This is so precise and fun to read, and I even thought you might be from my generation. You are my sons' generation and wrote generously, authentically and helpfully to pierce through the obnoxious stereotypes that still pervade the American psyche. My favorite line is that "no racist white person can stop my success". Yes!
Every time I see that condescending/racist infographic, all I can imagine is a group of white supremacists laughing at the success of their plot to have their rhetoric adopted as “progressive” via strategic plants in our “elite” institutions.
As Ayn Rand so eloquently put it, "The smallest minority in the world is the individual". I have always been an individual first - not a 'joiner' and proud of it. It sounds like you are just the same. I stopped worrying about the 'joiners' a long time ago.
Back in 1967 and 1968 I worked in the Upward Bound Program at the Claremont Colleges. The second summer, a group of Blacks tried to take over the program through physical intimidation of the staff and high school participants. Upward Bound was designed to help high school students of all races who needed extra help to succeed in college with a residential program during the summer and follow-up sessions during their senior years. Those who tried to take over the program claimed that homework and studying were a white racist plot to undermine Black is Beautiful. Instead of having homework sessions in the evenings, the Blacks claimed that they were entitled to have dances -- every night -- and to use peyote to open their awareness to white oppression.
The solution as simple. The leaders of the "uprising" were fired and their "muscle" from the probation camps were send back to their camps. The program ended up being the most academic west of the Mississippi. The biggest losers were the minorities students from the probation camps since they had been mislead by the "coup's" leaders, all who came from wealthy Black families, e.g. surgeons, entrepreneurs, etc. Because the probationees had been abused into criminal behavior, they lost their best opportunity to break the poverty cycle, while the leaders suffered no actual consequences as is the general situation with the wealthy.
It is clear that race was a bogus division. Instead, certain power groups used race to divide people because there's money to be made in division. It seems that the same dynamic is at work today.
“[The charge of “trying to act white] stems from a narrow view of “blackness” that is highly reliant on the idea that to be “black” is to be a supposed outsider to the broader American culture. Of course, this never made sense, as black (read: Negro) culture has always been central to American culture in some way and it certainly was when I grew up.”
First, black culture is, and has always been, an essential strand of, and inseparable from, American culture, with outsized influence and significance in comparison with the proportion of black folks in the American population. In fact, the black cultural strand is often the strand by which members of other cultures most readily recognize aspects of this culture as American.
Second, black folks rightfully object to being perceived in stereotypical terms, but isn’t the accusation of “trying to act white” at bottom a charge that one is not conforming to a “black-enough” stereotype?
Finally, the expectation that being “black enough” requires that one maintain a semi-oppositional “outsider” status, seems at odds with the perfectly valid desire of black Americans to fully share in the benefits of being Americans. Isn’t it an obvious mistake to view the choices as exclusively “outsider” or “Carlton”? Just more stereotypes.
Regarding American culture as “uncool” works for comedic purposes. But insofar as “acting white” makes one a “race traitor” due to the implication of insufficient oppositional separation from whites, that is a troubling position: how does maintaining the “black-enough” outsider pose lead to greater cultural and political participation and rewards for non-celebrity black Americans?
How is a majority culture likely to regard a minority that continually asserts its separate “outsider” status? Doesn’t the freedom of black folks also depend on the willingness of black folks to grant all black folks the freedom to find their own personal relationships with American culture?
I really dig this. Since we are America and ARE AMERICA, why is it we feel the need to remain outsiders. Part of the point of the CRM was to get America to ACT LIKE America. My ancestors have been here longer than many people who are here today and I'll be damned if you're gonna say you're more American than me.
It's another reason that I don't have problem with code-switching or think it overly onerous. Everyone has to code-switch. You think a peasant talking to the king was gonna talk like how he talked with his peasant friends? Sure. If he wants some kind of injury for showing a lack of respect. There have always been levels and to an extent they are arbitrary but life is about surviving and adapting. Gotta do it.
I loved this questions as well: "how does maintaining the "black-enough" outsider pose lead to greater cultural and political participation and rewards for non-celebrity black Americans?" It's an important question and in practice we know the answer is that it doesn't really help. No one wants to work with someone being difficult--whatever their reasons, whatever happened to their ancestors.
I wish I could shake your hand. This is so brilliant. “If me being me is a problem when I do nothing to you then it’s your issue, not mine” is exactly how I was raised, and what I’m trying to teach my kids.
The real privilege is to live in a time when we can be individuals and live our best lives. Shame on those who squander that privilege on hatred and resentment.
Wonderful! I wish more people could allow themselves to be themselves instead of living down to limiting preconceived notions. I always advices my children to simply answer with their given names whenever someone inquired “what are you?”
I'd love to include you on my YouTube, if your are interested. I focus on neurodivergence and intersectionality, which includes perspectives on life in general, like racelessness. You might enjoy the conversations I've had with Angel Eduardo, Adam Coleman, and others.
