What is the Fourth of July to the Writer?

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75 Arguments, American literary Canon, fireworks, Founding Fathers, Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, free speech, Freedom, history, Independence Day, July 4th, Liberty, Literature, Politics, Republic, slavery, Speech, Temple of Liberty, The Declaration of Independence, The Meaning of the Fourth of the July for the Negro, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Thomas Jefferson, United States, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, White America Vs. Black America, White Priviledge

It’s fair to say that I’m a nerd of epic proportions because I would honestly rather sit in my house reading The Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July than I would being outside shooting off fireworks.

Two days of barbeque have made me into a bit of a grump.  You see I’m not a terribly huge fan of holidays, and despite my patriotism the 4^th of July is not one of my favorite holidays.  Part of it may simply be bad memories of fireworks, for despite the fact that I loved watching the colorful bursts of light the powder in the smoke, along with the pollen that was already in the air, most of my memories of independence day are of me sitting in a car snorting and crying as I sweated and blew my nose into my t-shirt.  The only enjoyable part of the holiday was the food and war movies.  It was never really brought up why we always watched World War II movies, I guess it was just one of those things you do.

Still reflecting upon my younger self I’m reminded why the holiday has always left me a bit flat.  While other people were watching the fireworks and beating their chest to Bruce Springsteen, and typically screaming at their kids to stop shooting each other with fireworks, I was a shlub mourning my own existence and wondering why we celebrated our nation’s founding with such a pathetic display.

Despite this narration I’m actually a pretty positive person in person.  I also love my nation terribly.

Because of the vividly described afore mentioned nose problems I typically had to stay inside either playing video games or reading Calvin and Hobbes.  As my ability as a reader improved steadily over time I began to challenge myself, and likewise I created my own ceremonies so as not more than I already did.  Whereas others would celebrate the Fourth of July by getting drunk as a skunk and playing with explosives, I chose to curl up on couch next to my dogs and read The Declaration of Independence…and then get stinking drunk.  It’s about the little decisions in life.  This act assumes pressing significance to me as an individual citizen of a republic because, and perhaps I’m just being pessimistic, I seriously doubt many Americans have actually sat down to read the Declaration in its entirety.

Part of this may simply be because of the faults in public education.  We’re taught the first lines:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  (210).

But after that there really isn’t much else apart from the story of John Hancock signing his name extra large to piss off George  III.  For my own part I did eventually read The Declaration of Independence in its entirety.  My parents had managed to take me to a History Museum, and when we stopped in the gift shop I convinced them to buy a packet that had “replications” of the Declaration, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, Bill of Rights, and the Constitution.  It’s been a long abandoned project, but I distinctly remember grabbing the Declaration and reproducing the original text in cursive in a purple spiral notebook.  Beneath the cursive I would transcribe the text in print, and finally beneath that I would write a small summary of what Thomas Jefferson was conveying to King George III.  To this day I have no idea where that spiral is, because I stopped at the list of abuses.  Many of my classmates at the time eventually asked me what I was doing, and after I explained they usual response was “why do you want to do that?”  My response was usually something hammy like “Because I’m an American” or “Because it’s an important document” but I do think that some part of me was either just trying to get attention and the other was honestly just trying to understand why this document was so important.

It may seem odd to have to explain the significance of The Declaration of Independence given the fact that it’s the very reason I’m able to write under the shadow of the Stars and Stripes.  Still despite the barbeques and family dinners and fireworks displays what’s buried beneath the actual holiday is a significant literary and political document that has informed American democracy, or at least its illusions.

Looking at The Declaration of Independence as a literary document it’s impressive to see Jefferson’s actual prose, for the man doesn’t write casually.  The Declaration is a work of thought and passion that was well edited and written with precision, though honestly most it was plagiarized from the work of John Locke but that’s for another article.  As a document it lifts it’s reader into an archetypal realm where citizens become part of an almost divine struggle between deities and beasts.  This is a bit of hyperbole on my part, but I hope my reader is able to understand  this hyperbole after the following passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.  (210).

