For those who watched Marvel’s series, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, this is a reflection I wrote right after watching one of the episodes. If you’ve never watched the series, it’s worth a watch. For context, Isaiah Bradley is an old man, and it was just revealed that he was actually the first Captain America, but history forgot about him because of how he was discarded and erased. How? Take a read below:
Isaiah Bradley went through hell several times over. He is old and bitter and understandably so. I got furious all over again hearing his story as I recalled the Tuskegee Experiments. Isaiah’s view of America is an honest one, and it comes from how America used him to fight America’s wars and then threw him away when they didn’t need him anymore. Put him in prison for 30 years where they branded and experimented on him. He was seen as nothing more than a black body they could use as a lab rat. The shield to him was a symbol of oppression, exploitation, and erasure. Minus the superhero fiction, this was the reality of many black military men in the service.
This was Isaiah’s reality.
He also told Sam that nothing had changed.
But something did change.
In Sam’s training sequence, we see his two nephews watching him practice with his shield. He holds it as one of his nephews touches it while beaming with pride. He did not have the same association with the shield that Isaiah Bradley did. And while I’m sure a character like Sam will make sure Isaiah’s story is told to his family and the rest of the country, his nephews won’t carry the same bitterness. Though Isaiah’s bitterness was real very appropriately placed, his bitterness did not mean every black man had to share in it. Sam, carrying the burden of Isaiah’s legacy, is ensuring his nephews can grow up in a world where a black Captain America is not an anathema, and not even necessarily something to be seen as better than a white one, but a normal part of life.
That is the responsibility we have as people of any color. Not to pass down our jadedness, but to pass on our wisdom to make sure the next generation is adequately informed, and can make their life choices with the knowledge of the past, but not with the same pain.
Knowing the pain of the past without operating in that same pain is not ignorance.
It’s freedom.
The Isaiah’s of the world are well understood, but will never win. The Sam’s of the world are inspiring, but lacking wisdom.
It’s when Isaiah meets Sam. That’s when great things can happen.
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