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:
To be “accessible” is often framed as a moral good: to open oneself to others, to communicate clearly, to be understood. But in a world that assumes certain bodies are public property, the expectation to be visible can itself oppress.
There is a persistent demand that Black experiences, emotions, and pain be made legible to non-Black audiences. Even progressive appeals to “listen” or “understand” often conceal a demand for transparency: Explain yourself. Show yourself. Reveal who you are— so we can care for you—on our terms. We are too often made accessible without consent—our culture is appropriated, our labour extracted, our interiority laid bare.
To be known is not always to be free. The entitlement to know and to see is an inheritance of domination, one that mistakes observation for understanding. Blackness, through its long history of imposed visibility, reveals the violence embedded in this demand.
From the auction block to the anthropological exhibit, Blackness has been made hyper-visible, rendered a spectacle for others’ consumption. This imposed visibility was never about recognition; it was about control.
That legacy persists. Today, the same demand reappears in more subtle forms: the expectation to explain, to educate, to entertain. The gaze may no longer be colonial in name, but its logic remains intact. Black life is still expected to be accessible.
“…you got to hold tight a place in you where they cant come.” -Alice Walker
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. In the quiet sanctuary of being unobserved, we find refuge in each other, and in that fugitivity, encounter the fullness of our freedom.