Jefferson wrote this document during the period of Enlightenment, a space of time in Europe and America when there was a burst of interest in Philosophy and Science.  Literature at the time reflected this the most popular and important works tended not to be fiction (though Gulliver’s Travels may be the exception to this) but rather political and philosophical works written by men like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johnathan Swift, and Thomas Paine.  These authors emphasized reason as the cardinal virtue of man, and it was believed that, given the chance, this reason would eventually supersede religion because man was innately reasonable.

This notion would die out not long after the French Revolution when many realized human beings were anything but innately reasonable, but considering this intellectual atmosphere Jefferson’s words become more imbued with meaning.  In a contemporary environment Jefferson would most likely be heckled as a “self-righteous expert” or else another “armchair intellectual,” but the American consciousness has held onto the first lines of that passage because it exemplifies everything United States citizens want to be, or else believe that they are.  America is often sold as a land where “all men” are created equal, and that any person can become someone of significance or importance not only because they were born with a name or title.

Such is the idea, but no longer the reality.

My effort here isn’t to bitch about the changing economic realities of the U.S. however, for that is another day and time.  The actual concern is my original compliant.  For all of the flashy rhetoric and fireworks there is a real problem because not everyone is or was entirely comfortable.  In fact some people were suffering.

Thinking about the holiday, and preparing myself to read The Declaration again, I remembered another definitive American document that I only recently became aware of.  Last summer I took an American Renaissance course that dealt specifically with the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglass, and during that class I read the speech The Meaning of the Fourth of the July for the Negro.  For the record this speech is also sometimes listed as What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?  If the reader has never heard of it a little bit of background is necessary.

Frederick Douglass was a former slave from Virginia who had managed to learn how to read in secret and eventually escaped the plantation he worked for to seek solace in the North.  From there he managed to join abolitionist groups before writing his successful but controversial memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.  The book created a national tiff and Douglass was actually forced to leave America when his former owner put out a bounty for his capture.  Douglass fled to  England until a few of his friends managed to secure his freedom.  Upon his return to America he continued his efforts for abolition giving many public readings and lectures.  On July 5, 1852 in Rochester New York Douglass gave a speech in which he asked his audience a simple but important question:

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?  (194).

Douglass it should be noted, was a brilliant speaker and a damn good orator and reading many of his speeches will reveal just that to the reader.  He regularly addresses his audience as an equal human being, and whenever he expresses outrage it is always checked by a concern for balance.  Douglass rarely, if ever, resorts to pathos because he doesn’t need it.  Asking the audience “why am I here?  Why do you assume that I’m celebrating” is an effective strategy because it overthrows the mood that would be in the air during the celebration of Independence day.

He follows his question with an accusation that stings true:

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!  (194).

The idea that the Fourth of July is a “yours” and not “ours” is an important rhetorical device because it heightens the division.  Douglass was speaking to a time and audience with attitudes concerning race that were dramatically different than in our own contemporary times (then again if you’ve ever looked through the comment section of YouTube I might be overstating people’s current ability for tact).  The idea that there was a black America and a white America should sound familiar however for even today we’re still having this argument.  The way white parents raise their children is often far different the way black parents do largely because the complexities of African American life in this country are dramatically different.  Young black men are far more likely to be profiled by the police and receive jail-time, and many black women struggle with a job market that’s preferential to upper middle class white women. 

It’s not my concern to get into the nuances of the differences between white and black cultures in America, but rather to observe that there is one.  Growing up I was often surrounded by white people, and while the Fourth of July meant just as much for the few black friends I had growing up, Douglass’s speech stops me as I remember why I hate flashy mass rhetoric.

