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By Perry Brass
For the last several months the New York Times has had a very
congratulatory time with a series of pieces on "Race in America."
Basically, what they have unlocked is the secret that racism is alive
and well here. It has simply taken more subtle forms, in that despite
Affirmative Action and huge corporations with Equal Opportunity
policies, people are still very much treated according to their color.
This is not a color blind country, although I know no country that is.
The realities of America, the fact that its very founding took place because of an inherent attitude towards race-that white people had the right to own and exploit the continent-was simply avoided in this series. So was the idea that American racism was actually a continuation of European racism, which found its apotheosis in the Holocaust. This was not ever even discussed in the series. Although it is easy for America to beat up on itself for its racist attitudes, the fact that we've always had at least three, completely identifiable racial groups here from the onset was avoided in the Times. The first black people were brought to America as slaves by Dutch traders in 1648. The Dutch, entrepreneurs as always, conveniently sold them to the English and then got out. They could then go back to all-white Holland, where Catholics were slaughtering Protestants and vice versa, "scot" free and very self-satisfied. I lived in Germany during the late 70s, and was always amazed that the Germans managed to keep such a superior attitude towards American racism. I was told over and over again that nothing like American racism could even exist in Europe, where people were treated with civility and equality. Of course the fact that Europeans could not even deal with Jews and gypsies a half century ago went over their heads. Suppose they had had to deal with people who really were different from them? The Jews had been in Central Europe for two thousand years, longer than many Germans, Poles, etc., but they were considered to be an alien race. The "alien corn" as Somerset Maugham once called them.
Everyone knew how the Irish reproduced like rabbits, lived in shanties and drank like fish; the Scots were dull-witted; and the Welsh illiterate and only good for singing and working in coal mines. English racism and its constant, nose-in-the-air superiority was spread all over the world. It was the "God is an Englishman" attitude, but strangely enough, along with its superiority came an attitude that "Anglo-Saxonism" and its boy scout attitude was actually superior even to their own naked racism, blunt, cruel, and ugly, taken on its own. So racism had to be cloaked with colonial paternalism; the good Anglos would, in effect, allow the lower races to work their way up into the upper stratospheres of English worth, by aping English manners. The "races" would never be taken as English, but at least they could prove their own worth by acting English. They could join the Empire and then be invited to tea with the Queen, as long as they did not stay too long and knew when to leave. America was never that formal of a country. We did not have so much of a sense of "worth by birth."We always knew that the people in the big manor house up the hill, the Sartorises, in William Faulkner's Mississippi, were only a few cousins away from the no-account Snopeses down the hill-who were only a few dozen genes away from the colored folk down in the holler. This was the strange saving grace of America, as well as its disgrace: that the country existed from its very (by European accounts) beginning with very marked differences among the races, and that it had to survive these in an atmosphere of constant aggression--what destroyed the Indian population of this continent and brought blacks in slavery to our shores--while at the same time making strange, very American, accommodations to individual value.
Americans felt that these were just Euopean affectations, and that our Negros and Indians, who were at best children and at worst animals and retardees, could never even be expected to behave well. They would fail every test, so why put them to any test they would fail? The best that we could do with them was just put them into places where they might be contained. Or entertained. The fact that so much of American popular culture has "black" roots, and that this culture is now fed back to blacks as "important," is a perfect example of containing a group of people. American kids may now be living in a Hip Hop culture, but that does not get them into top drawer schools, pay their bills, and build stock portfolios. It's simply the 21st Century version of slumming: "going to Harlem in diamonds and pearls" as the closeted, gay Cole Porter said. When I was growing up in the Deep South in the 1950s and 60s, the "accepted wisdom" (John Kenneth Galbraith's wonderful term for the popular stupidity) was that black people in the South were loathed as a group and beloved as individuals (as the family darkies, Aunt Jemimas, etc.). Conversely, way up North, they were accepted somewhat as a group, but loathed as individuals. Of course, neither was true. In the South that I grew up in, blacks were absolutely hated as both a group and as individuals. The South, especially my South, Savannah, Georgia, had been a colony of Yankee America for a hundred years after the Civil War (known down there, by the way, as "The War Between The States"), and anyone who's every lived in a colony knows that colonialists have to abominate the original natives that they need to exploit. In this case, they were blacks and also "white trash" people, usually of Irish or Scots-Irish descent, the clay-eaters and dirt-pokers who could barely scratch a living out of the land. Of course that world was not ever going to be fair. It had a social system that one was supposed to look up to, and preserve. We now have very little social system left, except one based on pure old-fashioned money. Money is the great equalizer, and here we have one of those American conundrums as its best: with so much equal money running around, why are blacks still at the bottom? And, how can we get them rising up to the top, to become as callous and rapaciously carnivorous as the rest of the population? Here we have the old irony: if everyone is absolutely equal now, why are blacks still not equal? If you bring up the idea that there might be a cultural difference between black Americans and white Americans, you are instantly branded a racist. The idea that blacks may still harbor a culture that is based more on oralism, on the spoken