Chapter Eighteen

THE HEALING

IF, WHILE THE HEALING OF THIS VAST SORE IS PROGRESSING, THE RACES ARE TO LIVE FOR MANY YEARS SIDE BY SIDE, UNITED IN ECONOMIC EFFORT, OBEYING COMMON GOVERNMENT, SENSITIVE TO MUTUAL THOUGHT AND FEELING, YET SUBTLY AND SILENTLY SEPARATE IN MANY MATTERS OF DEEPER HUMAN INTIMACY,—IF THIS UNUSUAL AND DANGEROUS DEVELOPMENT IS TO PROGRESS AMID PEACE AND ORDER, MUTUAL RESPECT AND GROWING INTELLIGENCE, IT WILL CALL FOR SOCIAL SURGERY AT ONCE THE DELICATEST AND NICEST IN MODERN HISTORY.

—“Of the Training of Black Men”

In the spring of 2003, I was invited to give a reading at the Saratoga Springs Public Library in Saratoga Springs, New York. Then in the early throes of shaping and writing this book, I read from the prologue, which seemed the most cohesive bit of it at the time. Afterward, during the question-and-answer period, a white man who was probably in his mid to late sixties asked this question of me: “Clearly, you’re intelligent and well educated, and have been given many opportunities in life—why don’t you just call yourself white?”

The question did not stir any audible reaction from the rest of the audience, all mostly older and white, nor did it shock me. The man was sincere, and I think he really did wonder why I didn’t call or consider myself white, given what I had articulated by way of the book’s introductory remarks about my life experience and background. I treated the question like any other. “Because,” I replied, “I live in contemporary American culture.”

No matter how much time, how many words, how lengthy the analysis set to the issue of race and racial identity, there will still be the person who asks, as if it were the easiest thing in the world to parlay, why it can’t just be this way or that way. The reasons why are many, but the reason that resonates most is as simple as it is complex.

Understanding race in America is, to use Du Bois’s words, an “unusual and dangerous development.” It is a work in progress, he continued, that “will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and nicest in modern history.” Such a high-risk surgery requires the best surgeons and the most willing of patients. Even more risky is performing surgery on an already-open wound; a wound that refuses to heal.

LeAlan Jones, who first earned recognition as the thirteen-year-old coauthor of the book Our America: Life on the Southside of Chicago (1997), represents a new generation of African American youth. His is a generation that embraces both Eminem and 50 Cent, The Source and GQ, Survivor and The Bernie Mac Show , and which is the target audience for newly multiculturalized megamovie franchises such as The Matrix and Charlie’s Angels.

After we finished our interview on a bench in New York’s Union Square last year, LeAlan and I lingered for a while. Friendly but not close, we hadn’t seen each other in quite a while and so were just catching up, very casually, when mid-sentence, almost as if it were part of what he was saying to me, LeAlan looked up past my shoulder and said, “Hey, Q-Tizzy, what up?” Then, in this one beautiful seamless motion, LeAlan and the man he had just greeted exchanged the graceful palm-to-fingers slide of a familiar handshake, the man kept on walking, and LeAlan resumed the sentence where he’d left off with me. A little while later, having recognized the man he’d shaken hands with, I asked him, “So, how do you know Q-Tip [rapper from A Tribe Called Quest]?” and LeAlan said, “I don’t.”

I recognized the gesture between these two young black men in America as generous and elegant, open and inspiring. These, I thought, in their easily pronounced and actual recognition of each other as black men in the struggle of collective character, are the kind of men who could be trusted to perform the delicate “social surgery” that Du Bois recommended for this country one hundred years ago—the critical procedure that will allow this society to see us as individual human beings.

LeAlan Jones

Ironically, I was a guest on the radio show “Democracy Now” during the same broadcast as David Levering Lewis, the man who won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois. I was on the program to present an essay I had written about the war in Iraq and the democratization of that region in its aftermath. I wasn’t learning about Du Bois for the first time through Lewis, but it was interesting to hear what he was saying about him, even if his presentation seemed a little dry.

