juxtaposing the black boy & the bullet

Smith celebrates the Black body while also almost writing a eulogy for it. Smith describes the body as hard, loud, fast, a flash, warm, and looking for a home. While most of these can certainly have negative connotations, most of them also show the body alive with vitality and youth. The body also contrasts the cold, hard death of the bullet, which is inanimate and kills. The body is life.

This is important because there is a long history in America of weaponizing the Black body, especially the male body, for racist intentions. This began with slavery and the literal enslavement of the Black body as a means of economic production. Black bodies were bought, sold, and used as livestock.

In addition to slavery, the minstrel show mocked the Black body with racist stereotypes and offensive portrayals by White actors in blackface. The idea was to lampoon, shame, and criticize the Black body by connecting it to racist beliefs about Black people including stupidity, sexual promiscuity, and a general sense of incivility.

Along with minstrel shows, America has traditionally viewed the Black male body as threatening. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, there was a deeply entrenched tradition of viewing Black men as overly sexual and unable to control their carnal drive. There was extreme control over Black bodies because White men feared Black men would lust over and rape White women. Fears like this were popularized in movies like The Birth of a Nation (1915) in which a Black man rapes a White woman, and this irrational, racist belief led to the death of many Black men—most famously including Emmett Till, who was lynched after allegedly whistling at a White woman. Even the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst events in American history, began as a result of a White woman’s claims about a Black man’s advances.

More recently, the Black male body has become a different kind of cultural weapon. Although in sports, the Black male body has become a symbol of envy for many, some racist tropes from the era of slavery continue to permeate culture. This became a topic of conversation when football player Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during America's national anthem to protest racial injustice. Many people, including many Black athletes, interpreted the backlash against his protest by fans of the sport as a sign that White audiences cared little about the sacrifice Black athletes make to their bodies in an attempt to entertain the masses. Some athletes, including Kaepernick, drew comparisons to slavery.