Rereading The Declaration of Independence I’m reminded why I love being an American for my country is a founded upon a beautiful idea.  Liberty is a word that can be thrown around a lot, but when an individual possesses it in the core of their identity they are able to live life without fear.  Liberty is the virtue of civic reality because being free means that you are able to be and exist without fear, and reading What is the Fourth of July to the Negro? is a reminder that The United States’ founding was as much tragedy as it was glory.

Douglass hits his audience with the real implication of speaking of freedom while slavery exists:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Being an American is often simply about owning a car, having a job, blowing shit up on the Fourth of July, and going to bed after watching The Walking Dead or New Girl.  Rarely are we asked to consider the history of our nation even on the day when we’re supposed to remember it more than anything.  I understand that asking people to remember slavery on the Fourth of July is being the buzzkill of all buzzkills, especially when slavery is no longer an active institution.

Slavery may be gone, but our nation is still feeling the lingering reverberations of the economy and environment that relied on the institution.  Race is a hot topic in my country (though watching the after effect of Brexit it may not just be an U.S. problem) and for that reason discussing race with careful and sane rhetoric becomes an important political act.  Holidays are important to break up the mundane nature of our lives, but if the joy of the Holiday comes at the expense of relishing in bullshit rhetoric and erasure of history then it becomes corruption of informed democracy.

On this day and night people in my city, state, and country will be shooting roman candles at each other, firing off black cats, and launching bottle rockets into the sky enjoying the catharsis of watching something go pop.  Some of them, many let’s be fair here, will think about how lucky they were to have been born in this country, but few of them will really consider that the day they’re celebrating was not always a universal festival.  Ignorance, specifically willful ignorance, can and should never be excused.  This independence day, as I thought about what that actually meant, I could only think of Douglass’s speech because it seemed the most appropriate way to really celebrate my country.

Douglass’s speech is outdated, but like The Declaration of Independence it reminds its reader of the importance of universal liberty.  If the United States was founded on the notion that all men were created equal, and that abuse of liberty cannot be tolerated, then the fact that Douglass could criticize the system openly, and without fear or shame, only reminds me more why the United States is truly a great nation.

Freedom of speech and act is what makes this country great.

I suppose blowing shit up may not be the best means of expressing admiration for this nation, but it does at least look pretty when they hit the last rocket of the night.

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/

 

**Writer’s Note**

All Passages from The Declaration of Independence were taken from 75 Arguments: An Anthology.  All Passages from What is the Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro were taken from The Library of Back America anthology Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings edited by Philip S. Foner

**Writer’s Note**

I’ve used the word “America” throughout this essay synonymously with the “United States” and for this I must apologize.  Part of the rhetorical patterns of being a citizen of this country tends to be referring to yourself as American, but growing up nobody ever corrects you to remind you that you’re a U.S. Citizen and that “American” refers to someone living on the American continent.  A Mexican, Canadian, Peruvian can be Americans as well as citizens of this nation.  I apologize again for this, it’s just cultural habit.

 

***Writer’s FINAL Note***

While I was finding images for this essay I stumbled upon a fascinating illustration of the Founding Fathers, re-imagined as a sexy sorority party complete with frilly nighties…it’s the simple joys in life that keep you going.  Enjoy.

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I, Racist: A White Tower Review

Tags

Confederate Flag, fantasy, Frederick Douglass, Game of Thrones, I Racist, I'm Not a Racist But..., J.R.R. Tolkien, John Metta, race, Tamir Rice, The Lord of the Rings, The Present Condition and Future Prospects of the Negro, White Priviledge

I, Racist is the essay everyone in America should be reading right now. I came across it when a friend of mine, a college professor that teaches Freshman composition, shared it on facebook. At first glance the essay seems like it’s just an opportunity for the author to discuss the new breed of racism that seems to be dominating our society (as well as my own generation of Millennials, we showed such promise), but once one actually gets into the essay it becomes clear that the author, John Metta, is sound mind and a gifted writer. The sentence that strikes me, and I hope becomes iconic in the coming years, again and again is his third paragraph:

