This is the fourth attempt at writing this blog entry, which is ostensibly about race relations in the United States, and how it afffects writers.
The first time I sat down to write was after Barack Obama’s transcendent speech on his controversial minister, Jeremiah Wright and more generally race relations; the second, after fellow blogger Fringes wrote a great post on the matter; the third, the 40th anniversary of the asassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on Friday.
The problem is writing about the State of Race Relations in the United States makes one sound either sanctimonious or bigoted, pretentious or banal. Either your message is pointlessly anodyne or gratuitously provacative. Trying to say something new about this topic is like trying to describe a sunny day or a pair of beautiful eyes: no matter what you write, it’s been done before.
The only way I can write about this, then, is from my own experience.
So it took a University of Memphis basketball game to get my off my fat white ass, so to speak.
You see, I spent the first dozen years of my life in Memphis, where King was killed, where poverty is endemic and overwhelming, and the state of relations between African-Americans and whites has been, to be charitable, awful. Historically, Blacks and whites in Memphis can agree on exactly two things: 1) they don’t like each other very much; and 2) they have an unbiding love of the University of Memphis Tigers men’s basketball team.
Growing up, the Tigers (then, the Memphis State Tigers) was about the only thing that could bridge the chasm between Blacks and whites. There was no major professional sports teams in Memphis, and Memphis State basketball — whose roster was largely African-American — was the only thing in the city that everyone embraced with something resembling color-blindedness.
When Memphis State reached the finals of the NCAA tournament in 1973, it was one of the only times of that era I can remember white people actually expressing admiration for Black people in public.
Where the hell is Memphis?
Now, having won their showdown with UCLA on Saturday night, Memphis is playing in tonight’s final versus something called "Jayhawks." I’m pulling for Memphis not just because I’m a fan, but for some much-needed (however temporary) reconcilliation and love in a town that — despite being home of the National Civil Rights Museum — still pretty much has its head up its ass in terms of how people treat each other based on the color of their skin.
But that’s the whole problem, the whole reason I wanted to write. It’s not as if I can sit here and point fingers. Both as a person and a writer, I’ve got my own demons that need to be called into account.
Growing up, I knew people who used the word "nigger," and not infrequently. My parents are two of the most open-minded, tolerant people I have ever known, and taught me to be the same. Talk of denigrating black people — and where I lived, you could drop into any white neighborhood and hear it — always made me uncomfortable.
But not uncomfortable enough to protest when I heard the n-word; I went along with the crowd. Granted, I was a child, and it isn’t exactly the equivalent of a Nazi concentration camp guard just following orders. Still, I should have known better.
Like my father. He was not the civil rights-marching type, but at least had the courage of his convictions. When he was in high school, told his classmates he didn’t see why his school should remain segregated. This was when he was 16. In 1948. In the rural South, in a town of about 2,000 people. My father was called "nigger-lover" and the like. But he didn’t back down. It couldn’t have been easy for him, either, being one of six Jews in his neck of the woods, all of whom lived under the same roof.
As a writer, my scorecard is less-than-impressive. My (unpublished) novel is set in Memphis, whose entire cultural self-esteem is based on music, in the hardcore blues of the Mississippi Delta, the gritty soul of Stax Studios (where Blacks and whites played music side-by-side), or, as everybody knows, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other musicians who ripped off Blacks, combined the music with hillbilly and gospel, and made rock-and-roll safe for white people.
Try as I might, I’m no soul man
Music figures large in my novel, and it is set in a city with a majority black population. Yet not one major character is African-American; they appear as factory workers, musicians in a club, workers at a cotton brokerage (both as high-income traders and as waiters), and as a subject of debate and conversation. I don’t think this is racism as much as writing about what one knows, but what does it say about someone who spent so much time in a majority-Black city that he doesn’t know enough Black people to write of them?
I am curious about other writers’ (and readers’) thoughts on this. Do you avoid writing about people who don’t look like you? Do you feel, as the song goes, that everybody is just a little bit racist, or maybe that one shouldn’t try to write about those whose experiences have little to do with your own?
I’ve got way too much to blather on about here, including the bizarre trend I noticed in the 1980s in which suburban white kids who knew absolutely zero Black people but wanted to "be" Black. I’ll have to write more on this later; too bad for you.
For now, go Tigers.
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Excellent post. I rooted this weekend for your Tigers and figured out during the announcers’ commentary a little of what you wrote. Thanks for the perspective.
I also read over the weekend the reason for MLK being in Memphis the weekend he was shot. At the time, black sanitation workers were not allowed to seek shelter in the rain in any other place than under the overhang of their trucks near the trash compressor. The compressor of one such shelter/truck malfunctioned, crushing two workers. Such a shameful law, and MLK was there to ask for basic human rights and dignities.
Great post.
go tigers, so we home boys, memphis born and raised
I once took a poetry workshop with Al Young, California’s poet laureate. He assigned us a poem written from the POV of someone who was very different from us in some way: gender, race, ethnicity… A white woman in class (Al is African-American) said she wouldn’t feel comfortable writing from, say, the point of view of a black man. Al said it’s incumbent upon her to try, or for everyone to try to write from a completely different point of view, as an entry point into empathy. She said, “What if I get it wrong?” And he said, “People will let you know!”
