Living It Up To Blackness, In Ferguson And Beyond

Why challenge others for what they are free to think – of Black people? Why waste precious time on such an endeavor? Perhaps our energy must rather be directed inwards – or the chains of such a habit, though now small, will become too strong to be broken.

We have toiled for far too long and bled for too much, pleading to Whiteness to tread the just cause of a common humanity; we have by far reached out to it more than any group of people, and have implored it to suffer an understanding of the common strand of mortality that underscores our collective experiences; but alas, to no avail.

Our struggle with Whiteness, to inform it, as people of African descent living in America, has fallen on tribal ears. For Whiteness itself, as a concept, as a binding principle for people of European descent, is Exclusion, it stands in the way of American unity, it stalls international progress and robs America of the soul of its founding and its true color.

Whiteness as an idea is rooted in Tribalism. It is inimical to any free thinking melting pot of a society.

Along with it trudges the so-called idea of American Exceptionalism, which by itself seems like a morale-boosting chant in a sport, but when mixed with a dose of Whiteness, lacks a full comprehension of the true color of America, and evolves rather into the equally dangerous idea of Elitism – Marginalization, or rather, Segregation!

To gain a fair comprehension of the lures of Whiteness and why it divides America rather than unite it; why it continuous to be virulent in her unjust dealings with Blackness; why it breeds exclusivity rather than nurture receptivity, one must unearth the underpinnings of the ideology itself.

The notion is born out of a metamorphosis of a branch of Christian doctrine while it mapped its way through the deserts of Africa to southern Europe. The models of Mary and Christ are the unambiguous culprits in its formulation. They are both exemplary and exceptional human beings, perhaps. And in pious respect are only dignified in drapes of Whiteness. They became what one should aspire to be like, and yet also harbored what one can never be – as White as snow.

Relatively, Blackness which has stemmed entirely from the Ancient African religious concept of Ma’at underpinned all Ancient Africa’s religious belief and has since been translated as ‘truth’, ‘justice’, ‘order’ or ‘balance’. The Ancient Kemet personified Ma’at as a Black woman with an ostrich feather on her head.

Embodied within her symbolism was the ideal to a life corresponding to socially acceptable or ethical ways to behave. The texts of the Wisdom Literature of Ancient Africa reveal that – disorder, rebellion, envy, deceit, greed, laziness, injustice and ingratitude – were considered crimes against Ma’at, and hence crimes against Her Blackness.

The Old Kingdom Writings of Ptahhotep places a lasting emphasis on how Africans should listen, as opposed to being deaf to Ma’at, and on the idea that greed destroys social relations. In the Middle Kingdom Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, the lazy and the greedy are said to be deaf to Ma’at – deaf to Blackness!

Would today’s America pass the test of Ma’at? Social interaction between peoples of African descent and those of European descent are continuously strained and tense. While others argue that some progress has been made since the tragedy of slavery ended, large swaths of African American concerns are left particularly without redress.

Quite calmly most White Americans do not like African Americans, and plan neither for their survival nor for their definite future if it involved free, self-assertive modern personhood. W.E.B Du Bois once lamented in a speech in 1934 that the great mass of White Americans were merely representatives of average humanity, who muddled along with their own affairs and scarcely could be expected to take seriously the affairs of African Americans whom they feared, despised and exploited.

But White America can continue to afford the persistent maltreatment of African Americans for one reason, besides providing an unshackled privilege for their material advancement, it maintains a belief system entirely suited for conferring those stars and strips of privilege.

This ideology has set up a dynamic of aspiration amongst people of European origin, of striving to be, to transcend, and to go on striving in the face of the impossibility of transcendence, as god’s chosen.

Such striving to be White is registered in self-denial, and also material achievement – the precursor of modern Capitalism – if it can be construed as the temporary and partial triumph of the mind over matter. These constitute something of the thumbnail sketch of the white ideal – an ideal that is as separate from human reach as the edges of the universe.

In America especially, Whiteness has been enormously, often terrifyingly effective in unifying coalitions of disparate groups of people against African Americans. It has generally been much more successful than class in uniting people across national cultural differences against peoples of African descent, and against their best interests.

This has been strengthened by two instabilities that such a coalition produces in the American racial context.

On the one hand, it creates a category of the ‘maybe people’ – people who can be sometime White – or who may be let into whiteness under particular historical circumstances. The Irish, ‘white’ Mexicans, Jews and people of mixed race provide striking instances: often excluded, sometimes indeed being assimilated into the category of Whiteness, and at others treated as a buffer between White and Black.

On the other hand, Whiteness as a coalition also incites the notion that some Whites are Whiter than others, with Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Scandinavians usually providing the apex of Whiteness under British Imperialism and Colonialism, U.S. Slavery and Development and German Nazism.

Blackness as circumscribed by the principles of Ma’at is diametrically opposed to these ideas of Whiteness. There is no quest for victories, except over death – and like its embodiment in the goddess Ma’at, strives for justice as the only possibility of transcendence over death and thus the only ticket to passing into the afterlife of the Ancestors. Justice unlike Whiteness, is achievable, since it is tangible.

So, let us rise above the petty-mindedness of Whiteness; let our Blackness, just the way it was fashioned in Ancient Africa for all humankind – Europeans too – rise tall and above the narrow-mindedness of Tribalism. We are better not because we are superior but because from among us came all.

Our Blackness is greater and supersedes their Whiteness – let us show it in living it. We know we are endowed by the Creator, a giant’s strength; we also know, to use it like a giant would be tyrannous. Our peaceful reaction to the several killings of innocent Black boys in Ferguson and around the country in recent years may be construed as only weakness; however, we see peace and humility as a weakness more powerful than violence and bullying because we believe the Creator’s Power is made perfect even in our weakness. If others wish to rot in the ungodly bunkum of Racism and ‘nigger’ hating, if they wish to continue to support a system that continues to marginalize, restrict, disenfranchise, threaten and kill Blacks, then let them.

But we are better because we rise above their Whiteness, we rise above their Tribalism, and achieve something more attainable, more constructive – Blackness, and its penchant for Justice, Receptivity and Sharing. Please, my friends, let us turn the energy and the effort inward and look to Blackness both for inspiration and for the ammunition to defeat this terrifying Tribalism!

It is God’s way!