Wonderful. Will you please send a message via my site? That way we don't need to publicly post our email addresses. I'll get back to you ASAP. https://eqsolutionsu2.com/contact
Some race-activists have commented on how Carlton was mocked, while Will was the hero. In the first Hidden Colors documentary, British activist Toyin Agbetu says of the sitcom, "There are two black boys. One is street smart, he can dance, and he doesn't get good grades. The other is not street, he can't dance and he gets good grades. Which one are we expected to admire?"
Thanks be to God this piece is indeed Black thought! And yea, it was “fun” as one responded stated. Yet, this is a serious debate that involves pain & search. I think it has to be “fun” & “witty” because we (Black folk) been focused on the wrong point to be considered regarding one we think might be a “House Negro.” (Because that’s the underlying debate...is it not?)
And we get stuck on arguing if one is or if one ain’t a House Negro, rather than distinguishing if one is or if one ain’t a GOOD House Negro? And then, *whose* good?
We don’t even allow for the idea of a “good” House Negro. Because the image of a Good House Negro is Stephen (from Django). But that Negro was “good” as good was defined from the perspective of white supremacy & white power.
Yet not all House Negroes were Stephen. Some of them snuck food out to those being starved. Some House Negroes (rarely yet on rare occasion) unlocked the door to the ammunition house. Some House Negroes aided the Underground Railroad & guided others in the “runaway process.” And even if you have never read the narratives, close your eyes & sit in the Spirit with the spirits of our ancestors & know it to be true...
So...who is the “Good” House Negro? From whose perspective are we allowing the House Negro to exist?
We only allow the House Negro to exist within the framework of whiteness. So the “good” House Negro was someone we despise, & the “bad” House Negro was someone who got his/her ass whopped all the time...and we ain’t want to be that.
We confined the House Negro to someone who served Massa’s purposes. And so the House Negro was to be shamed. Is to be shamed. Carlton. (sic)
But, what if the question accepted the reality of the House Negro? The House Negro exists. He and she were bred into existence by the ideology of white supremacy & the force of white power.
Whose “goodness” does this House Negro serve? Whose “goodness” does this Field Negro serve, for that matter?
The real debate is it or if not Carlton use the definition of “good” supplied to him by white power and/or rooted in white supremacy? Or is this Carlton a Free Negro who uses his access to whiteness for the liberation of his people?
Honestly, I'd just as soon do away with the whole dichotomy. Why keep it at all? There's no point in worrying about who is a "bed wench" or "sell-out." Being Black, specifically an American Negro which isn't the same thing as say a black Haitain, is an ethnic fact. But, just sharing an ethnicity doesn't mean all your experiences are the same. Having a healthy outlook on your ethnicity and your place would do far more for Negro success than harping on this stuff. Again, why care what Massa said at all? Ain't no Massas now unless you choose them.
Furthermore, I'd rather us look to being virtuous whereever we are and whatever we do. True virtue is not held by any one culture and all have their strengths and weaknesses. Praise what is praiseworthy and blame what is blameworthy. Lift each other up where you can but also keep your business tight. I think it's too much weight to put on people. It reminds me of the quote from Head of State that one Chris Rock movie. It was about how in his position he represented his WHOLE race while the white candidate didn't have to worry about that. But, why? People can try to impose that but should you care? Is it really gonna help?
I recall 2 occasions where the branch manager talked about what an "ethical company" IBM was. I never saw the word 'benchmark' on any IBM documentation.
Benchmarks are how you test the performance of computers. IBM introduced the Datamaster 23 to replace the 5100 as the low end computer for the General Systems Division. That was the division I fixed computers for as a Customer Engineer.
Someone set a a table in our office with a 5100 on the left and a DM 23 on the right.
I was working 2nd shift at the time. Sometimes it was totally dead a sometimes I was running around like a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. So I wrote two benchmark programs in BASIC to test the machines. One was a Bubble Sort and the other was a Prime Numbers Search using division and square root. The old machine was almost twice as fast as the new one in both benchmarks.
Very ethical!
It is not that the new device didn't have some advantages, much bigger screen and 2 floppy drives instead of a single tape drive. But what would have happened if everyone knew it was slower.
Virtue? In this world?
The Screwing of the Average Man (1974) by David Hapgood
Yes, people will lie and cheat etc. I'm not saying that doesn't happen but I do think we don't HAVE to be that way. The fact that they did that was shady and rather shitty. We can call stuff out and try not to support that behavior.
Sounds like they should have just made a faster machine. Don't have to lie then...
In any case, I believe it is possible for people to at least be mostly virtuous.
Oh that is just the start. You see they did make a faster machine.
I was in the General Systems Division an we dealt with what everyone in the industry but IBM called minicomputers. There was also an Office Products Division. They made a device called The Displawriter which was marketed as a word processing machine. The Displaywriter was based on the 8086 CPU while the DM23 had an 8085 CPU. The Displaywriter would have been about 4 times faster as a computer but IBM only provided word processing software.
There was a company Digital Research that started providing a computer operating system for it.
One of my fellow employees actually asked me why I wanted a computer at home. I had soldered together a Heathkit H-8, an 8080 based microcomputer. That is what they were called then.
He was an Irish guy in his early 50s I guessed.