I do strive to include diverse characters in my books – not just race but size, sexual orientation and religion – so long as they fit naturally into the narrative and only when I feel I can write for them. I think, just as with the acting, a writer should be able to extrapolate from his own experience.
fringes: thanks for the kind words, and keep rooting for the tigs.
the garbageman’s strike is part of history, obviously, but few are aware of the conditions that they worked under. most of them had to apply for welfare to keep a roof over their heads. mlk didn’t have to march with the strikers, but he wouldn’t have done otherwise.
rawdog: i’m from memphis, born and raised indeed. but about as much a homeboy as mashed potatoes, no gravy. if i can say that.
kate: what a great way to look at it. kind of like historical writing — if you get it wrong, somebody will let you know.
still, i’m kind of chicken.
leigh: you make far more of an effort than i do. i don’t know if i can really extrapolate from experience what it’s like to be african-american — i’ve never been pulled over for driving while black — but there is thing called “research” that i am loathe to do.
Wonderful essay this one; sometimes the only way to reconcile 2 diverse views is thorough a neutral conduit with a power uniquely its own. I am not a huge fan of basketball on television but watching it live is mesmerizing – the movement of the bodies in concert with ball accompanied by the beat and squeak of shoes on the floor. The beauty of the game transcends division. You have taken a difficult subject and achieved exactly what you set out to do.
Thanks for sharing.
This is a wonderful and thoughtful post. Your question is a good one – I just read Martha Southgate’s novel The Fall of Rome which is about the black-white color bar in a private new england school. Southgate is black but she writes convincingly from both perspectives. And my all-time favorite writer is Nadine Gordimer (white South African) who dedicates her entire life’s work (all fourteen spectacular novels and hundreds of short stories) to issues of ineguality along ethnic differences. She writes from all perspectives and has the courage to let her characters speak honestly.
It’s a difficult thing to do, but I agree with Kate’s story – we should try.
Very thought-provoking post. When I write I don’t consciously attempt to write about race. Which is kind of awkward, because African-American writers are sort of expected to write about race. Originally the only way I could do that was to write about my family, but the New England black experience or the West African experience is very different from what is depicted in the mainstream, so it’s not like I have any models to draw from. I was born in Harlem but I didn’t grow up in a black community; I grew up in the suburbs: predominately white school, predominately white church. I’ve lived in a black neighborhood now for about 10 years so now I can draw from both experiences. My family single-handedly diversified wherever it went. Gotta go to work now but will blog more about this later. If interested you might try taking a look at “Black Like Me” or the first book Lawrence Otis Graham (don’t remember the title) wrote on the exclusive country club lifestyle in Greenwich CT.
judy: thank you for the kind words. i love how you put it: sometimes the only way to reconcile 2 diverse views is thorough a neutral conduit with a power uniquely its own. well said indeed.
after last night’s debacle for memphis, i wish i was not a fan of basketball on television, either.
verivore: also thank you for the kind words. and thank you for the book and author recommendations — gordimer would be a good read on this (even if it’s not the good ol’ u.s.a.).
kofi: and a very thought-provoking response. when you say that african-american writers are expected to write about race, i though of the writer-critic anatole broyard, who passed for white; he didn’t want to be considered a “black writer” who wrote exclusively about race.
you have a wealth of varied experience to draw upon, kofi; in a way, i’m kind of jealous. i would be interested in reading about having your family diversify things wherever it went, if you’ve written about it.
funny aside: i had originally called this post “black unlike me.”
Wow, interesting post. Maybe I’ll steal the idea for my own blog, if you don’t mind!
I moved to the deep rural south for a couple years as an adult and was quite shocked at the state of race relations — I’d had no idea. It informed my work for a long time. One of my first published stories was partly about race; my first and unpublished novel was very much about race and had many black characters. (I never tackled the issue head-on, though, which is probably why I gave up on the book.)
But I’ve never written from the pov of a person of another race, and only very rarely and unsuccessfully from a man’s pov. I was vigorously warned off this as an undergraduate: if you’re a privileged white woman, I was told, you shouldn’t write from a black man’s point of view. Someone else owns that story.
I sort of think this is true, but not entirely. If the purpose of the work is political, then yeah: it’s not my place or my story to describe the experience of racism as a victim, since I haven’t experienced it and there are plenty of people out there who have and can tell the story better. But if the purpose of the work is solely imaginative — and frankly, not much work is — then I think it’s okay.
This is just my thinking at the moment and totally subject to change!
Great thoughts, bookfraud. I recognize in myself the tendency to have characters more like me and those I am fond of. I have only had one moment where I consciously decided I was being an idiot about it when I found myself having an evil dwarf. (This was before Twin Peaks, but still.) I know it is a character flaw, but I haven’t yet written anything where the dynamics between races of humanity were significant. I have sone so between alien races, though. (Science fiction and fantasy, the safe way of touching on awkward stupid human tricks.)
