Note: Much of this post is stream of consciousness.
Thanks Flo ; )
It was just a few minutes past 8am and those were the words I heard as I wiped the sleep from my eyes and tried to make breakfast from a lonely bagel and an egg. There, on CNN, was one of the many nameless commentators making reference to a statement made by a Cambridge police officer.
To be honest, my first reaction was laughter. I simply couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the moment and the rumblings of an "I told you so!" churning in my stomach. I was somewhat glad that it made the news, although it is difficult to discern whether it was said to inform or entertain. With the media circus surrounding celebrity deaths as of late, news and entertainment seem to be seamless.
The night before, I was unfortunate enough to be eating while watching Larry King and celebrity pseudo-scholars, Judge Joe Brown, Larry Elder, and Michael Eric Dyson (No, I am not making this up...) discuss the media frenzied Henry Louis Gates incident.
This incident, coupled with some personal and professional developments prompted me to wait to comment until I was less emotional and could speak with some clarity.
For those of you who have short historical memory due to living in the Twitter era, here is a video about what happened.
Speaking for myself, emotions collide. Being African in America (or however you choose to define yourself) is a constant analytical existence. The experiences of racism and general attitudes toward race here are maddening and at times so much so, that all I can do without losing my mind is laugh, listen to music, or write. Truth is often said in jest, and so I recalled Dave Chappelle. I'd talk more about him, his brilliance, humor, and wisdom, but that is a post for another time.
I am sure this might take devout Al and Jesse fans aback, but, I'm only a little annoyed by the Gates incident. Unlike most negroes and other so-called Americans, I am not shocked by racism in this country. Its in the bloodstream.
Note: (You're only an American, if your rights are protected, and the only people whose rights are protected en masse are wealthy WASP men)
Note 2: A tabloid in Duane Reade alleged President Obama's birth certificate a fake. Some newspapers still allege the same. Post Racial Society my ass.
The Gates incident came on the heels of the failure of CNN's Black in America 2 - a half assed program that allowed voyeuristic white folks to peer into the lives of black folks in poverty without getting too close to us on the street and discussed us as a pathology.
All of it made me think of a book I recently read, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. It helped to tie all of these egregious events together for me. The book is an autobiography about the varying economic, covert, and military means by which the US adds countries to its global empire by giving out massive loans and promising development in exchange for costly contracts and access to natural resources.
After reading it, I couldn't help but make the connection about why my mild discontent with the police officers in the Gates incident grew to fury toward Gates and others like him. He, like many of us have been victims of domestic Socio-Economic Hitmen, and up until now, he has been one as well - at least in a subtle way.
He was outraged for being accosted in his home, not simply because it was his home, but because he thought that despite his unfortunate blackness, his ascent into the white intelligentsia and quiet Cambridge community would make him untouchable by the jackals. Perhaps, he thought, as many desperate upwardly-mobile petit bourgeoisie negroes do, that money, status, and connections somehow buoy one from blackness and the victimization that many black folks fear every day.
Surely, a few doctorates, a black president, and speaking ever so clearly would render the word "nigger" obsolete, no?
Perkins reminded me that Socio-Economic Hitmen exist in our schools, churches, businesses, and even our homes. The idea of having to earn our right to be fully protected by the law and treated equally and justly has infiltrated our collective consciousness. We've dreamt the American Dream and fell into a deep coma. We are tumbling down the rabbit hole where white picket fences, two and a half kids and a dog chase us through Orwellian dramas and yellow brick roads that lead to nowhere.
Gates was arrested in his own home. That means no one is safe. Now what?
Like the author, I am not surprised by this particular instance of racism, nor is that all that egregious in the grand scheme of things. I'm reminded of the Boondocks episode where Mr. McGruder half-humorously highlighted the phenomenon of the 'n***a moment,' and I'm reminded of a not so well-known phenomenon that happens in the Black community: the 'still a n***a (SAN) moment.' While this may have been Skip Gates' SAN moment for the month of July, I'd wager that he's had a steady stream of them throughout his life. These are little individual reminders of the reality there is no such place as 'above' racism. It's sitting at a traffic stop with an engineering degree, a 60K+/year job, and the thought in the back of your head that just because you 'fit the description,' or drive a car that's a little too nice you might be subjected to the brutal whims of a person who barely graduated high school. It's being seated near the kitchen of a restaurant where you could buy everything on the menu if you so desired and watching while everybody around you is served and waited on and yet you haven't even been brought water. It's walking out of that restaurant, and seeing the man who's worked his ass off in that restaurant for decades with the exasperated and dejected look in his face that silently speaks volumes about 'how things work around here.' These moments abound in our everyday lives. Some of them are big, and others are nearly unnoticeable sleights, but they're there. One of my primary criticisms of the petit bourgeoisie/intelligensia/Only ones/whatever is the tendency to cloak themselves in the tattered rag of the absurd notion of a Post-Racial America and grin and bear it for fear of rocking the boat or messing up their 'good thing.' Sometimes I believe that nothing undermines the efforts of the common man like seeing the so-called 'best and brightest,' still grinning and bearing it with the spittle of the loogie that was just hocked in their faces dangling off their noses like the latest fashion.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteWell done. You called it with the Chapelle clip.
