“I’m not a Star,
Somebody lied, I got a choppa* in the car. Unghhh”
– Rick Ross/Lil Wayne
It’s rare to have an opportunity to see social theory in action, but I recently experienced some of DuBois’ key theoretical contributions to our understandings of race and Otherness. In their recent book on DuBoisian sociology, Itzigsohn and Brown discuss the three concepts DuBois coined for understanding the experience of the “Other” in American society: the Veil, twoness, and double consciousness. Starting from the question: “what does it feel like to be a problem?” DuBois walks through the paradox confronting Black folks in American society. At once a part of and excluded from the society. Rooted in these is the misrecognition of non-white people by whites and the inability of the latter to see the former as fully human. DuBois masterfully presented the veil, double consciousness and twoness through his use of parables. In particular, Of the Coming of John strikes a chord with the most recent bullshit I experienced. In the story, John (a black man from the post Reconstruction South) goes away to college and starts to see how the world sees him and how he sees himself. He wrestles with the dissonance that race inspires in our society and it culminates with him killing white John (I’ll avoid spoilers; go read that shit). How did John get pushed to the brink?
Black people, and many folks of color, experience American society from a position that white folks can never quite understand. Sometimes it’s a subtle thing, a la microaggressions, and others it’s explicit in the form of a slur or physical assault. I live in awe of the patience and grace of my forebears and contemporaries who didn’t/don’t snap in the face of disrespect. My rage haunts me. It keeps me up at night. It nags at me during the day while I’m trying to work on other things.
I was in a space where I felt comfortable and safe. Surrounded by close friends and in the middle of watching a Colombian soccer game. Then, John arrived. He walked up to the few people he knew, friends of my brother-in-law from the predominantly white affluent South County town of North Kingstown, and said loudly “HOLAAAAA AMI-GOES, COMO ESTAN” with that tone of mockery that many of us know all too well. They laughed and he dropped some more exaggerated nonsense before taking a seat at the end of the high top. I was annoyed. Filled with rage really. But, I’ve spent years working to control my temper. Developing strategies to calm down. It wasn’t directed at me, I rationalized. It’s just another white boy in his white bubble talking about us the way many of us suspect they do. A sort of backstage conversation that people have when they don’t think others are looking. I glanced over at my Colombian boy sitting next to me, we shrugged annoyingly, sipped our beer, and carried on with our game.
I don’t know if it was because I was his friend’s brother-in-law or if he was simply audacious but as the game ended, John came up to me and asked “COMO TE YAAA-MAS?!” I said swiftly and calmly: “My name is Jonathon and you need to cut that shit out because if I don’t kick your ass, someone else in here will.” He seemed caught off guard. Not expecting to be called out. He fumbled on his words, apologized profusely, asked if he could buy me a drink (a classic white frat boy strategy for diffusing tension). I told him it was fine as long as he stopped exaggerating his accent.
I worked through the incident in therapy later that week. My therapist asked how I felt as I recounted the incident. I was proud that I warned John before swinging on him. The threat, though violent, was clearly an effective deterrent. It was also an exercise in restraint. My community and I were disrespected but I didn’t respond violently. The white therapist concurred. We talked about the audacity of whiteness. The blindness of it. The bluntness of it. My hatred of it.
The white male ego can be so fragile as to demand affirmation and understanding when it’s protagonist is in the wrong. As if the white male is owed some kind of appreciation or understanding for their misdeeds.
Weeks passed and I felt like the tavern exchange was just another classic clash with whiteness. I hadn’t thought much of it following my debrief with my therapist. When we celebrated my birthday, we invited my brother-in-law and he mentioned that he had dinner plans with John that day. He asked if they could come over. In the spirit of moving on, I said yes. There’s no use in holding onto rage. It’s generally best to process it and let it go.
John and his fiance walked into our house. I greeted them, offered them a drink, and welcomed them to our home. The night was proceeding uneventfully until John decided to bring up our first meeting. “You won’t believe what your friend did!” he remarked to my best friend from college who was partaking in the festivities.
John: “This guy threatened me!”
“Well…” said Mike chuckling. “What’d you do?!”
I recounted the events from our first meeting and cautioned John that Mike has known me for years and would be unlikely to empathize with his position.
John proceeded to offer that I NEEDED to understand where he was coming from that night. He studied Spanish and spent a semester abroad in a Latin American country. For him, speaking Spanish was HIS WAY of celebrating MY culture. As he said: “I made the effort to learn YOUR language. Can you at least appreciate that?!” He went on to offer that he hasn’t had any issue ten out of ten times that he’s done this in the presence of a Latinx person. Plus, “you’re a SENATOR, you can’t threaten people.”
I noted that 1. He was clearly not batting 100 if I took issue with him 2. What the fuck did being a Senator have to do with his bullshit; I wasn’t “threatening people generally, but rather responding to disrespect directed at me” and 3. Had he EVER considered the possibility that the Other might nod in his presence, go home, and remark to their friends and loved ones that they had a frustrating interaction with an unaware disrespectful cracker. It was beyond his abilities to ponder what the Other might think because he had little experience with this twoness many of us live.
It was clear to me that the conversation wasn’t going anywhere. This man was looking for some sort of formal forgiveness for his past transgression and I wasn’t in the mood to cater to his ego. When he entered the tavern that night, he didn’t engage with any Spanish speakers but walked up to his suburban friends and threw out an exaggerated accent.
I asked directly: “what is it that you think would come from this tonight?”
He said that he expected a “compromise” and “middle ground”. I noted that NOT slapping the shit out of him was the middle ground. He disrespected me, my family, and my people. I didn’t engage him that night. He came up to me and acted disrespectfully. On this day, he was in my house, on my birthday celebration, trying to convince me that I should UNDERSTAND him. FUCK THAT.
As if this suburban white boy could understand how it feels for a child to watch his mom berated by a stranger at a gas station. A stranger who called her an arrow thrower and demanded that she go back to where she came from. The real problem, as I saw it in the moment, is that I did understand where he was coming from and I had no sympathy for his perspective. An ignorant sheltered kid from the suburbs raised around people from his same background who is all of a sudden confronted by the consequences of his actions is not exactly a sob story. I hate him, but most of all I hate a system of social reproduction that allows people to really believe that their individual choices to move to “good” neighborhoods with “good” schools will have no adverse consequences on the rest of society or their own children. Children raised to believe that their lives are the result solely of hard work rather than an alchemy of luck, some work, and a large dose of ethno-racial class privilege. Children growing up around few people different from them in any substantive way who end up lacking the skills to speak and engage respectfully across differences. Children that are the predictable result of segregation and whiteness.
My partner looked at her brother and firmly stated “it’s time for you to go.” He concurred but John insisted that we needed to reach some middle ground. His fiance grabbed him by the arm and motioned to the door. I looked at my partner, at the ceiling where I wondered if my sons could hear the commotion in their beds, and agreed that it was best if they left. They did and my brother-in-law sent a brief apology text some time after.
The comings and goings of John have inspired more questions than answers. When, if ever, will they SEE us? How long are we expected to confront disrespect and turn the other cheek? How long will the burden of white fragility fall on the Other? How much of John is in my sons’ uncle who is a childhood friend and contemporary? How much of John is in their cousins who grow up in similar environments? How much of John will be in my white passing sons? How much of John can this world continue take?
*I do not own any firearms. I don’t condone the use of firearms. I do keep a bat in the trunk for recreational sports purposes.