People Love Oppressed Blacks: Reports from a Haunted Present
By W. F. Twyman, Jr.
I am haunted by few books. People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn haunts me. In her penetrating essays, Horn reveals modern-day antisemitism as a consequence of tragic and comedic dehumanization of obsession with the Jewish past of horrors. I perceived parallels with the haunted present of Black Americans today. Let’s explore my insight for a moment.
In the bad old days of American slavery and Jim Crow segregation, blacks were subject to dehumanizing protocols. Allow white pedestrians to pass on the public sidewalk even if one has to step into the street to make way. Use the back door to enter the home of a white person, not the front door. A slave shall never meet the eyes of a white slave master.
These days of black American horrors, of dragons in the southern night, are long gone.
Today, the present remains haunted. Consider that some Americans believe one should never question a black person. One must listen, never criticize. Some books by black authors are never reviewed because people are afraid to offer a black writer constructive criticism. As a result, blacks are treated with kid gloves, like children. Black intellectuals are denied the benefit of healthy critique and we end up with rubbish like the antiracism book by Ibram X. Kendi. This circumstance is one example of how people love blacks as oppressed people. The result is a haunted present.
Another example in support of the thesis would be the institution of a Black Honors College at California State University Sacramento. The idea is black student success requires isolation, segregation, affirmation and celebration of authentic Black identity…in the year 2024…in Sacramento, California. I Need People Who Look Like Me
To support this revolutionary initiative of race isolation, the Chancellor’s Strategic Workgroup Black Student Success Report (too many words) claimed the Emancipation Proclamation was at issue. A presidential directive in 1863 freeing slaves fell short and now black students need a Black Honors College at California State University Sacramento. Dear readers, where is the causation? Where is the reality? Where is the logical nexus between 1863 and a compelling state interest in a segregated Honors College by race today? I was an Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia in Charlotteville, Virginia in 1983. Didn’t need or require segregation, affirmation or ideology. I needed inner drive and an all-night library…not trying to be funny but…
Yet another example of past oppression haunting the present.
As support for its Call to Action, the Cal State report profiled and quoted Franz Fanon at the top of the page. Fanon was an infamous Marxist, Liberationist, and supporter of violence in Algeria against the French. He perceived Blacks as oppressed. See Black Skin, White Masks. There is no place for Black Enterprise in Fanon’s world. Nor does he find favor with ambition and high aim in individuals. It is all about oppression, oppression and more oppression. The book was published in 1952.
The world would be a better place if Black Skin, White Masks were never published. But the book circulated and froze in time black identity in 1952. When the California State University deigns to quote Franz Fanon, one knows the despair of Fanon continues to haunt the minds of decision makers on campus. I feel sorry for black college students whose understanding of reality is informed by Fanon.
People love oppressed Blacks. Thus, we continue to witness reports from a haunted present in the Academy.
Conclusion: There is this idea that there are no new ideas in race literature. We desperately need new ideas in the discourse on race. Horn had the epic insight to realize the world was only interested in dead Jews, never living ones. Similarly, we need a Dara Horn of race to realize institutions remain frozen in race time, whether it be the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 or the regrettable fatalism of oppression obsessed Franz Fanon in 1952. Time has moved on, people.
Seriously, race time has moved on. I urge writers, scholars and intellectuals to channel writer Dara Horn. Make the case for why people love oppressed blacks. There is more to blackness than oppression. Am I just writing into the void here? We need a writer out there to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with black oppression and so little respect for black reality in the present.
Sometimes your body is someone else’s haunted house. Other people look at you and can only see the oppressed. — paraphrase of Dara Horn’s opening line to People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
Ugh!
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Thank you for your honesty. It is mind boggling that it’s actually necessary to make an argument as you have. But it serves the “woke” or whatever you want to call their self adulation to characterize anyone “of color” but particularly “black” as pathetic.