1.
Our Grandmas used to beat us to remind us that there was a massive price to pay for being black, free and imperfect. Years later, we’re still paying that price and we have yet to accept the probability that, all things considered, not one black man in this country really deserves the positive or policed attention we get in the classroom, in prison, on Main Street, in the bedroom, on the playing field, in Jena, on the page, in the White House or on the porches of our own homes.
Last Thursday, Henry Louis Gates was policed for being the nigger. We all know that the nigger is the American icon, the most infamous, characterless “it” in American history. It is at once a real mirage and a real object like those translucent, two-dimensional prizes at the bottom of sugary red, white and blue cereal. Because of it, real fleshy black men like you, me and Henry Louis Gates wade waist deep in abundant 
amounts of unearned attention as Geraldine Ferraro stated about a year ago but we also drown in unwarranted discipline and state-sanctioned policing, often regardless of class or geography. There’s not a grown black man alive who has not been shown this over and over again, right?
Then why do we act surprised when we find out that Henry Louis Gates, one of the most decorated scholars in the country, was arrested outside of his home last Thursday. Why are we shocked that police were called when a neighbor reported “two black males with backpacks” on the porch and one of the men, according to the neighbor, was attempting to “wedge his shoulder in the door, as if he was forcing entry.”
Gates supposedly snapped on the white officer called to his residence, calling the officer racist and asking “Do you know who I am?” And of course, the arresting officer’s claim that Gates continued to call him racist in a loud, disturbing and “tumultuous” way will persuade millions of folk that Gates, a supposed uppity race man, got what he deserved.
Most of the folks I love tend to laugh or sugar shake off the the idea of anything post racial yet we’ll gasp at Gate’s arrest, saying to ourselves or other folk, “I can’t believe it” or “Racism is alive and well” and “If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone.”
Yep, and water is wet.
We know that police will stop targeting us somewhere around the time when middle aged black men stop abusing blue tooth technologies and white folks stop jogging. Our question has never been, “Will cops unfairly target us because we’re black men?” That’s the vaporous stuff of synthetic op-eds, 24 hour news channels and crappy town hall meetings.
In real space and time, it’s simple, absolutely binary. Do we snap on the cops when they unfairly test us or do we play it cool as Grandma and them taught us?
That’s it.
Though the later runs through our mind, almost all of us choose the former almost all the time because well, we like life and fear jail. Whatever we do, we try to survive with dignity. But that dignified survival has many faces and even more consequences.
Right now, I’m wondering and wandering beyond simply how we should react when we’re unfairly policed. I wonder what happens when we go beyond being the stars and narrators of American racist spectacle. On days like this, I’m tempted to say that my discovery of what it means to be a young black professor begins and ends with Professor Henry Louis Gates getting arrested outside his own house. But I could only utter that corniness if I really believed in post-racial/post-racist anything.
2.
Realistically, the discovery begins, ends and begins again with my arrival on Raymond Avenue in Poughkeepsie, New York after a fourteen-hour drive from Bloomington, Indiana. I drove directly to the Main gates of Vassar College and instead of going through what I knew would be the hassle of security, I u-turned and found my way to the Alumnae House, the college hotel.
The Alumnae House was the first hotel I’d ever been in that had no televisions in the room. What Alumnae House lacked in televisions, it made up for in spooky pictures of little beady-eyed white children. All through the Alumnae House, I found myself being looked at by the hollow eyes of little Brody, Chad and Hannah. I called Grandma from the room and told her that Vassar didn’t feel like home, that I didn’t like the way the little kids were looking at me and that I didn’t like how Vassar looked like a guarded castle. Grandma said that Northern white folks loved to put ghost-looking pictures of white children on walls and that I didn’t drive fourteen hours to, “ … find no home or judge no white folks’ pictures. You have a home. You up there to get a job,” she told me. “So get it!”
I got it.
My first day as an actual professor at Vassar, I was asked by a white student in flip-flops and a crooked smile if I could sell him some weed. I told the boy that I worked here and that I was not the dope man. He just looked at me and nodded up and down, still waiting for his weed. When I told him that I taught English, he brought his brow together, looked at me, said “Word?” and jogged off.
