The Essentialist Trap, Part Three

Excerpt from "The Unbearable Lightness of Being Negro"

Our hypothetical African American is an upper-middle-class woman entering a store to buy some trinkets. It’s just some Gucci, some material junk, but she has to have them. A male black customer tries talking to her and suddenly she is revolted by his physical appearance, yet tries to keep on a smiley face.

Meanwhile another black woman working behind the cash register watches her facial expression, and then another woman, white, appears out of the blue to accuse her, of all people, of having stolen her iPad, which is actually in her purse…but because the white woman is drunk, she doesn’t realize this.

The upper-middle-class black lady, after being arrested, after being slapped (or, to be exact, felt up, then punched and kicked) by the cops, is clamped in jail, released on bond, and is suddenly indignant about her being treated like a “nigger.” In the back of her mind she reserves the bulk of her contempt and disgust for the black man who tried to holler at her, because if it wasn’t for him, and that lowly negress of a cashier, she would not be in this mess.

The cashier, who is black, is scared of the drunken white woman, loathes her, but has an even deeper loathing for the upper-class “black bitch.” The black male did not register in her mind except as another dumb nigger…like her father, who was not there; her brothers, who are clowns; her boyfriend, who is another clown.

Collectively however, all three of these “Negroes” subconsciously saw this white woman as their mommy.

The order of American society is remarkably similar to a dysfunctional family run by obsessively narcissistic parents. The parents are white, of course. They gaslight their children and play favorites with the white and light-skinned and Asian ones to the detriment to the Latino and above all the Black ones. The more you are like the parent the less they are likely to punish you. In order to survive in this white narcissistic society, the African American has been forced to “play along” according to the tyranny of expectations. Playing along as an ersatz white man, or a congenial buffoon, or as a mastiff on a short leash, is often self-perpetuating in that long after the curtains drop, so to speak, and the African American returns to his or her own designated socio-political space, the African is still role-playing as “Negro.” W.E.B. DuBois, as we already know, called it “double consciousness.” Frantz Fanon, writing many years later, called it something else: a colonial mentality, or if you please a slave or plantation mentality. There is nothing our poor little hypothetical Black man can do to truly please his overlord unless he agrees to be the valve on his overlord’s trumpet. And even then, in a position of total subservience, racist paranoia always surfaces…in the same way that a narcissistic parent is never entirely satisfied with the child she manipulates, no matter how hard the child tries to lick his mother’s ass.

Yes, we’ve all heard Ellison’s Invisible Man trope countless times. In his unfinished novel Three Days before the Shooting we are presented with a further elaboration upon the theme of invisibility. In Book One of this novel, a Southern white racist reporter named McGowan is sitting in a segregated club lecturing his fellow reporters as to why “nigras” — aka, African Americans — would not be capable of attempting to assassinate Senator Sunraider. (We all know why.) In a nutshell, he claims to “know” the “nigra” and that everything he does is “political” — in other words, an expression of what he really is. This “nigra” has to be watched and studied at all moments to make sure he does not step out of his properly designated place in American (not just Southern) society. McIntyre, the narrator for Book One, says of McGowan, “colored people were either objects for amused contempt or the greatest danger to the nation.” A little later in the novel McIntyre falls asleep in the hospital while waiting to talk to the Senator; in his dream he encounters a rebellious, well-spoken lawn jockey who dismisses his liberal humanism — obviously, the same liberal-left humanism that Wilkerson hints is and Baldwin says is fraudulent — and snaps, “you refuse to recognize my humanity, you really do, so admit it!”

The lawn-jockey is an outdated stereotypical image of African Americans — in other words, a “Negro.” But in the novel’s dream sequence, the image is subverted and rebels against its owner merely by revealing itself to be a complex human being who calls out the moral failure of all white Americans, whom he blithely dismisses as “McGowan”: “You’d rather plead insanity than deal with me honestly, such is your McGowan pride. But don’t cliché me, baby. I’m real and there’s nothing simple about me. I’m here and very much myself.”

In spite of the endless pleas on the part of people such as Baldwin, Ellison, Wright, Toni Morrison, Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, the African American finds himself still having to explain why he (or she) exists — often with a policeman’s gun pointed at his or her head. This is because America never paid much attention to Ellison (let alone King, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer or Frederick Douglass) when he said, “who knows but on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”

America grunted, shrugged its fat shoulders and went back to Warner Brothers, back to Disneyland, back to TV dinners or lynching and strangling and laughing at (or even with) “Negroes.” And to this very hour the white American pretends (as usual) that all of this national craziness has nothing to do with him when in fact it is he who runs this whole bloody show, this commedia dell’arte that is America today: indeed, for Black People America has always been just a piss-poor light opera where everything has been faked, everything is blatantly insincere. And we all know why. According to Ellison’s lawn jockey, “you deliberately refuse to understand. And that’s why you have so little insight into yourself. You fail to grasp your own nature; you insist upon a stance of innocence.”