Most people don't really buy products they buy marketing. Yeah it's dumb. LOL
Hence why democracy is the purest form of authoritarianism. You “choose your masters.” Like slaves in the Deep South who chose their masters every new year. Folk today believe their choice from a selection of shitty masters could somehow become “good.”
Do you realize in traditional Japanese culture, something we would call suicide is considered a virtuous & honorable position? There a extremely few “universal truths.” You might consider reading Marimba Ani’s “Yurugu.”
The only way to “do away with the dichotomy” is to live beyond the white supremacist power structure. Otherwise, such dichotomies are structural to the current world order & must be kept so long as it is in tact.
As I live in Japan, yes. I realize that and it's a current social problem. Just last year, two young girls stood on some train tracks in order to kill themselves. They also tended to kill offspring that they felt that they couldn't care for in the belief that the child's soul would be reincarnated and given another chance later. So, yes. I'm aware. Some of those beliefs are the result of philosophical differences in certain areas but generally all cultures know that murder is wrong (but if it happens in self-defense that's a different matter), frown upon stealing, etc. For examples of this, you can look at C.S. Lewis's "The Abolition of Man." I found it quite helpful there. Thanks for the book rec. When I have down time in the school year, I'll look at it.
You do bring up a good point regarding the tyranny found in democracy. If done right, you can get compromises that mostly work but currently it feels like our government has been actively working against all citizens for years. It's exhausting and I've stopped voting in large elections. When I return to the states, I'll focus on the local and maybe state level but even then I have my doubts.
I also have reservations about how intact certain structures are and how effective they are. Societies don't have to have a full revolution to change and improve. In the US in particular, we made a system where we can amend the errors that were made previously. Unfortunately, that stuff ends up in political squabbles. Finding common ground and figuring it out would be preferable.
That said, part of doing away with a dichotomy is changing your thinking about it. People go to America and are successful all the time. Most of them, if not of European stock, set about trying to see what they need to do to get the most bang for their buck and go from there. At base, I think that renovation is possible and you don't have to wreck the whole house to remake that racist bathroom.
I will say this, as we are in the Time of the Sufferings & entering the Season of Resurrection, the Lord said: destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.
Wrecking the whole house is not a hopeless thing. Rather, for the faithful, wrenching the whole house is the best & more praiseworthy solution.
Moreover, there may be a racist bathroom left from the original design. But don’t neglect the reality that the house was built upon a white supremacist foundation. And that foundation remains...ever mason knows if the foundation is faulty, it must be relaid.
My take on this requires a little background. I started reading science fiction in 4th grade. Not a Black thing. My Catholic grammar school did not teach science. Not a Catholic thing. I learned science and decided that I was an agnostic because of science fiction which my mother called "something crazy". To this day I don't know what she really meant by that or how she came to that conclusion. I have just decided that she intended for me to have a negative emotional reaction to it which seemed rather bizarre when I was 10 because I learned more in a week as a result of reading one sci-fi book than in a month from the nitwit nuns that she was paying to educate me. I was on the road to hell with Clarke and Asimov.
But life changed at the Catholic high school. They determined class category on the basis of mathematics and I ended up in the "Top Class" of the college preparatory track. That is what they called it, I didn't make up that name. School was no big deal, after all these years I think it probably wasn't good for me that it was so easy. I never worshipped grades though. I got straight D's in religion my freshman year, being an agnostic since 7th grade. Spend hours doing mindless busywork for a grade. No way Jose! But I think part of the "white" definition of intelligence is obeying and believing in AUTHORITY. But maybe I am just a racist.
By the time Fresh Prince of Bel-Air came on I was not interested in that kind of show. I don't think I ever watched an entire episode. There was a Black kid at my high school who fit the "Carlton" role though. I think his name was Julian. We didn't cross paths much since he was never in The Class, and the term "acting white" hadn't come into vogue, but other Black boys talked about him in those kinds of terms. Of course I have no idea what they said about me behind my back but one kid made a point of calling me "a gentleman and a scholar " on multiple occasions in my hearing and being quite sarcastic about it.
We now have what is referred to as The Stockholm Syndrome. I don't recall anyone ever suggesting that many Black Americans might be suffering from it but I think it fits to some degree. Among all human beings there are conformists and reactionaries. In my more cheerfully cynical moments I suspect that when the White people are doing something dumb the Black conformists go along with it, and when they are doing something smart the Black reactionaries refuse because it is a "White thing". My sister who was 5 years older started smoking when she was 11. White women in the movies were so glamorous with their languid motion while smoking and getting White Men to light their cigarettes. She has been dead for 14 years. But we can't lynch the cigarette executives for selling "Torches of Freedom" now, can we?
But back to high school. I used to swap SF books with some of the White boys. Probably a White thing. The two Straight A's in Everything White boys did not get involved. Neither one of them impressed me with their intellects they just did the nose to the grindstone thing. That is "Acting White" but it was OK since they were. I never really saw the other White boys giving them a hard time about it. But what shocked me was when one of them got a B. He cried in class. Fortunately that shock delayed me from laughing because that was almost what I did. Then I thought of all of the hours he must have spent doing that stupid religious drivel homework that drove me crazy. So he became the Salutatorian. I used to beat the Valedictorian at chess but number 2 refused to play me.
