Let’s take off the headset of dogma and slogan words. Let’s assume individual consciousness is fundamental. What could emerge from individualism? All that is real is the aggregate of what individuals observe. This is my theory of the morning.
Does my theory presume an interlocking network of individuals? And does race reality emerge from these interactions? There are an infinite number of interactions between individuals every day. Thus, the emergent reality of race is ever changing. There is no permanent white supremacy or unyielding oppression of blackness. Arguably, race presents as a simulation created by interacting individuals. Blackness becomes a molecular experience at the level of the individual.
If there are over 40 million black Americans, there are over 40 million stories, experiences and perspectives. Each individual has a unique story, experience and perspective giving rise to a unique consciousness of Blackness. It is true.
The problem is we don’t have a rule for where the points of interlocking consciousnesses will land. There is nothing deterministic about the emergence of reality. If I am at a gathering of Jack and Jill individuals, I will experience race in a way unlike how I experience race with my individual Virginia cousins or with my individual kindred spirits at Free Black Thought. Each unique collection of interacting individuals creates a unique reality of race, a unique consciousness of blackness and race. And when I am hanging out with individuals at the Hotel Del bar on Coronado, I have no consciousness of race.
There is nothing deterministic about the emergence of race reality.
All of the possible dimensions of history and geography and personality and family are unknowable by any commentator or social scientist. The reality of race is unknowable because the property of emergence of race consciousness is unknowable. There are too many individuals and too many variables at play. What is my race consciousness, for example? Is it ever changing depending upon the weather? Just kidding, people. How about my mother-in-law? My wife? My daughter? My sons? We are all wildly divergent in consciousness of blackness.
Do you really believe there is one constant, fixed, universal black consciousness for over 40 million individuals? Do you believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny?
All possible choices are in play every day when it comes to consciousness of race. There is no single thread of race consciousness.
“We go through hundreds or thousands of possible things before arriving at the ones that are most promising.” — Larry Page, Google
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In over 500 essays, I have explored the human condition and this vexing question of Black consciousness. My conscious individual moments are unique. This is true for every writer, intellectual and scholar. I will never experience the same moments as Professors Glenn Loury or Ibram X. Kendi because we are not clones. We are of different places and times. The South Side of Chicago in 1948 is not Twyman Road in 1961. The dangerous streets of sketchy Baltimore are not the oak tree covered lanes of Chester. No two individuals have the same experience of race. Author Ian Rowe has the Jamaican immigrant experience of race in Brooklyn. I have the Old Family experience of race in a southern suburb. Different moments of life create a different consciousness of life.
No two individuals have the same consciousness of blackness and race.
It follows no writer or intellectual has moral authority to speak for millions of people. The collective project on race is defective in conception. There is no hierarchy of individual consciousness. The thoughts of Nikole Hannah Jones in The 1619 Project are the opinions of one individual, nothing more. All writers are equal since all individuals have equal claim to human dignity and creative expression. There is no unqualified truth in the land of dogma and slogan words.
More research should be conducted into the space time dimensions of race consciousness. How does race consciousness in Montana in 1893 compare to Mississippi in 2024? Did you know the only black individual in Libby, Montana from 1890 to 1924 “earned a comfortable living as a lawyer” and served as United States Commissioner to the federal District Court from 1893 to 1917? His name was John D. Posten and there are no images of this pioneer black lawyer on the internet. What was Posten’s consciousness of race? How does race consciousness of black kids in suburbs in the 1970s compared to race consciousness of black kids in suburbs in the 2020s? How does race consciousness of black kids in rural Virginia compare to race consciousness of black kids in urban Virginia? How does one define black consciousness? How does one survey and question for black consciousness?
The research may be impossible since each individual is the alpha and omega of individual consciousness. Experience plus personality creates consciousness. Each individual is the sum of all the individual has known in life. How would one ever conduct such a comparative analysis of millions of individuals?
