Posted on 02/20/2004 2:44:42 AM PST by kattracks
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Debra Dickerson, the author of the prize-winning memoir An American Story and of the new book The End of Blackness. Educated at the University of Maryland, St. Mary’s University, and Harvard Law School, Ms. Dickerson has been both a senior editor and a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and a columnist at Beliefnet.Frontpage Magazine: Ms. Dickerson, welcome to Frontpage Interview. In your new book, you call Afrocentrism “self-eliminative and isolationist.” Could you kindly tell our readers why you believe this?
Dickerson: I don’t think Afrocentrism must be self-eliminative and isolationist, just that it often is. Afrocentrism is a valid discipline and world view and there are many worthy Afrocentrists just as there are many worthy Sinophiles or Anglophiles. Like most things, however, the Philistines get hold of things they don’t, or choose not to, understand and diminish it to the point of silliness.
For too many blacks (African American is just too unwieldy), ‘Afrocentrism’ means “I thumb my nose at Western culture.” It’s a rejection of white people, not an embrace of something else that lives and breathes. It’s a way to punish America for mistreating us by pretending to opt out while availing themselves of every morsel of their American, Western rights and benefits.
You can’t call yourself Afrocentric without studying the true history and traditions of Africa (that enormous place with all sorts of contradictory traditions), without taking part in the new discoveries that are being made about its lost intellectual traditions and output, without at least knowing and grappling with the significance of such things as that Classical Arabic was the language of knowledge in the Middle East and Africa before the Europeans came. At a minimum, you have to visit there as often as possible and many so-called Afrocentrics are horrified by Africa and just as racist against it as any Klansman.
You have to study an African language, you have to study the slave trade, you have to grapple with gender roles, not just make up stories about how Africans were doing vascular surgery or inventing airplanes during the Bronze Age, that’s just about one-upping whites. Kente cloth placemats and fertility mask screen savers are not Afrocentrism. That’s just shopping. Snooping around in old photos trying to ‘prove’ that Babe Ruth or J. Edgar Hoover were “really” black – that’s not Afrocentrism. That’s just trying to embarrass whites.
To complain that something is Eurocentric, without explaining why that is unhelpful or wrong in any particular situation and without being able to explain what an Afrocentric point of view on that issue is, is not Afrocentrism. It’s just making a nuisance of yourself, its just being a naysayer. I always chuckle when someone draped in Kente cloth from hat to shoes gets hysterical about ‘western rationality’. Ok, what is African rationality? I have yet to get an answer. Being Afrocentric should be about how you live YOUR life, how YOU see the world, not about how others should live theirs or why theirs is less worthy.
Also, those who are Afrocentric have a duty to persuade others to incorporate Afrocentrism into their Eurocentric (or other) world. Europeans can’t demand that Africa admire and adopt western literature or western religion and neither can Afrocentrics living in a Eurocentric society. Win me over, dazzle me with the glories of African traditions, because I’m not changing my world view just because you want me to. I’m not going to be harangued with your trivia about Shaka Zulu. Show me the substance if you want my attention and too often, there’s no substance, just someone mouthing unsupported insults about western culture, as if they’re not a part of it.
Another thing that seems central to a claim of Afrocentrism, is the mature realization that America and the West are, duh, Eurocentric. So choosing Afrocentrism requires one to be sanguine at the fact that one leaves himself out of many things. Afrocentrism is a choice. Accept its consequences, like your irrelevance outside of your own Afrocentric circles.
When I was in law school, I stopped straightening my hair and had some pretty wild stuff happening on my head. Most of my black female classmates got very straitlaced come interview time – all the braids and piercings disappeared. I interviewed with top law firms assuming that my Afrocentric hair would disqualify me at most places and made my peace with that. I gotta be me and they gotta be button-downed lawyers. I decided that I didn’t want to work anyplace that couldn’t handle my hair because it was a particular expression of certain feminist and black sentiments I held – I just believed that I shouldn’t have to look a particular way to be considered either attractive or intelligent.
My appearance never came up in my interviews (all of which were with white people). I was inundated with offers. I think my ‘non-performed’ Afrocentrism, my quiet self-expression rather than haranguing them about the difference between black hair follicles and white ones, haranguing them with subtle threats about not making me an offer because of my wild hair -- that’s the good kind of Afrocentrism. Afrocentrism within a Eurocentric culture. Seems to me that I can’t demand access to Harvard Law School and fancy law firms while simultaneously denouncing western legal traditions, but I can do it with a wild Afro.
FP: You strongly criticize the black community for its defense of O.J. Simpson. What do you think the psychology was of the African-Americans who jumped up and down for joy when he was acquitted -- even though it was evident that he had murdered his wife in cold blood?
