Cold Drank

A lot of pundits see Obama on the ropes right now. They see his moves to the center, his so-called flip-flopping, the statistical “dead heat” as the beginning of the end. I had to revisit this piece to remember that Obama, like both Clintons, McCain and Bush, will do anything to gain the right to govern. Anything! Of course, the coming months and debates will give more folks the chance to critique and punish Obama for doing anything to win. But let’s not sleep on Obama or the Obama machine. You don’t make it this far as 46 year-old black biracial man with blacker lips and a Deez Nutz name without being a supreme politician, a supreme hustler and a bare knuckle brawler. Yeah the anti-Obama backlash is in full effect. Yeah, McCain doesn’t have to prove or do much in this election, except join America’s super and subhuman scrutinization of a Obama. But never ever underestimate a Nigga’s ability to hustle or –gulp — white racism’s ability to destroy and make folks afraid of that Nigga hustle. In the words of a quite skilled American Jigga hustler, “We will not lose … fucker!” The real question, though, is does not losing mean we win. I hope so, but I’m pretty sure it simply means not losing as painfully.

Ether.

“Negroes know about each other what can here be called family secrets, and this means that one Negro, if he wishes can ‘knock’ the other’s ‘hustle’ – can give his game away.”
James Baldwin

1.

Dear Uncle Jimmy,
Nigga, do you remember picking me up from Indiana in your long sky blue van on our way down to Grandma’s house for Christmas in ‘98? You stopped in Bloomington on your way down from Chicago. I was in my first year of graduate school and I finally believed that I was going write for a living. My nasty apartment looked like I’d made that decision too, so I met you outside.

“Shit, sport,” you said as you hugged me, “you look like you ready to tryout for the league.” I laughed at your comment about my body and stared in awe at how skinny you’d gotten since the last time we’d seen each other. Your eyes, which were less red, and closer to the yoke yellow, looked like they were determined to pop of your head. As you hugged me, you grinded and gritted your teeth, making the annoying sound of someone tapping on a hollowed sandpaper door. I asked you what was wrong. You ignored my question and said, “Yeah, this blood pressure medicine the doctor got me on makes it hard for me to keep weight.”

I figured that the medicine must have eaten away at your appetite because I couldn’t imagine a drug for blood pressure speeding up your metabolism or trimming fat. It shocked me when we stopped at gas station after gas station and you brought out pints of Butter Pecan Ice Cream and big bags of Salt and Vinegar Lay’s. Before bringing your goods to the van, you went to the bathroom for long periods of time. When you finally made it back to the van with the food, remember how you didn’t offer me any? That shit was annoying. You emptied the containers in less than 20 minutes after we left the stations and then the grinding of the teeth began again?

Somewhere in Arkansas, we stopped at a truck stop for a sit down meal. When we sat down in the dim restaurant in the truck stop, a family of three moved away from us. They said something to the white woman who seated us, and pointed to empty tables on the other side of the restaurant. You claimed you heard the father in the Razorback hat ask the waitress, “Why you sit those niggers over here?” I shot up when you said that and started walking towards the family. You grabbed my arm, laughing uncontrollably to yourself. “You gotta lotta dog in you,” you told me. “But you gotta do something with it. That shit, it’ll kill you.”

I didn’t say a word. I just stared at the family. You started telling me a story about one of your friends at the Caterpillar plant where you worked. Nigga, I know that you told me that story just to get my mind off the man in the Razorback hat. I don’t remember all of what you said, but the gist was that you and this Nigga were close because you’d both been in AA and had been clean for about the same amount of time. But something else bothered you about the man.

“He always talking big bout all the Martel he dranked over the weekend and all the women he had and how the white man do anything to keep a Nigga down,” you told me. “But soon as any white man come around, you’d think the young Nigga didn’t have a neck. He starts grinnin’ and jivin’ them to death.” In addition to his boasting about drinking he didn’t do, you were also a foreman at your job and it pissed you off that he didn’t grin and jive for you.

I asked you why he acted like that in front of white men. “Shit,” you said, while nervously tapping your foot under the table, “You know how niggas are. A Nigga do what a Nigga does.” Then you said some other stuff before saying, “I still got love for ‘em, though. I ain’t really trying to knock his hustle.”

And by 24, you were absolutely right. You didn’t need to explain anymore. I did know how Niggas were and I knew that what was in that Nigga was not only abundantly in you, Uncle Jimmy, but in me, too. And what was in him, other than the torment that makes us all self-preserving human beings, was a peculiar necessity to create a handle, a hustle, a way to throw white folks of your real intent, no matter how wholesome or suspect that intent was. And this had everything to do with policing, I thought. Having love for other black men meant really never knocking another Nigga’s hustle, mostly because you knew how integral that hustle was not just to achievement, but also to his and your survival.