So what does school and grades and this "acting white" crap really mean? Then there was college. I ended up in a White fraternity sorta by accident. When they didn't have enough rooms reserved in the dormitories at the beginning of the school year they had some deal arranged with the frats to handle the "overflow". So I ended up staying in one for a couple of weeks. Also during this time the fraternities were looking for people that they wanted to pledge. Prior to this I had never even thought about it. Of course science fiction came into it, AGAIN!
There is a now classic and well known book, among SF aficionados, Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. It was fairly new back then. It involves Einsteinian physics with extreme time dilation and the Big Crunch Theory of the universe. So I got into a discussion with a senior physics major about it. He says to me, "You don't try to understand Einsteinian physics. You memorize the equations and how to apply the equations." That shocked the hell out of my 18 year old brain. The scientist and engineering characters in my SF books always understood what they were dealing with. ROFLMBAO
You're not supposed to disillusion people like that! It's just not White!
So two Black kids ended up pledging with the fraternity, Al from California and me from The Projects but very unghetto. They were shocked when I didn't even know what marijuana smelled like. The cops never busted the fraternities for drugs that I ever heard. An engineering school campus was practically sacrosanct. Watch the movie Real Genius to get an idea what it was like though of course not that far over the top but similar atmosphere.
Another peculiar thing was the Black kids in the dorms. Any Black kids in the fraternities had to be Oreo cookies. LOL
What has the world come to after decades of this crap though? I did FORTRAN programming on keypunch machines back then. Now I am typing on a Samsung smartphone. The technology DOES NOT CARE. But are we still paying The Man to live on the planet.
You can get labeled a Carlton for just being smart and finding school easy. Two Black kids who were not friends paid me $100 each to take their SATs. That probably would not be so easy today. Photo IDs weren't standard then. LOL
There are Black people playing at the Carton role but many of the people making anything of it are those trapped in the underclass. I don't have the slightest interest in psychoanalysing every quasi-Carlton I meet. Who cares?
What kind of future we try to make using this technology for education could matter. Read some science fiction.
This was a lot and you pointed out a fact regarding how the definition of a "Carlton" could be quite elastic. The thing is, by all accounts, I really counted as more of a Renaissance Man ideal since I did pretty much everything. I just wasn't as strong in math. You're also right about this mostly coming from those who feel stuck in "underclass" status. It's the same thing for any group of people though (though maybe less so with certain Asian groups due to the influence of Confucianism and other things). Either way, those who aren't as skilled or talented tend to try to say that whatever the skilled or talented person is doing is wrong somehow instead of inspect themselves and expanding their own horizons.
That said, I would never say that I am playing or played a Carlton role. That was just a label that was slapped on me and after a while I was like *thug shrug* about it.
I also find it odd that you didn't learn science in your early Catholic schooling since things like the Big Bang Theory and the basis of Genetics comes from Catholic people, particularly monks and priests. Your school sounded odd. There have been run-ins between the Faith and Science but often that was when a scientist went beyond his field and started trying to do theology a la Galileo.
Anyway, thanks for the readings, I'll look through these when I can. I've always liked science-fiction and I am currently writing stuff based in a world that I built. It's currently in its steampunk phase because---the aestethics. Be blessed!
I do not know how my grammar school compared to other Catholic grammar schools at the time. Was it different because it was in a Black neighborhood? Do not know.
I'd be curious to see what the deal was. I do know some groups of Catholics caught what I would call "The Protestant" bug with regard to things like science when actual dogma doesn't require you to believe or disbelieve in any of it. What difference does it mean to a being outside of time whether or not creation was instantaneous for its creations?
That's the thing. A lot of the traits are just good ones to have in an employee or someone you do business with. Even with your weed dealer, you'd like that dude to be on time and to give you the correct measurements etc.
However, we've definitely assigned things like hair too much importance. I see nothing wrong with having to dress for work but as long as the hair is well-kept and doesn't smell, I don't see why it needs to be an issue. Thankfully, I've never had to worry about it. I do what I want with my hair and clothing for the most part. That stuff can be so cultural and as the world has expanded, being overly strict on that makes little sense.
This is so precise and fun to read, and I even thought you might be from my generation. You are my sons' generation and wrote generously, authentically and helpfully to pierce through the obnoxious stereotypes that still pervade the American psyche. My favorite line is that "no racist white person can stop my success". Yes!
Every time I see that condescending/racist infographic, all I can imagine is a group of white supremacists laughing at the success of their plot to have their rhetoric adopted as “progressive” via strategic plants in our “elite” institutions.
Spot on! I just became an annual subscriber. Looking forward to meeting you one day. Hopefully soon. God bless you!
Thank you for the praise for the article and thank you for your support!
Spot on & such a fun read!
As Ayn Rand so eloquently put it, "The smallest minority in the world is the individual". I have always been an individual first - not a 'joiner' and proud of it. It sounds like you are just the same. I stopped worrying about the 'joiners' a long time ago.
