Cobb

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June 09, 2003

The End of Blackness, Again

I believe that the last time I wrote about the end of blackness, it was prompted by a woman who didn't feel it. Now it comes from someone who felt it but now may be tired of it. Well, at least she's not blogging about it every day. She's somewhere else now.

Arguing that "blackness" is a concept that is rapidly losing its ability to predict or manipulate the political or social behavior of African Americans, Dickerson heralds the final phase of the Civil Rights Movement.

That idea brings me here.

I hear that the best R&B comes from overseas these days. I don't listen to much and so I don't miss good R&B. I suspect that anything that gets as good at India Irie without the histrionics would be good enough to hear out, but in fact these days I'm seeking out bluegrass. That's because I'm interested in soul music, and less with the commercial shit that distorts our ideas about intellectual property.

The problem with being black lies in the impoverished imagination. People expect something positive, something negative but always something definite. Few look at blackfolks and see anything, or exactly who they are. There are standards to prove or disprove and this is the problem. What do you do with the black man who can be anything?

Mr. Cheadle sees racial bias as part of the rough magic of Hollywood. "It's so subtle that people sometimes don't even recognize it," he said. "The sergeant or the police captain roles always tend to be played by a black guy, but if you raise the question, it's always like, `No, look, he's in a position of authority.' "

The problem isn't the lack of roles, Mr. Cheadle said. There are plenty of black cops and criminals and comic foils in movies. "It's the lack of well-drawn black characters," he said. "Complex leading roles for blacks are rare because the perception is that black films don't perform internationally, which means they can't get financing, which means they won't get made. Sometimes, I feel like the business isn't skewed toward my interests. I look at most of the films being made and think, `There's no heartbeat there.' "

There's a human out there which is impossible for us to see. Only when we go to the gutbucket of our own truth can we imagine our way out of it. It's going to be very difficult for there to be anything manufactured to satisfy the need for human truth. You see there's something out there called 'creativity' which is simply the product of boredom and money. I hear it in suburban dialects of middle-aged 20-somethings who still find it interesting to make literary references to Hanna-Barbera. I hear it in the voices of journalists who are stuck in a duality of reverence-objectivity vs irreverence-opinion. It walks around with comfortable shoes and insufficient numbers of blood relatives. How else to you explain this surfiet of gratuitous liberty?

The answer for me has been various forms of liberation theology and literature. Good fictions assist us in dealing with truth. We're more prepared. Blackness is becoming commercially construed into a bad fiction, and all the stupid arguments are about who owns the property. There's something fundamentally wrong with stuff like this:

It's amazing that once again we are being blocked out of the newest media
called the Internet. We weren't allowed to get into radio, television, and cable
until the boom was over. The Internet is the media in which African Americans
can have complete anonymity and operated an online business without being
left out. This time we have left ourselves out by supporting an electronic
minstrel show. We support black sites in name only (el b.i.n.o. sites) such as
BlackVoices which is wholly owned by the Tribune Company; Black Families by Cox
Communications; BlackPlanet.com by an Asian company; Soul City HBO by
AOL-Times/Warner and B.E.T. which is owned by Viacom. These sites are the most popular
"black" sites online and make millions of dollar from us, but not even one is
black owned and operated.
We must begin truly supporting black technology efforts in the same way we
cheer on our movies and athletic stars. If we don't, they'll end up having to do
the same
as other black web sites by getting assistance from elsewhere, thereby
losing the original flavor they have. IF you have, know of, or just would
like to get new sites join here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blacksitesproject .

I am not going to Black myself into an organic revolt against this duplicity. I'm simply going to stand against it. There's not a generation of ethnics out there who are going to pickup the proper balls and run with them. It's going to come down to survival before people wake up out of their comfortable assumptions. The truth is not Jesus, so there is no John the Baptist doing advance work. People are going to have to stumble into it. It's going to take death and disease. It's going to take poverty and pestilence. The slip, the fall, the cracked hip. This is the sequence precluding the death of denial. This weekend I am regretting that I didn't want to be a doctor.

Since I am a writer, I'm just going to have to keep coming up with better fictions, more factual irreverence and that dimension of stuff. Listening to the right music will help. Thank goodness that there's still black music out there.

Posted by mbowen at June 9, 2003 12:06 PM

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Comments

Posted by: George at June 10, 2003 07:25 PM

Posted by: Cobb at June 10, 2003 09:14 PM

Posted by: Everton R. Bend at March 1, 2004 11:12 AM

Posted by: Everton R. Bend at March 1, 2004 11:15 AM