And I believe we are at least somewhat hard wired to see differences. Not that that’s an excuse, because it isn’t. If small children don’t notice the differences between the races, then it isn’t an overwhelming tendency and it does, like the song goes, have to be carefully taught.
“I have only had one moment where I consciously decided I was being an idiot about it when I found myself having an evil dwarf. ”
Where the hell did that garbled mess come from? Let me rephrase: I have only written one character that was another race/type/ability than myself, and that was an evil dwarf. And I realised I was an idiot for that choice.
The race issue is one that is continuously simmering in my country, Guyana. About half of the population is of Indian descent with blacks comprising about 40 percent. The ruling party is predominantly Indian while the main opposition is…you got it. This makes for interesting times when general elections come around. There is a kind of uneasy peace between these two races that at times is fractured by criminals. The perception is that the Indians have the money and the majority of bandits are blacks. Open racial hostility is very rare with everyone walking around minding their words for fear of being labelled racist. Thing is, lots of the black folks I know think that their travails are a result of their race. Ok, this comment is going, going….
It just happens that my fledgling attempt at a novel focuses on the life and times of an Indian family living in a black community. Yeah, another black writer and race.
reellis: go ahead and steal the idea for your own blog. just make the check out to “cash.”
i find it fascinating that your years in the deep south has informed your fiction writing — and that the failure to tackle things head on lead you to give up on it.
“they” say one should try writing from the opposite gender’s point of view (or that of another ethnicity) just as an exercise. but academia, and other students, are pretty dead set against the idea in practice. but you’re not allowed to change your thinking.
writtenwyrrd: i was kind of wondering about what that mess regarding the evil dwarf.
it’s interesting how you’ve had conflict between difference “human” species, but not necessarily between different colors of humans. it can be just as powerful a metaphor, if done with a steady hand.
as far as hard-wiring is concerned, i think we are all programmed for at least a bit of tribalism — simply open up the newspaper for evidence of that. when you have people who look alike killing each other because of what tribe they inhabit, then you know something is really messed up…
bakannal: great comment; getting a totally different perspective really puts a fine point on this. maybe your fledgling novel is about race, but it sounds as if your experience is rich with possibilities.
I’ve been writing about race a good bit lately. Most of the new chapbook has some type of racial element to it, esp. when it comes to this administration’s actions during Hurricane Katrina. Shameful, shameful stuff.
I think rellis makes a good point: when used in a political context, a white woman writing as an African-American man (or as a half-white/half-Native American woman, e.g. Peggy Seltzer/Margaret Jones) will likely ring false but if I’m creating a work of fiction that I want populated by a diverse group of characters, why can’t I include black, Mexican, Asian, gay, etc. characters?
As for kofi’s comment about not writing the “correct” African American experience, that which is accepted as mainstream, I think that simply perpetuates the literary stereotype. I, as a reader, want to know more about the many different kinds of “black” experience – whether it’s growing up in a suburb or the city, in the northeast or the southwest. You as the individual will make the story both unique and universal, not your cultural identification.
Hmmn, an interesting guy walked into my first short story. He’ll probably show up again. Turned out he was black, but I saw no point in emphasizing it, because I don’t care for ostentatious introductions, to “prove” I am or am not this or that. His colour wasn’t the most important thing about him anyway.
Funny you should mention Anatole Broyard. Lawrence Otis Graham’s second book, “Our Kind of People,” is all about people like Mr. Broyard, who either passed or were light enough to do so. A disturbing but fascinating read.
An aside. Why is it some writers describe their black characters as ‘dark and smooth like an eggplant?” Where I’m from an eggplant, or boulanger as we know it, is purple. He’s so black he’s purple? I’ve never seen anyone that black.
Great post, and an interesting question. I’m working on my second novel, set in East Texas, which has a diverse population. My goal is to reflect that naturally within the work. The trick is to stay away from stereotypes and challenge myself: Why is this major/minor character white or black? How would race reconfigure the character arc, and what would it mean for the novel as a whole.
collin: interesting angle; did you talk to (or read about) katrina survivors? i’m sure they have some strong words.
leigh: of course, you are right. one should strive for diversity, if it suits the work. does one do “research” in the typical manner of the word, or simply imagine?
there’s no typical “black” experience in this country (just like there’s no typical “jewish” experience), but there are stereotypes. and i guess fiction will kill stereotypes; at least that’s the idea, eh?
bernita: his color [sic] wasn’t the most important thing about him anyway. absolutely. great point
kofi: well, it’s not like there’s a ton of examples to make my point besides anatole broyard.
i will definitely check out “our kind of people.”
how much does “passing” happen today? not that i’m assuming you would know because of your ethnic background…
bakannal: i’ve never met anyone with that kind of tone to their skin. it makes it sound like acrylic paint.
also, if someone is white, usually they’re “white.” not much exposition on what shade of white.
britta coleman: thanks for stopping by and the comment. interesting questions you have there, and it shows some depth of artistry for even asking them. me, i just write full steam ahead without such considerations.
what is it like in east texas — like louisiana, but with bad food?