July 16, 2020
(Thursday)
7:30 Eastern — 6:30 Central
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Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards—ten cents a package—and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,—refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,—some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DUBOIS
Experience has taught me how easy it is to get distracted from the “main thing” and mired in minutiae. The recent public spate between Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, and Nina Turner, co-chair of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, is such a moment. Just in case you missed it, the two battled on CNN regarding the applicability of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to Joe Biden’s Presidential candidacy.
Lost in the contentious feud was Dr. King’s tremendous intellectual offering. This is familiar terrain for Dr. King that resembles the muting of his political maturation by of all things, his “I Have A Dream Speech.”
No one should be surprised that Dr. King’s commentary in his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” is as applicable today as it was the moment it was penned. According to Dr. King,
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says:
“I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I have pondered over MLK’s words for decades and as the historical context changed, so did my understanding of this piece of history. As with most intellectual offerings, it is crucial that we revisit and reconsider them as context changes. As mentioned above, the role of White moderates such as Joe Biden in the political lives of Blacks has not changed much. Yet, some things have changed in regards to Black political realities.
In some ways, it is shocking that Dr. King’s commentary that was aimed at the gradualism of sixties White moderates fits far too many of today’s Black political leaders. Consider the following assertion. Black political leaders have rejected Bernie Sanders’ calls for a radical redistribution of wealth in this nation because such matters would be appropriate for a “more convenient season.” Obviously contemporary Black leaders fit the description of those possessing what Dr. King termed “…a mythical concept of time…”
Today’s White moderates have been outdone in their calls for gradualism by a cadre of Black political leaders whose resistance to immediate change color them as Conservatives regarding such matters. The alluded to leaders appear undisturbed by the unfortunate reality that their inaction extends an all too familiar misery and suffering among their Black constituents; if one did not know any better they could be led to believe that Black political leaders have become comfortable in their present socioeconomic position.
There is neither rhyme nor reason that explains why Black political leaders from Michael Eric Dyson through Jim Clyburn are so strongly supporting Joe Biden. Could it be that they are sold on Biden’s penchant for eating Soul Food in a South Carolina “hole in the wall” or the fact that he served closely with Barack Hussein Obama? Not even his most strident supporters can effectively argue against the assertion that Biden’s most significant impact on Black America has been negative.
There is no reasonable explanation for the above political alterations within Black America. However, it is obvious that contemporary Black leaders are no longer feeling the immediate impact of grinding multi-generational poverty as the vast majority of their constituents. While Black political leaders enjoy the material accruements wrought by political careers where success is measured not in the delivery of racial justice but by significant increases in their financial wherewithal, poor Blacks remain mired in omnipresent misery and suffering. It is the “good life” that Black political leaders are enjoying on a daily basis that makes them hesitant to embrace an overthrow of inequality in this nation, even they realize that such a radical change would cost them their positions of privilege.
Dr. James Thomas Jones III
© Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.