Whose space is it, anyways?

This morning as I was reading the profile on Christian Cooper on Washingtonpost.com, I had this strange sensation of reading something utterly new, something rarely found in publications like these: a profile of a Black American male that portrays the full humanity of their being. Such was my surprise that I took a double take in the middle of the article to see who had written it. Yes, in 2020.

But here are the two things that stood out for me:

• Perhaps the rarest of mentions — especially in a publications like these — is the limitations imposed on Black Americans and even other people of color inhabiting public spaces and geographies with freedom. And although that’s always been an American reality, the forces driving these limits seem to be in a renewed ascendancy lately.
• In reading it, I was yet again reminded that our media, images and representations continue to be gravely deficient in projecting the full humanity of all of its people. And that deficiency being true across all media types, unless owned and designed by people themselves who are habitually excluded from equitable representations.

And that’s the bigger lesson. The struggle of a truer, complete and honest portrayal of all peoples has just begun. And that is the only just and meaningful counter-response to the persistence of inequity.