Dickerson: First, some people actually think the evidence against OJ was not dispositive, so their jubilation is justified. A significant corollary of that is the widespread belief that the LAPD framed a guilty man. In that case, freeing OJ works the same as discounting evidence because it was illegally obtained. Convictions have to follow the law, we have to be process-oriented, not outcome oriented. I happen to be of the school that thinks he was both guilty and framed and of the school which puts all its faith in the rule of law. That’s what separates us from the beasts, from the autocracies, from the dictatorships.
That’s what made the Constitution come to life and end the de jure oppression of blacks. We can’t invoke it sometimes and not others; justice has to always be in the ‘on’ position. We can’t allow the police, whether from zeal or racism, to frame people or even just be slipshod. The rules have to be followed because the police power is an awesome thing. We have to put ourselves in the defendant’s place, with the unlimited resources and power of the state facing him, and ask ourselves what constitutes fair play on the part of the state. I think every police force in America became a lot more careful in its handling of evidence in OJ’s wake. The Constitution must take precedence over any one crime. Better that murderers go free than American justice become an oxymoron. LA could have convicted OJ had they not cheated.
That brings us to those blacks who defended him only because whites wanted him convicted. That is immoral. I was listening recently to one of Dr.King’s speeches where he drew a firm distinction between those going to jail for Civil Rights activities and those blacks in jail for drunkenness, robbery and the like. Among blacks in those days, to commit a crime was to put yourself beyond the pale, both because you were stupid enough to put yourself in the hands of a racist, brutalizing criminal justice system and, more basically, because of the black community’s disgust at sin. We didn’t think it was all right then to commit crimes just because there was so much unfairness facing us. We used to know that it wasn’t how others behaved but how we behaved that mattered. So the Movement fought an uphill battle convincing blacks to accept going to jail for the cause as an acceptable, let alone heroic, thing. So, I’m listening to the disgust dripping from Dr. King’s voice when he dismisses the black criminal element in jails and reimagines it as a place of nobility if you’re there for noble reasons, if you’re taking a stand against injustice.
So, blacks jumping for joy at the sight of a black murderer gone free just because he murdered white people, I feel ashamed. That’s why I call my book The End of Blackness. I’m just so tired of being black in that way, that way which can only understand itself as the people who are oppressed by white people. The people who condone murder as long as it annoys whites. The people whose morality is situation specific if there’s a way to get back at whites by forgetting our home training.
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When I moved to Texas for the first time I was introduced to a very profound saying. I have always felt a great divide between my ideals and beliefs and those of black America. To be honest, this troubled me, because by everything my liberal brethren said, I was probably a racist. I certainly did not equate myself to a skinhead or Nazi. To be perfectly honest, I hadn't met a black person I have had any issue with. I generally get along with everyone I have met of any race. So I was confused how I could be at such odds with black America yet have no issue with any individual black person I had met. Upon discussing my quandary with some friends in Texas I was presented with the perfect solution. I was told;
"In the South we hate the race, love the people. In the North they hate the people, love the race."
That made perfect sense to me, not just with blacks who that saying was directed toward, but with Innuit, French Canadians and Muslims. Each group I have taken issue with. Each have ideas; put forth by their respective leaders, which have outright angered me. Yet I am not a racist. I don't hate someone because they are a certain color. I make no such distinctions in my day to day life. I simply take offense at those groups who would single themselves out, pit themselves against me because of the color of MY skin. Seek to change what my ancestors toiled and died for to meet some sort of image they, as a minority, held. And the worst of it, I hated that a minority would make me feel ashamed of who I was. Because I have nothing to be ashamed of. I have nothing to apologize for.
So I say to any Muslim, I am glad you choose to come to Canada to make a better life for yourself. I am proud to call my countrymen people who would work so hard and go to such lengths to succeed. But I say to all Muslims, the country you live in, the citizenship you carry, that is not what separates a person from one nation from that of another. It's more than paperwork. It is thoughts and ideas. In my case as well as that of those countries I call friends and allies, it is the idea of freedom, democracy and liberty. So while I respect any person who wishes to better himself or herself by joining with those of us who share those ideals, welcome to Canada, I am proud to call you Canadian. But if you are unwilling to accept for yourself what it means to be a Canadian, you might just be happier remaining in your home country where the people share your heritage and your ideals.
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But if you are unwilling to accept for yourself what it means to be a Canadian [American], you might just be happier remaining in your home country where the people share your heritage and your ideals. ... or going to Africa, Afro-centrists, and enjoy the disease and starvation. Or moving to Europe, John Kerry, and take the rest of the French-wannabes with you.
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