Some of the most horrendous form of cruelty that I have both witnessed and experienced, short of brutal physical cruelty, can be properly characterized as black-on-black cruelty. The viciousness that blacks can display towards one another over the issue of being “black” may have no parallel in social interaction. In fact, I will go so far as to say that black-on-black viciousness can rival racism itself. Only a fool would think that racism no longer exists. I do not think that. Indeed, there is no one I know who thinks that, although we no doubt differ as to its extensiveness and character.
The thesis that black-on-black cruelty sometimes rivals racism itself hardly diminishes the reality of racism. For evil is not impoverished. One form of evil rarely precludes other forms.
If racism, broadly speaking, can be characterized as the view that blacks are intellectual inferior, black-on-black cruelty is the view that a black person had better more importance to being black than she or he does to anything else. And this a black had better do otherwise she or he will be ostracized and made the object of any number of fulsome characterizations. Outright character assassination is perfectly acceptable.
Sometimes, it seems to me that people are more interested what I shall black-grandstanding than substance itself. Thus, a black who goes on and on and on and on about “the suffering of my people” can get more so-called respect blacks than the black who, without saying much of anything is working hard helping other black people to better themselves.
Two days ago, I was talking a black woman, call her Miriam—a bi-racial woman, in fact. Just for the record, let me say that she did not choose to be bi-racial. It turns out that she was born that way. In a poignant conversation, Miriam spoke about how mean blacks have been to her—the utterly vicious name-calling to which she has been subjected. “Zebra” was one of the examples that she gave.
I have known Miriam for a number of years now; and every indication that I have is that she is a hard-working woman who enjoys life. But her “fault” would seem to be that what matters to her first is not that a person is black, but that a person is decent.
Surely, this is right. On the one hand, there is nothing to be said for viciousness simply because its personification is by way of someone who is black. On the other, there is everything to be said for a decent loyal friend, even if the friend should be the at the very opposite end of the color spectrum, given one’s own hue.
Miriam will take decency any day over color. And for a great many blacks that fact is a problem.
As a professor at Syracuse University, one of the things that I find most striking is the number of black students who think that I favor white students over them. By the behavior of some, one would think that I had office hours for “whites only”, that I gave my phone number to only the white students, and that tests were designed so that only white students would pass them.
To the best of my knowledge here is what I do: I hold offices hours; and I will talk to any person who will make a visit during those office hours.
Judging from the behavior of some blacks on campus, I am nothing other than an Uncle Tom. This is someone who, by definition, thinks that he is inferior to whites and who delights in being subordinate to whites and who is more than willing to abandon his views in favor of theirs.
Unless I am utterly delusional, it seems to me impossible to have even an inkling of an idea as to who I am and yet think that I am Uncle Tom. I know very few people who are more strong-willed than I am and whose convictions are deeper than mine. I am, if anything, I am the UCA: The Uncle Tom Antithesis. And, once ore, unless I am utterly delusional, it seems to pretty clear that every white professor on this campus understands all too well that I live by my own terms.
This brings me back to black-on-black cruelty. Far from being respected for my fierce independence, I am something of a pariah. Why is that? Because it is not just that whites exert little control over how I live my life, but guess what: it is no less true that blacks exert little control over how I live my life.
Black-on-black cruelty is about nothing at all if it isn’t about control. The need for this control is borne of an irrational fear. Anyone, black or white, can betray blacks or be indifferent to the plight of black suffering. But it is just absurd to suppose that the only way to prevent such undesirable states of affairs is by having some incredibly rigid conception of blackness that flies in the face of reality.
What is more, the strategy is counter-productive. If hostility and vituperative behavior worked, then Miriam and I should have long since taken on the cloak of blackness that is insisted upon. But nothing of the sort has happened, each of us proceeded with all the more determination to maintain our independence. This each of us does—she with her husband and I with my friends—all the while being ever so mindful of the reality of racism.
Black-on-black cruelty is rather like wanting and having a sycophant for a friend. The hallow praise is effective only because one does not allow oneself to attend to it. Sometimes in life we need instructive and alternative points of view upon which to reflect and in order to become energized. The sycophant is too busy being servile to provide these benefits.
In a like manner black-on-black cruelty is so busy stifling creativity among blacks that the black experience has become more or less stagnant. And this truth is altogether compatible with the truth that we hope for a yet more perfect world with regard to matters of race.
A final comment of from a different direction: It always amazes me when blacks talk about not being sufficiently concerned with issues of racism. Miriam runs a kick-ass business in the Syracuse University area, catering to folks of every stripe and persuasion. I have successfully attracted 400 students to my Ethics & Value Theory course semester after semester for more than a decade. Between the two of us, we have probably disabused more people of their racist notions than all the diatribes about racism that black-on-black cruelty has produced in the name of “caring about my people”.
Every now and then I ask: What is really wanted? Is it to call people racist or live so as to command the respect of all? The best evidence would suggest that black-on-black cruelty is much more about the former than it is about the latter.
