Professor Badass, Look-Alikes and Me

The movie was good and bizarre, as Captain America took on Jadis the White Witch in order to fight his way to the director of The Truman Show.

Before the movie, we grabbed some dinner at a pub. Upon sitting down, my friend proceeded to tell me that she liked my beard in its current fashion: more than an inch of length at the chin and muzzle before tapering on the sides to thin razor-edged points and a near-bald crew cut.

“You look like Professor Badass,” she said.

I had no idea who the hell she was talking about. But I trusted her when she said that it was some kind of Internet thing that I had missed, and to check it out later, and she’d be right. I simply thanked her for what had to be a compliment. How could being called Professor Badass not be a compliment?

Well, I looked up Professor Badass, and holy crap.

This is Professor Badass:

And this me:

Well, damn. A lot more gray in the beard, but there it is. Chalk one up for a famous doppelganger!

And so, one of the few times that someone said I looked like someone, and it was true.

I bet a hefty chunk of the people of color reading this right now are nodding their heads in rueful assent right now. It’s one of those things that, as a person of color, becomes a rite of passage for interacting with folks who don’t share your ethnicity. Somebody says you look like some other person who’s the same race as you … and they look NOTHING like you!

I’ve been told that I look like any random number of famous black guys, especially black nerds: Steve Urkel from Family Matters, Carlton Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, James Earl Jones circa The Great White Hope, Stevie Wonder.

I don’t look like any of them dudes.

At least I am too old to look like Donald Glover these days.

Mostly white people have done this to me, which calls back to the “all of them look alike” hallmark of racial bigotry. That still plays out any time Samuel L. Jackson gets confused for Laurence Fishburne, Seal for Michael Clarke Duncan, among a host of examples.

What looks like a simple, embarrassing mistake for some, registers as “all of them look alike” to others.

This even affects the manufacture of action figures, novelty figurines, cartoons and such. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve dismissed action figures and cartoons based on real black people, for all having the same, one brown paint for their skin tone. I even made a habit of buying black figures that got an actor’s face and skin right. Even black pro athletes have complained about their bobbleheads lacking proper specificity.

But I also know it’s not always bigotry going on, nor are white folks the only culprits.

Sometimes it’s simply lack of familiarity, and our evolved-to-categorize brains find a reference point and turn that into an equivalence. It can be related to whoever the dominant group is in any given place – region, state, country. I’ve had other black friends get compared to other black folks by other people of color, or anywhere that they were in the minority.

It can get even weirder when traveling abroad; one friend of mine visiting Japan said he kept getting called Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant. Neither of those three men looks like the other, and my friend looked like none of them.

After saying all that, there have been a few more times that someone of a different racial background told me that I looked like some other black dude, and they were right. Oddly enough, both musicians – another reason that entertainment and media representation matter so much to us black people, because that’s how many people get to know anything about us.

My top celebrity doppelgangers are Curtis Mayfield and Kenny Garrett.

Curtis Mayfield? The R&B funk genius behind the Superfly soundtrack? We don’t look quite the same, especially in the lips and general build. But the smile and full cheeks, though, really sell the idea.

I call it a Hollywood match. With a beard and the right glasses, I definitely could play Mayfield in a movie. I can sing Mayfield’s songs, plus I am familiar with a guitar and could fake Mayfield’s expert playing onscreen.

Someone make this movie happen so they can hire me! Chadwick Bozeman can’t play all the important black men of the 20th century; he’s already played Jackie Robinson and James Brown.

Jazz saxophonist Kenny Garrett, however, is spot on. I have an ex-girlfriend to thank for that one, as she point this out to me back in 1999 and it’s remained true. The round face, the glasses, the everything.

At the turn of the 21st century, I was shaving my head and wearing a kufi – the skullcap most associated with Muslims – as a fashion thing plus protection from the summer sun. (I wasn’t into ballcaps at the time.)

I don’t mind looking like a jazz man. They’re incredibly cool. For real.

I got to spend considerable time with jazz legend Wynton Marsalis once, escorting him around for an event. This man had that trademark husky voice of low tone; a don’t-nothing-faze me sensibility; and a way of making tons of work look no more labored than breathing while lying in a hammock on a lazy summer day with a glass of cold lemonade.

And Marsalis is considered to be low on the jazz cool meter because he’s an academic who outwardly lacks some of the New Orleans down-home funk of his brother Branford! Yet he was cool as shit!

But now I look like someone who looks tough as shit, smart as shit and cool and shit: Professor Badass. My latest doppelganger.

All thanks to a well barbered, edgy beard. Plus, look at his clothes! I love wearing clothes like that. I wear clothes like that, on occasion, along with my glasses and brimmed hats.  It’s tough to rock a vest, tie and dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves these days, but I have done it.

Also, he’s Professor Badass.

This dude completed graduate work at Badass University and is lighting the badassery lamps of others. His physique is impressive, but he does power lifts with his mind – and dishes out a beatdown or two, when necessary. I’ve been known to coach, intimidate and impress with mental prowess in my time. At my best, it’s a way of life.

Teachers in my elementary school used to call me “The Professor.” And I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been told I should be a teacher. My whole life has been in preparation to become the real-life Professor Badass.

The funniest thing is that I most likely have crossed paths with Professor Badass in real life.

His alter ego, former ESPN magazine fashiondirector Kevin Stewart, and I both used to work for the Worldwide Leader in Sports. Between ESPN stuff and whatever gatherings of black journalists, we’ve probably been in the same room. Probably shook hands while wearing name tags, or something.

My beard isn’t as good as the Professor’s yet. But I keep trying, and growing.

And combing.

Always combing.