Back in 1967 and 1968 I worked in the Upward Bound Program at the Claremont Colleges. The second summer, a group of Blacks tried to take over the program through physical intimidation of the staff and high school participants. Upward Bound was designed to help high school students of all races who needed extra help to succeed in college with a residential program during the summer and follow-up sessions during their senior years. Those who tried to take over the program claimed that homework and studying were a white racist plot to undermine Black is Beautiful. Instead of having homework sessions in the evenings, the Blacks claimed that they were entitled to have dances -- every night -- and to use peyote to open their awareness to white oppression.
The solution as simple. The leaders of the "uprising" were fired and their "muscle" from the probation camps were send back to their camps. The program ended up being the most academic west of the Mississippi. The biggest losers were the minorities students from the probation camps since they had been mislead by the "coup's" leaders, all who came from wealthy Black families, e.g. surgeons, entrepreneurs, etc. Because the probationees had been abused into criminal behavior, they lost their best opportunity to break the poverty cycle, while the leaders suffered no actual consequences as is the general situation with the wealthy.
It is clear that race was a bogus division. Instead, certain power groups used race to divide people because there's money to be made in division. It seems that the same dynamic is at work today.
https://bit.ly/3fUBy1z April 8, 2021, CityWatch, Hate Money Stalks America
Good article!
A key point:
“[The charge of “trying to act white] stems from a narrow view of “blackness” that is highly reliant on the idea that to be “black” is to be a supposed outsider to the broader American culture. Of course, this never made sense, as black (read: Negro) culture has always been central to American culture in some way and it certainly was when I grew up.”
First, black culture is, and has always been, an essential strand of, and inseparable from, American culture, with outsized influence and significance in comparison with the proportion of black folks in the American population. In fact, the black cultural strand is often the strand by which members of other cultures most readily recognize aspects of this culture as American.
Second, black folks rightfully object to being perceived in stereotypical terms, but isn’t the accusation of “trying to act white” at bottom a charge that one is not conforming to a “black-enough” stereotype?
Finally, the expectation that being “black enough” requires that one maintain a semi-oppositional “outsider” status, seems at odds with the perfectly valid desire of black Americans to fully share in the benefits of being Americans. Isn’t it an obvious mistake to view the choices as exclusively “outsider” or “Carlton”? Just more stereotypes.
Regarding American culture as “uncool” works for comedic purposes. But insofar as “acting white” makes one a “race traitor” due to the implication of insufficient oppositional separation from whites, that is a troubling position: how does maintaining the “black-enough” outsider pose lead to greater cultural and political participation and rewards for non-celebrity black Americans?
How is a majority culture likely to regard a minority that continually asserts its separate “outsider” status? Doesn’t the freedom of black folks also depend on the willingness of black folks to grant all black folks the freedom to find their own personal relationships with American culture?
I really dig this. Since we are America and ARE AMERICA, why is it we feel the need to remain outsiders. Part of the point of the CRM was to get America to ACT LIKE America. My ancestors have been here longer than many people who are here today and I'll be damned if you're gonna say you're more American than me.
It's another reason that I don't have problem with code-switching or think it overly onerous. Everyone has to code-switch. You think a peasant talking to the king was gonna talk like how he talked with his peasant friends? Sure. If he wants some kind of injury for showing a lack of respect. There have always been levels and to an extent they are arbitrary but life is about surviving and adapting. Gotta do it.
I loved this questions as well: "how does maintaining the "black-enough" outsider pose lead to greater cultural and political participation and rewards for non-celebrity black Americans?" It's an important question and in practice we know the answer is that it doesn't really help. No one wants to work with someone being difficult--whatever their reasons, whatever happened to their ancestors.
All in all, bravo here. We are in accord!
I wish I could shake your hand. This is so brilliant. “If me being me is a problem when I do nothing to you then it’s your issue, not mine” is exactly how I was raised, and what I’m trying to teach my kids.
The real privilege is to live in a time when we can be individuals and live our best lives. Shame on those who squander that privilege on hatred and resentment.
May we all be Carltons!
Wonderful! I wish more people could allow themselves to be themselves instead of living down to limiting preconceived notions. I always advices my children to simply answer with their given names whenever someone inquired “what are you?”
The comments above said it way better than I ever could. But in short, beautifully thoughtful and personally honest! Love it!
I'd love to include you on my YouTube, if your are interested. I focus on neurodivergence and intersectionality, which includes perspectives on life in general, like racelessness. You might enjoy the conversations I've had with Angel Eduardo, Adam Coleman, and others.
EQSolutionsU2.com
NeuroawesomeLife.com
https://www.youtube.com/@neuroawesomelife241
I'm not unopposed. I'd love more info.
Wonderful. Will you please send a message via my site? That way we don't need to publicly post our email addresses. I'll get back to you ASAP. https://eqsolutionsu2.com/contact
Some race-activists have commented on how Carlton was mocked, while Will was the hero. In the first Hidden Colors documentary, British activist Toyin Agbetu says of the sitcom, "There are two black boys. One is street smart, he can dance, and he doesn't get good grades. The other is not street, he can't dance and he gets good grades. Which one are we expected to admire?"
