[lit-ideas] Re: The Strident Voice of Defeat
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 16:11:12 -0600
PE:
So, 'Black person in America' isn't something one can describe?
Sure one can. A black person in America is a person with lotsa melanin
living in a continent known as America (sometimes ethnocentrically referring
only to the United States of America, but that's another story). As you may
have guessed that description doesn't carry a lot of meaningful information.
So let's change it and say: "a black person in America is a black person in
America is a black person in America" après Gertrude Stein. To me that has
a lot of meaning, but this isn't the time to go into that, especially as it
still doesn't convey much information, so let's add something to it. A
black person in America is a black person in America who is a black person
in America with lotsa melanin who's statistically more likely to be living
in poverty than any other group of people, more likely to be incarcerated,
more likely to be denied a job, a promotion, an open choice of housing, more
likely to be denied credit, more likely to be preyed upon by unscrupulous
"lenders", more likely drop out of school, more likely to die young, etc.,
etc., etc. But that doesn't tell me what I want to know, to wit: what does
it MEAN to be a black person in America. Depends of what you mean by MEAN.
By MEAN I mean if I were a black person what thoughts, emotions, cultural
relief-belief system could I possibly have to keep me from killing every
fucking white person I encountered? Only when I imagine what it is to be a
black person in America do I understand Eric's desire to vaporize any and
all Islamists. Only it's the white people in America that I would vaporize.
But that's self-defeating for me, now isn't it? Not only that, it just so
happens that the most spiritually advanced human being America has ever
produced was a black person, Martin Luther King, Jr. (and, I would suggest,
the most politically advanced human being America has ever produced), a man
who would be appalled at my "what it means to be a black person in America."
He would say, I say, that to be a black person in America means to be the
last great hope for America.
Who knows? The wind bloweth where it willeth. Untilleth then we all go
blithely about imagining that we've chosen where the wind is taking us.
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2007 2:51 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Strident Voice of Defeat
I wrote:
"But I suppose, since I am white, someone could tell me and I still
wouldn't
KNOW."
to which Mike Geary shouted:
"BINGO!"
Clueless in Nova Scotia,
Phil Enns
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