As a side note, individuals lose memories of events over time. Individual consciousness ebbs and flows based upon conscious awareness and recollection of the past.
There is a topography of race. Geography and generation may well hold the key to the most profound understanding of blackness in America. To repeat myself until the message sinks in, if there are over 40 million black Americans, there are over 40 million stories, experiences and perspectives. The result is a plentitude of Black consciousnesses in families, let alone the larger world.
Let’s imagine a hypothetical black American family, the Montagues. There are five individuals in the Montague family — Dad, Mom, Older Son, Younger Son, Daughter. The Dad has zero consciousness of blackness as a default position. Random injection of race into his life annoys Dad. He loves to study black history and people but he presents as a traditional, Brooks Brothers loving, suburban individual. Black consciousness is extremely important to Mom’s sense of self. She is committed to various black associations and her sorority. She has zero interest in Black history, although her family has made their mark in American history since 1790. Although her closest friend is white, she feels duty bound to maintain black friendships. Older Son loves being black. A graduate of predominantly white schools, he pledged a black fraternity and dates black women. He loves rap and hip hop music. Younger Son grew up in predominantly white schools. His sense of race consciousness is muted. He is most comfortable in the larger world of friends and has never dated a black woman. Daughter is the young revolutionary in the family. Committed to woke ideology and a black sorority, her friends tend to be privileged women, black, puerto rican and white.
Now consider this playbill of characters. How would they interact as a family? Would consciousness of race ebb and flow as they interacted? Hours might go by and there is no consciousness of race. Then Miss Revolutionary asks whether there are sunset towns around which annoys the Dad. Or, Mom laments that her husband is great except she wishes her husband was more Black. She felt misled while dating because he loved Black History. But love of Black History has no bearing on one’s sense of self. Dad feels his older son lives in an alien world of a black fraternity. Did he consider pledging Sammy? Dad and the younger son never have any race consciousness in their interactions, save for a remark once every year or two. Once, younger son asked Dad why Dad was so bent out of shape about Jack and Jill? Was it because Jack and Jill was bourgie?
Observe how the shifting interactions of these five individuals creates an ever changing emergence of race consciousness within the family. Writers and scholars should write more about the calculus of black consciousness within typical American families.
This is a hypothetical family, of course, the Montagues.
Dogma (Blackness is Oppression. Nothing else matters.) misleads us because dogma understands black people as cardboard figures. You know the tropes — historical marginalization, low income, poor, inner-city, police brutality, poor reading skills, poor math skills, no father in the home, etc. Where is Jack and Jill in the popular imagination of black people?
Dogma and slogan words erase individuals. The erasure generates disaffection and alienation. Is it so hard to accept individuals as individuals, unique persons unlike any other individuals in history? I have never met a clone in my life. Even twins have individual and unique experiences giving rise to unique consciousnesses.
Oppression is not a monotone restriction on anyone’s life. What does oppression even mean? There are no structural disparities. There are individual disparities in life. Individuals bring different strong points and weak points into the game of life.
Geography and generation is best understood as the space time continuum of race and blackness. From relationships between individuals emerges a consciousness of blackness in the world.
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What Does It Mean to Pass for Black?
Rejection by individuals can create a consciousness of blackness. For example, suppose one appears ambiguous in physical features and skin color? How do relationships between individuals create a consciousness of blackness? One example of passing for black would be Adrian Piper.
Adrian Piper
Born in the same year as Professor Glenn Loury, Piper came into the world in New York City. Piper grew up in a light-skinned, middle-class family in Harlem. She attended a wealthy, predominantly white private school. Her father was a lawyer. Her great-uncle was William T. Piper, founder of the Piper Aircraft Corporation. Great-uncle was not hurting for cash. He ranked within the Forbes 400 richest people in the world in 1970.
