Ah the existentials of blackness. So complex. So unnegotiable.
I'm annoyed again, this time because I hear little history in the blackness stuff. But let me say my few things then shutup.
Blackness leapt into existence a generation or so ago. It was constructed. It was an intellectual and cultural construction, not simply a response to 'conditions'. Nor was it a part of the 'legacy of slavery'. It was an action, a project, a mission, a Struggle. It was about asserting pride, political cohesion and a new outlook on self, power, brotherhood, integration and religion. The creators of blackness were an intellectual elite. Interestingly they were not so elite then as they are now, but they were an elite. How soon we forget.
Fortunately, I have some photographic evidence to present in the form of these covers from the Johnson Publication of Negro Digest. There was also Freedomways and The Liberator. If you were to be black in the ferment of the Black Consciousness Movement, you had to be intellectually sharp and you had to keep up.
There is no such ferment today, and most African Americans wear blackness like an old suit. People consider themselves 'naturually black' and black can be anything anybody African American wants it to be, generally posed in defensive terms. But I say there is nothing natural about blackness and anybody who says so is ignorant, lazy or both.
So here's the soundbite and anchor of this talking point. That thing which we now call an 'Afro' was once known to all of us who wore them in the 70s as a 'Natural'. The point of calling it a 'natural' was to distinguish it from permed and processed hair. Thoughtful decisions were made to understand the implications of accepting European standards of beauty and after this thought was born the natural. The Dashiki fit into the same framework. But if there was an existential breakthrough to be had in doing all of this, I don't think we have to consider it that much of a trek. How long does it take to 'get it'? How long? Not long? The Natural was not natural any more than dreadlocks are natural or cornrows are natural. Wearing a natural was a sacrament, on outward expression of an inward commitment. Today, the afro is just another hairdo.
I hold, and have always held, that the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts, Black Consciousness, Free Speech, Gay Rights and Feminist movements were all resounding successes, and what took place in the streets and universities have changed our society for the better. We're all multiculturalists now. But like rural electrification, it's done. We're all on the grid and dependent on it. We can't take it for granted although we do, but we also can't keep pretending that it's as electrifying today as it always was. Somebody telling me today that they are proud of their blackness runs my temperature up about as much as hearing them describe the three prong outlets in their house. If you're not an electrical engineer you don't know anything about electricity worth knowing. If you're not in the intellectual elite, there's nothing about blackness you know worth knowing. OK? Blackness is no longer a revolutionary concept, it is a commodified consumer good.
There's a reason that Amiri Baraka is not heard. He said what needed to be said when the time was right. That time has passed. Johnson Publications ain't publishing. The world is no longer interested in the plight of the American Negro. A more interesting question might be, what hasn't Toni Morrison said that needs saying in black literature? I think that no further ground needs to be broken, but that we should be building upon the foundation we know. It's not about being black or getting to blackness or even defending it. It's about moving up.
Blackness is not over. We are not at the end of blackness. Black pride remains. But the Black Consciousness Movement is over, and blackness is not going to undergo a radical revision. There will be no new Black Nationalism, there will only be conservatism of the best of the old black nationalism. There will be no new Black Arts Movement, but there will be an auction at Sotheby's some years hence of Murray's manuscripts. There will be no new Black Consciousness Movement, we can testify that as cool as Soul II Soul, Junior and Loose Ends were, they couldn't bring British Blacks closer to American Blacks. Despite the hopes of the 90s, the New World Afrikan Diasporan Hookup did not materialize. It's just Dave Chappelle going to Durban, not them coming here (Mark Matabene notwithstanding). For all the hype of hiphop's revolutionary power, the indisputable fact is that it has brough American whites closer to black culture than it has blacks in other nations. Black culture and blackness are dispersed like pollen in the air, but that's not agriculture.
I'm going to stick out a complaint which has been irking me for a few days and leave it. I've googled the Great Plains and found fascination in the flow of the Missouri River. And my gut tells me that I could flow along that river for days without passing any land on any side that belongs to African Americans. It takes me back to a painful subject which is how the West was Won and blacks lost out on getting land. It's a reason I am not compelled to watch whatever emotional whining is coming out of that new show on television called 'Out of the West' or some such melodramatic schmaltz. There could be great lands here in the US with African American deedholders. But there is not, and someday that bill will come due.
It will come due because human ambition is what it is, and while some are satisfied with just human rights, some will strive for civil rights. While some will remain fixated there, some will want more. Many will be comforted by social equality, integration and acceptance, but some will continue to desire and amass power, wealth and influence.
When I speak of the Old School I am working an intellectual patch which is itself a construction. It is a direct outgrowth of an integrationist, soft cultural nationalism of a scholarly bent. It is elitist, intellectual and literary and bears a burden that hiphop cannot carry. I tried, really I tried. It is conservative of African American patriotic traditions (like Booker's ethos) and it is also modern and integrative of the Western world, (like James Weldon Johnson's ethos). It is nationalist and conflicts with my globalism I must confess. It is also ideosynchratic and flavorful (like Jess B Semple) which conflicts with my appreciation for the classics. I haven't figured the whole thing out. But I know that it resonates with blackfolks who are on similar intellectual journeys, as well as with a class of African Americans I believe I know well.
The Old School can be said to be a faction in an African American Culture War. On some days, I'm not entirely sure that war should be waged, and yet I believe it to be inevitable. But like the Natural, it isn't natural. It's a construct, it's a framework for understanding - a solution to a problem developed by thinking ahead and generating ferment you believe people will understand and engage. At bottom, I don't think it takes long to understand. How long? Not long. People will 'get it'. It will provide what people need, and if it works, I'll go the way of Amiri Baraka in due time.
I want people to leave blackness alone. It cannot bear any more overloading with meaning, especially since it has been so commodified. We need to recognize new distinctions which are applicable to out contemporary lives, and simply being black and proud doesn't cut it. As long as we've known rivers, when will we control a county off the Missouri? It doesn't seem to me that talking about being black outside of the historical context will deliver.
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