The Gravity of Racism: A Weight You Can't Escape

In my junior year at Vanderbilt University as an Electrical Engineering major, I took the formidable Differential Equations math class required for all engineering majors. Though my freshman year with Calculus and Chemistry had been a bumpy one, I rather enjoyed Differential Equations because it was such a highly useful tool for the world of Engineering that I desired to be one day be employed. Plainly stated, Differential Equations are mathematical equations of variables and functions used to describe a deterministic relationship between continuously varying quantities and their rates of change in space or time. For instance, these equations can be used to find the velocity of a ball falling through the air considering the gravity and resistance the ball experiences[1]. To me, the best part (oddly I found this to be slightly fun at the time) of solving these equations was being able to use constants in which a certain value was already known. Therefore, in the aforementioned example, the gravitational constant (which is 9.81 m/s² – and, yes I still remember this by heart) was easy to factor into the equation. Having constants made dealing with unknown variables a bit more bearable and provided more insight as to how to navigate the problem in finding the proper solution. Though I only ever thought that Diff EQ (differential equations) was suitable in application with science and engineering, I think that its concept fairly communicates the ultimate truth of Derrick Bell’s work The Faces at the Bottom of the Well. It has been a supreme goal of the United States to posit racism as a variable that is ever changing and evolving; however, Bell postulates the grizzly truth that racism is not some variable that has decreased or improved over time. Instead, racism is a constant – ever present, never erasable – impermeable and permanent facet to the American backdrop of society.

In Diff EQ, the constants we were able to use in solving problems were not some issue of question; rather, they were well-proven and widely used both historically and presently. As a nation, whose foundation was forged on the very backs of Black people, racism is both well-proven and widely practiced historically and presently. Yet, there has been a hesitance to classify its existence as a permanent earmark of our society. Bell provides clear justification as to why racism has been verifiably immortalized in America, saying:

…the continued viability of racism “demonstrates that racism is not simply an excrescence on a fundamentally healthy liberal democratic body, but it is part of what shapes and energizes the body.” Under this view, “liberal democracy and racism in the United States, are historically, even inherently, reinforcing; American society as we know it exists only because of its foundation in racially based slavery, and it thrives only because racial discrimination continues.” The apparent anomaly is an actual symbiosis. The permanence of this “symbiosis” ensures that civil rights gains will be temporary and setbacks inevitable[2].

Therefore, since racism is a constant in our society, it must be factored into the equation as such instead of being viewed as something that is unknown throughout space or time. Then, and only then, will Blacks in America ever be able to assess our place in society and what to do about our plight with the knowledge that racism is not a function that can be minimized or zeroed out with a stroke of pen or calculation of laws.

                As innately as the gravitational constant comes to my mind now, after using it in numerous equations and observing its theorem proved time and time again, how do you explain it to someone who has been privileged enough to live outside of the pull of gravity, so-to-speak? My Momma always used to tell me, “that ain’t gone make sense to a man on the moon” when I would try to explain to her my warped since of teenage logic at the time, and, perhaps, this cliché saying fits here as well. As we evaluate racism in America, for Whites they have literally been on the moon – outside of earth’s gravitational pull of the ugliness of racism since they have the normative privilege of being “superior” to anyone considered Other. Even mere discussions of racism as a constant, permanent schema of the American fabric would simply not make sense to them. What is more, is that even for those of us who have never had the privilege of escaping the effects of discrimination under the gravity of racism due to the color of our skin, we still believe that certain hierarchies of elevation allow certain pockets of us to experience less gravity than others. For Derrick Bell, this is all blasphemy. Denying the permanence of racism is like denying God is real.

Perhaps those of us who can admit we are imprisoned by the history of racial subordination in America can accept – as slaves had no choice but to accept – our fate. Not that we legitimate the racism of the oppressor. On the contrary, we can only delegitimate it if we can accurately pinpoint it. And racism lies at the center, not the periphery; in the permanent, not in the fleeting; in the real lives of black and white people, not in the sentimental caverns of the mind[3].

In his work Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Bell implores us similarly to the famous Spike Lee line to WAKE UP! The time for seeing and calling racism the spade that it truly is, is now.