“He who loves his friend,” Camus continues, “loves him in the present, and the revolution wants to love only a man who has not yet appeared. To love is, in a certain way, to kill the perfect man who is going to be born of the revolution. In order that he may live, he should from now on be preferred to anyone else. In the kingdom of humanity, men are bound by affection; in the Empire of Objects, men are united by mutual accusation. The city that planned to be the city of fraternity becomes an ant-heap of solitary men.”

America is just that: a former “revolutionary” state where all white men were allegedly “created equal” — but now an ant-heap of solitary men and women, a country of seething hatreds, confusions, misunderstandings. What we see every waking hour in this country speaks for itself. The lovelessness is endemic in the very way that Americans relate to one another, regardless of social or ethnic background. This — in spite of all circumstantial evidence of the existence of friendships, of perfectly happy partnerships from every conceivable walk of life in the United States. One does not need social media to see this. In fact “Love, American Style” is an oxymoron. And a society shorn of any semblance of love — whether between individuals or between groups — is consistently seeking scapegoats and targets for its own collective rage and endless antidotes for its bottomless confusions. Normalization is the buzz-word in societies such as ours; sadly, our model has been exported globally. Normalization is reinforced by a bland, white neoliberalism in which everyone is expected to look, think, talk, dress, eat, shit and fuck alike. Normalization in that everyone is reduced to being a prostitute, to a price-tag — much like those African slaves dragged across the ocean hundreds of years ago.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, who somehow believes that white supremacy is “indestructible,” will tell his younger son in a convoluted letter that destroying the Black body constitutes a cornerstone of the American heritage. Coates is only partly right. His broad, generalized statements are shot through with indignant emotion (and rightfully so: who in one’s right mind would suggest he not be indignant over the sorry condition of African Americans?) — but without carefully analyzing why, specifically, Americans insist upon destroying — or, to be more precise, subjugating — the black body. White America desperately needs its racism the same way a junkie needs his fix: the hatred, whether passive or overt, is addictive; it makes the rank-and-file white American feel powerful, “free,” as it were. Their sense of security as whites (and their semi-freedom as non-white, non-Blacks) hinges upon our insecurity and poverty as rank-and-file Blacks. To Asians, Mid-Easterners, Latinos, Native Americans and even African American elites, they can feel reassured that no matter how poorly they are judged by the dominant white majority, at least “we aren’t them,” not those pathetic, disgusting, ignorant, infantile “Negroes.” Racist kitsch, whether from the whites or the blacks, comfortably reminds thoughtless Americans that everything is just honky-dory, pun intended.4 Kitsch obscures rather than clarifies; it muddies the cultural, political and ideological waters.

Destroying black bodies is indeed an integral part of Western “heritage,” yet the destruction in and of itself negates the primary reason for the very existence of Black bodies in the Americas. Tens of millions of Africans were not dragged across the Atlantic for the sole purpose of stringing them up on trees or shooting them down like rabbits on either back country roads or piss-soaked streets. They were brought to America to be used as flesh-machines, as objects. The destruction of Black bodies, continuing unabated to this very day — even after the Civil Rights Movement, even after Black Power, after “we” were allegedly “eight years in power” (to quote from Coates again) and most certainly after the 1951 charges of genocide brought against the United States government at the United Nations by Paul Robeson — serves a specific purpose, one which is in fact very simple.

The purpose, of course, is to intimidate the African American and, to paraphrase James Baldwin again, “keep (him) in his place.” And it is definitely not merely white men telling Black men to stay in their place. Indeed virtually the entire hip-hop industry functions for this precise purpose, to remind Black people that they are worthless and that their place — whether physically or mentally — is in that modern-day Catfish Row called “Da Hood,” which is also the plantation.

Very little has changed between the 1600s and now as to what African people are considered to be not only by the white powers that be in America, but by the very victims of that white power. These black victims will even consider themselves New Afrikan, an identity which is still in the process of being shaped, but when generally called upon to define precisely what a New Afrikan or African American is, their descriptions of what it means to be “Black” will suspiciously manifest to look like what it means to be a “Negro.”

