Racebit: Heart Broken & On Sleeve

I don’t know that anybody that is white in America knows this feeling—and I say this with pause because I am not comfortable making such statements generally because intellectually I know, they’re as plausible as guarantees about the after-life. Truth is, there’s no telling what the invidual human being will experience. Suffice to say that it is often the case, in America, that white people don’t have this feeling. History made that the case. Just as it made it the case that it’s likely that we will have this feeling.

You know, I am not a native born citizen. My citizenship is a few months old in fact. My immigrantship is more robust, going on 15 yrs. Much is written and said about the specificity of race in America. I would go further and say that for much of my intent and purposes in life, race was invented in America. Was and is every day. And so in my stay here, a huge component of who I came to be as an adult was “made in America”—this country taught me race, taught me I was black.

And it did so incompletely—as it often does for those like me, who despite appearing to be as black as the next black person and often more geographically black if you want to evoke African origin---have a pre-existing understanding of themselves that belies the way this country teaches you about race. I wouldn’t dare enumerate the ways in which my experience of myself often appears to be to be very distinct from that of black Americans (and mine is not the sole black ethnic specificity that would recognize its distinctions from a inherently very diverse black American experience either). Simply stated, "I'm black too" but it’s not the same in many ways. But it is the same in one crucial respect and to me, that is this feeling. The feeling of becoming simultaneously invisible and calcified into an identity that has nothing to do with the human being that you are. It is surreal in the sense that you are not made to be able to process its incongruence and in the sense that it is literally above the reality--if you want to hold on to the notion that you, yourself, are real.

The very first time you experience that feeling—that very American feeling—it comes without fanfare, perhaps to highest cruelty. It comes at work or at school or in an intimate moment you thought was a confessional with a friend—you are there and you are yourself and you realize, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that all that you are doesn’t rise up and drown a pre-existing idea that has been had of you, all along. A question like "do you think these statements were purposely intended to marginalize you as 'the black candidate?" is asked and there you are, a foregone conclusion pretending to be a real interlocutor. There is no explaining the little tragedy that unfolds in that moment. And not only do you recognize when it happens to you, but you have the added violence of watching it happen to others routinely, in that way that only those who have seen something, can see something. That feeling to me, is racism, if ever it was worth trying to quantify it that way.

I think this week of race-baiting identity politics in the campaign brought me squarely into that feeling. It was in part the dirty politics of race that seemed to get the best of the discussion on blogs, best of Obama’s people, best of me, even. I mean I could barely believe when I realized, reading shit at work, like comments by the head of BET or Charlie Rangel, that my feelings were hurt. "Feelings?", I thought? "When did I get so sensitive? What are my feelings doing anywhere near the NY Times online anyways?". But mostly it was the fact that at the end of the day, or rather, in this case, at the very beginning of the debate, Obama could not escape being encapsulated, entrapped, eventually declawed. He had not done so himself, not in the campaign and not in the recent days. He had not gone there and on the record that is not his rhetoric. And yet, there he was, being put to insistent formulations of The Race Question.

The real sad irony is that in that context, the person who slung race around, and self-congratulatedly mentioned the “black-browns” ad nauseum was Hillary, of course. Because a good, solid, self-satisfied white liberal who (to hear some tell it) has a “track record” of “service” on behalf of said “black-browns” is completely comfortable tossing race around. She even showed off her street cred by being comfortable saying bullshit like “I’m actually sad we didn’t get to more black-brown issues.” She could say that in this debate over and over again. If he had done that, he would be considered polarizing or militant or narrow minded, or God forbid, “like Al Sharpton”. If he had spoken in that voice—not that he would want to—he’d lose all his appeal as the crossover man of change. If he didn't, as he didn't, he would sit there and take it and lose God only knows how much. And to watch a grown man, an accomplished man, in the heat of such a historical moment that’s also such a heady personal moment, have to be diminished in this way was, frankly, infuriating and painful at the same time. It made me miss the early nineties, when I had just moved here and didn’t really give a shit about this place except for thinking it was a fascinatingly dysfunctional social experiment on crack.

Watching him tonight broke my heart; brought me to that feeling. Not only is the feeling difficult to fully express or explain, as is made clear by this rambling, it also makes the very idea of coherence tenuous. Racism—in a nutshell, is this: you become an incoherence to yourself and there is nothing you can do about it. The feeling of having your hand forced, but in a deeply personal, subjective, spiritual way, despite what you say, what you mean and what you intend, is truly uniquely devastating. And I'll concede, if there's a stench of "righteous indignation" here, well, the air is contaminated, so it is only right it should stink.