Teaching Our Way to Freedom

Last week or the week before, we delved deeply into the subject of 'black problems' and have come to some agreement that there is no such thing. Along the way we touched on the notion that America's problems are our problems and vice versa. I think this begs a question of responsibility.

I have posed what I think is an interesting question centered around the cliche "It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand". I have taken arms against that slogan before. As a black writer I have defended subjectivity, but anybody can understand, if you are good enough to explain. Good enough implies a skill in writing and discourse, but it also connotes a willingness.

So I ask a question of myself and of all black partisans. Are we good enough to combat racism? More specifically when it comes to the battle of black and white, are whites welcome to understand? Are we good enough to teach? Do we have the skills, do we have the will?

James Baldwin inverted this question. In 'My Dungeon Shook', he asserted that it was the duty of the next generation to find a way, given appropriate behavior, to accept whitefolks. It was not our concern to ask ourselves if they should accept us, but whether we should accept them. Whitefolks were obviously guilty of conspiring to deny our humanity, so our duty would be first to assert it unconditionally and second to see who was worthy of sharing.

I would say that the majority of African Americans has taken the opportunity to unconditionally assert our humanity. Sure there are various blackfolks stuck in various states of mental imbalance due to 'the legacy of slavery, but most of us know who we are and what we want to be. But for those of us who are fully realized, what effect does our racial partisanship have on the perception of whitefolks own humanity?

There is a strong presumption that the use of the n-bomb is likely to result in some kind of beatdown, black to white. It is precisely the use of that term which characterizes dehumanization. It doesn't matter who is saying it, to treat somebody, even in name-calling, like a nigger is the same sin as treating a person like a thing. The presumption of the beatdown assumes the propriety of right over wrong, and of justice. But it also presumes the strength of character required. One must be a strong black man to teach a wrong white man. Nobody wants to hear whimpering. We want the person in the right to prevail, we want the person in the wrong to be set straight. That is the natural human thing to do.

Have we been doing that? Not as much as we should.

The problem with hearing Malcolm X and knowing that he represented a shining black symbol is that once you know it, you can't fake any longer. It should be very difficult, with that knowledge, to pretend that anyone has a right or a privilege to denigrate the humanity of blackfolks. But what is to be done if one is responsible? If you have recognized your humanity and you recognize some duty to humanity for the cause of justice, how can we allow the persuit of justice stop and our teaching to stop at the black fence? If we really, really know what racism is, how it originates and how it can be stopped, don't we owe whitefolks as much as we owe blackfolks a way out of the trap of racializing and dehumanizing? In our own assertion of humanity mustn't we insist everyone does?

Being online early put me in the company of lots more whitefolks than blackfolks, and I talked the talk then as now. It seemed perfectly natural to me, especially given my anti-racist political goals at the time to share everything out in the open. After all, has there been any significant revelation that we haven't wanted to share? Did we expect whitefolks to cover their eyes and ears during Black History Month? Of course not. I have never been interested in any black agenda that wasn't good for America. I could not be because I expect America to work for human beings, period.

We have arrived at a point in history where questions of integration are somewhere between relevant and moot. The mobile classes have proven their mobility, the inert classes their inertia. Most Americans are still born, live and die within a 50 mile radius. But we also have invented a place called 'flyover country', which could only exist for a class of people who are known as 'frequent fliers'. For people who are more or less fixed in place black neighborhoods are still black, white neighborhoods still white, along more or less the same lines as in the days of Jim Crow. And because we have pathetically lacked the political will to collaborate when it comes to public schooling, we have punted our futures to the schemes of judges who order. We sue and countersue and bite out nails during various trials of the century instead of acting like the community we pretend to desire. It is a rather pathetic failure of leadership to watch the legal enforcement of the beloved community we humans seem incapable of manifesting without the force of the state. Perhaps that says more about the inert classes of Americans. We who don't read maps but draw psychic unspoken rules and boundaries in our streets, how much we are like insurgent militias in Iraq, submitting not to democracy but only the most tyrannical arbiters.

Why do blacks and whites need Supreme Court decisions? Because they have a vested interest in being black and white, not in being humans in community, not it being equal American citizens, not in being free men. So much is asked to put down the mask of black and white, masks we've worn so tightly for so long that we forget our faces are able to express anything but through those masks. For too many of us, masks have become essential characteristics of our public face.

Our duty to expressing our humanity, our spiritual community, our American citizenship and our freedom lies in being good enough. Good enough to be willing. Good enough to be able. Good enough to share. And yet we have so many holdouts who want perfection. Perfection of a black agenda. Perfection of a white apology. Perfection of a social theory. Perfection of meritocracy, of 'corporate america' of 'race relations'... Perfect is the enemy of good.