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Like a Tortoise Shell
Commentary by Rudolph Lewis & Peggy
Brooks-Bertram
The working class black folk tend to be
oriented towards local interests of friends and family.
The black underclass are cut-throat individualists.—Wilson
I appreciate
greatly this sketch of Eugene Robinson's multiple facets
of "black society" or its numerous black communities (Drive
Time for the 'Jena 6).
We indeed may be like the back of a tortoise shell.
There's an
interesting tale about how the tortoise's shell came
about.
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The tortoise is known for his cunning but
he's also greedy. He tricked a group of
birds to allow him to join their feast in
the sky. Each gave him a feather so he could
join them. After which he convinced them
each should change his name and he chose
"all of you." And when the food was
presented in the sky it was presented to
"all of you." And the tortoise ate all of
the food. The group of birds he was with
realized they had been tricked and each took
back his feather. It was a long ways down
and he asked one of the birds to tell his
wife he will be home shortly and that she
should put all the soft things out in the
yard. But she was told to put out all the
hard things. And when he fell from the sky
he landed on all these hard objects and his
shell cracked into pieces. But he found a
magician or a mechanic to put his shell back
together. But it no longer had its former
uniformity and smoothness. But rather had
these numerous facets. |
Of course, there is
a multigenerational black bourgeoisie. On the whole
their influence on those classes below tends usually to
be rather insignificant. Their concerns tend to be
rather local and upward and we usually find them trying
to catch up with that which cannot be ignored from
below. That is, they claim more worth and value than
truly deserving as leaders of their imaginary "we."
They see a life membership in the NAACP as their racial
card.
I've seen such
black bourgeoisie families in which there were street
walkers and crackheads and "cut-throat individualists."
More typically is the interweaving of the "working class
black folk" and the "cut-throat individualists," often
in the same family. Our “cut-throat individualists”
mirror more openly and accurately the underpinnings of
the nation’s economic system, for good or ill. In one
instance, I recall a wife as working class and the
husband as dealer in stolen goods and drugs and then at
other times as wage slave.
Both these
"classes" tend to be non-literary-readers, as is the
case among whites as well, except for maybe how-to or
religious literature or on gender relationships or other
faddish writings. If in prison the "cut-throat
individualists" may have a keen interest in law books,
and maybe then racial, political, or Islamic literature,
or in the South, books about the successful, like Tavis
Smiley. But all these readings go to the practical
realities of survival.
As TV watchers or
theater goers, as it has always been, it is low comedy,
of a highly successful commercial nature. That is, these
two "classes" are not that far apart in their cultural
tastes. They may even join that segment of the lower
bourgeoisie that has a taste for the more superficial
aspects of African culture, like clothing or other
ritual paraphernalia. But on the whole a rough
approximation of the cultural style of the rich and
famous is that which is admired and considered for
reflection.
To be truthful as
long as there are bogey men like Republican racialists
who court the milder aspects of contemporary "white
supremacists" (crude guardians of white privilege), as
Bob Herbert points out in his recent "The Ugly Side of
the G.O.P. " (NYTtimes),
there shall indeed always be a "we." But it is a "we"
like that of the tortoise shell.
We have still a
modest need for each other; our usefulness for each
other often is not the most noble, or sentimental, or
romantic, as is the case of Herbert and many black
columnists, Eugene Robinson as well as Stanley Crouch,
come to mind. Many of these “black” mouthpieces find the
black working classes useful for their disparaging
comments in their columns as well as their support of
the Democratic Party, which as a whole is no more
supportive of black (or white) working class aspirations
than the Republicans.
In that the working
classes and cut-throat individualists merely want to
eat, drink and be merry and are little concerned if at
all about the larger politics of the nation and the
world, they treat the ballot with the same regard as
buying a lottery ticket. They are always being
castigated from above by the “black mouthpieces.” On the
whole the brothers and the sisters below, however,
possess the commonsense of their working class
ancestors: This is a white man's country and he will do
for his own first and foremost. Some headway might be
made momentarily but it is difficult to impossible to
sustain.
Yes, I am rather
sentimental and romantic. It is not that difficult for
certain old black-and-white films, with their fine noble
sentiments, to bring me to tears. I do want my folks to
be as Camara Laye’s rural kin:
| They were together!—united by the same
task, the same song. It was as if the same
soul bound them (Dark Child). |
With a website like
ChickenBones, how could I be mistaken as
anything other than a racial sentimentalist and racial
romantic? In a society organized politically and
economically as ours is, I do not think that black
society will ever be more than the design of the
tortoise shell. To think otherwise is indeed a
delightful illusion. As Killens argued so long ago, an
emphasis on property at the expense of human dignity
national unity or of the races is impossible.—Rudy
First published
Ghana Dot Com
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Books by Peggy Brooks-Bertram
Uncrowned Queens: African
American Community Builders / Wonderful Ethiopians of
the Cushite Empire (Book II)
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"Uncrowned Kings" &
"Queens/Kings in the Wings"
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I do not think that black
society will ever be more than the design of
the tortoise shell.—Rudy |
In fact, the whole
shell is "not cracked up to what it ought to be." I
have been working in an organization that I started with
a friend of mine almost ten years ago. We celebrate
the lives of African American men and women who would
otherwise be forgotten forever. We gather their bios
and their photos, get their permission if they are alive
and tell their stories to the world through our website
at Uncrowned
Queens.
Now we have
introduced "Uncrowned Kings" and also "Queens/Kings in
the Wings" to celebrate the accomplishments of young
black women and men. I never worked so hard for no
salary in my life and I do not anticipate a salary. It
is a labor of love. We saw the cracks in the shell early
when one prominent "community" woman told others that
after the first few hundred women were identified and
celebrated in a book that it was all down hill from
there because the whole project wasn't "elite enough, "
too many ordinary "unknowns" were being recognized.
This comment was from a woman who prospered on the
backs of the "non-elite" for her entire life.
Then certain women
took offense because we worked so hard at the discovery,
reclamation, and preservation of the histories of Black
women who had stories to tell but none would hear
them. Some could be heard if they were the mother of
Ruben Santiago who told the story of his mother in
Lackawana Blues. And, when
Lackawana Blues was debuted in Buffalo at the
Albright Knox Art Gallery, the whole Black "community"
turned out but you can't find this community when you
need $1.00 to help preserve the history of women and men
on whose shoulders we stand.
But our cracks go
even deeper, they get personal. Someone even commented
that perhaps it was time to "help" us because they
noticed that the "white" community recognized our work
and that was a good sign for them to come on board—but
not before. Sheer madness!
Then there are those who wonder why we work so hard.
They imagine that we are secretly making a fortune and
not telling anyone. Imagine, a fortune telling the
stories of Black women that no one knows about!! So
jealously and envy started to peep through the already
gaping cracks in the tortoise shell. Some speak about
us with "acid tongues" as if disparaging comments will
stop two sisters on a mission.
My colleague and I
have fallen back on the thing that has saved us from
worse: humor and laughter. Even while I write this I
am smiling thinking that little old me, survivor of the
East Baltimore ghettos in the shadow of one of the
greatest medical facilities in the world, The Johns
Hopkins University Medical School, could cause such
angst trying to rescue the history of our people. Oh
Lord. The tortoise shell! Save me from the tortoise
shell.—Peggy
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 27 September 2007 /
update 14 December 2011
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