Even then, though, I wondered if having “love for ‘em” and refusing to “knock a Nigga’s hustle” were the same thing as “loving a Nigga.” I also wondered if the hustle many Niggas used on black women was rooted in the same hustle we used to evade the discipline of white folks. If so, what did that mean about the racial, sexual dimensions of policing and parole? How did we police black women, and what were their hustles? Those questions, though not as salient, cornered me as we walked into Grandma’s house that late afternoon after our trip from Indiana.

Grandma, Mama, Sue, Nichole and Linda hugged me and commented on the ways our bodies had changed since they’d seen us last. Only Grandma seemed to exude the same amount of joy for both of us. Though I’d lost a ton of weight, your sisters and my Mama all said I was healthy and better not lose too much more weight or my big head would look even bigger. But with you, it was different. They suspected something and wanted you to plead guilty right there. You refused to look anyone in the eyes and, despite all your sisters looking at you suspiciously and waiting for answers to your weight loss, you went directly to the freezer in search of more ice cream.

I heard you say to Grandma that you were so hungry simply because we only stopped to eat something once. Mama looked at me and asked me if how many times we ate on the trip. Without a second thought, Nigga, I lied and said, “Just once, Mama!” I acted like she was somehow wrong for asking the question. “And these white folks called us ‘niggers’.” That was enough to divert attention from your fantastic appetite, and zero it in on what happened at the truck stop. I kept looking at you, expecting you to give me a thankful glance for taking the attention off your strange appetite but it never came. What did come was the light feeling that I had shown love for you by not knocking your hustle. But what was your hustle? And wasn’t I just stopping Mama and them from loving you by showing love for you?

To this day, Uncle Jimmy, I don’t know the answers to those questions. I know that the entire situation has a lot to do with drugs and addiction and withdrawal, but I’m not sure what the contours of that addiction and withdrawal are. During the rest of our time in Mississippi that Christmas, we didn’t say more than a few words to each other until the last day. You gave me one of your old mix tapes called Soul Classics. “Everything you need is right there,” you said. “Now you can listen to where all that rap shit stole their music from.” I had a lot to say but I didn’t say much more than thank you.

3.

Strangely, Uncle Jimmy, this idea of loving Niggas, hustling and knocking the hustle has ample dimension in the Odyssey of our first Black President, Barack Obama. Obama’s Odyssey is really the Odyssey of the United States and the Odyssey of the Nigga. Even before this year’s Father’s Day Speech where he called black fathers to be more responsible, Obama aimed and fired at Niggas with statements like, “There are lots of brothers who are walking around and they look like men … they’re tall. They’ve got whiskers, they might even have a child but it’s not clear to me that they are full grown men.” This was part of his Father’s Day speech Monday, June 19, 2005 at Christ Universal Temple in Chicago.

Three years later, in a Father’s Day speech at another black Chicago church, Apostolic Church of God, Obama — awkward, but comfortably — told Niggas (black fathers and fathers-to-be) not to use racism as “an excuse.” He pinpointed our failures. And as he did at his Father’s Day Speech in 2005, he publicly disciplined us, critiquing our behavior as more “like boys than men.” But before he did this, he made sure all in the church and most importantly all those outside of the church heard him say “Lord” “Jesus” and “faith” way more times than a little bit.

Obama’s speech didn’t acknowledge that there are some black fathers who aren’t in the homes of their children due to economic constraints like Section 8 housing. Nor did he acknowledge that there are some Niggas who aren’t allowed in those homes at the mother’s discretion. But I agree that way too many black men are shiftless and afraid to commit to the life changing possibility of being a healthy responsible parent. And, of course, Niggas need to find ways to be more intimately connected to their children. The most essential enactment of that intimacy might necessitate being in the home.

But there are plenty of foolish fathers in the homes of their children, providing their children with dysfunctional models of masculinity and their partners with treacherous companionship. What about them? Obama’s speech doesn’t speak to this reality. If I’m sitting at home abusing my wife and child, selling methamphetamine, fucking the baby sitter without a condom, I’m patting myself on the back after hearing Obama’s speech simply because – shit, I’m at least in the house.