And why is this? Simple: the African American — all exceptions admitted, to quote Norman Mailer — has completely internalized “Negro” within the very core of his/her being. He’s been playing the “Negro” role for so long he regards his very being as that which his oppressor has defined him as. This explains black-on-black violence; it dictates the extreme inequities between the Black rich and the Black poor, the extreme vulgarity of popular African-American culture and the extreme vacuity and vapidity (even kitschiness) of so-called “high” Black culture. Above all, it dictates precisely how other Black Americans interact with each other on a daily basis — including my own interactions with insufferable black cashiers and postal workers.

Once one accepts this Negro/Zanni fantasy as one’s own self, then one is finished. One becomes an object. That struggle between the two selves — the “black” African self and the “white” American self, the struggle of which begat the Negro to begin with — must end with the Black trouncing the white within the Black body. Today, a “New African” or “African American” whole self (sans white censor) renders “double consciousness” completely obsolete. We do have our own identity: it is simply a matter of clarifying precisely what it is. However, no amount of clarification will suffice once one accepts the white “Negro” fantasy as your true identity. To put that into concrete terms, to accept such a fantasy is to believe that you really do belong in the ghetto or, just perhaps, in an exclusive white suburb, quite well-off, abiding by WASP mores and attitudes — a perfect Oreo mouthing off the same prejudiced bullshit as your white neighbors ABOUT THAT SAME GHETTO, THAT SAME NEGRO. You will become precisely what the affluent white world wishes you to be, whether for “good” (Clarence Thomas) or for “ill” (Jay Z). And tragically you won’t even know it, because today the Negro is invited to revel in his own destruction. As Ayi Kwei Armah once wrote of the “educated” African Negro, “his murdered intelligence is praised.” Kanye West, eat your heart out.

Today, we see Ali Akbar Alexander, a so-called “Afro-American Arab” and dead-ringer for a 1963 Sammy Davis, Jr., conk and all, organizing the “Stop the Steal” campaign and the resulting storming of the Capitol by a white, racist lumpen-bourgeoisie. Today we see Kanye West palling around with Donald Trump, and then “going def-con” on the “Jews” while proclaiming his love for — Adolf Hitler. Today we see a so-called “Black mainstream culture” predicated almost entirely upon the Negro/Zanni fantasy. Lil Durk is not Satchmo, who in turn was not Louis Armstrong since Armstrong had sense enough to distinguish between himself and what he was forced to present of himself on stage. The same held true for Duke Ellington, whose public persona and statements often led one to think of him as being an unctuous House Negro. He wasn’t. His own private statements and actions showed otherwise. Ellington (like Ralph Ellison) firmly believed in presenting a carefully maintained mask of elegance to the white world — a false perception to the whites as being “one of the good ones,” an “assimilated” and “evolved Negro” — while fiercely protecting his private self against any and all intruders. Duke Ellington knew his history as an African American far better than Ralph Ellison did. Above all, he connected to Africa in ways that Ellison would not have dreamed of doing. Maybe this is also true for 50 Cent, Jay Z, Dr. Dre, T.I. and all the other established “niggas” in the gangsta rap pantheon. But it is definitely NOT true for maniacs such as the late King Von, the late XXX-Tentacion, and the still living bones of Uncle Murda, SexxyRedd, Lil Nas X and all the rest of their ilk.

Today, in the West, “we” have to accept the queer folk (including Black queer folk) not because we are overcoming centuries of gay-hate, but as a new buffer class/caste to play off against the Negro.* In just the same way “we” have to accept (however reluctantly) the humanity of Asian-Americans not because it is absolutely necessary (it is), but in order to emphasize Negro savagery — look at how those darkies attack Asians in the street! But what won’t be said on this score is that the Negro attacks Asians, or gays, or Jews, or Arabs not merely because they too regard him as just a “nigger,” but precisely because the “nigger” sees all of these people the same way that the white man sees them. It also won’t be mentioned too often that once the Asian decides to stop being the Perfect Negro (for indeed, that’s just what the white world thinks of him), these same Asiaphiles will want Asians to leave America. Dr. Amy Wax, a Jewish Nazi, is already fed up with Asians for simply voting Democrat. What, then if the Asian-American decides to become Socialist?

All of the cheesy left-wing rhetoric about “black and brown coalitions” notwithstanding, all Negroes hate each other, and hate themselves. This is simply how “our” reality works. Otherwise, Blacks and Latinos would not be at each others’ throats in the states of Texas and California — or, for that matter, virtually any state in the Union where Blacks and Latinos live side by side. Negro gals would not kill each other over blond hair weaves (in hair salons staffed and operated by Asian “Negro” middle-men) and Negro boys would not kill each other over chicken sandwiches, sneakers and sunglasses (none of which they designed, manufactured, distributed or sold). A disgustingly huge premium is placed on objects created by Europeans for Europeans, as if by possessing these elite objects, one gets further away from being a dirty little Negro — subconsciously, of course.