The answer to that is easy: admire them both for their virtues and learn from their vices.
Beautiful, thoughtful, humorous!
Thanks be to God this piece is indeed Black thought! And yea, it was “fun” as one responded stated. Yet, this is a serious debate that involves pain & search. I think it has to be “fun” & “witty” because we (Black folk) been focused on the wrong point to be considered regarding one we think might be a “House Negro.” (Because that’s the underlying debate...is it not?)
And we get stuck on arguing if one is or if one ain’t a House Negro, rather than distinguishing if one is or if one ain’t a GOOD House Negro? And then, *whose* good?
We don’t even allow for the idea of a “good” House Negro. Because the image of a Good House Negro is Stephen (from Django). But that Negro was “good” as good was defined from the perspective of white supremacy & white power.
Yet not all House Negroes were Stephen. Some of them snuck food out to those being starved. Some House Negroes (rarely yet on rare occasion) unlocked the door to the ammunition house. Some House Negroes aided the Underground Railroad & guided others in the “runaway process.” And even if you have never read the narratives, close your eyes & sit in the Spirit with the spirits of our ancestors & know it to be true...
So...who is the “Good” House Negro? From whose perspective are we allowing the House Negro to exist?
We only allow the House Negro to exist within the framework of whiteness. So the “good” House Negro was someone we despise, & the “bad” House Negro was someone who got his/her ass whopped all the time...and we ain’t want to be that.
We confined the House Negro to someone who served Massa’s purposes. And so the House Negro was to be shamed. Is to be shamed. Carlton. (sic)
But, what if the question accepted the reality of the House Negro? The House Negro exists. He and she were bred into existence by the ideology of white supremacy & the force of white power.
Whose “goodness” does this House Negro serve? Whose “goodness” does this Field Negro serve, for that matter?
The real debate is it or if not Carlton use the definition of “good” supplied to him by white power and/or rooted in white supremacy? Or is this Carlton a Free Negro who uses his access to whiteness for the liberation of his people?
Honestly, I'd just as soon do away with the whole dichotomy. Why keep it at all? There's no point in worrying about who is a "bed wench" or "sell-out." Being Black, specifically an American Negro which isn't the same thing as say a black Haitain, is an ethnic fact. But, just sharing an ethnicity doesn't mean all your experiences are the same. Having a healthy outlook on your ethnicity and your place would do far more for Negro success than harping on this stuff. Again, why care what Massa said at all? Ain't no Massas now unless you choose them.
Furthermore, I'd rather us look to being virtuous whereever we are and whatever we do. True virtue is not held by any one culture and all have their strengths and weaknesses. Praise what is praiseworthy and blame what is blameworthy. Lift each other up where you can but also keep your business tight. I think it's too much weight to put on people. It reminds me of the quote from Head of State that one Chris Rock movie. It was about how in his position he represented his WHOLE race while the white candidate didn't have to worry about that. But, why? People can try to impose that but should you care? Is it really gonna help?
Virtuous? Sorry I'm to cynical for that.
I recall 2 occasions where the branch manager talked about what an "ethical company" IBM was. I never saw the word 'benchmark' on any IBM documentation.
Benchmarks are how you test the performance of computers. IBM introduced the Datamaster 23 to replace the 5100 as the low end computer for the General Systems Division. That was the division I fixed computers for as a Customer Engineer.
Someone set a a table in our office with a 5100 on the left and a DM 23 on the right.
I was working 2nd shift at the time. Sometimes it was totally dead a sometimes I was running around like a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. So I wrote two benchmark programs in BASIC to test the machines. One was a Bubble Sort and the other was a Prime Numbers Search using division and square root. The old machine was almost twice as fast as the new one in both benchmarks.
Very ethical!
It is not that the new device didn't have some advantages, much bigger screen and 2 floppy drives instead of a single tape drive. But what would have happened if everyone knew it was slower.
Virtue? In this world?
The Screwing of the Average Man (1974) by David Hapgood
Yes, people will lie and cheat etc. I'm not saying that doesn't happen but I do think we don't HAVE to be that way. The fact that they did that was shady and rather shitty. We can call stuff out and try not to support that behavior.
Sounds like they should have just made a faster machine. Don't have to lie then...
In any case, I believe it is possible for people to at least be mostly virtuous.
Oh that is just the start. You see they did make a faster machine.
I was in the General Systems Division an we dealt with what everyone in the industry but IBM called minicomputers. There was also an Office Products Division. They made a device called The Displawriter which was marketed as a word processing machine. The Displaywriter was based on the 8086 CPU while the DM23 had an 8085 CPU. The Displaywriter would have been about 4 times faster as a computer but IBM only provided word processing software.
There was a company Digital Research that started providing a computer operating system for it.
that's so dumb. I really just don't get it.
ROFL
Attitudes were so different then.
One of my fellow employees actually asked me why I wanted a computer at home. I had soldered together a Heathkit H-8, an 8080 based microcomputer. That is what they were called then.