ReplyDelete~Portia Richaé
Excellent. Bravo young fellow...It's good to read something worth while on the internet these days. It's sad to say that when I visited Harvard University a couple of months ago, me and my friend were stopped by the cops as soon as we step foot in Massachusetts! The cop was very adamant about the reasoning two people of color were coming into his territory. "Celtics Game," said my boy. Where are you guys from the cop said, "We are both from Chicago but we live in DC," I added. All of this steamed this copper even more to find out that my boy is a professor and I'm a Grad student...wow at that, still got a ticket nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I visited Boston and Cambridge, actually on your way to Harvard...guess u what....ITS A HOOD...lol...who would have thunk it...I know it has to be rough for them in the area that Blacks set up the first African schools (Boston, take the heritage trail, it'll tell you all about it) in this area and we are still treated like second class citizens. Racism still exist, but they try to take our minds off of it by entertaining us with Religion and Media that play hand and hand, now let's check our facebook statuses to see how many people thank Jesus because they got an B on their report card (No Christians were harmed in the process of writing this post.)
My only question is why are people surprised by this and any racially charged episode? It is part of the very foundation upon which the society was forged. Upon what premise are people basing this uber erroneous notion that there exists some post-racism era? Come on people, wake up!
ReplyDeleterespectfully,
nubienne-coco
First, great blog Runako as this is my first chance to respond to an entry, I wanted to say congrats. Second, I was ironically just having an interesting conversation with some friends/sorors about the cost of integration to black folk. Things like abolishing an entire Negro Baseball League so that 3 players could play Major League alongside tons of white folks, as they got spat on, etc. Things like having 2 or 3 black kids at a time @ prestigious white collegiate institutions as they sat by themselves @ the corner lunch table? Was it worth it??
ReplyDeleteIt's funny also these references to "SAN moments"and makes me ponder my own status in this pseudo post-racial America many are trying to purport. Not that I forgot my blackness at any point (my parents are straight from the motherland and I have every intention of making my life's work there), but these SAN moments suddenly sneak up on me when I mutter to a hillbilly from middle Pennsylvania that I went to UPENN, they are taken aback perhaps first and foremost that I'm black, I'm a female and from Brooklyn and then b/c "that's a very good school!". I've come to know these astonished faces well and then I ponder what exactly I bought with this expensive Ivy League Degree. For one, I now ride the delicate line btw. "those black people" and "these black people". Its funny how we separate ourselves, but are surprised when white people do the same thing and then struggle at it when we're all mixed up as was the case with Gates and his driver as they forced that front door open. It's all ludicrous really, we're the same people. The Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson speaks to alot of these themes. A fancy degree DOES NOT buy you separation from the rest of your people, but rather it buys you a deeply rooted responsibility to work within your community, this is what I believe anyway. I hesitate to endorse such ideologies like the Talented Tenth, and Five Percenter beliefs, b/c inherent in them I think is a distaste and even presumptous take on exactly how this responsibility should be implemented...believing that you are better I think is perhaps not the best approach for n****as see that behavior coming from a mile away!
Now Gates, for his status in the black intelligentsia wasn't very well known outside of a close circle of other black collegiate scholars. And even then, unless you were in some kind of Africana studies major or speaking to people who were, you would never know his name. I believe Gates is a scholar who has published very important critiques and analyses on the black community but I think it also speaks volumes if you're a scholar on African-Americans but very few everyday African-Americans know who you are. It's sad and yes, perhaps it does speak to the affinity of the black intelligentsia to "study" our own people from afar. In so doing, as the reader stated above they are "cloaking themselves in this tattered rag of Post Racial America".
I will say, however that Obama's gesture to have them over for beers was interesting to say the least. Amidst all the rumors of what really happened...I was a little taken aback by the scene. It was nice, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way, perhaps it was Joe Biden's non-alcoholic beer that added the aura of phony to the moment hmmm..