In continuation of our
discussion on the legendary James Baldwin and his works, there was this book
written by Professor Frederick C Harris, that I chanced upon quite recently,
which gives added insights, of the incisive type, that also pays glowing
tribute to Baldwin.
From Baldwin to
Barack, the book titled, The Price of the
Ticket: Barack Obama and the Rise and Decline of Black Politics, does a
pretty insightful take on the quintessentially Black achievers of all hues, paying
glowing tributes to each of them!
One of the noteworthy aspects that makes this
study tick is found in the epigraph to the book, which is again drawn from an
amazing quote of Baldwin’s, the sweep of its understanding not far to seek!
Here goes the epigraph
-
Yes: we have lived through avalanches of tokens and
concessions but white power remains white. And what it appears to surrender
with one hand it obsessively clutches in the other.
- James Baldwin
Cruising through the
chapters in full throttle, I had to decelerate full quick and slack up for a
pause just a few pages into chapter six! To be precise at page 189!
The lines read -
It was James
Baldwin - who always encouraged survivors to bear witness - who wrote, “The Negro
has been formed in this Nation, for better or for worse, and does not belong to
any other . . .
Set me thinking!
How much the importance
for survivors to bear witness! And well, if the survivors have to bear witness,
then the powers that be should facilitate in giving them their voice! For them
to speak out their angst and their agonies! And for their voice to be heard!
Even legendary
hermeneutic phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur vouches to the importance of the witnesses
to voice themselves! To Ricoeur then, the alternative to storytelling is
silence! Hence, with Baldwin, Ricoeur concurs full pedal, by saying that, a spontaneous
willingness to face the past and its resultant loss is hence the beginning of
healing and an opportunity to retrieve something from the seeming irreversibility
of the past. A kernel of hope is there, a horizon of the future, amidst the
debris, he quips.
On this note, Professor
Harris continues -
The paradox is that
the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent as long as he
is ‘unwilling to accept his past.’
How much the importance of the survivors to willingly accept their past! And if the
survivors have to accept their past, then their past should, using the likes of
Freud’s repressed memory theory or through ‘recovery of memory’ projects or by
any other like means, facilitate a conducive atmosphere for the survivors in
allowing them to come to terms with their past!
This is where
Professor Harris painfully rues the fact that, unless the survivors tell their
stories, then the official version of the story – a tweaked or warped version
of the real – would gain in validity, acceptance, prominence and pre-eminence!
How true does the
axiomatic statement of Achebe prove here, when he says, ‘Until the lions have
their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.’
One reason why a great
many survivors of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum, Elie
Wiesel, amongst others have emphasized on the importance of narrating their
stories by travelling back in time into their memories!
They also feel that,
it is their bounden duty and moral duty as
well, to narrate their stories, failing which the events might otherwise be
forgotten, and once they are forgotten, the same events may also stand a high
chance of repeating themselves over again.
So much for the importance of narrative memory!
To Ricoeur then, this
narrative memory serves two important functions – first and foremost, it can help
to represent the past as it really was, and secondly, it can help to re-invent
the past as it might have been, as a gift to the future.
Professor Harris then continues
–
It is possible that
the newest descendants of the survivors will hear the official story of
overcoming tragedy not by those who bore witness or by those who witnessed the
bearing of witnesses, but by those who desire to maintain the nation’s reigning
myths and ideas about equality and opportunity.
The diminishing of
black America’s memory will have consequences for future generations of blacks.
Will the “official” national history really tell them about how battles were
won and of casualties lost along the way, so that tragedies will not be
repeated?
Perhaps this is why
the monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., on the National Mall - and the many
comparisons of President Obama to the civil rights leader - disturbs memory but
makes great history. Obama has been lifted up as the fulfilllment of Martin Luther
King’s dream.
That dream was
realized when the nation elected Obama - a black man - president of the United
States. His election is a testament that he has been judged - and presumably all
blacks are now judged—by the content of his character and not by the color of
his skin, as King proclaimed in his 1963 speech on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial.
How future generations
of Americans - both blacks and nonblacks - will interpret black America’s struggle
from slavery to freedom, from civil rights to post–civil rights to the present
day’s persistence of racial inequality, will be dominated by triumphant
narratives extolling Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United
States.
Like King’s granite
image on the National Mall, the civil rights leader’s national memory is frozen
in 1963, when King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
The selective passages
from King’s famous speech convey the spirit of the American promise and hope
that the nation will one day live up to its true values of freedom and
opportunity. But the King on the National Mall and the president in the White
House are where memory fades and national mythology begins.
Now that King is a
national hero - whose ideas and actions are no longer a threat to the American
way of life - it is easy to erase from memory the last two years of his life, in
1967 and 1968. It was then when King became increasingly critical of America’s
failure to deal with poverty and the war in Vietnam.
King believed that the
bombs that were being dropped in Vietnam were taking away resources that could
attend to the poor in the United States. He believed that the “triple evils” of
racism, poverty, and militarism worked together to perpetuate inequality in the
nation.
He’s sure got a
sensible proposition and a valid postulation here, I bet!
Well, again, me thinks
it sure ain’t gotta be meet on my part to keep on a platter for y’all the
profound study of Professor Harris on Black Politics. The book is available on
all popular e-stores for grabs!
Happy reading folks!
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