Later that year, a white woman student came to my Spring office hours in a string bikini beneath her trench coat. That was followed by a white senior professor telling me how “lucky” I was to be at Vassar and how he wished “he was me” because of all the attention he believed a young black guy could get from female students at Vassar. At the end of that first year, security twice entered my office demanding to see my identification despite pictures of my family and me on my desk.
My first year on tenure track, a senior white member of my department stole a draft of a recommendation from our departmental printer and showed it to the Dean of Faculty, highlighting the typos and the possible disservice I was doing to Vassar students as a writing teacher.
After I got my first book deal, I was told by another senior white member of my department that I was “special” and it was “alright” if I speak to him “in ebonics.” This cat continued to consistently confront me with claims that he is fighting for me and other black American faculty without ever asking me, and maybe other black American faculty, the simple question of who we are, how we are doing and what he should be fighting for. That was before he threatened to take me to court for calling him out.
Last summer, four security guards stopped me for walking past the President’s house at night with no identification. When I asked one of the officers, ”How do you not know me? I sold you a fucking car a few years ago,” they said I was threatening them.
Last semester, a volunteer coach at Vassar called me “a visitor, a guest” while I was playing ball with some of my boys. After I cussed him the fuck out, the old jogger persued a personal investigation into my character and went to the Dean and the Office of Affirmative Action with the claim that I harassed him and hence had no place at Vassar.
Blah, racism, blah, evil white folks, blah, blah, the weight of white folks, blah, bluesy blah blah …
3.
When I talk to white folks about my Vassar beginning, I often talk about the dope man experience, the experience of staying in the Alumnae House under the gaze of little white ghosts. Or I talk about security policing me in my own office, the presumptuous woman in the string bikini and my obliviousness to departmental politics. When sharing these narratives, I long for that particular group of people to understand the shape and origin of my identity at Vassar by understanding the shape and origin of white racism’s oppressive relationship with bodies like mine (i.e., I want those white folks to drown in guilt while my black ass wants to wade in innocence, or vice versa).
But in more ways that I want to admit, telling these kind of origin narratives is a dishonest act of desperation, a clumsy conflation of policed struggle and whole experience. Investment or indulgence these dishonest acts could really make discovery and acceptance of what it means to be a black human being who reads, writes, acts and acts up for a living impossible.
As true as all racist spectacles are, dangling them out there as defining narratives of my Vassar tenure is dishonest primarily because I have reckoned with these experiences. Similarly, reckon or not, it’s dishonest to crystalize all that it means to be black man or a black male professor or a black man in America in the Gate’s policing. The retelling of these racist spectacles is often mediated through a desperate desire for particular listeners to see that we’ve been recognized and policed as the nigger from our beginning. And if that white listener, reader, watcher and I invest in this desperation narrative, I don’t have to do the hard work of accepting my nuanced relationship with sexuality, gender, home, whiteness, entitlement, anger and ironically the other Niggas I love.
Desperation blots out our ability to accept our multiple identities and the paradoxical people in our own origin narratives and our own lives. Often, those are the people who make us feel most loved, most vulnerable and most challenged. If I am going to honestly engage with the discovery of what it means to be young black professor or in 2009, I don’t need to statically indulge in versions of “If it can happen to Gates, it can happen to all of us.”
I’m more interested in how the love of people close and far leads me to tell every security officer asking for my ID to show me their ID. And sure, I experienced a white female student disrespectfully, and expectedly coming into my office in a bikini but in a twisted way, I often tell that story to my boys in the hopes that they’ll think I, you know, just got it like that. And I deal with racist ass colleagues who call me lucky to be at Vassar by being better than them and telling them to their face, in front of my department, that they are racist ass colleagues. Then I brace myself for their definite but unpredictable retaliation. I’m imperfect and fucked up and longingforbelonging just like you, just like Gates and — though I hate to admit it — just like the trifling up cops who arrest us for peddling crack when throwing peace signs out a window or stealing a computer when typing outside our apartments.