You see, I don’t talk about race with White people. To illustrate why, I’ll tell a story:

Now anyone who’s been on facebook or twitter in the last few months knows this pain intimately. If you’re a person like me, a person who grew up with White privilege and you know what that word actually means, when you try to assert that it actually exists you will be bombarded mercilessly either by pathetic arguments, or arguments so complex you miss at first how flawed they truly are. I really wish I knew why white people like to paint themselves as victims, but lately it seems like that’s all that we can do in terms of intellectual responses. When someone accuses a white man of having privilege the immediate argument is that they aren’t economically superior than anyone else and that they have it just as bad as anyone. When a white man says something racist and someone calls them out on it, their response is the usual, “I’m not racist, but…” not realizing that the “but” immediately cancels out the first part of the sentence revealing that they are in fact racist.

Metta’s argument however is not about calling people out on such instances of racism, but is more interested in revealing how white privilege operates. Metta states:

Black people think in terms of we because we live in a society where the social and political structures interact with us as Black people.

White people do not think in terms of we. White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals. You are “you,” I am “one of them.” Whites are often not directly affected by racial oppression even in their own community, so what does not affect them locally has little chance of affecting them regionally or nationally. They have no need, nor often any real desire, to think in terms of a group. They are supported by the system, and so are mostly unaffected by it.

What they are affected by are attacks on their own character. To my aunt, the suggestion that “people in The North are racist” is an attack on her as a racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a racist. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn’t exist because they don’t see it.

The result of this is an incessantly repeating argument where a Black person says “Racism still exists. It is real,” and a white person argues “You’re wrong, I’m not racist at all. I don’t even see any racism.”

The difference between an “I” and a “we” is everything to a working, functioning individual. As a white man I can’t possibly conceive a real threat to the collective “we” of white culture because I’ve never actually experienced anything like that. It’s different growing up white because you’re typically divided in terms of your own self. I was always told to be myself and believe in myself, and the only real collective mentality I was instructed in was that I was from the South. That was supposed to mean something, but all it ever really meant was drinking beer, listening to rock music, and dating pretty girls in tank tops and shorts. It’s hard for me to even conceive that someone dying, who happens to be white, constitutes a threat against my own self.

This is the privilege of being white, you’re allowed to live free from such threats.

Reading this article reminded me of a speech given by Frederick Douglass titled, The Present Condition and Future Prospects of the Negro, and a just a short passage springs to mind:

Sir, I am a colored man, and this is a white audience. No colored man, with any nervous sensibility, can stand before an American audience without an intense and painful sense of the disadvantages imposed by his color. He feels little bourne up by that brotherly sympathy and generous enthusiasm, which give wings to the eloquence, and strength to the hearts of other men, who advocate other and more popular causes. The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed. (251).

This passage rings true when we remember the argument over the confederate flag. Now I wrote before on that topic, making my own position clear, but one aspect I failed to note was how white people attempted to made the argument of Southern pride. There were plenty of interviews of men and women waving the flag and arguing that the Confederate flag represented Southern Culture, but the question I never heard pressed to these southerners was: whose culture did it represent? It’s important to remember that it was white people that succeeded from the south, it was white people that crafted Jim Crow laws, it was white people pasting the flag on the backs of trucks, on tattoos, on bikinis (hello again miss). The culture that was being defended was white culture, but was being referred to as “Southern culture.” What many of the Confederate Flag apologists failed to employ in their defense was the intricacies inherent to the Southern Latino experience, the Southern African American Experience, the southern oriental experience. Being white, and being from the South is not a unifying experience, and writers have been testifying to that for ages. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Mama Day, Beloved, Rolling Thunder Hear My Cry, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, and numerous other works all testify to the fact that depending on your skin color your impression of Southern Culture, will be drastically different.

But let me return to the idea of privilege that Metta lays out. Why don’t we try Lord of the Rings?