I’ve never read The Souls of Black Folk, no. I mean, since that program segment, I’ve read a few pages of the book, but I have not read it from start to finish. I live right next to the Center for Inner City Studies in Chicago, so I’ve definitely heard of W. E. B. Du Bois—that he was one of the forefathers of the civil rights movement in the early part of the twentieth century, that he lectured worldwide, and, of course, that he had an argument with Booker T. Washington. In terms of the quote about healing from The Souls of Black Folk, though, I think the healing he hoped for or suggested then is definitely happening today. Just look at hip-hop and what’s going on with Def Jam poetry, and the vast array of people who use the spoken word to talk about their own personal issues and experiences.

Eminem, for example, is respected by African American people for his struggles, and we can identify with him, because we can see when it’s real, when it’s not falsified or manufactured. Sure, he’s marketed, but he comes from Detroit. Detroit hasn’t been right since the riots—no economic infrastructure at all—so for anybody to come through there and succeed is something to respect. Eminem faces the same sorts of struggles that a lot of black rappers face, and so part of the healing is about having respect for those shared hardships—having problems with your baby mother, your girl. The world expected Eminem to end up some kid in Detroit selling burgers, bussing tables, or working at the factory. He said no to that. He said, “I’m going to be creative with rhymes,” and by doing that, he has introduced rap, a black form of communicating, to a white-trash, trailer park mentality. We gave this black form of art and poetry to him, and he has used it as a coping mechanism. That’s a beautiful thing.

What separates Eminem from, say, that whole Wigger movement of a decade or so back is that he has evolved through it—like the kid in Atlanta who starts out believing in the Confederate flag but then ends up wearing a Michael Vick [a black NFL quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons] jersey. Kids don’t start out knowing the difference between black and white. It’s when they get older and start to explore out of curiosity and human nature. It’s the white girl who wants to take the black basketball player to the prom at an integrated school, and somebody has to tell her that there will be recriminations because of that action. And then she has to make a choice.

When I was a kid, I would hear the words white and black being used, and the difference between those two words became clear to me when I started to think about what my goals were and what I wanted to excel at. White people had the nice house, their own space—you know, Family Ties, Night Court, Dynasty—white people always seemed to do things a little bit better, to have more influence. Then, when Cosby came on, I realized that I could be Theo and go to college, or grow up and marry Rudy. And even though there was just the one show with black people having a nice life and nice things, I understood that these images of wealth and success, both black and white, were circumstances being dictated by aptitude. A white kid from a trailer park in Appalachia is about as likely to make it as a black kid from the projects on the South Side of Chicago. And that’s what makes Eminem as valuable as, say, 50 Cent, because Eminem has shown us the cracks in white culture that have been hidden for so long. We’re all accustomed to seeing the cracks in black culture, and now we can see that every white cat can’t be living large if Eminem came up out of what and where he did.

Of course, with all due respect to Eminem, no one is denying that he’s white, and that there are certain ways and things about black people that cannot be imitated. Swagger, for one thing, and eternal optimism, for another, because what else is there? We started out as a people who were told that we couldn’t make classical music; we couldn’t speak this way or that, or learn certain skills. So what we did was to get the instrument, the device, or the skill, and then add our own thing to it—figure out the science of it later. And I think what we’re seeing now is a younger generation of the Talented Tenth that Du Bois wrote about, a generation that is not only figuring out the science but inventing the science.

People who have suffered have a wisdom that no one else has, and a way of applying that wisdom to their everyday lives. Oprah—from Tennessee, the country—who loves her? White women who want the perfect look, the perfect lives. It doesn’t matter whether or not she’s respected by those white women. I don’t care how she did it or who respects her—she can connect with mainstream culture in a way that no one else can. Like I said, we’ll figure it out later. All I know is that we got it. We didn’t come here to smoke crack.

My sense of Du Bois as a man—and not to sound disrespectful—is that he was almost like a pimp of his time, because pimps are effective; they get the point across as smoothly as possible, while at the same time making you feel good about yourself and making you look at yourself. With The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois wrote a timely book that reached the right people. He couldn’t be too radical back then—like, you know, To hell with you all. We gonna get the hell up outta here. Begin to get your things together so that we can go. Let’s break. No, Du Bois said, Look, we’re really trying to be here, and I don’t know what being here is, exactly, but I’ve seen what’s behind us, so let’s try another way.

Sooner or later, people are going to have to see beyond the color line into a gray world. Gray might not sound too hopeful, but we know what the black-and-white world has given us. We don’t know what the gray world will give us. What’s hopeful is to wish for something and then to find out what it is. We know that slavery and racism ain’t cool. So we’re willing to try something else.