Date: Sat, January 25, 2003 11:49 am
From: LOREN SPAIN
Subject: Your article re: Leonard Pitts

Hello, Mr. Landrith:

Hope everything’s going well with you. I came across your response to Mr. Pitts by accident when I went on-line to send e-mail to him concerning a different article he wrote. However, I felt that your response to him was so interesting that I want to address it.

Please understand that whatever I write is my own opinion and nothing more. It is not my intention to attack you personally, to diminish you, or condescend to you. I said this because I consult the ‘Web regularly to get an idea of what people think about a variety of “sensitive” political issues, and I have noticed an alarming lack of etiquette in the way some people express their difference of opinion to the person they disagree with. I’m not one of those people.

First of all, I agree strongly with Mr. Pitts when he expresses his cynicism about the concept of “color-blindness”. The fact that the human race is comprised of people who have different skin colors is undeniable; it is impossible to be blind to it, unless one is literally blind and has been from birth. However, if a person who says he/she is “color-blind” uses that term to assert their desire and capacity to perceive and relate to a person of color in an inward, or spiritual way that resists racial categorization and stereotyping, only then would I agree with, and support, the idea of “color-blindness”. Is this what you meant when you quoted Martin Luther King’s statement about judging a person by the content of their character? I hope so.

I believe that most, but not all of the white people who told me they didn’t think of me as “black” meant well. Nevertheless, as Mr. Pitts said, it is mildly insulting, especially when I reflect on what I believe, which is that the whole concept of “race” seems to be an invention of the European mind that has remained stubbornly central to their experience of people who are not white. Because of this obsession, people of color have been forced to dig deep into their ancestral history to resurrect knowledge of our origins that could counter the negative associations that became attached to our skin color, which resulted in us righteously exulting in it as a matter of pride based on what we learned about our cultural history. But then, when we did this, it seemed to frighten a lot of white people who had become accustomed to the stereotypes and found it difficult, if not impossible, to accommodate our transition from self-hatred to self-love. So, for a white person to try so hard to convince me that my “blackness” is not a factor in his/her recognition of me amounts to what seems like a dismissal of the hard work that went into shaping our new, improved definition of our “blackness.”

Over the last twenty years I have read obsessively, extensively, and have conducted personal research into how Aboriginal indigenous people all over the globe perceived themselves before the arrival of Europeans into their lands. What I discovered is that the original names they used to describe themselves as a people in their native tongue were based overwhelmingly on their relationship to the land and the features of the land that were peculiar to the geographical area they inhabited. From the Arctic, to Africa, Australia, the Amazon, and elsewhere, almost without fail they referred to themselves in very simple terms such as “The People Who Live Along The River,” or “The Sun People,” or “The Strong People”, or, “The Peaceful People”, or, most often, just “The People”. I’m not through investigating this, but, so far, I have not found any Aboriginal indigenous peoples who referred exclusively to their skin color as a way of distinguishing themselves from others. I find that refreshing and very, very telling.

The other thing I wanted to address was your statement that “interracial marriage rates are up”. What import do you attach to that assertion, and why? Personally, I don’t like it, because based on what I have observed about MOST, but not all, of the people of color I know who have engaged in “interracial” marriage, I believe they saw it as a form of escape by any means necessary from a white world that has terrorized us into attempting to flee from the stigma of inferiority that comes with being non-white. Why do I believe this? Because I pay very close attention to my people, and I know the methods that a lot of us employ on a daily basis, minute-to-minute, second-to-second, to unburden ourselves of the stress of being “black” in a hostile white world. Listen to what Franz Fanon had to say about this issue, taken from his book, Black Skin, White Masks, in the chapter titled, The Man of Color and The White Woman:

“Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white. I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white. Who but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved as a white man. I am a white man. Her love takes me onto the noble road that leads to total realization. I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness. When my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilization and make them mine.”

I have witnessed the consequences of just that sort of thinking in many of my brothers (yes, they are my brothers, whether they like the idea or not), and if you object to this, all I can say is that you’d have to be black to understand what I am talking about.

Let me suggest a scientific example that corresponds to this state of mind in human beings. In Poland, an animal behaviorist by the name of Konrad Lorenz conducted an experiment to prove a theory he had formulated called imprinting, in which he attempted to explain how animals came to identify themselves as members of their particular species.