An equally disgusting (and equally huge) premium is placed on the seeds and wombs of white men and women in the hopes that assimilation into the American “melting pot” will make our children fairer, with brighter, rounder eyes and straighter hair. The American obsession with whiteness has reinforced all other global forms of anti-Blackness; however, anti-Blackness in Asians or Latinos does not merely stop at their collective disdain for Africans, for it is a boomerang that eventually strikes any yellow, tan or brown person whose physical features not only closely resemble that of Africans (Cambodians, for instance), but any one whose skin isn’t pearly white.

“The advantages of being white were so obvious that race prejudice against the Negroes permeated the minds of the Mulattoes who so bitterly resented the same thing from the whites. Black slaves and Mulattoes hated each other…(T)he man of color who was nearly white despised the man of color despised the man of color who was only half-white, who in turn despised the man of color who was only quarter white, and so on through all the shades…(S)o despised was the black skin that even a Mulatto slave felt himself superior to the free black man. The Mulatto, rather than be slave to a black, would have killed himself.”**

There also remains that question, as Camus brought up, of “love.” Again — all exceptions admitted — it is a vexing question in our particular civilization. Suffice it to say, there isn’t going to be a hell of a lot of honesty in a relationship predicated upon racial stereotypes. There won’t be much to work with, relationship-wise, when both parties — whether straight or gay, or one black and the other non-Black — come into a relationship filled with the usual expectations from a “Negro.” It is not accidental that interracial relationships between Black and White frequently end in total acrimony, or that Black Male/Black Female relationships are often toxic to the extreme. It is by unconscious design, and sadly, it is not limited to the United States.

A funny thing happened in American pop culture on its way from the seventies to the 21st century. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, virtually every hit single on the pop charts had something to do with “Love.” And then almost imperceptibly a cynical sort of Las Vegas-Mafia morality, a mafia strip club mentality, intruded into this phony “love” dialogue. It happened sometime between the mid-80s and mid-90s and it has stuck with us since. What really happened is that the relentless objectifying of America’s “minorities” into acceptable (yet false) identities resulted in a society so brutalized to its core that it could no longer even dream of “Love.” It was like a boomerang effect, so to speak; to paraphrase Aime Cesaire, it was an “imperial boomerang”: the endless brutality America dealt its Black citizens (and, just perhaps, Iraqis, Somalis and Afghanis) above all began to infest the entirety of American society.

It became patently impossible in this American “ant-heap of solitary men,” in an America where — to be brutally honest — to truly love again means (just as Camus said) to kill these historical and social monstrosities that were born of America’s own “revolution” of 1775. While acting as a Negro, the African American will never be able to love: for his own sake he will prefer an obese white drunk over a Black “10” — not because the Black “10” is supremely arrogant (though she may very well be: see below) but because the former is white. And for her own sake she will forever be drawing up insane laundry lists of demands for any potential Black partners — lists which, mind you, she would not dare compile for even the most mediocre white partner — in order to offset that Black partner’s falsely perceived “hideousness” of simply being a Negro.

Well — of course. The Negro is indeed hideous. He was designed that way out of the sick mind of the white fascist. But then again, none of us are Negroes: the Negro only exists in our heads. But do we really need to shoot ourselves dead to free the “Negroes” in our own heads? No, we don’t. But we, as Black people, don’t really know that. Worse yet, we don’t want to know it, because we are still blindly acting out our shitty little roles on the stage of American society.

No one would persuasively argue that Jews murdering Germans after the Holocaust would have been morally “unacceptable” for their psychological trauma would have been understood as the natural reaction of human beings under the heel of totalitarian oppression. It’s certainly considered “okay” by many for sick Jewish settlers to take their rage out on Palestinian children. But we need to keep reminding ourselves that — once again — the Negro’s plight cannot be compared to that of other human beings; the Negro is “special.”

*“Brown people were always administering the White Empire, they never stopped administering it, and the same bad medicine is still going down. Our troops were the boots of the East India Company, the mace of the Queen, the enforcers for the white man against our own people. Our elites were the rulers of neutered kingdoms, traders of stolen goods, getting paid off with wealth plundered from our own land.” — indi.ca, “How Brown People Run the White Empire,” Medium, 2022

**James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins. London, 193