He was an Irish guy in his early 50s I guessed.
Most people don't really buy products they buy marketing. Yeah it's dumb. LOL
Hence why democracy is the purest form of authoritarianism. You “choose your masters.” Like slaves in the Deep South who chose their masters every new year. Folk today believe their choice from a selection of shitty masters could somehow become “good.”
Do you realize in traditional Japanese culture, something we would call suicide is considered a virtuous & honorable position? There a extremely few “universal truths.” You might consider reading Marimba Ani’s “Yurugu.”
The only way to “do away with the dichotomy” is to live beyond the white supremacist power structure. Otherwise, such dichotomies are structural to the current world order & must be kept so long as it is in tact.
As I live in Japan, yes. I realize that and it's a current social problem. Just last year, two young girls stood on some train tracks in order to kill themselves. They also tended to kill offspring that they felt that they couldn't care for in the belief that the child's soul would be reincarnated and given another chance later. So, yes. I'm aware. Some of those beliefs are the result of philosophical differences in certain areas but generally all cultures know that murder is wrong (but if it happens in self-defense that's a different matter), frown upon stealing, etc. For examples of this, you can look at C.S. Lewis's "The Abolition of Man." I found it quite helpful there. Thanks for the book rec. When I have down time in the school year, I'll look at it.
You do bring up a good point regarding the tyranny found in democracy. If done right, you can get compromises that mostly work but currently it feels like our government has been actively working against all citizens for years. It's exhausting and I've stopped voting in large elections. When I return to the states, I'll focus on the local and maybe state level but even then I have my doubts.
I also have reservations about how intact certain structures are and how effective they are. Societies don't have to have a full revolution to change and improve. In the US in particular, we made a system where we can amend the errors that were made previously. Unfortunately, that stuff ends up in political squabbles. Finding common ground and figuring it out would be preferable.
That said, part of doing away with a dichotomy is changing your thinking about it. People go to America and are successful all the time. Most of them, if not of European stock, set about trying to see what they need to do to get the most bang for their buck and go from there. At base, I think that renovation is possible and you don't have to wreck the whole house to remake that racist bathroom.
Amen brother. I delight in the engagement.
I will say this, as we are in the Time of the Sufferings & entering the Season of Resurrection, the Lord said: destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.
Wrecking the whole house is not a hopeless thing. Rather, for the faithful, wrenching the whole house is the best & more praiseworthy solution.
Moreover, there may be a racist bathroom left from the original design. But don’t neglect the reality that the house was built upon a white supremacist foundation. And that foundation remains...ever mason knows if the foundation is faulty, it must be relaid.
Right on! I feel this.
I encountered this months ago:
White on the Inside - Black Booktuber https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FFqjSrxV8Ig
My take on this requires a little background. I started reading science fiction in 4th grade. Not a Black thing. My Catholic grammar school did not teach science. Not a Catholic thing. I learned science and decided that I was an agnostic because of science fiction which my mother called "something crazy". To this day I don't know what she really meant by that or how she came to that conclusion. I have just decided that she intended for me to have a negative emotional reaction to it which seemed rather bizarre when I was 10 because I learned more in a week as a result of reading one sci-fi book than in a month from the nitwit nuns that she was paying to educate me. I was on the road to hell with Clarke and Asimov.
But life changed at the Catholic high school. They determined class category on the basis of mathematics and I ended up in the "Top Class" of the college preparatory track. That is what they called it, I didn't make up that name. School was no big deal, after all these years I think it probably wasn't good for me that it was so easy. I never worshipped grades though. I got straight D's in religion my freshman year, being an agnostic since 7th grade. Spend hours doing mindless busywork for a grade. No way Jose! But I think part of the "white" definition of intelligence is obeying and believing in AUTHORITY. But maybe I am just a racist.
By the time Fresh Prince of Bel-Air came on I was not interested in that kind of show. I don't think I ever watched an entire episode. There was a Black kid at my high school who fit the "Carlton" role though. I think his name was Julian. We didn't cross paths much since he was never in The Class, and the term "acting white" hadn't come into vogue, but other Black boys talked about him in those kinds of terms. Of course I have no idea what they said about me behind my back but one kid made a point of calling me "a gentleman and a scholar " on multiple occasions in my hearing and being quite sarcastic about it.
We now have what is referred to as The Stockholm Syndrome. I don't recall anyone ever suggesting that many Black Americans might be suffering from it but I think it fits to some degree. Among all human beings there are conformists and reactionaries. In my more cheerfully cynical moments I suspect that when the White people are doing something dumb the Black conformists go along with it, and when they are doing something smart the Black reactionaries refuse because it is a "White thing". My sister who was 5 years older started smoking when she was 11. White women in the movies were so glamorous with their languid motion while smoking and getting White Men to light their cigarettes. She has been dead for 14 years. But we can't lynch the cigarette executives for selling "Torches of Freedom" now, can we?
