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How about the race question? Of course I would bring up such a sensitive and recurring topic in the American story right around Thanksgiving. Aren’t the holidays the time to rest in the comfort of families, in the promise of plenty and possibility? Thanksgiving is almost a monument to an American legend — the Pilgrims at Plymouth — in which racial difference was not a concern. Yet in 1620 Europeans were still as concerned with their status compared to darker-colored Native Americans as their descendants are in 2013.
So I will forge ahead on the race question, mainly because too many of us still view the world comfortably through a white middle-class lens, shaking our fists angrily when an appalling event rocks the TV sets or Twitter feeds such as Trayvon Martin’s death or the most recent story of America’s inner cities. Why don’t politicians take more responsibility? Why do minorities in America take more responsibility? These questions are asked as though the answers have already been given and somehow just aren’t adding up. We are indignant when we are told the Civil Rights Movement never actually ended. Don’t we have a free and equal society? Aren’t “minority interests” what Jeremiah Wright preaches with radical fire from a Chicago pulpit?
The answer to these last two questions is emphatically, NO. Racial differences in the United States may have changed in form over the past century, but they have changed little in function. I have blogged before about institutional racism, and the numerous structural causes which oppress nonwhite Americans. I have cited Beverly Tatum and Michelle Alexander as excellent voices on how this oppression works psychologically and politically.
Now I turn to a literary account which gives more personal and philosophical arguments about race. In other words, how could you discuss race around the dinner table this Thanksgiving if you are looking to make educated observations on how people perceive or debate the race question as spectators? The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, written in 1912 by the African-American scholar James Weldon Johnson, is an emotionally wrenching account of events in the life of an African-American at the turn of the century.
James Weldon Johnson is perhaps best known for his authorship of one of the great pieces of music of its time: Lift Every Voice and Sing. Often called another one of America’s national anthems, the song has been used as a political tool and call to racial pride as recently as 2013 in the mayoral inauguration of Jackson, MS. In this way, James Weldon Johnson remains relevant over a century after his novel was published. His discussion of race relations, social behavior of racial groups and of the psychological effects of racial boundaries apply as much today as they did when he suffered through the oppression of a society which would lynch legally-recognized citizens in the public square.
(1) Theory of race relations: Toward the end of the story, while traveling back from Europe to work as an interpreter of spiritual songs, Johnson recounts a conversation between a former Union soldier and a Texas cotton planter. Each man represented a side of the “race relation” question as cast by whites: are African-Americans fundamentally less capable and therefore less deserving of the full benefits of citizenship? African American thinkers of the time mirrored the debate, as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois took starkly different views on the pace of integration.
If you think the minorities-are-less-capable argument died with the Civil Rights Movement, think again. How often have you heard the proposition that low-income, inner-city minorities just aren’t responsible enough and are up to no good? How often have you heard that crime, drugs, failing schools, absent fathers and social welfare enrollment are products of a “culture” of a certain race? The prejudiced discourse on race masquerades under different names today. As recently as the 1990s, scholars published works such as The Bell Curve claiming that minority students’ low performance was explained simply by lower average intelligence than their white peers.
Johnson recounts an argument used by the white cotton planter was the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race in justifying the oppression of African-Americans. The cotton planter believed Anglo-Saxons were of certain character and capability which placed them above other races in the United States and required them to defend their status. Ethnic superiority is a common tool used by leading thinkers of races, cultures or nations to justify violence and restriction of rights (such as voting, healthcare, social welfare) against out-group members. A foreign, contemporary example is the 1990s nationalist violence in Serbia in which an ideology of ethnic purity was developed “from above by people who knew exactly what they were doing.”
(2) Social behavior: The philosophy of race relations which many white Americans past and present have is backed up by behavior patterns. Once the social structure is established, it has to be enforced. However, people in privilege don’t want to think about the fact that they are privileged, so they have to talk about privilege in terms that do not make it obvious. In my school and community in Forest Park, GA, I have seen enough misfortune and hardship to know that hard work does not guarantee success, that good things do not come to those who wait, and that windows do not always open when doors close.
