Challenger or bargainer? - the thin black line

SOME white folks feel that it is tough being white in the new SA. Well, try being a black writer. We have it tough too. This self-indulgent thought struck me last week as I was following the discussion unfolding online and in my inbox around two articles that appeared on these pages. In the first, fellow columnist Jacob Dlamini articulated the insightful thesis that too many black people think that blackness is a profession. In the other, I took a dig at the abuse of the race card by the Julius Malemas of this world. The sterling endorsement by white readers made me uncomfortable. My discomfort, almost certainly not justified, again underscores the complexities of race and identity.

One dilemma is whether or not to qualify hard-hitting criticism of fellow blacks. While writing furiously about the abuse of the race card, I found myself continuously wanting to qualify my critique by foregrounding the fact that white racism remains pervasive. (The logic student in me convinced the anxious black in me that my argument does not presuppose the nonexistence of white racism.)

Relying on formal logic alone can miss the point that we are psychological creatures, who live in a morass of sociological complexity where rationality is not always present. My urge to scold the (imagined) sneering white reader, who might enjoy my black-on-black critique just a little bit too much, shows that not even a writer aspiring to be untainted by the merest whiff of racism can fully escape racism’s reach.

My reaction to these imagined readers is partly irrational. In the absence of robust evidence, it is certainly premature to attribute racist motives to all white readers. Furthermore, I recognise that opportunistic behaviour by black people needs to be exposed, even if the odd reader conveniently finds a new “favourite writer” in the black person who dares to speak truth to power.

But part of my reaction is justified. I do not doubt that there are many white people who conveniently and suddenly start loving a black writer just because the black writer articulates viewpoints that a white person supposedly dare not speak.

In a piece in one of the Afrikaans dailies, Tim du Plessis takes his cue from Antjie Krog (courtesy of her reflections on her latest book, Begging To Be Black), who asserts that the words of whites (when they criticise the government) die in their mouths. And so he quotes black critics of the government right back at Krog — people such as Barney Mthombothi, who is Financial Mail’s editor, Lucas Ntyintyane (a “regular letter writer in Business Day”, a description intended to confer credibility) and Dlamini, a “thinker and writer of the highest order”. What these writers have in common is their fearless criticism of professional blacks. Is this what makes them all “brilliant black thinkers”?

I am not suggesting Du Plessis is a closet conservative pretending to enjoy these writers’ work — I have not even met him. The point is about me, not him. It is this: as a black person writing about the black community, I am bedevilled by considering, perhaps too closely, the unintended effect of argument, word and tone choice. This is ordinarily not a bad thing. Shooting too eagerly from one’s writing hip can kill innocent bystanders and not only criminal bastards. But when racialism’s reach affects these choices, how free am I in my writing act?

All this transported me back to a theory of race by one of my favourite self-hating black writers in America, Shelby Steele. Steele argues that black Americans who gain some measure of professional success in mainstream US society adopt one of two strategies. They become challengers or bargainers. Challengers say to white America, “Look, you buggers messed up our black lives with your racism. We are still angry. If you want to redeem yourselves, make some concessions like supporting affirmative action.”

This tactic is employed by angry black people such as Al Sharpton. People who could never, for example, become president of America. Ask Jesse Jackson.

Bargainers are craftier. They say to whites, “Let’s make a deal. I’ll pretend racism never happened. In return, I want you to promise that you will never hold my blackness against me. Deal?” The most successful bargainer in entertainment is Oprah Winfrey. In politics, it’s Barack Obama. That is why some challenger-blacks doubted his black credentials along the way. Unlike them, Obama knew the strategy that could open most doors to the White House.

Sometimes, despite being part of a numerical majority, being black in culturally white structures in post-democratic SA presents one with similar strategic dilemmas. Do you challenge your way through newsrooms, media debates and public discourse? Or do you increase your chances of accolades and popularity by bargaining with readers, colleagues and fellow writers? And that really is the nub of the issue.

Being a black writer in a majority black country with deep racial fissures but many white-dominated organisational structures and cultures requires fancy identity footwork behind the writing scenes that many readers may not see.

If Krog had understood these lived realities, she would start begging to remain white, rather than hoping to wake up in a black birthday suit.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=87615