word or tale, than on literacy, a culture that values family ties more than networking professional ties, a culture that still has some room in it for instinct, appetite, and warmth, then you are covering them with the "noble savage" blanket, instead of saying that they, too, can grow up and become equal shoppers and consumers. If you say that there is no cultural difference between blacks and whites, then you are saying that either they are blanketly inferior, and no matter how far you move over white racism, it will do no good. The second attitude, strangely enough, has become a wonderfully racist ploy, in that with "all this equality" running around, blacks still are at the bottom of the American ladder. The fact that they now make up something like 75% of the prison population shows that they do not "want" to become decent, honest, regular citizens. Any understanding that blacks still have to fight their way through a world that is very racist goes against the American Disney version that this is the best of all possible worlds--and it is also simply depressing. We don't want to face that music and dance, even if the music is all Hip Hop. The feeling that there might be something worthwhile, worthy and worth preserving, in black culture has been branded by the conservatives and their strange bedfellow allies, the "libertarians," a "liberal" ploy. It is the blood that all those bleeding hearts want to throw into the face of Reality. It maintains that blacks, inherently, do not deserve to become part of mainstream Americanism, which is now totally open to all, to join our vacuous consumer economy and culture. So we are now at a funny crossroad: the "goodies" are all there, but why aren't we all simply grabbing equally? I grew up in this strange hybrid way of being Jewish, poor, Southern, and very much gay at the same time: that is, I was aware from the Year One of being different. My parents were both fairly garden variety Southern Jewish racists, in that they hardly questioned the race card in the South--it was too close to the Jewish card--even though one of my mother's cousins, a now dead saint named Abraham Eisenman, was one of the first white men to openly espouse civil rights in Georgia. Cousin Abe started a black newspaper, was a radio personality on a black radio station, was a friend of Martin Luther King's, and marched and picketed. His family thought that he was nuts. He also married a non-Jewish woman, who came from an old, well-off WASP family. She had security and money of her own, and supported him. Her father had been a judge who took the aristocratic view that blacks were simply noble children and should be treated fairly. This was the decent view of most white Southerners when I was growing up. Its flip side was cross-burning and what is called in Dixie "honest hatred." (As in: "Let me honest with you. I hate 'em!") My mother's view was completely racist. Blacks were just animals who happened to resemble human beings. This was the accepted wisdom of the South. My partner's mother, who still lives in Alabama, says simply that they "never came down from the trees." She grew up before the Civil Rights era, and looks with nostalgia upon that time when blacks were waiters and servants and knew their place. She remembers fondly servile black "friends," who were usually employees either of hers or of her friends. My father, who had fought in the Army during World War II, had a slightly different attitude: blacks were like Jews, without the moxy. He had black friends, some of whom had been around him long enough that I remember them picking up Yiddish words from him. "Yo daddy's got a good kaupf," one of them once told me. Strangely enough, being gay can put you in the middle of race in America the way nothing else can. The first gay bar I'd ever been in was in Savannah, in 1965. It had black lesbians in it. I had never been in an integrated bar, but gay bars were notoriously open back then. All sorts of underworld and low life went into them, including black people, who saw being "in the life" as just one more kick in the ass to the Man, who was white.
Of course this did not keep blacks from being viciously, violently
homophobic, anymore than it kept gays from being rabidly racist. Anyone
who studies primates, from which all human beings came, sees that they
always need someone to throw their shit on, to look down upon, no matter
what. The idea that "queers" are a cultural group, a human group, worthy
of dignity still escapes many blacks, although certainly not any worse
than many whites. It's just that being racist myself, I expect more from
them. Or at least something from them.
I was in Grand Central Terminal in New York a few weeks ago, in the huge majestic central room, one of the great indoor spaces in America, standing against a wall, when I overheard a young, tall, black Metropolitan Transit worker shout through the crowd to one of his white co-workers, "Don't get me no FAGGOT coffee this time. Get me REAL coffee." I guess he meant no expresso latte crap: just real, butch American coffee. I turned absolutely red. Just shivering with rage. I wanted to shout, at the top of my lungs, "No. Get him STUPID NIGGER coffee instead," but realized that if I did, I might have started a race riot right there in Grand Central. But I felt if it were alright for him to defame--to dehumanize--a group that I belonged to; maybe he should hear what it's like to have his own group, again, dehumanized. The man was very popular. I could tell. He was tall, good-looking, friendly, and took words like FAGGOT COFFEE in total stride. Friends and co-workers, white and black, came up to him, smiled, and took what he said casually, until I felt completely isolated within my rage. It made me understand what it must have been like to have been a Jew in Nazi Germany, when the destruction of Judaism was simply a gentleman's agreement. Or, once again, to be in such an isolated, anger-washed situation that you know exactly what it's like to be black in America, where the reality of race is not "lived" as the New York Times tried to call it, but for many of us, daily, fought. Perry Brass is the author of eleven books. His latest novel is Angel Lust, an erotic novel of Time Travel. You can learn more about his work at www.perrybrass.com. |
We had to show that all white people were created, somewhat, equal--an
attitude that did not exist in Europe, where the feeling was that
although you might never become equal, with the right training and
discipline you might be allowed to have equal access to what your
superiors had: culture, breeding, and good table manners.
© 1997-2000 BEI