                The thing about racism is that it is such a touchy subject – kind of like Jesus. You bring His name up in these times and people will pause and wait to see what you will say and do next. The same is true with racism. It is that taboo thing that you want to keep as some ideology rather than a way or part of life. So, imagine not only having to write an entire book on racism, but also having to explain why it’s here to stay. That seems like a ridiculously negative and counter-productive task, especially to those who have worked so hard and long to eradicate it. However, Derrick Bell navigates this weighty topic with ingenuity and clarity. He presents several fictional, other-worldly stories that encapsulate an aspect about the shape, size, and color of racism in America that are undeniably eerie once confronted. For example, with the chapter on Racial Preference Licensing – he presents the idea that business owners buy a license to legally discriminate as much as their hearts desired and that a portion of their profits go to a fund to help Black people with their own living and professional expenses. The point of his story was not that the U.S. should actually consider employing this strategy but rather the grim reality that if this law were in effect much less discrimination would actually happen as we are accustomed to today. In another chapter, Bell presents the outlandish idea that all the Black faculty and President of Harvard University were killed in an explosion. In the final letter written by the President of the University, he speaks of the effort to hire more Blacks and equalize opportunities for higher minority recruitment. As a means to pay homage to those lost in the explosion, the community decided to honor the President’s wishes and increase the number of Blacks on faculty at Harvard. Bell wished to show how outlandish it is that a tragedy would serve as the precipice for doing the right thing – something that should have been done all along. Then, the question is – why does Bell use these stories rather than using real life examples of racism? Because of the jarring and sensitive nature of racist experiences, he uses these other-worldly anecdotes to serve as a mechanism to create distance between the audience and the topic. By doing this, the reader would be able to see through to the truths of each example without having to necessarily make an emotional connection.

                What strikes me about the chapters written in Bell’s pages is the realism hidden within each character. Though one such story wasn’t captured within his chapters, Fruitvale Station, or the life and death of Oscar Grant, may as well have been another account in Bell’s book. I found myself getting lost between the fantasy worlds he was creating and the real lived racist experiences that even I have had a Black woman. I experienced this same ambivalence when I watched Fruitvale Station. I kept thinking to myself, ‘I know this is a cinematic portrayal, but this is everyday life.’ When 22 year-old Oscar Grant was murdered, martyred, lynched, it was as if the earth’s gravitational pull curled itself up into a wrecking ball and slammed into my gut. I remember vividly walking out of the movie theaters panic-stricken, unable to breathe, and sobbing uncontrollably. The gravity of racism – its ugliness, consistency, and permanence – became real all over again in that moment. Just like the O2 held within the atmosphere, racism is everywhere permeating every being, every crevice and corner.

                Rather than continue on in stubborn denial of the staying power of racism, Bell would have us all confront the truth. It is not that that he wishes for people to feel defeated by the existence of racism, but he finds that acknowledging the truth is enlightening.

Armed with this knowledge, and with the enlightened, humility-based commitment that it engenders, we can accept the dilemmas of committed confrontation with evils we cannot end. We can go forth to serve, knowing that our failure to act will not change conditions and may very well worsen them. We can listen carefully to those who may have been most subordinated…We must learn from their example, learn from those whom would teach.[4]

When we are able to rightly identify the agency and entity of racism with accuracy about its gravitational pull, we will be able to better evaluate our stance in dealing with it properly. In a lecture this semester, Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas taught about the genius of discrimination – it is genius because it poses itself as many different other ills, so that you end up only treating the symptoms while masking the true source. The sickness is not a gland problem or a hormonal imbalance. It is cancer, called racism – and, it is terminal. Now that the diagnosis is clear, the regimen for treatment can be formulated.

                As mentioned earlier, there is plenty of viable proof that racism is a constant aspect of daily life in America. Off the top of my head in my lifetime I can name several terrible examples of the impact and implications of racism: Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Marissa Alexander, Hurricane Katrina, caricatures of President and First Lady Obama, caricatures of the Boston Bombers, black face costumes for Halloween 2013, disproportionate number of Black students placed in Alternative Schools or Special Education, the number of Black men and women in prison, the number of Black men and women in poverty and/or on welfare, the number of Black men, women, and children without healthcare, etc. I can honestly keep naming more, but the amazing thing is that anyone reading this list most likely already knows these events are racist – it is just a matter of dislodging oneself from the socially irresponsible location of de-sensitivity and/or privilege. And even if you didn’t know that the aforementioned people or events have to do with racism, the same course of action applies – dislodge yourself from the socially irresponsible location of de-sensitivity and/or privilege and WAKE UP!

