EBONY MUSTANG

His sagacious engine enrages with horsepower; his penetrating eyes beam into the piercing twilight of the night foraging for his prey; his bestial extremities aggressively conquer the earth imprinting his legacy with every velocious rotation of his wheels. The unyielding vigor of a Ford Mustang’s shell, synonymous to the thick ebony skin that comprises a man of African descent has evolved throughout history. The façade of aggressiveness that is draped over both of these structures can no longer loosely cover the wounds caused by the nails and sharp thorns that awaited them on the paths that they adventured. Like the veneer of candy red paint concealing a decrepit engine of a 1966 Ford Mustang, the mere ebony skin that floats over an ocean of blood and a structure that would make the artist of the Venus de Milo envious, harbors the depth and emotion of a man of African descent. A black man is a man of African ancestry who is more than the black skin color that he has been convinced he is, more than the magnitude of his endowment, more than a overbearing, stereotypical, oppressed figment in our nation’s past; he is an avant-garde symbol parallel to the Ford Mustang that continues to reproduce mint versions of itself that are adaptive to the virgin generation.
A man of African descent is limited. His potential is forcibly sealed within the zip-lock bag of restrictions only to burst out with rebellion. Comparative to the Mustang whose ferocious appetite to conquer the road ahead of him being corked by the speed limit, the African male’s capability to achieve is and has been contained by discrimination, segregation, and racism. From the dawn of his forced leap onto the embankment of the new world, the African male has struggled to find his place in a world that he was never meant to succeed in. The manacles of injustice have been slapped across his wrists and shackled around his ankles leaving him paralyzed and unable to advance in society. Statistics have repeatedly whispered in his ears, telling him his indubitable cemented fate. The most common of these statistics involves the correlation between black men and jail time. According to a national study conducted by the Department of Justice, Bureau and Justice Statistics in April 2003, 43.91% of jail cells were occupied by men of African descent (1). Although the statistic can be trusted, the data fails to explain why these men had been incarcerated. Without providing a candid explanation as to why these men have been barred within the confinement of metal barriers, American society automatically jumps to illusive conclusions such as: wife beating, robbery, homicide, and etc. Therefore, a man of African descent is inconclusively defined as a criminal.
A man of African descent is protective. The antecedent past of segregation has taught him to construct a conglomerated wall of fortitude in order to protect his emotions, homologous to a Mustang fender safeguarding its wheels. An example of this armor of protection is the barrier that the use of the word “nigger” or “nigga” creates. Some men of African descent have tried to justify their use for the word “nigga.” Many say they are changing the word to mean brother or friend. Some say that the word does not have the same effect coming from a person of African descent as opposed to coming from a person of non-African descent. Even though they claim to be changing the word, they still maintain the belief that it is not permissible for people of other races to use the word. A recent example displaying the use of the “n word” by a person of non-African descent was Michael Richards’s use of it in a comedy club. “You can talk, you can talk, you're brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A nigger, look, there's a nigger!" He was reported saying” (Spades 1). Michael Richard’s use of the “n-word” rallied African American liberation movers and community members. They are protective of this word which stems from the past, because this word conjures emotions embedded in slavery and oppression, yet when they use it those emotions of slavery and oppression are nonexistent. Defined according to this word that they use, men of African descent are thoroughly examined under a microscope of speculation and criticized in some arenas and glorified in others.
A man of African descent is enthroned and dethroned. Like a Mustang being glorified for his flawless exterior but belittled because of his transmission, the black man is exceedingly exalted above others for the heavy-duty immensity of his hardware, while degraded for his intelligence. The stereotype of a man of African descent and his endowment has continued to glorify his body parts rather than his intellectual mind. There are probably more articles that focus on this stereotype of penis size than articles that focus on his academic achievement.
Studies incessantly bring about the concern of African American men not completing high-school or university rather than uplifting the men that have graduated with a high school or university diploma. According to the Urban Institute, the national graduation rate of African/American males in high school is 42.8%, the lowest of any gender and race of students (Orfield 2). This data forces young African American males to believe the stereotype of being white-washed if he is in this other 58.2%. A black man who speaks eloquently rejecting the slang of Ebonics, has had a proper and formal education, who takes brain-stimulating courses in school that often lack other blacks, and typically associates himself with those of whom he shares classes with, is viewed as white-washed. Basically, not conforming to stereotype of rapper, athlete, gangster and rather substituting these for positions such as teacher, lawyer, and doctor, entail that a man has become white-washed. Apparently the enthroning of black man for the size of their jewels constitutes for the dethroning of black men for their aptitude. Regardless of how eminently he is placed on the throne of achievement, he has remarkably advanced himself considering his past.
A man of African descent is progressive. The fundamental blueprint of the 1965 Ford Mustang, the first of its class, lacked many of the amenities such as: air-condition, radio, and side air-bags that the current 2008 model has. Likewise, the black man who once lacked the resources and opportunities to advance has overtime acquired these and as a result has become more privileged and capable than ever before. “[…] slavery was so bad that no one could have achieved anything of significance under it,” (Watkins 2). The time when this undeniable statement was accurate has elapsed and a new epoch has dawned and now there are many successful black men who have found their place in society.
The dawning of this budding new epoch has unchained the once clasped ties that the archaic yesterday held on the aboriginal black men. The subsequent result is a black man who reconstructs and engineers himself in order to contribute to the fruition of the imminent posterity. No longer is he capped like the Ford Mustang to abide by the speed limit, but he has the green light to rev up whatever momentum that he has and accelerate down his own freeway of achievement.

-Nathaniel Statistic