKK cross burning, you are just over reaching.

I’d rather say that hunches & nuance become mathematically accurate over time, when their cumulative value is calculated & applied. That’s the principle of experimental data: replicability.

Now back to The Artist formerly known as Prince. In this short video, when she says: “off stage you’re shy”, Prince answers “I’m just that way around you”. Everybody laughs, but nuance is exactly why it’s difficult to tell the difference between a royal joke & a Prince-ly pun, intended.

Prince pulls away ever so subtly as the powerful white woman leans in, question after question. She’s trying to get into his space. He’s trying to repel her. They’re both smiling.

The nuance is lost on only one of them. The power balance, and her assumptions about black people, forbid her to see what’s right in front of her: a culturally experienced black person applying his cumulatively acquired apprehension of closeness in white spaces, and likely his awareness of her interview tactics, but only through his body language, while remaining courteous in the interaction; and because she misses the point, she. leans in even more.

Now who’s the intelligent one?