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July 08, 2003
Too Black, Too Strong
I have one of those headaches again. This one is called boohabian blowback. It is the feeling one gets from digging deep into the archives and reliving old-ass arguments despite having moved on. I retired the boohab several years ago, but through several coincidences I have found myself writing on the racial subjects again and wishing at times for his clarity of purpose. These days, I've got all the words, but not much of the passion. This lack is very good for my life as a geek which I intend to continually enrich, but not so comfortable for my life as a black political writer on the net.
The fact is that I have already made up my mind about the future of racism in America. It is, without question, a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you must eat, but only relatively speaking. And while it's true that I have a bucket where my father had a barrel, it doesn't make the taste any more palatable, nor the skill of swallowing it without retching all over everyone and everything more easily acquired. Nevertheless, as a writer, I have grown calloused. If it ain't mass murder, I'm not losing sleep. So I find it difficult to sustain the discipline and context that I did in rants such as the following from 1996:
whether we liked it or not, our very identity, any difference, subtle or otherwise, became a matter of intense concern. in order to head this off, we were consciously *black*. we had to come with a story that *we* owned. assimilation implied that the old regime was correct - that the old presumptions and proscriptions of the institution were appropriate. so one had to be black as a challenge, and further as winners. the point was not to be objectified. so we created blackness improvisationally along the way such that as winners or losers we were always our own selves, not mere victims or justifications of the system. it made us much more consciously individual than any average student who could ride along in the belly of the beast without confronting such facts.
This is an angle on Affirmative Action I have competely forgotten and it is the core of the argument I have against the whinging of Shelby Steele. What's wrong with me?
Posted by mbowen at July 8, 2003 09:41 PM
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