The Negative Gloss
As I looked into the living room, I noticed that KPBS was interviewing the author of the new book about Emmett Till’s murder from 1955. I will not be reading the book for several reasons. I know the horrific story and have no desire to wallow in an eighty-year-old murder. I do not like books that paint race in the worst possible light imaginable. One turns into the words one hangs around. Did KPBS review Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative by Glenn Loury? Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power by Ian Rowe? Because of reviews of books like The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, my wife feared dragons in the southern night earlier this month…in Carytown, Richmond, Virginia…in the year 2024.
KPBS does us a grave disservice when positive books about the possible are not platformed and murders are replayed over and over again to keep fears of the southern night alive.
I walked out of the living room as soon as I saw what KPBS was up to. I have no interest in reliving 1955 horror.
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Dogma dictates that the Black experience is depicted as downtrodden and pitiful and oppressed. My Mom vetoed the local news because she did not want me and my sister bombarded with negative news about black people. Mom was wise. Instead, I absorbed the positive about blackness as enterprise. My Mom would have turned the channel tonight and she was born in southern Virginia in 1940! We become what we allow to enter our minds. Sadly, my wife absorbs the negative about the southern night and replays the 1950s in her mind. She knows no other way quite in contrast to her mother-in-law who knew genuine, in your face, racial meanness. Why would the child of 1940s Southside Virginia turn the channel on an Emmett Till murder from 1955 (it is not breaking news anymore) and her daughter-in-law native to Brooklyn, New York City consumes the Till story like the blood of Christ in the year 2024?
More writers, intellectuals and scholars should write about the disparate psychological response to recycled horror stories like Emmitt Till. It is time to move on and to let it go.
This negative gloss on Blackness is always disaffecting for me.
I don’t want to write much tonight as many of these points have been communicated in past essays….but I can’t help myself once exposed to the Till book interview. I kept thinking to myself, why not new books like a new interpretation of Howard University President Mordecai W. Johnson or a sharp analysis into the mindset of Acting White in an Anti-Racism world or an intimate calculus of emergence black consciousness in typical American families, not downtrodden and “marginalized” but regular intact families making their way in life? Or, how about a new fresh book on the generation chasm between grandparents born in the 1930s and grandchildren born in the 2000s? That is a book review on KPBS I would watch.
Alas, the gloss of Black life is submerged and subsumed in a negative gloss. Case in point — black students in private schools. I was hell-bent on my kids attending private schools since I experienced the feeling that my public suburban high school did not match up well against St. Christopher’s and St. Catherine’s in Richmond. So, as any good Dad of high aim and foresight would do, I concluded in high school that my children would do better than me. They would attend private schools. And they all did. That’s the American Dream.
A stroll through You Tube is not uplifting. One would conclude private schools are dreadful places for black kids. Consider what a curious parent would uncover today on You Tube:
Are Private Schools Suitable for Black Students?
Don’t you just love the inviting title? And I quote from the video, “In this episode we discussed the advantages and drawbacks of private schools in particularly for black students.” See how negative the frame is from the get go? There is no appearance of neutrality, let alone positivity. The negative framing always pushes me away from Blackness. Got to be honest. Got to be real.
Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools
I loved the title but the substance was disappointing. As a veteran of public school desegregation and the author of an honors thesis on public school desegregation, I was eager for details, details, details about the individual black student pioneers. Did they throw themselves into the life of their school? Were they running for student offices and running awards? Did the black students create a Black Table or not? How did the experience in desegregating private schools compare to desegregation of public schools? None of these details were forthcoming. By the end of the video, I was left empty and bereft of knowledge. There was the obligatory nod to dogma — “racism let's think about the black schools and black communities out of which they come so you have to create” and “important to be able to have folks like you” which I found off putting and tribal.
Black Kids in All White Private Schools
Negative from the start. The commentators highlight the drawback of being removed from the black community. Man, that’s not the point of a private school education! The point is to gain the top education possible, be challenged and develop ambition and self-confidence. I would not care about the black community in choosing private schools. I would care about are my children going to be challenged?
I would give this video a thumbs down as linked to tribalism and conforming notions of conformity.
Intersectional Counternarratives of Black Students and Belonging in Private Schools
No, just no.
Black Private School Students Share Racism Experience
Notice the negative frame — racism. Why not highlight in the clickbait title admissions of graduates to Ivy League schools? Why not highlight standardized test scores? How about the illustrious careers of black private school alumni in life? Nope and nope. The frame is negative. One is manipulated towards pessimism and hopelessness. I have reached the point in life where I do not view videos with “racism” in the title anymore.
Don’t care for the distortion of reality.
Conclusion: There is more here in terms of psychology and self-esteem of black people. Lord knows, my Mom was the opposite of racial inferiority. She saw herself free from the caricatures and stereotypes of others. I am my Mom’s son. I decline to accept negative ideas about black students in private schools. I have personal knowledge of the opposite. If one doesn’t think well of oneself free of Emmett Till horror tales, performative racism in private schools, and dragons in the southern night, I don’t know what to tell you.
Life is more fulfilling when one lives free of racial narratives. Choose non-conformity. Choose life lived full measure. Turn the channel off southern dragons in the night.
Respect yourself. My Mom LOVED this song!