Since Mr. Lorenz lived on a farm, to prove his theory he took some goose eggs from their mother and set them down with a cat that had given birth to a litter of kittens. Then he sat down to observe what would happen when the eggs hatched. When the goslings broke out of their shells, the mother cat treated them just like she did her kittens, licking and suckling them. As the goslings matured, Mr. Lorenz observed them behaving just like the kittens, licking themselves, following the mother cat around, using their beaks to groom their feathers just as the kittens used their tongues on their fur, and so on. Obviously, the goslings didn’t know they were supposed to act like geese, because the first thing they saw upon their entrance into the world was the cat and the kittens. Therefore, they thought they were kittens.

Do you see my point? Those goslings were not even the subjects of a conquest, yet had been imprinted with a cat identity because it was all they knew. The same thing goes for human beings who must sublimate their identities to the will of a ruling class, which is what white people are. Let’s face it, white people are, by any yardstick, the most successful conquerors the world has ever known, and that fact is neither a compliment, or a put-down. It’s just how things turned out. For all our sophistication and vaunted intellect, we, too, are a branch of the tree that is the animal world. In other words, it seems to be a natural thing for people to submit–however unwillingly–to the demands placed upon them by their conquerors to appease them by adapting their identity, their world-view, as much as possible, to avoid being ostracized, alienated, or, even worse, killed, which happens often when a member of the conquered class resists and rejects the “superior” group’s mandate to adapt their ways, to conform. It’s sort of like what happens when a dinner guest expresses his/her dissatisfaction with the meal. The host is usually hurt by the guest’s rude rejection, and could ask him/her to leave. Sometimes, if the guest expresses him/herself in a hostile way that threatens the host’s sense of security, he/she gets thrown out.

Interracial marriage can be, and, to my mind, is often a form of extreme adaptation on the part of a person of color who simply cannot stand up to the stress of being non-white. If this sounds like a manifestation of what you described as a “victimhood persona”, then, so be it, although, quiet as it’s kept, I think of myself not as a victim, but as a survivor. I wonder how white people would respond if they were subjects of a Black conquering caste that exercised its power as ruthlessly as Europeans and their white American counterparts have.

I also believe the idea that the offspring of interracial marriages could somehow herald a brave, new, “color-blind” world is in error also. It suggests that since a dark skin color is so offensive to white sensibilities, the only way to remove the offense is to lighten everybody up. Again, the onus is on people of color to “blend in” any way they can. In fact, the use of miscegenation as a tool of conquest has a long history in Europe. It is considered a form of genetic and social engineering, or “penile conquest”, that is an inherent part of colonial occupation, all over the world. Check out Jim Hoagland in his book, South Africa: Civilizations In Conflict, written in 1972, with regard to the Portuguese in Angola:

“The assumption is that the mesticos (mixed-race people) will identify completely with the Portuguese interests and help promote them. Such theories have promoted miscegenation into official policy, encouraged by the government and praised as patriotic. Officers have encouraged their soldiers to do their duty to Portugal by leaving at least six mestico children behind when they finish their tours in Angola. Visiting dignitaries are introduced in Angola to “Africans” holding key jobs. Many, if not most, are in fact mesticos, and some are not even Angolan.”
Mr. Hoagland also notes that once the mixed-bloods, or “Coloreds” in what was British-occupied South Africa became established as a community, whites tended to mix sexually with Coloreds rather than Africans, thus breeding the Coloreds ‘whiter’.

What I’m saying, Mr. Landrith, is that any scheme supported by whites, or even blacks, to clear up the “problem” of race through intermarriage, will only harm people of color, and consolidate the power that whites have over blacks already, because we cannot be in complete control of our collective destiny as long as whites rule. “Blackness” is not just a skin color anymore. It’s a state of mind, an attitude, a political weapon against oppressive “whiteness”, and if it is swallowed up by that whiteness, we will have lost the only weapon we could yield short of violent revolution that could sustain us in our seemingly interminable fight to hold on to what makes us different, and remain proud of that difference, in all ways. The Racial Privacy Initiative itself is nothing but a symptom of the confusion and insecurity that results when the “races” mix in a social and political environment that remains hostile to people of color. The only way us Americans, Black and white, could ever achieve the parity that we dream of is if whites would abdicate their position of power over us, and you know as well as I do that it ain’t gonna happen. Conquerors do not give up their subjects without a fight, and I wouldn’t either if I was a member of the conquering caste. Whenever I was involved in a fight with a man and managed to knock him down, I did not extend my hand to him to help get back up on his feet. And the reality of racial conflict is just that simple.

Thank you for your attention, Mr. Landrith. I do empathize with your seeming concern about issues of diversity. I just think that your position relative to the people of color you are trying to help prevents you from seeing clearly how disastrously problematic white dominion over us people of color really is.

Respectfully,

STEWART SESUANDE