This kind of personal responsibility critique, made by freedom-fighting black folks for centuries, is not novel. And the black church as the site of this critique is also familiar. The substance, however, of the critique and the understood spectacle of the critique and the timing of the critique and Obama’s overarching political hustle are what need exploration. Uncle Jimmy, like the grinning Nigga at your job and the bougie Niggas who wanted to make a spectacle of burying the N word, part of Obama’s spoken words were guided by a desire to evade white policing via the cloak of black exceptionalism.

Obama’s speech was a post-Uncle Jeremiah Wright plea to be taken seriously as a humble Christian Nigga, a clean Nigga capable of rhetorically policing other Niggas, and a restrained Nigga disinterested in making critiques of whiteness and white power. The speech made good on all three goals thanks to way we were played as conduits and props. Niggas, no doubt, served Obama well this Father’s Day.

Uncle Jimmy, I doubt that anything I’m saying is news to you. You know that Obama is a Nigga politician who is desperate to become President. Since Obama is the best candidate I’ve seen in my lifetime and the first Nigga President, I want him to be a great man, an incredible leader, and a thoughtful healer. I want my leap of faith to be filled with visions of Obama gliding into Washington in a Cadillac called Hope and I want him to bring the best of humanity to the oval office.

!Splash!

But unless you know the Nigga personally, all of that is speculative. And, quiet as it’s kept, it’s impossible because Obama is a politician, not an artist, not our nephew, not our Uncle. He is a courageous, curious, capable, genius politician who is willing to strategically pander, ponder, manipulate and hustle his way into the Presidency of this country. That’s it. That should be enough.

Unlike white politicians, cleanliness and perfection are integral to Obama’s hustle. However, just like white politicians, his speeches have policed and critiqued us in a way no other group could be critiqued. There is no other race and gendered group that Obama could have critiqued the way he critiqued black men in either of those speeches. And while the argument that politicians are allowed to overtly critique their particular race and gendered group is compelling, you will not find Hillary Clinton disciplining white women for neglecting their responsibilities. And you won’t find McCain overtly critiquing white men for anything. Ever.

In my fairy tale I’d love for Obama to make the same critique of Niggas at Apostolic Church of God, but he’d preface the speech with, “Now, I’m about to say some things that are going to endear me to white people and power. Ya’ll know how it is. And I’m not saying these things to endear me to white people and white power, necessarily, but it’s a fact that when Niggas critique the behavior of other morally suspect Niggas, white power and white people feel empowered and more trusting of the Nigga who leveled the critique. And if I’m going to be President of this motherfucker, like ya’ll claim you want, these white folks are going to have see me up in a Christian church and they’re going to have to see that I’m as disgusted by Niggas behavior as they are. Now you can get mad at me after service or you can blame that old Nigga, Jeremiah. Either way, Nigga, I’m trying to get mines. And by mines, I mean ours. Please don’t knock the hustle. Yeah Michelle. Baby, I love you, too. Y’all ready. Okay, yes we can.”

It’s possible, though not probable, that all of that was actually conveyed via some hidden transcript or nod. In theory, these hidden transcripts are sentences or gestures or inflections or jokes that white folks don’t get and that parole doesn’t overtly allow. But I wonder if I’m conflating hidden transcripts with black enabling. For instance, did you see how an immediate black audience enabled Obama to overtly and implicitly diss the shit out of Clinton in South Carolina and brush the dirt off his shoulder in North Carolina? Both gestures were laced with subversive transcript that made me feel proud and, as corny it sounds, special.

I felt the same special feeling during part of Obama’s Father’s Day speech that wasn’t actually in the text of the speech or broadcast on major networks. And it wasn’t so much a hidden transcript as much it was a Nigga Please moment. Obama said he asked his wife Michele Obama why there is such hoopla over Mother’s Day. And Michele Obama said, “Please, everyday is father’s day because every day, you’re getting away with something. Shoot, you’re running for President.” This was a supposedly loving quip that could only be made in the presence of black folks and was only made for black folks. Michelle is overtly saying that while you’re out playing Presidential candidate, I’m doing the work of raising our daughters. It is also understood by many black listeners that Michele is saying with love, “Father’s Day? Nigga please. If it’s so hard for you, how is your black ass the democratic nominee for President? I don’t see no black Mama’s being the nominee. Ahem. Father’s Day? Nigga please.”