But racism is even more subtle than that. It’s more nuanced. Racism is the fact that “White” means “normal” and that anything else is different. Racism is our acceptance of an all white Lord of the Rings cast because of “historical accuracy,” ignoring the fact that this is a world with an entirely fictionalized history.

Even when we make shit up, we want it to be white.

And racism is the fact that we all accept that it is white. Benedict Cumberbatch playing Kahn in Star Trek. Kahn, who is from India. Is there anyone Whiter than Benedict fucking Cumberbatch? What? They needed a “less racial” cast because they already had the Black Uhura character?

That is racism. Once you let yourself see it, it’s there all the time.

Now growing up I loved The Lord of the Rings, and despite this effective argument, I’m still going to love Lord of the Rings, but dammit now I can’t not see it. Play any fantasy game, watch any fantasy film, read just about any fantasy novel and the racial diversity is slim, beyond slim, it’s slimmer than jim (get it?). Look at Game of Thrones, just the television program. In the last four seasons there have been around two black characters, one was a pirate, the other was a slave trader. Now if I’m a young black man looking to identify with a character my options become either to want to be a pirate or a slave trader, meanwhile Jaime Lanister and Deanerys Targareon are both lily white. White people can expect to dominate even our fantasies. I’ll give you another example. In the sixth Harry Potter film there was a noted controversy because Lavender Brown, the girl that Ron dates through most of the film is white. This may not appear to be much of a problem, until you remember that before the sixth film the character was portrayed by a black girl. In Lord of the Rings the cast were all white except for orcs, Easterlings, and Haradrim. I can hear the objection already: it’s just fantasy it’s all made up.

Well, white people, if it’s just imagination why is it so goddamned hard imagining a black character that actually has some role to play in the plot?

Now let me address the argument and point out real quick how it should have gone. The Lord of the Rings was written By J.R.R. Tolkien, a white Anglican that studied medieval English and Danish texts such as the Arthurian legends and Beowulf. These works inspired The Lord of the Rings, and they contain casts of white characters. The argument is weak because the people tried history when they should have said the books and films were rooted in a cultural reinterpretation of English lore, and it’s hard to incorporate Africans when there weren’t any in Beowulf.

Having said that, it’s still a hard sell.

Nobody’s asking for African or Latino characters to be shoved into stories just for the sake of racial diversity, but the attitude that it’s difficult to insert people of color into film says everything about the way audiences and directors and writers are thinking. A white person is guaranteed to be able to identify with someone in the plot, because they have the privileged of knowing their interests will be represented.

And now let’s talk about THE TALK. When a man and a woman love each other very much, but love their children more they:

Black children learn this when their parents give them “The Talk.” When they are sat down at the age of 5 or so and told that their best friend’s father is not sick, and not in a bad mood– he just doesn’t want his son playing with you. Black children grow up early to life in The Matrix. We’re not given a choice of the red or blue pill. Most white people, like my aunt, never have to choose. The system was made for White people, so White people don’t have to think about living in it.

One of my good friends is Hispanic and grew up, for lack of a better phrase, in the  ghetto. One of the most amazing short stories I have ever read re-imagines a fight he had that, to this day, has left permanent bumps on his knuckles where the flesh has been torn away. To put this in perspective, I went to an almost all white school where the worst you really had to put up with is one of the kids would pick on you for missing a basket in gym. The Talk, is not just meme on the internet, this is a functioning reality for African and Latino parents because they know the system is stacked against them. My friend received the talk, his friends received it, and they know at some point they’ll have to give the talk to their children. I was never given this talk because there was never any fear that a police officer would gun me down or arrest me for no reason. This is privilege. The freedom to raise your children without that fear.

