Blackness is not probable cause

 

Professor Laymon: You are a real American writer.  My friends who advise me on ethnic and racial matters tell me it’s prejudice to make the “black” qualification. But I note it might be impossible for you to be a professor of Africana studies without the modifier.  What if, however, as an intellectual exercise, we removed the word “black” from every use of it in your book of essays, “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America”.  Would your book speak to any greater human condition?  I think it would...not perfectly in all cases...but with a few more subtle changes, learning how to slowly kill yourself and others, in America, might not be a “black” monopoly.  One need look no further than the book I finished reading yesterday, “The Catcher in the Rye”.  The human condition comes with it the innate ability to self-destruct.  Self-destruction crosses all ethnic and cultural boundaries.  The trick, I believe you are trying to teach, is, in the words of John Wayne, “Life is tough, it’s tougher if you're stupid”.  Don’t be stupid and intentionally push the self destruct button.  You don’t have too.  There is a better way.  But yes, it would be easier without the presumption of guilt that “my people” carry so easily around with them, but conceal--just out of view--our chief white hustle.  When I pull up to the intersection and roll to a stop, close by to those kids wearing hoodies, I’m not going to push the door locks, even though my hustle is to pretend that thought didn’t cross my mind.  It did.  Where are the thought police when I need them.  Yet I kept the doors unlocked.  Does my hustle help or hurt the human condition?  

Here is another confession.  I bought the wrong book.  I’m pretty sure the book I wanted to read was “Long Division”, the second book you’ve published in a single year.  Congratulations are certainly in order on both books.  But I needed something to read on my vacation, which is, it has to be said, a pretty stereotypical vacation for us...beach house, family, NC, OBX, etc.  The beach house isn’t inherently white but the location is as sun bleached as the Adirondack chairs on the deck.  Not the place where I would actually like to discuss the topics contained in your book, primarily because to really pull this material apart, you need to be talking to scholars, not vacation intellectuals such as myself.  So... no debate and the wrong book.  But I’ve read it and it’s time to post my review.

First, I hate a book of essays.  Going into it I couldn’t even conceive of a 5-star rating.  You shouldn’t have called them essays. You’ve achieved what you set out to do.  These are in fact musical tracks that tell a crucial story.  That’s enough.  This is not a collection of essays.  As for you other goals, it’s debatable whether or not I’m your intended audience...but I believe I’ve learned far more from you in a few hours,  then I learned reading, “Sounder” with my daughter, during our trip to the beach last year.  But let’s just start with your good writing.  Brilliant.  Here are my favorites.

“...the reckless order of American human being…” -- Brilliant

“The worst of white folks, I understood, wasn’t some gang of rabid white people in crisp pillowcases and shaved heads...The worst of white folks wanted our mamas and grandmas to work themselves sick for a tiny sliver of an American pie it need to believe it had made from scratch.” -- Brilliant

“Nineteen-year-old black boys cannot be perfect in America. Neither can sixty-year-old white boys named George.” -- Brilliant

“I’m a walking regret, a truth-teller, a liar, a survivor, a frowning ellipsis, a witness, a dream, a teacher, a student, a failure, a joker, a writer whose eyes stay read, and I'm a child of this nation.”  -- Brilliant

“I convince myself that Mississippi is on the other side of the field.” -- Brilliant

On Kayne West, “He has proven himself good enough, brave enough, conceptual genius enough, compassionate enough, and now rich enough to use his voice to explore, with prickly honesty and dramatic irony, what black women deserve.” -- Brilliant

On Tupac Shakur, “By age twenty-five, Tupac Amaru Shakur had recorded six albums and starred in five movies.  Five bullets had entered his body and he’d gone to prison for eleven months.  He  traveled around the world, influencing the life and are of millions of people and talking about organizing a movement against poverty and police brutality.  He had shot two white off-duty cops in Atlanta who were harassing a black man, and beat the case. By age twenty five , Tupac Shakur had fought to stay alive for six days in a a Las Vegas hospital after three new bullets entered his body, And less than three months after his twenty-fifth birthday, Tupac Shakur was dead.” -- Brilliant

That’s enough.  I will read  “Long Division”.  I will post my review.   But I will continue to read your work for one reason alone.  

“Blackness is not probable cause.” -- Sublime