How do you process your thoughts? It sometimes helps me to think through things through a dialogue in which I ask questions and prompt myself to dig up answers. I agree with the saying that the quality of your questions determines the quality of your life. I imagine myself in terms of the duality of Jekyll and Hyde as I navigate through these conversations. So I call my one self Jekyll, and the other self Hyde. Yea, it's something of a schizophrenic affair.
So this particular instalment of conversations went as follows.
On being black
Me:
1) Every nation has both strengths and weaknesses, therefore no nation is inherently better/worse than another. Nawe ke muntu ompisholo awumncinane.
2) Do not hold your breath: nobody's gonna regard you with higher esteem than your own opinion of yourself.
3) If you compare your weaknesses to the strengths of other nations - in other words: if you voluntarily subordinate yourself to others - no one can be blamed for not proving you wrong.
4) Sink or swim.
Case 1: I used to have a friend who had a phobia for cats that completely paralysed her. One day, she saw a neighbour's cat as we were walking to the car and she not only froze, she gripped me firmly and I discovered that she was stronger than me. We both couldn't move. Of course, the cat wouldn't bite but if it did, it would bite both of us.
Case # 2: Another friend, a decent swimmer, had an encounter where a friend who couldn't swim almost drowned, but clutched on to my friend, who was nearby, trying to support himself. In the process, de-functionalized my friend who might have saved both of them if the drowning fellow wasn't all over him. My friend eventually wrestled himself out of the guy's grip and escaped him. Fortunately, someone else helped the grappling drowner.
My swimmer friend explains that one of the things when lifeguards perform a rescue operation on someone who can't swim (like me, might I add!), they approach the person from behind because, as the saying goes, a drowning man will clutch at a straw. And looking at the image above, I'd bet it's easier to give a drowning person something they can clutch on, which u can then pull and help the drowner. Anyway, I digress!
If, you find it hard to find a sense of pride in yourself, even if you honestly believe that blackness is an incurable condition you were born with, the least you can do is to appreciate that you might be wrong - be open to correction. Stop insisting on proving your point by imposing that lowly opinion on other black people. They have enough to deal with as it is. If you will insist on drowning, do everyone this favour: drown alone - don't drag the lifeguard or other swimmers with you to rock bottom. It's natural not to know how to swim, but it's wrong on many levels to clutch at someone else undersea and grip both their hands - drown alone if you will! The few black people who are upwardly mobile shouldn't be made to carry the weight of those black people who (may/may not be upwardly mobile, but) are determined to pull down on blackness - this is unfair. Serve your nation: drown alone if you're not gonna try to, at least, let others rescue you.
5) Do not hope for miracles. Hope is not a strategy, anyway. If you don’t consistently spend less and/or sustainably earn more, you won’t get rich. That thing about miraculous prosperity, I’ll leave that for another day.
6) Live truthfully: acting rich is only convincing to those who are less fortunate than yourself (or perhaps equally unfortunate), and it sets them up for a further burden of perpetual misfortune. As a matter of fact, such pretentiousness is transparent to those who are actually rich and leaves it up to them not to manipulate you, seeing that you’re so desperate to convince yourself and your inner circle that you are successful. What do I mean? Well, conspicuous consumption (buying stuff for social status), among other traits, is what unsuccessful people resort to in the absence of actual success and leaves you at the mercy of anyone with the means and desire to sell you the feeling of being successful.
Why can they manipulate you? Good question, self: because you value their opinion more than your own, so you’d pay them if they affirmed you.
Point I was trying to make before you asked, is that false success costs your children. They pay for your social status with their chance at true success and they inherit (from YOU, of course) the burden/curse of keeping up appearances.
7) Talking of keeping up appearances: YOU CAN NEVER BE BETTER AT BEING WHITE THAN PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY ARE WHITE. The prospect of being a secondhand white person and still having weaknesses that actual white people don’t have - such as having the unfortunate heritage of being oppressed for many generations - leaves you at a much worse place than just looking at facts (such as being a descendant of slaves) in the face and actually standing on the shoulders of those who came before you, rather than adopting cultures that were NOT evolved with your best interest at heart. What does it mean to be white, you ask? Well, it’s the province of white people to determine what it means to be white, but I can extrapolate. I can tell you what being white does not mean: it does not mean being interested in teaching you what umemulo means, or incwala, or seanamarena, or what lebollo/koma/umgonqo is actually about. If you will desert the quest to discover what that was about to begin with, and discard it as “barbaric” - if you will take the easy way out (by assuming another nation’s concept of being progressive) - well, the joke’s on you.
I can tell you that it doesn’t make sense for white people to be interested in what exactly is isikhakha, or why ibheshu made sense when other nations were already wearing pants, or why there’s nothing non-modern about carrying your child on your back. As a matter of curiosity: why will you only consider it if you read (or worse yet, heard) that some “researcher” says it improves the mother/child bond when it’s common knowledge to your grandmom back home? Why is it hard to fathom that your grandparents were black before you were black and therefore know much more about being black than you and the “researchers” (and those who cited them) combined?
Self (interrupting): Do you hate white people?
Me (indignant and dismissive): With all due respect: don’t be a jerk.
Me: (Moving along) Be white all you want. Hell, be burgundy if you please, but surrendering your right to self-determination - and subordinating your history and that of your children - is not what white people would do. So if you really ARE hung up on being white, start with determining what and who exactly you are. Nobody taught white people how to be white. Be a bit diligent about your mimicry. Do it properly. Consider this: Chinese manufacturers get to produce stuff even for American innovators because…? They can reproduce really, really well.
Self: K, but let’s be honest, you do hate white people, right?
Me: I don’t mean to be unkind or anything but you’re really being mindless about this. It has NOTHING to do with how I feel about white people at all. Get your mind out of the gutter and let’s reason together.
8) Lastly, being expressive is more important than twanging. These are not the same thing. While some white people might twang, it’s for reasons other than that they heard some other nation doing it: it’s native to them. So if you really want to be white, be original.
Yea, it's a pleasure.
