Ever since 1993, after reading 'Drylongso' by John Langston Gwaltney, I came to a fundamental realization about blackfolks and stepped off my Talented Tenth mission. It was a singular reorientation of my relationship to black people. My guiding principle became: Don't second-guess blackfolks. I may come to change this. It's huge.
Not long ago, I accepted the 'anti-black' label which I may or may not have earned. The reason was because I raised the burden of proof for the 'average' black individual. My presumption is that black politics is and perhaps always well be aimed at organizing for race raising, and within that context, it is aimed at those still living in the shadows of the American dream. In order to push the direction of black politics towards the right and expand it overall, I threw down a gauntlet which argues that this uplift goes counter to the main. That is to say what a black partisan should be assuming is that his politics addresses the concerns of people who cannot hack it in American cities. In other words, mainstream politics is for normal people, black politics is for oppressed and crippled people. For me to accept 'anti-black' is cynical and derisive, but I think that stance, as distasteful as it is for a writer to assume, is far less actually cynical than the presumption that masses of black people need a politics which presumes their powerlessness and oppression in America.
The effect of this reorientation has been subtle but profound, and it has influenced my attitude in writing. For now I deal with black partisans from the center and left as obsessed with defying the odds and the system that has worked for every other type of American including the sixty percent of African Americans who have already achieved middle class standing. Along with this attitude is my presumption, again, that blackfolks are grownups and can manage their own affairs.
I would like to believe that African Americans can and will do as they please and need no politics more or less than anyone else. But my opposition to center and left black partisans as well as my geographical remove from the 'hood leaves me in splendid isolation, and from that position I can make some stupid pronouncements, which my critics rightly smack me about. I think that perhaps I have gone overboard beyond what is appropriate for the purposes of this blog which are essentially expansive, not combative. The problem is that I can't seem to do it both ways.
I can't accept that black people lack the ability to navigate their way through America an find their way to middle class status without an interventionist, handicapping politics. Given the very traditions we claim to revere, of the strength of black family and all it took to survive slavery and Jim Crow; given our respect of men like Malcolm X and our claims about black power, one would think we've got plenty enough to go on to make it in the cushiest nation on earth. And yet all this (which I call The Sound of the Drum) seems to elude the Forty Percent, those who have the black skin but seem to lack the black backbone. And still all this blackification is annoying to me, because I firmly believe that there is no essence in blackness, that blackness is a cultural, political and intellectual construct born out of a historically specific period. I would like to fix that in place and include people in and kick others out based on their proper understanding of The Sound of the Drum. I do so because it is clear to me that all of the ills and boogabears black center and left partisans claim to be the bane of the Forty Percent are evidently not strong enough to beat us all down. So who owns black? The ones who win or the ones who lose? Who defines black politics, those whose work and values result in success or those whose failings dog us? Basically whom is black politics for?
My answer is and has been, break it up by class. The problem with that of course is that American politics and political rhetoric tends to be zero sum. And as I have demonstrated here, it seems rather impossible to assert noblesse and Right politics simultaneously among an audience of black politicos. Of course on the Right we understand, but the rest do not.
And so I have come to a new preliminary conclusion: Give the people what they want.
'Give the people what they want' works like this. Basically employ alternative means than political debate to discuss the issues of the day. But at a more significant level, it basically means to commiserate with the doomsayers and assume a position of self-righteous charity towards the poor misfortunates who don't measure up to my new burden of proof. In other words it goes from cynicism to duplicity, which is precisely what I feel is the current posture of the Democrats. Since I am evidently talking to a class of black politicos who are seeking to move the crowd, I may as well move with them.
I have determined for myself, that it is not worth suffering the slings and arrows of black political proxies of the underfed, undernourished and otherwise underprivileged of black America. So I'm going to give them what they want. I'm tired of being genuine, and so I relent. I therefore declare that I am the last real black man alive in America, and if you can coax me out of my cynical, duplicitous shell, instead to telling people what they want to hear, I may even tell the truth.
In the meantime, I will be talking about health care, education, charity and other soft subjects for your listening pleasure. Maybe. I'll see how long I can stand it.
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