Metta’s essay is an important piece of writing, and I hope you take the time to read it. But before I end here I wanted to address one last quote that sees particularly relevant:

Living every single day with institutionalized racism and then having to argue its very existence, is tiring, and saddening, and angering. Yet if we express any emotion while talking about it, we’re tone policed, told we’re being angry. In fact, a key element in any racial argument in America is the Angry Black person, and racial discussions shut down when that person speaks. The Angry Black person invalidates any arguments about racism because they are “just being overly sensitive,” or “too emotional,” or– playing the race card. Or even worse, we’re told that we are being racist (Does any intelligent person actually believe a systematically oppressed demographic has the ability to oppress those in power?)

But here is the irony, here’s the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings.

Ask any Black person and they’ll tell you the same thing. The reality of thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned, and systematically disenfranchised are less important than the suggestion that a single White person might be complicit in a racist system.

This is the country we live in. Millions of Black lives are valued less than a single White person’s hurt feelings.

White people and Black people are not having a discussion about race. Black people, thinking as a group, are talking about living in a racist system. White people, thinking as individuals, refuse to talk about “I, racist” and instead protect their own individual and personal goodness. In doing so, they reject the existence of racism.

The White ego has become the most fragile gem in the Museum. Anyone who dares to criticize it, or suggest that it needs to be diminished is assaulting an institution built upon long lasting cultural paradigms.

What’s painful to me about Metta’s essay is it’s truth. This is not me simply agreeing because I don’t want to be perceived as racist, it is because I have seen privilege first hand. One day in art class a student came into the room, and in the middle of a conversation dropped the word “nigger.” The room was quiet, because at the other end of the room one of the two black students in my grade was sitting. There wasn’t a confrontation, but the two of them did talk, but that was it. No detention, no slap on the wrist, no retribution. Several years later I was sitting before my Intro to U.S. History class talking to an engineering student when a comment slipped past his lips. He said, “Yeah you know I don’t have a problem with black people, I just can’t stand niggers.”

And time and time and time again I have been forced to listen as white people try to protest that they don’t have privilege. It’s all bullshit people.

I am a white man that grew up with the privilege of not having to deal with this crap. This article will not stop people from having nasty fights on facebook and the comment section of a Daily Show video on YouTube, but if the reader is open and willing to observe how white privledge operates and then determine for themselves whether or not they truly believe they have it as bad as people of color, then it’s worth it. Metta closes his essay by stating:

White people are in a position of power in this country because of racism. The question is: Are they brave enough to use that power to speak against the system that gave it to them?

The system has been kind to me, and I’m the person I am today because I have had the advantages that led to this place, but a system isn’t working if somebody is getting screwed at the expense of such success. The system is broken when 12 year olds are getting gunned down in parks for carrying a BB gun. The system is screwed  when a woman is arrested after being beaten by the police and found dead in her cell the next morning. The system is screwed when people try to defend a symbol of treason after it’s been found to be the inspiration behind the murder of nine people in a church. The system is screwed, when white nerds try to defend the Lord of the Rings as being historically accurate.

I don’t want to be the “White Savior” that liberates black people from oppression, I just want to be the guy that’s able to say, “cut the shit, read a book, and learn what’s real for fuck’s sake.” I’m a sensitive guy, but my feelings aren’t worth spit if it means they’re being protected at the expense of calling out the fact that Mr. Cumberbatch shouldn’t have been cast as Kahn. Even if I like the movie, and even if I love Cumberbatch, it is a fair point to note that they could have gotten somebody else for the part.

And don’t even get me started on that Exodus movie….

 

 

**Writer’s Note**

I’ve included a link to the original essay I, Racist here in case the reader is interested in reading the original document.

https://thsppl.com/i-racist-538512462265

 

**Writer’s Note**

You may have noticed several memes throughout this work.  I’m sorry but as a writer language is everything to me(despite my numerous grammar errors), and the way people construct arguments is important.  You can’t employ a double negative and then defend yourself with it, you’re only proving yourself to be either an unintentional bigot or an intentional moron.