I’m interested in how Henry Louis Gates would describe his feelings when walking into a faculty meeting filled with men and women who would never be arrested in front of their own homes. How would that feeling differ from what he’d feel when walking into a room filled with mostly black men who could never say to a cop, “Do you know who I am?” I’m also interested in what Henry Louis Gates would have said differently if 
the arresting officer were a white woman, a South Asian woman, a black person, and not a white man. But more than that, I can’t front; I want to know what Professor Gates ate for dinner when he came back from jail. Did he drink Faygo Peach with crushed ice? Did he watch Tracy Jordan’s belly play hide and seek on 30 Rock? Did the cops confiscate his cane? Did he look in the mirror, wipe his eyes and cry when he got home. When the cameras came, was he happy he had a nice shape-up? Does being one of the most incredible academics in the world make being treated like a nigger less painful?
I’m still discovering what it means to be a young black professor, but the dimensions of that discovery, at least today, are not dictated by the racist spectacle itself. They’re dictated by the details of my messily drawn character. Our Grandmas beat us so we would understand that there was a price to pay for publically acting like we were real characters with real character. We pay the price and we don’t want to get beat no more. We are real characters with real character, not stars and narrators of racist spectacle. We are real characters with real character, not stars and narrators of racist spectacle. We are real characters, not stars …
Ether.
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30 Responses:
July 21st, 2009 at 9:39 am
I get what you are saying. Is it possible that dude was arrested for
being a asshole though? You cannot just yell at police and expect anything good to come from it no matter who you are.
July 21st, 2009 at 10:53 am
the fact that people made such a big deal about this means that we are indeed closer to postracial than your essay wants to admit. doesnt it? i like the writing here a lot. i just don’t agree with the premise
July 21st, 2009 at 11:19 am
The fact that “urksome” thinks that making a “big deal about” Gates’s arrest is bringing us closer to a postracial era shows how far from postracial we really are. In the first place, why is it consider a “big deal” as if individuals are spending far too much time on such event. I also recall people making a “big deal” about Michael Jackson’s arrival on the music scene, I mean MTV went as far as showing his video with enormous success, but we sure as hell weren’t any closer to a postracial era back then either. And who are the presumed “people” who are making this “big deal?” Because if they are Black people, or people of color in general then really the people (*cough* white people *cough cough*) who’s minds need to be changed aren’t being changed. They’re not even listening. The fact that WHITE Representative Todd Tiahrt can insinuate on the House floor, that because Obama is half-black his mother might have been one of those poor (which is one of those many adjectives that is considered to be synonymous with people of color) women who couldn’t afford an abortion goes to show that we are not in any way, shape or form close to postracial so let’s really open our eyes yeah?
July 21st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Thank you for writing this – I really appreciate the nuanced but straightforward way you’ve approached it.
And for urksome and others who, misguidedly, would like to see this in some way as evidence that things are so much better: The reason this is “a big deal” is not because we’re so close to postracial, it’s because this sort of crap happens all the time, and just this time happened to someone who can turn this into a national story. It’s a big deal precisely because it’s so common, not because it’s so rare; it just doesn’t often happen to someone who both wants to and can make other people pay attention to the injustice.
July 21st, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Kiese, THANK YOU! Dronile, THANK YOU!
It’s been a while since I’ve read your pieces, I’m ashamed to say, but I will definitely be getting back into them.
Am I crazy for wanting to be a black/latina college professor myself? This whole scenario in addition to your experiences AND THE B.S. that some people say in believing this stuff really doesn’t mean much makes me want to get my PhD all the more. On my way, on my way.
The nerve of some people.
~sos
July 21st, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Professor,
Let me start off by outing myself as a white Vassar student. I haven’t had the opportunity to take any of your classes yet, (I’m only a rising Sophomore), but I’ve respected you from a distance, and this essay crystallizes, for me, exactly why I have that respect, despite not actually knowing you. I was simultaneously shocked, and yet completely unshocked, by your experience at Vassar, as you describe it in your piece. I was shocked because, although I am under no illusions that we’re living in some mythical post-racial Eden, I would like to believe that at a “place like Vassar,” (whatever that means), you wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit. Chalk it up to naivete. I was unshocked because I witness similar ignorance on the Vassar campus constantly. I am not (completely) ashamed to say that I am still ignorant myself, although I am making a concerted effort to change that.