Like her great uncle, Adrian Piper attended Harvard University where she obtained a master’s and doctorate degree. Overcome with a sense of great accomplishment at being admitted to Harvard, she attended a graduate students reception. “She had made it!” I knew the feeling years ago in the distant past. She walked into a room with some of the top intellectuals in her field. And then it happened. The most illustrious professor walked into the room and said point blank “Ms. Piper, you’re about as Black as I am!” One individual laid low the self-identity of another individual, young and full of promise.
This interaction between two individuals created a consciousness of blackness. There was no state action. There was no structural this or institutional that. It was the interaction of the young Piper with a senior individual that left consciousness of blackness in Piper’s mind.
As Piper moved on in life, she felt a renewed consciousness due to interactions with black individuals. Interactions with individuals who were black led Piper to believe that she had to pass a litmus test of authenticity for acceptance. An individual would meet Piper and, aware of Piper’s physical appearance, share some horrible experience with racism. Piper in return was expected to reciprocate with some horror story of her own. Piper’s stories were never enough. Her suffering was always diminished. She would fail the suffering test for blackness and be rejected by individuals.
The lighter the skin, the lighter the burden it was presumed. The suffering test was meant to exclude. In point of fact, the requirement of proving her blackness created a consciousness of blackness in Piper. And it was not favorable.
In a poignant dinner with writer Thomas Chatterton Williams in East Berlin, Germany, the now retired from race Piper listened as Williams bemoaned that his white-appearing daughter might not feel racial pain as a black individual. Williams worried that his blonde, blue-eyed French daughter might not also feel guilty. She looked just like enslavers in the past. “Why would you want that in the first place?” Piper asked Williams matter-of-factly. “If the pain and the guilt isn’t there, why introduce it?” Williams had no rebuttal to Piper’s wisdom of experience. In that moment, Williams decided to retire from race.
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Piper and Williams have removed the headset of dogma and slogan words. We are left with conscious individuals of a place (Berlin and France) and a time (2019). A theory of the individual as the seat of race consciousness emerges from the interaction of two individuals.
Dogma gets it wrong. We don’t better understand through the peek hole of abstraction. We gain wisdom through the lens of concrete and specific individuals. I learn more about race from a young server at The Fancy Biscuit or a tour guide at Agecroft Hall than I do from White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo or Anti-Racism by Ibram X. Kendi.
No one is an avatar for a race.
Black consciousness is an emergent property. Even my individual life is evidence in this regard. My consciousness of blackness in an all-black first grade was different from my consciousness of race in the third grade which was different from my consciousness of race in junior high school versus senior high school versus college versus law school versus Manhattan (dreadful) versus San Diego versus Las Vegas. If I as an individual have experienced perhaps nine different phases of race consciousness in my individual life, multiply that number by over 40 million black Americans.
Sigh.
Blackness is an emergent consciousness informed by space and time. What is the true reality of Blackness? Does it depend upon whether one lives in Montgomery County, Maryland or San Diego, California? Does it depend upon whether one lives in Palo Alto, California or Chesterfield, Virginia? Does it depend upon whether one is living in 1940 or 1970? 1970 or 2024?
There is something deeper than present race discourse. The network of all possible understandings of race refuses to be boxed in by dogma. See my pioneer black lawyers essays. Season 4 Episode 1 Season 4 Episode 2 Season 4 Episode 3 See my 500 essays on life and the human condition. The Burbank Happening and Other Signs of Intelligent Life See Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America. No theory can explain the unexpected in life. Life laughs at us. The universe laughs at Robin DiAngelo.
Conclusion: We have a vector which is the individual conscious experience. We have to start from there. Life starts from there. We all start from there. Otherwise, we are wasting our time trying to mold individuals into caricatures and stereotypes.
The individual conscious experience may not line up with dogma and slogan words. Slogan words are deeply non-human. None of us are abstractions. Before Justice and Social Justice and Critical Social Justice, there was human dignity and creative expression and the individual.
Reality, the infinity of interlocking individuals over space and time, overwhelms dogma and slogan words. The individual survives.
Start at 4:20 — Adrian Piper