The Story No Eyes Seem To Be Watching

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American literary Canon, Black women's narratives, Feminism, Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, Literature, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Their Eyes Were Watching God, White Priviledge, Zora Neale Hurston

White Privilege exists in our nation, and anyone who denies it is fooling themselves. Sorry, but it’s best to start out strong and work your way down from there. I’ve often had to defend this opinion to others who deny it, affirming the position further by showing them that I am living white privilege. I attended a private Christian grade school from pre-k through the twelfth grade, that accommodated the children of noted doctors, lawyers, engineers, and even politicians (one was actually the son of a Texas senator, and surprise surprise he was a complete asshole who masturbated in classroom and didn’t get expelled, try to contain my amazement). The kids in my own grade group were fairly nice people, at least what I remember of them, but all around there was a sense of entitlement. Everyone drove nice cars, everyone was going to become a doctor, lawyer or engineer and make lots of money. But always what struck me was that within my grade of fifty to sixty there were two black boys. There were no black or Hispanic girls.

Now before you begin my interest is not to badmouth my high school (meet me in person and I’ll do that, believe me, I have dossiers) but instead to blend a highly contested public debate with a facet of academia. In my entire life I have only once had a teacher or professor who was a person of color. My readings in academia have only on occasion actually dealt with literature written by African Americans, Hispanic Americans, or Asian Americans. And out of this long literary training I have only on a few occasions, perhaps seven times at the most, have I read a literary work written by a black woman.

This of course leads me Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston.

I was blessed with having an openly liberal English teacher in high school (in East Texas that’s an impressive feat), and for our Junior year reading , once we had completed most of the Harlem Renaissance, we were assigned this short but wonderful work. The story is of a young idealistic woman, the half black daughter of a former slave and her master that raped her, named Janie Crawford. Janie marries young because she is lost, looking for something to complete her. When this marriage fails to satisfy her she runs away with an older man who founds a store with her, runs for mayor, and over the years strips her of her sense of self. Eventually shaming him in public Janie meets and falls in love with a man several years her young named Tea Cake. Their love blossoms as they live together in the everglades of Florida and live their life in relative peace (the marriage ain’t perfect but we’ll get to that later) until a great hurricane strikes and sends a terrible flood. While they try to find their way back to civilization Tea Cake is bitten by a mad dog and develops rabies. Janie, in the end, faces off against a by now mad Tea Cake and shoots him in self defense when he tries to kill her. She’s tried for murder but is acquitted and Janie ends the novel returning to her home town, with an understanding of herself, and the world she inhabits.

Now the novel, after this VERY brief description (especially for me), may not sound terrifically empowering, and after all this is the issue. My wife, being the fiercely intelligent woman she is, follows the track of contemporary feminism and civil rights much more closely than I am and has often brought up an important point. The women who often protest that feminism is no longer important and that men and women are equal all have one thing in common: they’re white. Much the same way that the people who protest that racism no longer in exists tend to be white.

In our society it is hard enough to discuss the troubles young black men face, it is an even greater uphill struggle to even get someone to acknowledge that in this white male dominant society, black women tend to get the shaft. Now dear reader you might immediately protest, you might argue that African American women have plenty of opportunities in our world.

While some this may be true, it would be foolish to suggest that black women, at least in fiction, for that is my area of expertise, have as many opportunities as white men to have their stories even told. If we return to the novel for a moment, Zora Neale Hurston had difficulty even getting the novel published. The Harlem Renaissance was an artistic movement dominated by black men that were interested in praising the idea of “the New Negro” as something of pride. While Hurston didn’t object to celebrating the negro experience (I’m using that word only because it became an important idea to the movement, I apologize vociferously), she was trained as an anthropologist and so she was unwilling to alter her novel so that the males in her book, who not only dominate their wives but also physically beat them when they “speak out of line.” Men like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright didn’t appreciate or care for this image, and so Hurston had to fight, just to have her book published, and even after it was, it received little readership.