Your piece reminded me of Adrian Piper’s “Passing for White, Passing for Black,” not because you really deal with passing, as such, but because you both describe similar interactions with ignorant white academics. But that essay was written in 1992, in the Simi Valley era. Things change, things stay the same, I guess. For me, the passage about the white girl in the bikini was possibly the most offensive. I admire your honesty when you go on to discuss how you talked about that particular situation with your boys. I mean, I could go on and on about each of the situations you describe, but on the one hand, I feel like I wouldn’t really be getting anywhere, and on the other, I feel like, it being the summer, my thinking cap isn’t really on, and I’m not expressing myself as coherently as I’d like. This is the passage that really stuck with me: “I long for that particular group of people to understand the shape and origin of my identity at Vassar by understanding the shape and origin of white racism’s oppressive relationship with bodies like mine (i.e., I want those white folks to drown in guilt and my black ass wants to wade innocence, or vice versa). But in more ways that I want to admit, telling these kind of origin narratives is a dishonest act of desperation; it’s a clumsy conflation of policed struggle and whole experience, and – if invested in – these dishonest acts could really make discovery and acceptance of what it means to be a black human being who reads, writes, acts and acts up for a living impossible.”
I’ve talked with white friends about the sorts of issues you bring up in your piece, and our frustration is not, primarily, the racism itself – although that does continue to be deeply depressing. Rather, it is the helplessness we feel as individuals, who, while understanding that you are a real character with real character, cannot ever truly experience your experience. That is not to say, necessarily, that I wish I were a black man – I don’t deny my own possessive investment in Whiteness. But there are many times when I hate my white skin, because I know it means that as much as I educate myself about Whiteness and Blackness in America, I can never feel that specific pain that you’ve had to feel throughout your life. I wonder, without having felt that pain, how can I be part of progress? Is the answer simply to keep talking intelligently about race, like many scholars have suggested? Not to be too melodramatic, but what are us white folks supposed to do? I’d like to see real change in my lifetime, and in some ways I’d consider my life a failure if I didn’t do something to effect that change.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:05 am
My husband is a white college professor and he’s had female students offer to give him blowjobs for grades before. (Many of his white colleagues have similar stories of being propositioned for grades.) I think that one is just something male professors of any color have to put up with sadly.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:25 am
BT, I hear you. Who is ever really to say what motivates people? My assumption was that this student would not have come into other professors office in the middle of the day wearing a bikini under a trench coat if she wasn’t white and I wasnt youngish and black, but you’re right. I have no way of knowing.
I could have written an entire essay about that because I/m not at all saying that I’m a victim there. My girlfriend at the time was waiting for me outside of my office and I watched this student walk up from a window in my office. When she came into the little waiting area outside my office, she saw my girlfriend and asked her, “Oh, are you waiting for him, too?”
My girlfriend responded, “No! I’m taking him home. What are you doing?” The student left.
The conversation home wasn’t at all about race; it was about what was I doing that made the student think that coming into to my office in that get-up was okay.
So, yeah, there’s no way that I would say that the only reason that happened to me was because I was black. But I do think public things like that are very different from girls asking to blow professors in private.
Thanks for reading this mess.
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:36 pm
With little exception, the writing on this page (including the comments) is atrocious. You people are educated? Please, please, pay more attention to HOW you say what you say. Otherwise, you are only participating, and worse, contributing, to the steady decline in American expressive abilities.
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:47 pm
As a white male who came of age in the 1960′s Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements, I am not at all surprised (though chagrined and outraged)that a white officer arrested Professor Gates. That officer obviously doesn’t watch PBS or he’d have recognized his “suspect” immediately. People who are legally empowered to carry and use guns and clubs on citizens ought to be held to a much higher standard of conduct than the unarmed citizen…PERIOD!
Responsibility must always be apportioned in direct relation to POWER, and in THIS case the POWER obviously belongs to the POLICE! Unfortunately, we all still live in a world in which might makes right, all of our better yearnings for social and ethnic and racial justice notwithstanding. Therefore the officer in question made a judgement call to arrest Professor Gates simply because he COULD.
