I'm old enough to remember when cigarette ads were on television. One of the most famous of the ads was a semantic debate over whether Winston tastes good like a cigarette should or as a cigarette should. It really doesn't matter because either way cigarettes are bad for you. Joseph C. Phillips' new book is entitled "He Talk Like a White Boy". I was tempted to name this post "He Speaks Like a Black Man Should" but it doesn't really matter because either way, Phillips' book is good for the soul.
'He Talk Like A White Boy' is a personal collection of essays and reflections on life in America for a man who ought to be your best buddy. I say ought to be because in a righteous world, you ought to have righteous buddies. In a dangerous or devolved world, you ought to have them even more. Joseph C. Phillips probably would be your best buddy, except that because of a certain attitude of his, he is presumed to be unknowable. You see, Phillips is a Republican and he is black. And while this might be one small step for any black man it is one giant leap against the grain of mainstream black politics. Having made that leap he has entered forbidden territory and from that territory he speaks as an outsider. But is he an outsider, really? Reading his book proves that he is not, but in order to achieve what he has become he had to review all his values and experiences to see where it led him, and where it might land us.
Of course you may know Phillips as a TV star, but I came to know him in a different way. We crossed paths a few years back in local LA political circles and hit it off. We're frat and developed an email correspondance, and he decided to join as member of the Conservative Brotherhood. We're both married raising three kids in LA and devoted to doing that most of all. Importantly, we are witness to the reality of what was promised by the triumph of Civil Rights guarantees in this country and we're doing our damnedest to take advantage of that. And so we reckon with the fact that at the time we were born, our career paths weren't likely on the radar. And so we've arrived at this juncture in American life at which point personal and public struggle has paid off - we're a little bit isolated from the pack. We're the kind of blackfolks you know and we spend a great deal of energy just proving that because of this one difference of political affiliation, we haven't completely lost our minds. In fact, we have found them, and exercised them in ways that are extraordinary. Despite the fact that we shouldn't have to justify this, we're always explaining, and that in and of itself is an interesting, if annoying tale. It is partly because I'm not ever sure what to make of such existential matters that it has taken me so long to write this review. Knowing so many others will write about the book, in the end I felt it necessary to bring up this angle.
Joseph C. Phillips is a square in all the best ways. In that, I find just the right amount of confidence which suggest in many important ways that he is an important representative of our generation of African American men. As often as we read about this or that dysfunction in black men, we don't hear enough from men like Phillips. It is important to note, celebrity aside, that Phillips is not rolling in bling. He has not achieved the level of stardom that means that he can buy his way out of the tough decisions that face ordinary American parents. And so it can be said that like most of us, he is uppity, and still ascendant - trying to occupy a space in America that nobody expected that he might achieve. That may be a place that you don't read about in the papers everyday, but it is what binds so many African Americans psychologically. We all have our eyes on the prize. And yet Joseph does it with a difference and it is one we must recognize.
Black ambition in America is nothing new, but as soon as you start talking to him, as many did at a book signing here in LA a couple weeks ago, several things emerge. They help you see how it is that Phillips is confidently his own man.
All of us blackfolks know that there is a goodly set of assumptions and shortcuts invested and involved with our subcode. Once upon a time when we were Negroes, you could go quite a long way in that argot without breaking ranks. Which is to say that when blackfolks were just plain folks, you could cover the length and breadth of our experience in a parlance which was the same from Jamaica Plain to Compton and from Hyde Park to Little Five Points. All the black neighborhoods in America in the years just post Jim Crow were all pretty much the same. All the black radio stations played the same black songs, and all the schools used the same outdated books, and all the votes were Democrat. All the grandparents' living rooms had three portraits, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr and JFK. That old-time religion was good enough for us.
But as we all know, all the legal fetters were gradually released from the American Negro over the course of the a decade or so as well as many of the social restrictions. We raised our own expectations and began the Bogard. Old Joe and Aunt Jemima, our humble and righteous forebears shed a tear as we flew that old Negro coop. Right about that time, one of the clarions of the New Black Race, James Baldwin wrote these prophetic words:
All you are ever told in this country about being black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. Now, in order to survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and re-create yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose, in fact - this may sound very strange - you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
.. Then the pressure of being black or white is robbed of its power. You can, of course, still be beaten up on the South Side by anybody. I mean, the social menace doesn't lessen. The world perhaps can destroy you physically. The danger of destroying yourself doesn't vanish, but it is minimized.