But back to high school. I used to swap SF books with some of the White boys. Probably a White thing. The two Straight A's in Everything White boys did not get involved. Neither one of them impressed me with their intellects they just did the nose to the grindstone thing. That is "Acting White" but it was OK since they were. I never really saw the other White boys giving them a hard time about it. But what shocked me was when one of them got a B. He cried in class. Fortunately that shock delayed me from laughing because that was almost what I did. Then I thought of all of the hours he must have spent doing that stupid religious drivel homework that drove me crazy. So he became the Salutatorian. I used to beat the Valedictorian at chess but number 2 refused to play me.
So what does school and grades and this "acting white" crap really mean? Then there was college. I ended up in a White fraternity sorta by accident. When they didn't have enough rooms reserved in the dormitories at the beginning of the school year they had some deal arranged with the frats to handle the "overflow". So I ended up staying in one for a couple of weeks. Also during this time the fraternities were looking for people that they wanted to pledge. Prior to this I had never even thought about it. Of course science fiction came into it, AGAIN!
There is a now classic and well known book, among SF aficionados, Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. It was fairly new back then. It involves Einsteinian physics with extreme time dilation and the Big Crunch Theory of the universe. So I got into a discussion with a senior physics major about it. He says to me, "You don't try to understand Einsteinian physics. You memorize the equations and how to apply the equations." That shocked the hell out of my 18 year old brain. The scientist and engineering characters in my SF books always understood what they were dealing with. ROFLMBAO
You're not supposed to disillusion people like that! It's just not White!
So two Black kids ended up pledging with the fraternity, Al from California and me from The Projects but very unghetto. They were shocked when I didn't even know what marijuana smelled like. The cops never busted the fraternities for drugs that I ever heard. An engineering school campus was practically sacrosanct. Watch the movie Real Genius to get an idea what it was like though of course not that far over the top but similar atmosphere.
Another peculiar thing was the Black kids in the dorms. Any Black kids in the fraternities had to be Oreo cookies. LOL
What has the world come to after decades of this crap though? I did FORTRAN programming on keypunch machines back then. Now I am typing on a Samsung smartphone. The technology DOES NOT CARE. But are we still paying The Man to live on the planet.
You can get labeled a Carlton for just being smart and finding school easy. Two Black kids who were not friends paid me $100 each to take their SATs. That probably would not be so easy today. Photo IDs weren't standard then. LOL
There are Black people playing at the Carton role but many of the people making anything of it are those trapped in the underclass. I don't have the slightest interest in psychoanalysing every quasi-Carlton I meet. Who cares?
What kind of future we try to make using this technology for education could matter. Read some science fiction.
Black Man's Burden (1961) by Mack Reynolds http://sfgospel.typepad.com/sf_gospel/2008/08/mack-reynolds-on-africa-islam-utopia-and-progress.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32390/32390-h/32390-h.htm
Border, Breed Nor Birth (1963) by Mack Reynolds http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30639/30639-h/30639-h.htm
This was a lot and you pointed out a fact regarding how the definition of a "Carlton" could be quite elastic. The thing is, by all accounts, I really counted as more of a Renaissance Man ideal since I did pretty much everything. I just wasn't as strong in math. You're also right about this mostly coming from those who feel stuck in "underclass" status. It's the same thing for any group of people though (though maybe less so with certain Asian groups due to the influence of Confucianism and other things). Either way, those who aren't as skilled or talented tend to try to say that whatever the skilled or talented person is doing is wrong somehow instead of inspect themselves and expanding their own horizons.
That said, I would never say that I am playing or played a Carlton role. That was just a label that was slapped on me and after a while I was like *thug shrug* about it.
I also find it odd that you didn't learn science in your early Catholic schooling since things like the Big Bang Theory and the basis of Genetics comes from Catholic people, particularly monks and priests. Your school sounded odd. There have been run-ins between the Faith and Science but often that was when a scientist went beyond his field and started trying to do theology a la Galileo.
Anyway, thanks for the readings, I'll look through these when I can. I've always liked science-fiction and I am currently writing stuff based in a world that I built. It's currently in its steampunk phase because---the aestethics. Be blessed!
I do not know how my grammar school compared to other Catholic grammar schools at the time. Was it different because it was in a Black neighborhood? Do not know.
I'd be curious to see what the deal was. I do know some groups of Catholics caught what I would call "The Protestant" bug with regard to things like science when actual dogma doesn't require you to believe or disbelieve in any of it. What difference does it mean to a being outside of time whether or not creation was instantaneous for its creations?
If any company tried to make Black men into "Carltons" it was IBM.
https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/white-privilege/comment/9973158
They probably would not even think of it that way. It was just naturally what anyone who qualified would want to be. LOL
That's the thing. A lot of the traits are just good ones to have in an employee or someone you do business with. Even with your weed dealer, you'd like that dude to be on time and to give you the correct measurements etc.
However, we've definitely assigned things like hair too much importance. I see nothing wrong with having to dress for work but as long as the hair is well-kept and doesn't smell, I don't see why it needs to be an issue. Thankfully, I've never had to worry about it. I do what I want with my hair and clothing for the most part. That stuff can be so cultural and as the world has expanded, being overly strict on that makes little sense.