An officer of more discerning character would likely have defused the situation amicably and parted company on decent terms. THIS officer does not have THAT type of personal character. Commentary all over cyberspace has merely served to harden the racial divide which STILL poisons American society 146 years after the end of a horrendous Civil War that cost upwars of 650,000 American lives to decide the principle that it is illegal and immoral for humans to OWN humans as PROPERTY!
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:16 pm
LOL @ “Learn to Write”. You people?? What the hell you mean, you people? I think we need to have a house meeting, yall.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:11 am
Learn to Write!
We’s had a house meeting and we’s feels mad threatened by your beehaveyours and would like you to leave the house. Yo use of exclamation points has the womens and mens of the house feeling
vulnerable and in need a blanket like Linus and them.
Yours truly!
A nigga who needs to learn to write
July 24th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Kiese. Man. You know, I’ve had my fair share of fucked up shit happen to me on the Vassar campus because of my brown-ness, and to that token, my fair share of fucked up shit happen to me back in the Comforting Liberal Bubble of the SF Bay Area because of my brown-ness. And while that was all shit that really informed who I have now become, I don’t think I have ever been more attuned to the fucked up shit that still continues to happen to me because of my brown-ness until I entered the Real World. (Or is it the Professional World? The Post-College World?) One of the most depressing things I have come to realize about being an adult is the fact that as a young female of color, even if you are smart and have dealt with different variations of the same fucked up racist shit all your life, shit is still fucked up, and outside of the academy, it’s really fucking hard to point out the fucked up shit. At least at Vassar when people behaved in racist ways, I was able to communicate how I felt about it and why and feel like I was understood, on some level, even if the person chose not to be moved or motivated by anything I had just told them. But in the Real World? You start pointing out someone’s privilege to them and they just look at you funny, ’cause you’re the uppity brown girl. And not just that you’re the uppity brown girl, but you’re the uppity brown girl with that liberal arts degree spouting all of her liberal arts bullshit.
And isn’t that kind of what happened to Gates? He saw something happening, he felt how what was happening fit into a larger narrative of being colored in America, the relationship between black men and cops, and he said something because he noticed it happening and it upset him and he got a little belligerent because shit is upsetting. And then he got arrested because he pointed out that shit is upsetting. You call people out on things, you get in trouble. You try to talk about how these issues are systemic, and people think you’re just engaging in big talk.
Sorry to be so ineloquent; one of the other most alarming things about my life post-college is how quickly I have lost my language and my ability to be expressive in ways that aren’t completely crass, reductive, or just sort of superficial-sounding.
Whew. Anyway. Someday I’m going to have to visit you and tell you stories about the place I work now.
July 24th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Kiese, on just a quick read-through: Gates is actually renowned, not “renown” (and I think you mean “arguably”, not “questionably”, though some might argue that your word choice is a subconscious slip), and “alright” is not a word – only “all right” is proper (that is, presuming the dude didn’t actually write it to you).
I’ve concluded that blogging, with it’s inherent need-for-speed and quasi-extemporaneous nature, is partly to blame for the lousy state of most of the writing therein (and not just herein), but it’s not an excuse. You’re educated and getting paid to write – make the decision to be different.
And Reeya, I personally think you should hyphenate “fucked-up”. Otherwise, it reads as the opposite of fucked down.
And get over your silly selves with all your indignation about the pseudo-epithet “you people”.
July 24th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
And, yes, I fucked up (hyphenation not needed in this usage, btw) with “it’s” – but can’t we all just get along?
July 24th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
@ Learn to Write: What does “fucked down” even mean? “Fucked up” has a clear meaning, hyphen or not. “Fucked down”, as far as I know, means nothing (unless I’m really out of touch with the slang the young folk are using these days), so I’m not that worried about people being confused as to what I mean when I say “fucked up”. I think it’s clear what I mean.
If you’re so disenchanted with the way blogging has a supposed tendency to encourage bad writing (or unclear writing, or sloppy writing, or whatever you feel this is), why are you still here reading?
Oh. Wait. Troll. Right. Okay, I’ll stop feeding you now.
July 24th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Reeya, come on, stop succumbing to the impulse to use blogging comments as an anger release. You sound much too smart for that.