Right off the bat, Joseph grew up in white suburban Denver and grew up loving Western movies, and he's still a die-hard fan. (That's why I'm going to start calling him 'JC' next time I see him). So you know that somewhere along the line, the Phillips family busted down some old barriers and he is the product of that success. Phillips forces you to reckon with the fact that you and he might not share all that we assume that black men everywhere share, like a ghetto upbringing. I witnessed a whole lot lot of grief about the fact that you can't just start a..'Hey brah..' conversation with him. We're fraternity brothers and even when we greet, he gives me the strict formal fraternity handshake. You can't simply walk off the street and be intimate with this man. It is that presumption of black men that he defies - that we are all at root, at bottom and essentially the same in how we think. Not because he's trying to be anything special or different from everybody else, but that he and all of us must be true to ourselves. And it is on that note that Joseph C. Phillips defies political essentialism. He is his own man, his own creation, and for that he demands respect. Sound familiar? Any readers of Ralph Ellison out there? The consequences of this are fundamentally important for America. Because he can, we can, with respect.
His title is indeed prophetic. Just as many blacks may decide that their flavor of English is deserving of special recognition, it's nothing more or less than English. And Republicanism is nothing more or less that American politics. While today there may be millions who will swear up and down that they are black, but not American, they'll do that swearing in English. It is a distinction without much of a difference and yet it is a difference many would seek to capitalize. Phillips agonizes about what we make of such facile, surface distinctions - that we let it go when people are dismissive about the rationality of those who defy commonly held beliefs. We are supposed to defy simplicity. That's why God gave us brains; to think our way forward.
'He Talk Like A White Boy' is not a poltiical book so much as it is a staement of values and the revelations of a life well-lived. It shows how a faith in God, family, marriage, hard work and self-reliance can work in a puzzling and challenging world. It shows how six words spoken in elementary school can signify a struggle fraught with complications and destabilize a growing identity. And it shows the triumph of living in truth, despite sometimes losing faith and confidence, over the comfort of settling for those restrictions others would have for us. As much as the political wonk in all of us would like it to be some treatise, JC has no ideological throwing down to do. Rather it is the confident spinning of tales worthy of fireside reading. In the end he descripes a set of deeply held convictions that are in no way alien to the values that have kept African Americans moving forward throughout generations. Most importantly, they are his. He proved them by living right.
His is a unique but very useful tale of redemption. He has not lived a lie or overcome some tawdry addiction. He was accused of trying to be odd out the bunch when he was just trying to be himself. He stands accused of not being black enough and dismissed. But Phillips doesn't get caught up in the madness, he writes exactly where he is coming from, on a dare from Tavis Smiley. And so now everyone has to say of his struggle, now that it's in print, oh - I didn't know. But this is not a game of gotcha, it's about real authenticity, not the kind sketched in pencil, recorded on DAT, sold to a record label, broadcast on radio networks, sold in stores and then taught in seminars by Michael Eric Dyson.
Phillips is, in many ways, the future of our people. He understands the pain of living in a world where any assumptions of race cannot be defining and he has struggled with that from all sides. He reached into himself, his family, his values and his experiences, all illustrated in the book, and come up with real answers to get him and his family through it all. He has done so on his own just as Baldwin proposed we should. His path is assured not because he reached into some mytical African past, nor some fantasy radical future. This is something we all must do if we haven't yet.
There is no black shelf upon which our dreams await. It has to be built, by you. There is no program into which we will especially fit that will make up for the gross errors and heinous sins of the past. We must find a way around that stumbling block. There is no special legacy from which we alone can draw lessons. History is what it is, and it only applies usefully to those who research it. When it comes to being black, essentially all we have that is truly and uniquely our own is our parents, ourselves, our children. To make something of that requires that we travel the road Joseph C. Phillips has travelled and see where it leads us. It has landed him a special place in my heart and in my mind, and I hope it will for you as well.
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