                As I have engaged in dialogue with several of my friends about the year’s most recent racist happenings, most of my friends have lamented at how little they actually get upset anymore by the silly things racist people do. On Facebook I even saw one Black young man virtually giving his permission for White girls to dress in Black face costumes. I would love to complete a survey in which different racist pictures or media images are shown to Black people of all ages and have them rate how angry the picture makes them. I would like to conduct this research to observe how much Black people have become de-sensitized to racism. Conversely, I would like to conduct this same study on White people to see if a correlation between the level of White privilege, or the ability to ignore racism, and Black de-sensitivity, or the ability to become numb to racism, is evident and/or similar.

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[1] “Differential Equation,” October 28, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_equation

[2] Derrick Bell, The Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, (New York: BasicBooks, 1992), 9.

[3] Derrick Bell, The Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, (New York: BasicBooks, 1992), 198.

[4] Derrick Bell, The Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, (New York: BasicBooks, 1992), 198-199.

I am American-African.

             

              In the later portion of the 20th century, a very controversial publication of ‘The Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of a Slave’ sprang forth and has since stirred much discourse about the issue of slavery in America. Though the origins of the letter have some controversy in matters of credibility, I posit that its contents include an exceptionally valid school of thought to be considered. In the speech given by Willie Lynch, the slave-owner shares methods he has predicated for the successful enslavement of African peoples. Within his sermon-like speech, he outlines specific ways to gain willful subservience:

Keep the body, take the mind! …[and] for further severance from their original beginning, we must completely annihilate the mother tongue of both the new nigger and the new mule, and institute a new language that involves the life’s work of both. You know a language is a peculiar institution. It leads to the heart of a people.¹

Severance from the beginning essentially defines the principle Peter J. Paris sets out to disprove in his work The Spirituality of African Peoples. Though the African Diaspora and subsequent enslavement of its patrons in America mounted a vehement vehicle for the loss of cultural identity, Paris engages the truth that all African culture was not vanquished within the realization of chattel transaction. Instead of the termination of a people, African culture, traditions, and spirituality were transferred into a new tongue and translated to fit into the confines of a new place. In the face of monstrous adversity, the African spiritual truth ‘I am because we are’ abounds and transcends the oppression meant to strip its people of their cultural identity.

                In my line of work, we use transmitters to relay a signal that makes sense to a person operating some piece of machinery. For tanks, we use level transmitters to display how full or empty the tank is. For pipes, we use flow transmitters to gauge the amount of flow going into or out of a vessel. And so on for any process application needing surveillance. Transmitters, all have the basic tenant of functionality conducting their purpose – to read a process signal and output it in a way that is understandable to the context of its use. Therefore, if an operator does not easily understand a tank level in terms of inches of Mercury (which is a standard in some places), the display can be configured to feet.  Just because the units of measure of the level in the tank are changed, doesn’t mean that the actual level in the tank is any different. What’s more is that if you take the contents of that vessel and pour it into a different container, without spilling any drops, the same amount of media is still in the new tank. Though a different level may be reflected due to the differing dimensions of the original vessel versus the second vessel, neither the contents nor its quantity has been altered. Conceptually, this is the stance Paris goes to great lengths to appropriate as it relates to African culture. African spirituality was not totally changed or annihilated, rather it was just re-captured and transmitted in a different way with much of its inherent identity and original substance intact.