I’m not a troll, or if I am, it’s news to me. I’m a white dude who was hoping to find cogent and coherent thoughts from black folks about the Gates thing. I wasn’t completely disappointed. I just found the typical online writing problems.
And believe me, whether “fucked down” is usable or not (I was being a little whimsical, as I’ll bet you deep-down knew), the opposite, as you most often used it, should be hyphenated.
July 24th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/473532/dave_chappelle_stand_up_scared_of_the_police/
July 25th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Learn to Write, are you the same tool who highlighted the typos in that recommendation because you had nothing better to do with yourself? You have yet to grace us with any kind of meaningful commentary about the actual content of this essay. You are basically the grammar police with a stick up your ass. So you’re enhancing “American expressive abilities” how? By telling us that “alright” is not a word? All right, then. I’m sure that saved a life.
And who the fuck says something like “American expressive abilities”? Sounds like you’re begging to sound intelligent.
You should gently take that stick out of your ass and stay awhile. Learn a thing or two from Laymon. What he lacks in not knowing that “alright” is not a word, he certainly makes up for in grace. You could use some.
July 25th, 2009 at 8:44 am
Aw, now you hurt my feelings. Never mind, it’s apparent y’all are just a bit too angry to talk about your lack of ability. I’m outa here, promise.
July 26th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Learn to write. You should take your own advice and stop drinking from the comma cocktail because your writing is all over the place.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:07 am
Oh man, I remember you telling that story in class about the white female student who showed up to your office. Actually, I remember many of the personal narratives you told in class, and my response to almost all of them was the same: “What…The…Fuck…”
Maybe I’m totally naive, but I think that particular event had less to do with race and more to do with Vassar’s general acceptance of promiscuity, and probably a bit of substance use to top off the crazy.
Nevertheless, I’d suggest talking to a white professor of similar status about his experience with women on campus, if you want to figure out how much of that girl’s advances had to do with race. Jonathan Kahn comes to mind, although he might be married (although, that probably won’t matter).
Also—what happened to your facebook account? I tried to send my friend a link to that story you wrote about Allentown, but you and it have disappeared!
August 10th, 2009 at 12:21 am
Oh, and “H” :
I really like/appreciate your comment. Finally a white person who can express feelings similar to my own. I’m so sick and tired of White people who only get defensive when discussing racism; admitting your ignorance and confusion (for lack of a better term) about how to affect change is much more beneficial than pretending, or assuming, that you are not ignorant and/or know what to do about it.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
I found this blog through a link from Hua’s. Great essay. Thanks for sharing it with the world.
August 19th, 2009 at 1:22 am
Like Angie, I’ve been away from these pages for what I know come to realize to be too long. Kie, I’ve been a ruminatin’ on some many things and I gotta give a tip o’ tha hat to ya fer tuchin’ on em in dis here essay o yers. Gotta preciate ma folks for comin out like they always do and puttin they two cents in like I know they good for. law’d knows we caint all be like that there purto rican woman who just won her seat on the judgin bench cause she kept her fiery latina passion in check. like my uncle always say, just do what the nice pretty man say and act right, otherwise white jesus will have probable cause to put yer ass in hell for 25 to eternity. lub ya! 8D
August 19th, 2009 at 1:23 am
jumping right in, there are a few questions of yours that I didn’t find answered (and I demand satisfaction, damnit!). but seriously, I’m fascinated with our collective (and certainly my individual) responses to racism in particular when they result in shock or surprise.
As a young black queer man I must say that it comes as an absolute pleasure and privilege to have the fortune of working any Vassar Reunion Weekend. Every year ol’ Gray n’ Pink rolls out the red carpet along with cases upon cases of beer, wine and liquor to welcome back past graduates into the sanctity of its many walls; where donors (and soon to be donors – did I mention there was a lot of booze?) can come and regale in the spectacle that is the largely non-white student chauffeur/chambermaid servi- er… staff who cater to their every whim and fancy. From the simplest pleasures of asking a student, who, because of their skin tone must be a scholarship student, how grateful they are to have their education paid for (this happened) to asking another for a fast weed, yayo or acid connect (also happened), how do we respond? Maybe I should just be happy that white liberals seem to show so much interest in me because I have rasta hair and a big smile, but I’ve tried and still I’m missing something.
