The Soles of Black Folks: A Symposium on Sneakers, Blackness, and Community

“We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are today no truer exponents of the pure human spirit… than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black [folks] seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.” – W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks

This panel and quote explicitly fronts the limitless possibilities of Blackness, particularly the ways in which national popular culture is formed upon our backs and inked in our skin. Sneakers are truly an American commodity, and, as such, there is also no Blacker one. We, as a vibrant, beautiful people, dance, laugh, and thrive in sneakers. While we are not responsible for their manufacture, we made this! But also, this optimism must balance on reality’s fulcrum. Otherwise, it would just be nonsensical fantasy. Just as we live, we also die…in sneakers. I’m thinking, here, of Tyre Nichols who, quite literally skated through life in some dope SBs or Vans, and his death became a perverse realization of Lupe’s “Kick, Push.” I’m thinking of Takeoff and Young Dolph and Nipsey Hussle. I’m thinking of Tamir Rice playing in the park. I’m thinking of Lebron James being told to “shut up and dribble” and having “nigger” spray-painted on his home. I’m thinking of drug dealers and gang members and corner kids, of long walks to school and longer walks home. I’m thinking over-policing and under-resourcing. And finally, I’m thinking of Michael – most likely, not the one in your mind. I’m thinking of fifteen-year-old Michael Eugene Thomas who in 1989 was murdered over his pair of Air Jordan 4s. As such, the sneaker represents less Black athletic brilliance; any specific cultural becoming, performance, and appropriation; or, for that matter, the fomentation of a multi-billion dollar market and aftermarket. Instead, sneakers, in my mind…and hopefully yours, conjures our natal persevering essence, how in an anti-Black world our shoes can look as if they never touched the ground. So then, turning back to DuBois, sneakers materialize and problematize his understanding of that “sole oasis of simple faith and reverence.” In conclusion, the challenge and emphasis of this symposium is undoubtedly making space for Black tradition, a generational being in equal measures joy and pain in the humid apparatus of an industry and culture that too often reminds us our own flexibility – our ability to crease and bend without breaking at the whims of white ideation, fantasy, and profit, is essential yet disposable cog in a near endless array of hyped releases and vaunted grails.