I've been watching The Field Negro with some interest lately. It is mostly because his website has become wildly popular in the past several months, and because I hear he's the hot topic of the new LAT article on the black blogosphere. He recently asked a question, when did you (dirty) sell-outs sell out?
Selling out is also buying in, but other than that it's a kind of vague reference to the old trope of cooning, who is 'house' and who is 'field'. Rather than evade the entire analysis as shallow and practically useless, I'll play along as devil's advocate. In my terminology, I have come across points in my life where I think 'what I ought to do as a black man' has changed. I generally call this 'The End of My Blackness'. I have done this about seven times in my life and each time I find another strange and interesting reason to be black, but in a way different than anybody might have expected. I suspect in the most important way I will always be black - in that way I chose to be when I was forming my ideas about my particular manhood, so there is that essential thing I will never escape. But according to some popularly interpreted ways I am not black at all, I have turned my back to what might popularly be considered a critical mass of blackfolks, and thus Sold Out.
Cobb readers might be familiar with my old NSBE story, but it is the one point in my life when I felt most conflicted and torn about the move I decided to make. It must have been somewhere around 1985 in my second year as the National Finance Chair for the National Society of Black Engineers. NSBE is a college group dedicated to the recruitment, retention and successful graduation of black students in the sciences and engineering disciplines. As the money guy, it was my job to solicit bucks from corporate sponsors and fund the programs of the society. The impossible decision I faced was that we were of two minds - should we fund scholarships for the best and brightest so that they might piece heretofore unreachable glass ceilings? Or should we fund scholarships for the first time collegians who might never graduate, but like Dr King, will have seen the promised land and be rewarded beyond what they ever expected of themselves in attending engineering classes? It was ghetto vs bourgie. It was School Daze, light skin vs dark, straight hair vs nappy, HBCU vs 'predominantly white'. It was every social and class issue of Black America placed at the feet of the NSBE leadership, and it shook my faith in black unity to its very foundation.
I left the Society somewhat traumatized with that realization - that there is no single black agenda. Whatever faith I had in black nationalism was destroyed by the reality that given a real organization with real money and real capacity for change, getting cooperation and agreement was politically impossible. You could not satisfy all the black people all the time, you could only play the game. The game was bound to make some black people mad as hell. Like Michael Jackson sung in 'The Wiz', you can't win, you can't break even and you can't get out of the game. It became clear to me that there was no solution to be had, and that somehow black America was going to have to deal with that. I had really gone the length to discover this disillusioning truth, convinced as anyone raised to be Talented Tenth could be. The difference between me and the other Talented Tenth types was that they tended to come from families with a little bit more money and thus could afford to condescend to blackfolks in a way I refused to do. I wanted to take all black aspirations seriously, especially uplift. But realizing the economic constraints of supply amidst an untamably diverse demand made me sell out.
I sold out to the minority of the minority of the minority, basically black like me, and adopted the most ruthless and snobbish airs I could appropriate from the Talented Tenth school. I decided that if the problem couldn't be solved, then I would side with the people who had the fewest problems. And pretty much since then, to the extent that I identify with blackfolks, I tend to identify with the blueblood blacks. Except I have a problem. Both of my parents are sociologists by profession, and I know better. I haven't and could not internalize the self-conscious self-hatred many sellout Negroes possess, plus I don't have that blueblood money. And so I am in a sort of limbo of black identity meritocracy having inherited nothing truly settled class-wise. Perhaps that explains why I feel that I must continue to make progress by producing this black oriented work within my writing - which changes every time my blackness changes. Maybe it is why some part of me keeps evolving.
It doesn't particularly bother me, this imbalance and self criticism. It's like my internal radioactive element whose steady decay changes my weight and sparks mutation of my soul. It is a kernel of something that forces me to create, and I enjoy that deformity in me. I think it makes me a better man. It augments my humility. As I approach the age of 50, I am sure that it will continue to individuate me as a writer and will help define my place. I am accustomed to not being a stable shade of black, and that is excellent because I get to be black my entire life and yet never be anyone's stereotype of black. I can substitute the word 'human' if I were a humanist, as most intellectuals pretend to be, but on this note I tend to like Russians and I tend to like Jews. I think the world is much too complicated for us to pretend we understand humanity, but I know a Russian when I speak to one, and you know me as a black man when you speak to me.
Being a sellout means selling out a vision. I cannot accept a simple vision for the black race and so I don't mind attaching to various ones over my lifetime. Today, as Cobb, I am in the thankless position of political advocate for Conservatism and Republican governance. Thankless among most blacks that is. But I know that shade of black isn't permanent, nor is the realm of the Cobbian. I hope, in fact, that the Cobbian endgame is at hand. I suspect it will take about three years, because I still aspire to connive my way into riches. From there, from that aspect of a wealthy property owner, I think I can properly address the task of Lucifer Jones, because then and only then will I be truly free to sin in ways we in the middle class cannot afford on pain of dissolution. When I can afford to truly sin, then I will best understand and values the ways of virtue, whereas now I am held in check by fear and matters of self-preservation.
So we are all sellouts to the race, because there is always some agenda we are evading or undermining. There is always some blackfolks who are going to be mad as hell at you, and if you don't know who they are, well maybe you're not saying anything. I am blessed to have critics, admirers and commenters on the blog - although I don't have nearly as many commenters as The Field Negro. So definitely one of us is a sellout. But to whom?
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