The phrases privileged Americans say all the time indicate the behavior we take on to hold our privilege around us without a sense of responsibility. Instead of listening to Marian Wright Edelman quote that “service is the rent we pay for being,” it is much easier to settle into comfortable racial and socioeconomic patterns of thought. Johnson noticed this effect when touring the American South. He remarked that Southern whites could rarely go an hour without bringing up race either directly or indirectly. In my handful of experiences in the South so far, I would agree that conversations (or media viewership) rarely go an hour without reinforcing racial difference. So if “service is the rent we pay for being” prejudice is the rent we pay for holding on to power.
The perception of racial differences therefore carries over into how people think, talk and act, in a positive feedback loop which carries us further and further into a segregated state of mind. Northern whites, Johnson noticed, spoke with more tolerance but could just as easily slide into the same racial politics which dominate the American South. On occasion, the actions turn from passive to violent, as when Johnson witnessed a lynch mob in Georgia. Hate groups such as the KKK or racial interest groups such as the white Citizens’ Councils of the 20th century turned “race relations” into the fetters of racism.
White people’s attitudes and philosophies have effects on the social behavior of African-Americans. Johnson in his travels through the South as a young man identified three main groups — or responses — to the racial caste system created for them. The first is the African-American middle classes who have increased their income and reached a degree of security. This social group in general worked to keep its distance both from poorer African-Americans and from whites. Their fear, Johnson describes, would be to be perceived as “putting on airs” and pretending to be white if they were in white company. The second group are African-Americans who depended directly on whites for employment and were forced into a passive attitude to preserve what economic station they did have. The third group were the embittered and angry African-Americans who were directly victims of oppression.
(3) Psychological effects: “The race question” is not abstract. While it may make for more educated dinner conversation, the weight of it must fall somewhere. And that somewhere it falls is upon the minds of African-Americans and minorities the country over. Johnson was a very fair-skinned African-American man and therefore faced unique but equally difficult psychological effects. The fundamental effect, which W.E.B. DuBois called the “double consciousness,” is that African-Americans are forced to see themselves as both people and defined members of a race. The racial name follows them irreversibly in the United States.
The second effect which Johnson faced in the novel was a forced choice between who he should work for. Should he use his ability to “pass” as white to perform around the world or should he take on his identity as a black man and run the risk of rejection when he claims African-American as his race? Johnson decided to leave his performing career in Europe for the American South with the following decision:
“I argued that music offered me a better future than anything else I had any knowledge of, and, in opposition to my friend’s opinion, that I should have greater chances of attracting attention as a colored composer than as a white one. But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.” (Chapter IX)
The third effect came directly from the second effect of a forced choice between racial identities. Johnson had to deal with simultaneously the shame of racism when he identified as African-American and the guilt for avoiding the racism experienced by other African-Americans when he passed as white. The dilemma of racially ambiguous people is best expressed in his troubled love with a white woman he met in New York while playing piano. When he told her he was actually African-American after some months of courtship, she broke his heart by not talking to him for a long while. His letter to her about understanding the burden of his race explains the psychology well:
“I understand, understand even better than you, and so I suffer even more than you. But why should either of us suffer for what neither of us is to blame? If there is any blame, it belongs to me, and I can only make the old yet strongest plea that can be offered, I love you; and I know that my love, my great love, infinitely overbalances that blame, and blots it out. What is it that stands in the way of our happiness? It is not what you feel or what I feel; it is not what you are or what I am. It is what others feel and are. But, oh! Is that a fair price? In all the endeavors and struggles of life, in all our strivings and longings there is only one thing worth winning, and that is love.” (Chapter XI)
Deep down, that’s what this race question is about. The opportunity costs. While the privileged make theories about why races are inferior, while they keep falling into oppressive patterns of behavior and while they watch the shame and anger seep into the hearts of too many of their fellow Americans, something is lost. What’s lost is the chance to love.
When racism gets in the way of love, then we truly know the answer to the race question. That it is a non-question, that it should not be asked — or if it is asked, it should only be asked to be unasked, taken apart and given over to the equality, tolerance and love which tries to grow in its place. Love cannot supplant the harm done by the “race question” without everyone actively tending to its growth. As Marian Wright Edelman said, service is the debt we must pay.
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