What if tomorrow we stopped being/acting surprised at what happens every day and instead saw these “instances” or mere “moments” or racism as part of a far reaching and ever extending continuum? What happens when we continuously re-realize that water is wet? In the seat of a VC reunion golf cart with a misguided alum, my life isn’t threatened in any way like in a room of police men or in close proximity to a military recruitment office, but the power relations are still fucked up and some other things are going on. Instead of telling one of these folks to go fuck themselves but thanks for the dough or to go ask their own kids for their high, we typically give some placating “appropriate” response while all the real talking occurs in our heads. There are times when we physically fear the reprocussions of what someone sanctioned by the state may do to us, but there are many more times when we just don’t want to deal with the whole ordeal of doing the work of confronting what offends us head on.
Reeya, we should talk because I already grow tired of navigating the irksome waters of addressing whites who would automatically write you off or white who can’t get over how my hair “does that” and just needs to know more. We are continuously placed in the position of the receiver, reacting to the last play and often fumbling the ball because we had to stop and think what the fuck type of pass was that?
Its debilitating to, on top of being reactionary, having that reaction be that of one taken off guard.
I got to give it to our grandmas because every hit they lay was, at least in their minds, part of the good fight. They were concerned with our ultimate wellbeing and survival. Better get whooped by me than idontevenwanttosay by them. Well, one thing about black in america is that one often finds a price to pay no matter what direction she or he looks. There has always been a price to speak one’s mind in front of while folk who prefer the voices of their own, a price historically withdrawn from our bodies, though now more likely targets our wallets or credibility. Those before us who endeared so much chose not to take on that extra tax and today we have our lives, but we lack a leverage or strategy to effectively maneuver through this world with our minds intact.
Part of the problem is that we want piece of mind, the same dignity and accurate assessment of self-worth that everyone is entitled to. In these days, unlike days not too far past, our expectations have risen to how we should be treated. The trouble is that they have risen as they pushed aside honest reflection on what every day is proven to the be the reality of the matter, that for all our postulating and landmarks (rosa parks, mlk, brown v. board, 147 years since the end of the civil war! I think for the 150th we can give a funeral to fried chicken) the state of affairs for non-white, non-wealthy heterosexual anatomical males is anything but where it should be. I think now more than ever we as a nation are confused. The numbers don’t add up, the pictures don’t match. I want to be able to call the police to my house and not have them think this nigass broke in and posted pictures of his family everywhere (props, Max), but I don’t want to be the nigga who’s living in a fantasy or a future we wanted for so long and so very fucking hard that we just had to have it today, police, politics or prison be damned.
“Our Grandmas beat us so we would understand that there was a price to pay for publically acting like we were real characters with real character. We pay the price and we don’t want to get beat no more”
So we turn around and pay the price of beating ourselves up instead. Ain’t sayin its right, just sayin. Maybe its because my body hasn’t bean threatened in the same way as my mother or father’s or their mother’s and father’s that I can refuse the price of the psychic rupture that is caused when one continuously presents themselves as a lie in the act of negating their own character. I I’m concerned with this because I’m concerned with us and our future and our wellbeing. I’m concerned also because I haven’t found the way I’ve been able to pay the price of a unified humanity. Extending the metaphor, sure I make installments but really this shits on credit. If there is a way we can survive physically into the future after having collectively asserted ourselves as fully human and demanding, no matter what, that others recognize the same., I want to say the cost will be worth it. May those few, as there is no doubt we will loose many in the process, fully enjoy the payoffs. Otherwise, if we continue to wrongly believe we truly and completely own (read: determine) ourselves, I fear the interest on the bill is far too high.
January 17th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Ehhh he got what he had coming for being a stupid loud mouth NIGGER. You are all the same and no amount of school or money will change the fact that you are all talking monkeys/animals with bad attitudes. What we need is a roll back to when you all sat in the back. drank from a diffrent water fountain, and got your smelly monkey ass kicked for opening your stupid mouths!!!