A major theme of American literature, wrote Morrison in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination , involved the transferring of internal conflicts "to a 'blank darkness,'" in order to "conveniently bound and violently" silence black bodies." Slavery is a blackness. "CTR" is a blackness. Black people" well"
" The slave population, it could be and was assumed, offered itself up as surrogate selves for meditation on problems of human freedom," writes Morrison. On the plantation, during moment "peace," Blacks, perceived as mindful of their place, offered up images of lush gardens, tended by well-behaved gardeners. On the other hand, if an uptick in rebelli ons and escapes alarmed slaveholders and nearby residents, the appeared in literary descriptions images of a menacing blackness. What could be more contradictory if not nightmarish than Black people desiring freedom?
At the core of American literature, images of an ominous blackness in pursuit of contaminating, tainting, deflowering the purity of whiteness haunt the American imagination. It's not a simple matter of waking up one more and declaring oneself free of racism. Driving, walking, running while Black is still dangerous in America. These images were and still are, Morrison explained, "complicit in the fabrication of racism." Even if children are limited in the reading of American literature, as some fascists are working to effect, the children need only to listen to news reports.
Listen to the description of a suspect on the run from the law. Is that suspect happens to be Black, then the newscaster will stated that a Black man is is on the run from the law. Americans are trained to understand that a Black man on the run from the law is far more dangerous, downright threatening to the whole of civilization, than is a man on the run from the law. E ven if a serial killer, a "man" is usually a white man, and no threat, therefore, to the whole of civilization. How can a white man be a threat to something he built and must maintain? "A man" as criminal is a one-off, even if it happens repeatedly. Flying in the face of reality isn't something invented by the current cabal of American fascists.
In my day, I was introduced to children's books that featured Santa Claus as a white man with a white beard. Cinderella was a white girl as was Pollyanna. As a child in the 50s and 60s, attending Catholic schools, I came face-to-face with a Palestinian Jesus, painted, however, to resemble a white man with blue eyes. All the protagonists I encountered for most of my first eight years of education were white. At some point in our development, we Black children instinctively knew these images to be false, particularly when t he idea of Black liberation, freedom , reached our ears and young Black activists in Chicago made us understand that the idea of freedom was as old as t he scream of the first captured African.
Our enslaved ancestors recognized a freedom similar to the one described in the Declaration of Independence. Did Jefferson echo the thoughts of enslaved Blacks? All are created equal and a ll are endowed with "unalienable Rights"! All have the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"!
Today, we can measure democracy's progress in the b lue-eyed, brown-eyed, green-eyed, and black-eyed children beginning to learn that the world doesn't consist of one race. The idea of freedom doesn't demand the subjugation of the many for the one. On their own accord, children aren't afraid to identify with the concept of democracy. Yet, the fascist among us, churlishly screaming, as they always have in the US, in Spain, in Italy, and in Germany, want to see their agenda succeed. An agenda maintaining power in the hands of the few, the hell with the many. As Stanley writes in How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them , fascists work to pit citizens against one another. Chaos works bests when it works to sow anxiety " about loss of status for members of the true 'nation,' with fear of equal recognition of hated minority groups." Fascists leaders stir up their base to scream about the theft of their freedom s while pushing an agenda to return America to an authoritarian structure. Think: plantation hierarchy!
For the fascists, America is under attack if democracy threatened to end white freedom .
F ascists would love for Americans to believe fascism and democracy are running neck and neck toward an imagery finish line . On the other side of that line, there are no Indigenous or immigrants at the southern border. There are no reparations to be given to descendants of enslaved Blacks because no Blacks will exist within a white America. Asians and Muslims will have been disappeared along with the Jews. Racism is resolved in this fascist daydream.
A 2022 NPR report suggests that 6 in 10 Americans fear democracy is at risk. An increase from the year before. In 2021, The Atlantic referred to a poll in which only 3.5 percent of Americans would defect from a candidate who denounces democracy. We witness this in the support for Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar. The daily reports on hate-rallies throughout the nation is alarming along with an increase in other white supremacist activity on the Internet and on university and college campuses.
For someone such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, he's trapped in a nightmare of his own creation. In his daydreams, the beacon on the hill, stolen by the dreaded enemy, is being used to reveal the craftsmanship, what was never intended to be exposed, behind the literary creation of images such as "whiteness" and "blackness." A horror show for the likes of a DeSantis!
As Morrison noted years ago, there are American readers, nonacademic as well as literary critics, who proudly boast that they have never read " any African-American text." In White Freedom: The Racial History of An Idea, historian Tyler Stovall wrote that "to explore the history and power of white freedom is" to give a better sense of what those who fought against it were up against, a better understanding and appreciation of their heroic efforts."
DeSantis, however, would like for a whole new generation of Americans to have no access whatsoever to this body of knowledge. No knowledge about Black lives would mean no knowledge about American slavery! For DeSantis, there is only an America, to use Stanley's words, without "any dark moments" in its past.
Yet, as Morrison reminds us, t he act of enforcing racelessness in literary discourse is itself a racial act." Stripping "four-hundred-year-old presence of Africans and then African Americans in the United States" from "the entire history of the culture" by claiming this history has "no significant place or consequence in the origin and development of that culture's literature," is end up with a history in which Black people, to use Morrison's words, "are dead, impotent, or under complete control." A history that consists of lies!
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