Perhaps the supreme irony of black American
existence is how broadly black people debate the question of cultural
identity among themselves while getting branded as a cultural monolith
by those who would deny us the complexity and complexion of a community,
let alone a nation. If Afro Americans have never settled for the racist
reductions imposed upon them -- from chattel slaves to cinematic stereotype
to sociological myth -- it's because the black collective conscious not
only knew better but also knew more than enough ethnic diversity to subsume
those fictions.
-- Greg Tate
I was thinking about encapsulating what I think these days about being black and several old metaphors came to mind that bear repeating.
The first, and I think most steadfast is that being black is like being from a small town. Because no matter what you think about being black, the one thing you know is true is that it makes you a minority - from someplace other than from most people on this planet. Whether you loved or hated your small town, you can't change that you were from there and it shaped what you thought when you looked out into the rest of the world.
The second notion was a bit more complicated. It has to do with the back of the bus.
All educated Americans know that in the Jim Crow South, black Americans were forced through various laws and social pressures into second class citizenship. And before the success of the change of those laws and pressures, it was required of them to sit in the rear of public transportation. You almost certainly know the story of Rosa Parks at the tip of the spear in the heart of that particular abuse. She was a Negro and she was part of the solution of the Negro Problem. Rosa Parks was one of the last of her kind, and her often sung heroism is of a different sort than the attitude of blacks. Whereas most blacks march, Sister Rosa marched into battle. We often capture the cadence and the style, but rarely the stamina nor the prize. And because of the distance between ourselves, we blacks of the post-soul generation, we often ask ourselves about the nature of our blackness. Rosa didn't have to ask, because as I mentioned, she wasn't black, she was Negro and part of the solution of the Negro Problem.
The black problem is a bit more ephemeral which is why it isn't capitalized and why there are nary any statuary of men in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr. We like to think of all African Americans in our histories as 'black', but we're merely grasping. I have come to accept that there is no black orthodoxy. But what is there? There is the back of the bus.
When I rode the 85, back before it was the 210, northbound on Crenshaw just before my stop at Jefferson all the best drivers would hit the tracks at Exposition at a good clip. The best place to be was the back of the bus because the bounce would send you two feet into the air. It was an ecstatic moment at the most energetic place on any bus through the 1970s 'hood. The back of the bus was where the three card monte games were played, where kids like myself played the trickster.
Black Type One - Trickster.
If you're academic, you know the drill. Brer Rabbit and some loas I've long forgotten circle around this archtype of blackness. I'm not going to get all elaborate into it other than to fill in the metaphor for the bus. We knew, black kids like me, that we sat in the back of the bus in defiance of the sort which goes to the heart of my kind of black - of taking the negative and turning it on its head. It's all about Perverse Pride. Of keeping the outer signs used against you intact but keeping an inner fire, of wearing the mask of compliance while doing the deeds of subterfuge. Think of that black kid, wisecraking and crafty, smirking at the back of the bus. That's his bus, and you only think it's being driven from the front.
Black Type Two - Prisoner.
The prisoner sings not we shall overcome but we are overcome. He never bothered to move to the front of the bus. He wouldn't be comfortable elsewhere. He never went anywhere, not even inside his head. He might be a prisoner actually overcome or one that never bothered to dream. The movement simply passed him by. He minds his business and it all enough. He is the eternal reminder, the rat in the maze - the one people point their fingers at. Like C J Memphis in A Soldier's Story, he is not uncomprehending of the Struggle, he's just not trying. He's on the bus where he belongs. Why make a fuss?
Black Type Three - Traveler.
The traveler is on the bus to get from point A to point B. Which seat makes no difference. He's not caught up in the symbols. He might sit in the back, but for him it's about the legroom, or maybe it's the warmest part in the cold weather, or perhaps he's avoiding a funky smell in the front of the bus. Whatever the reason, it has nothing to do with the Struggle. He is indifferent to the schemes of the Trickster and the plight of the Prisoner. He's on the bus because his car is in the shop, or he just didn't feel like walking today. Or maybe he saw a familiar face in the back.
--
As I was thinking about marking these three types of black, I was considering what is the roughest part of being black for myself. That is, I think, the problem of the time I have spent thinking about it all and the extent to which the expression of what I have learned is not, in fact, black. And black was what I expected it to be, and to a certain extent I am a bit saddened that I have come to learn about humanity in metaphors I somehow expected to be a siren call to my own people. It turned out that I have no own people, and it's the hardest lesson of all. No black Americans have their own people because we, of all people have striven the most against being owned. So I keep repeating that question which is a basic human question, is when are people going to realize that they don't own people? When are black people going to learn that they don't own black people? When is humanity going to realize they don't own humanity? I suppose never, which is when we'll all realize at once that we are God's children and we don't even really know God. The alternative belief is more comforting and wrong.
So it's easy to ask, where are all the black people? The answer is disappointing on the surface. The black people are still at the back of the bus. But they are not who you think they are and their reasons for being there are more than the simple answer implies. Besides, if you have to ask...
One more thing. I wrote about The Fungibles ten years ago and updated it about six years ago. Maybe we can add two more names, but I'm still right.
Recent Comments