One of the reasons for this may be because the character of Janie is, to quote my lovely-lady-wife, a headstrong independent wo-man. Midway through the novel her husband Joe Starks berates her vocally, though he’s often beaten her for making mistakes around the shop, and Janie finally snaps back:

Naw, ah ain’t no young gal no mo’ but den Ah ain’t no old woman neither. Ah reckon ah look mah age too. But ah’m uh woman every inch of me, and Ah know it. Dat’s uh whole lot more’n you kin say. You big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but tain’t nothing to it but yo’ big voice. Humph! Talkin’ ‘bout me lookin’ old! When you pull down yo’ britches, you look lak de change uh life. (75)

Hurston’s language is strong and unrelenting in her honest presentation of what life was for many black women of the time. The reader may at first have difficulty with the dialogue, but once the rhythms are learned the apostrophizes that seem to run higgledy piggeldy (god I really am a white) about the place become just part of the visual linguistic treat the novel offers.

Now it should be asked now the important question, so what? Why should I care about a novel about a young black woman who talks back to her husband and keeps looking for something more out of life?

You should care dear reader, because that is the human experience. Their Eyes Were Watching God gets to the core of what it means to have dreams and wonder if they are attainable. In the very beg   nning passage of the novel we’re given a taste of what Hurston is capable of just in terms of language:

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead. (1)

My dream, as of this writing, is to at least be able to teach sophomore level American Literature courses to college students, because I do not believe were truly educating our citizens about the cultural achievements of our nation. Most importantly I want to contest the idea that the only literary achievements have been performed by dead white straight men. I would place Their Eyes Were Watching God alongside The Great Gatsby or Moby Dick any day, because Hurston’s language sings. Reading her novel is like breathing a language that surpasses reality, and I enter a world of passions, physical sensations, and I’m able to believe in an ideal of life where, even if my dreams crash like waves on a shore, there is still a satisfaction in the knowledge that in my time I have, for a moment, held them like petals of a summer flower.

But because Hurston is a black female author, it becomes difficult, for whatever reason (*cough* Racism*cough*) to just get people to even bother to listen.

It may be because many simply don’t see the relevance to their own lives. I have noted that almost all of the previous essays written on this blog were done over works by white writers. For god’s sake even the title reeks of upscale white intellectualism, because I am, after all, a privileged white man, and therein may lay the deeper problem. Those of us that are comfortable in this life, who don’t suffer the same problems as the underprivileged don’t like being burdened with guilt. “My family didn’t own slaves, and I have car payments, I wouldn’t call that privilege.” While that may be, you don’t have to put up with the Klan, you don’t have to put up with stupid white people using the word nigger and not caring that you’re offended, you don’t have to worry about your sons being killed by police officers, you don’t have to worry about your husband leaving you for a “fairer skinned woman,” you don’t have to worry about the legal system demonstrating bias against you because you’re black, and, this can’t be emphasized enough, you at least got your story told. Those of us that have it well in this life (like I’m some kind of fucking millionaire) don’t want to understand or acknowledge that we have been blessed and that others have had a rougher life because that knowledge is inconvenient, it makes us feel guilty which is the wrong response. Once there is recognition of privilege the next response should not be guilt and self pity, it should inspiration to level the playing field so that others can have the same opportunities as you have had.

Janie’s story is everyone’s story, for ultimately she feels that there is some part of her that is longing for something, an unknown alien sensation or feeling and so she lives life trying to find it.

Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her? Nothing on the place nor in her grandma’s house answered her. She searched as much of the world as she could from the top of the front steps and then went on down to the front gate and leaned over to gaze up and down the road. Looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made. (11).

If that strikes a familiar ear, it’s because that’s the way we all felt when we were sixteen. Therein is the final argument. As we read the stories of those who are supposedly separate from ourselves, we learn that human beings are homogenous in their life experiences and emotions. We yearn. We imagine. We look for some kind of comfort and purpose in this world.

The stories of black women are no different, in the broad sense, than those of a white man.

What are we missing by denying such women the right to have their stories told?

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Perrenial, 1937. Print.