Crying At The Cape

I wanted to ask the White girl why she was crying. I wondered what sadness she remembered, longed to know who she saw in chains when the tour guide gave his descriptions. We were standing, feet on cracked and not-so-ancient concrete, beneath us the foundation of the Elmina Castle, on the Cape Coast in Ghana. I saw my mother there, naked, wet, and used - my mother in distress usually gets me going - but I had no tears, none. I thought of this for several days after, blaming myself at first for a lack of connection to the grief of my people, but then it hit me that I was not in the wrong for not crying, this history was not news to me; then I hated her for crying. What was this salty theatre display? Was she entitled to weep for this pain? Is this my pain alone?

There come many times in this life when one is asked to put his theorizing to test. I was standing in one of those times - in theory I believe that this history of racism, fear and mistreatment is a stain on all humanity - and I could not seem to escape her red-blue-green eyes dripping with salty redemption. I scorned her in my glare but she did not notice. Soon there were gatherings of wailers, as sadness tends often to breed itself in quick succession, and I noticed them to be mostly White. There was a silent reverence with most everyone else, and maybe this says disconnection to some, but to me it acknowledges the true magnitude of the evil surrounding you - the chains, the stench, the darkness - crying is an attempt to make yourself feel better, within the moment. It is a vehement refusal to imprint on your soul anything longer lasting than the last tear wiped from your face with your handkerchief. Crying is a cop out.

I didn't cry because crying says 'this is a catharsis, this is the end, and oh how long we've carried this burden! We can now lay it to rest.' I am not an unemotional person, just to give some perspective, I have cried at ridiculous things; when Adam Sandler took Emily Watson's hand for the first time in 'Punch Drunk Love,' when, to protect her from a horrid machete death, Don Cheadle tells Sophie Okonedo that she has to commit suicide with her children on his death in 'Hotel Rwanda,' and every now and then when my sister's voice cracks on the telephone and in her sadness I cannot hug her - so yes, I am a softy, but I did not cry at the Cape. I refused to join the show, here a sniffle, there a sniffle, mostly from pink noses in distress, running from the truth of the moment, as plain as the sore noses on their faces - some will not now, or ever, understand the true tragedy that was and is slavery. And here I am, all of twenty-four, and an elitist in the shouldering of this pain, but maybe it will be different tomorrow, maybe tomorrow I will understand why she cried, maybe tomorrow I will believe that we can all cry, tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow...

The Only Best American

I was on the bus the other day and a Black man was insulting a Black woman, she was giving it to him just as good if not better; he was getting that rotten look, you know, the one that says, You've Got Me Pegged and I Hate You For It. In any case, he got so mad that he soon began a rant against Americans and right then it occurred to me that he wasn't American, he had a thick West Indian accent, what made me miss it? I don't know. He began to go after his "opponent" with some pretty furious stereotypes 'welfare queen, junkie, baby-mama, etc' and soon it was clear that his rant was not directed to the woman with whom he was speaking, at least not exclusively. He was livid, hurt and I believe had we not all been staring at him, a tear would have fallen. He seemed to have taken all his frustration over an unfulfilled America and poured it toward this woman, I never found out the cause of their tiff, but I've seen this man's hurt before. I have heard many of my relatives express the same sentiments; they seem offended by Americans they believe are throwing away their "blessings," Black Americans, and they use this to explain their own lack of upward mobility. Why is this their gut reaction? Why is the failure of America, to the man on the bus, and to most my uncles, to be blamed on the only people in the country who looked just like them?

Another Black man on the bus soon interrupted the fight in a tone I assumed chivalrous but soon discovered was a certain hurt patriotic pride. He retorted with 'if it's so good where you came from, why don't you go back there?' I was strangely hurt, of course he wasn't speaking to me, and might have meant only to hurt the West Indian man, but it was disheartening to see how close to the surface his xenophobia was. I am reading now a book called "Real Black," by John L. Jackson Jr., a field-study on racial sincerity with a quote from an older Black male Harlemite which I believe illuminates this topic further, he states: "just because somebody's got dark skin, doesn't mean they deserve to be here...people fought for this community...people come here and buy cars and homes, and live the lifestyle we say we want...they take our destiny." The entire plot of "Real Black" pivots on the question of racial sincerity vs. authenticity, the latter of course being at the very center of this Black on Black divide - authenticity of Americanism, who is more American. America being never of course the place, but the dream.

All this to say that my greatest fear is nationism - not nationalism, that at least embraces a history and includes other people in its big picture. I define nationism as the single-mindedness that both sides of the above debate have in common, albeit unknown to them. Nationism is wanting to be the only best American, nationism is wanting to have, for yourself, all the ideals that the history of red, white and blue has promised (implicitly and otherwise) - nationism is distracting, not to mention an absolute waste of time. If the realization of my dream or "destiny" creates your nightmare, we are both trapped in nothingness, the moral of the tale being? When you dream (even when you dream the American dream), do dream your neighbors in it too, be they black, white, native, foreign, purple, green, Australian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Latino...well, you get the point.

Jigga And Me

So I never thought it would happen, Hip Hop and I on the same page, I sat in my ivory tower and I looked down on the over-sized posturing that seemed to be all Hip Hop music could offer me. I was proved wrong the other day as I read a news paper article on none other than Jay- Z, Jigga as he is often known to friends and fans alike - one of Rap's elite, the King some argue persuasively.

I was more than thrilled to read that Jay-Z had decided a boycott on the alcoholic beverage Cristal, known through the rap circuit and actually through the world as a whole, as the drink you imbibe when life is just that good - Rap Star good. The favorite swill of the rich and ostentatious, and as a result I am sure sales of this drink were sky high as it was purchased by the rich and the credit-card rich alike. So why on earth was it just OK for Cristal's managing director Frederic Rouzad to step all over the best free advertising any product has ever received in the history of product placement? Why was it just alright for him to disregard the countless millions who would of course read his comments and understand them for the racist epithets they were: "We can't forbid people from buying it. I'm sure Dom Perignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business." THEIR BUSINESS?! WHAT?!

I am not Mr Hip Hop obviously, but this is beyond a question of what lyrics one finds offensive, this has gone into the financial arena, and there is nothing more disconcerting, infuriating, rage-building, than hearing someone say, 'I dislike your self so much that even all your money could not change my mind.'

I am a fan of Jay-Z, I may know absolutely nothing about what his music is, but he has proven to me sufficiently that he knows what his power is and he can effect change. Like many of course he has his string of press-kit ready philantrophic pursuits, but through the attention his revolt against Cristal has received, the question then becomes, when will he decide to turn that power against 'the game' itself as they say. When will his evolution reach a level of promoting a face for Hip Hop that evolves the entire industry to a level of social and political awareness that reaches into the hearts of all his millions of fans, white (many there are I am sure) and black alike. Aside from Jigga vs. Cristal; when will it be Jigga vs. Negative stereotypes of women in media? Jigga vs. the hyper-masculinity syndrome? Jigga vs. violence? And I am not talking about writing a song that says violence is wrong, I am talking about serious action like his boycott, real world action.