Opacity
Why does society continue to assume it has a right to observe and understand Black existence?
Opacity
noun
·the quality of being opaque to a degree; the degree to which something reduces the passage of light
·the quality of lacking transparency or translucence.
·the quality of being obscure in meaning.
Opacity is the characteristic of being difficult to understand or unclear. In its literal sense opacity is used to talk about objects that don't allow light to shine through.
The Right To Be Unknown:
We live in a society that prizes transparency. People are expected to be fully visible, to open up to others, to be understood. But in a world that assumes certain bodies are public property, the expectation to make ourselves accessible can itself be oppressive.
Blackness has long been rendered hypervisible while simultaneously denied understanding. To be seen has historically meant to be surveilled, categorised, and consumed.
From the auction block to the museum, from the archive to the media, visibility was a tool of domination. To observe was to assert ownership, and knowledge of the ‘Black Other’ was a means of control.
That legacy persists today, though in subtler forms. Black life is repeatedly summoned to explain itself. There is a demand that our experiences, emotions, and pain be made legible to non-Black audiences. The gaze may no longer be colonial in name, but its logic remains intact. Black life is still expected to be accessible.
The right to opacity is a right to exist without surrendering one’s mystery, without exposing one’s inner life. It allows Black existence to live beyond the white gaze. To hold something in reserve and resist the demand for explanation.
There is power in withdrawal, in the deliberate cultivation of spaces where Black life exceeds comprehension and remains untranslatable.
Within the quiet refuge of unobserved life, we sustain one another and exercise the freedom denied to us in public.