                What is consciously significant to me about The Spirituality of African Peoples is that the author goes to great lengths to propose a foundational commonality between ancient African traditions and contemporary African American culture. I believe this deliberation envelopes an effort to embrace an Africanized viewpoint as a genesis for philosophical existence. There is undoubtedly the harsh reality that the subjugation Africans and Africans in the Diaspora faced subsequent to slave-trade caused such a violent upheaval of African culture which intended to sever the people from their identity. Yet, even in the throes of this systematic oppression and isolation, a sense of cultural resilience was successfully sustained. Rather than the complete termination of the culture indigenous to the African people, an “enculturation” occurred allowing an amalgamation of African culture to essentially be retrofitted with Westernized civilization; thus, creating a uniquely new yet congruent way of life for Africans. If this be so, then Westernized progression of thought must be sidelined and an investigation of African ideas of culture and religion must be put to work.

While I normally identify myself as Black, the absence of the word African should have no bearing on the effect of African traditions in my life. As I consider this knowledge, I realize how much it is not necessarily a revelation for the things that comprise my idea of identity, morality, spirituality, and community. Rather, it is a reminder. Ways of being, thinking, and acting, as a Black person in America, cannot simply be explained away by such dismissive statements like ‘this is just the way I am’ or ‘it’s a Black thing, you wouldn’t understand.’ Instead, there is an intrinsic reason that I am the way that I am. There is an unspokenness to how I view family and community. And, both of these things are circularly related. Their interconnectedness is seamless and natural. While it is easy to know that my personhood is a reflection of my roots, there must be an intentional introspection and appropriation for why my lens is shaped and colored the way that it is – and this introspection must discard any and every negative view of an African or Black identity that has been indoctrinated by a European society. This must be done individually and corporately as Black persons in America post-Diaspora. Rather than rejecting our Afrocentric foundations, whether it is done intentionally or unintentionally, there must be a willingness to analyze our modality outside of a solely American context. There must be a reconciliation of what it means to be Black inclusive of our rich heritage through African ties and exclusive of the social construct of the Black race as proscribed by society.

Paris does an excellent job in the exegesis of African spiritual ideologies in relation to a Christian belief held by African-Americans during and after the Diaspora. Instead of a separation from their African spiritual understanding, the result of slavery justified a new appropriation of spiritual meaning for their new environment:

Hence… the acculturation of the Africans to their new environment did not result in a total loss of their religious and moral understandings. On the contrary, Africans in the diaspora were able to preserve the structural dimensions of their spirituality.²

In further examination of Paris’ work, the profound sense of community and family was of paramount importance in the African perspective. Working in conjunction with a Supreme Deity, Africans venerated their ancestral legacies as a part of their responsibility in life. This value system in which communal good and familial honor was the ultimate goal can still be seen in today’s historically Black churches. According to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 2007, Black people comprise a significant amount of those affiliated with a religion. Where 83% of all Americans associate themselves with some religious belief, the survey found that a startling 87% of Blacks align themselves with a religious affiliation.³ Blacks continue to place high value on a sense of community and family as found within a church membership.

                Personally, in reading The Spirituality of African Peoples, I have to admit that I was swiftly convicted by my somewhat elementary notions of African tradition. Though I always linked my affinity for movement and soulful music in my church experience with my African heritage, I diminished the possibility that how I view a Christian God had anything to do with that heritage. As easily as the American society tried to strip all Blacks of their true African identity, there was also an effort to coerce Blacks into associating all things African with negativity or uncivility. Within the vein of dismantling the pride in African customs, it became commonplace for me to wrongly pre-suppose that anything having to do with African spirituality was automatically going to be paganistic. There was an unfair assumption that the Christianity I knew and practiced was only related to my African identity in certain modes of worship, dance, or song. While an African beat can be seen in the pulse of this portion of Christianity, it is important that the blood line of our Christian faith can be attributed to the substance of African spiritual understanding of God as our Creator.

                As I’ve come to understand and appreciate the premise of African spirituality and its direct effect on my own Christian theology, I wonder more about the current spirituality of Africa. Accepting the effect of the African identity on western Christianity, how is Christianity now effecting Africa? Where has Christianity not become available in Africa? What indigenous modes of religion mimic our ideal of Christianity and could Christianity be easily introduced?

References:

1.)    ‘Willie Lynch,’ The Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of a Slave (African Tree Press, 2011).

2.)    Peter J. Paris, The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Source for a Common Moral Discourse (Fortress Press, 1995), 35.

3.)    The Black Church, http://blackdemographics.com/culture/religion/ (The Leonard T. Greenburg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life).