Uncle Jimmy, I don’t know if any viable Nigga presidential candidate will ever consistently and publicly love us because a consistent public love of Niggas doesn’t do the necessary political work of distinguishing the Nigga candidate from other regular Niggas. I also don’t know if meaningful love is public. While mature love seems to insist on the right to perpetually critique the loved one, Obama shouldn’t use us simply to gain the trust of unsure white American populace. But again, the problem is that American politics necessitates black folk be used that way by all the candidates. And while I’m a grown Nigga who believes that the ends justify the political means (and the end, during election time, is to get the most loving, daring and thoughtful politician on the ballot in office), a growing number of young folks of color aren’t buying it.

Anastasia Hardin, a multiracial Black college student, who grew up with her white mother in New Jersey, watched the speech and said, “I’m sorry, but did Obama grow up going to a black church, with his white mother in Kansas? I mean its possible, but I’m guessing that man spent less time in the black church than I did when I was young. I think its all a part of his strategic image which can appeal to black people, because he wants to show that he’s really black, and he’s also appealing to white people, by doing exactly what they think he should do. I just think he could of been twice as critical, actually, definitely should of been as critical of white men. Can you imagine white American men’s response?”

There is absolutely no telling the lengths that white American men would go if Obama Jeremiah Wright’ed them on Father’s Day. We saw some of their response to his empathetic “bitter” reference to their racism in Pennsylvania (Where is all the criticism of Obama being “elitist” and “classist” when he overtly critiques black folks for not being the best we can be?). We saw a bit more of their response earlier to Obama’s simply going to the church of a pastor who was as critical of white men and white power as he was of black men.

We saw in both cases that neither the policing, nor the privileging of Obama leave room for imperfection, for an acceptance of who he really is, which means, in a crazy way, he will always be passing. And when one passes, we are told, one ceases to exist. But this is undoubtedly an occasion where ceasing to pass could mean ceasing to exist for Obama. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. Any student of American history seriously knows that black bodies are always severely punished for disrupting narratives and seeking transformation. There is a price to pay for having love for Niggas. And there is an even steeper price to pay for loving Niggas, which is one of the reasons so few Niggas actually do.

But even you, Uncle Jimmy, who finds reason to hate every black man hoisted up by your family (Whether it’s Kobe, Tiger, Jesse or the random Nigga on Deal or No Deal), love what Obama makes you feel. I know you do. Before Obama won the democratic nomination, Grandma, you and me doubted the likelihood of seeing a black President in our lifetime. That’s three generations of folk echoing the same belief. That shared belief was melded with a lifetime of policing and sealed with a hearty glob of black skepticism.

This black skepticism is a survival technique.

Unlike cynicism, black skepticism accepts that though we weren’t supposed to make it this far from chattel slavery, we are still standing. Black skepticism also accepts the terrible and terrific price we have had to pay for moving from property to second-class citizenship to paroled Americans. Black skepticism rejects cardboard notions of progress but is fully aware that we would not be wherever we are were it not for the courage and evil doing of Americans. We are so joyful, not simply at the promise of a politician who has our multifaceted issues at heart; we are joyful that in a country partially dedicated to the infantalization and destruction of black human being, we willed, hustled and pushed one of us into most powerful position in the world.

Quiet as it’s kept, I think that any grown Nigga who is not supportive of and joyfully inspired by Obama is one of those Niggas who is probably as isolated from black folks as s/he really is from white folks because s/he believes deep down what white people say about her/him. Of course, Obama owes us more than he will actually be able to give in terms of policy and public speech acts. But symbolically, he has given us possibility and hope we never imagined. Like good lovers, we will continue to love, pray, defend and critique him like our life depends on it, even when we don’t get much in return. We will make fools out of ourselves. And we will do this because our lives will depend on it. But there is always a price to pay for black hope, courage and supposed progress.

And I don’t mean the price of Obama’s Presidency.

Nigga, this might be all I really know at the end of the day. Our country will burn from the inside if we are forced to pay this price. And angry Niggas with “nothing to lose” won’t be only ones burning. Millions of young Americans of all colors who have never believed that this was not their country, and who deep down think that they are beyond being hustled, will be forced to immediately and violently deal with the prospect of this country not being theirs if irrecoverable harm comes to the body of Barack Obama.

Uncle Jimmy, I trust Obama more than I have trusted any politician in my life to critically and effectively show love for us. It is not the most we can ask from each other, but it’s more than we have ever asked, and gotten, from a politician. So while I know that there’s a fundamental difference between loving and having love for, and while I know that having love for is symptomatic of a political and/or Nigga hustle, the stakes are too high to punish Obama for not loving better than me or us. For those complicated reasons alone, with the country in desperate need of new soul, I must sadly say, Hustle on, Obama … for as long as you can. Do your thing, Nigga until you can’t do it no more. We got nothing but love for you.

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