Dear Devi-kulis,
Sending you something (brief) to read...to inaugurate the new blog!
Devikecharansparsh,
aseem
You have sometimes heard me say that we await the day when an Indian will pluck up the courage to write an equivalent of Frantz Fanon's 'Black Skin, White Masks'...something like a post-Macaulay 'Brown Skin, White Masks', a book that tells the unbearable truth about how 'Modern Indians' experience race, colour, language, class, and gender.
You have also often heard me use the expression "Know your white man!" I should add another to it: "Know your white woman, too!"
What I am sharing is a classic dialogue well worth reading, esp for those residing or for those who have lived at some point in God's country...and as much for those wishing to reside in it !
www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/19/a-rap-on-race
I met James Baldwin in my first months in America in 1987, just before he died. He had come to Boston when I was studying there. Very gentle man, with a wry sense of humour.
To me, this dialogue between a huge name in anthropology with an African-American writer always demonstrated rather starkly how differently a black man (or woman) thinks about the world, compared to a white woman (or man).
For instance, they exchange this:
MEAD: Did you bomb those little girls in Birmingham?
BALDWIN: I’m responsible for it. I didn’t stop it.
MEAD: Why are you responsible? Didn’t you try to stop it? Hadn’t you been working?
BALDWIN: It doesn’t make any difference what one’s tried.
MEAD: Of course it makes a difference what one’s tried.
BALDWIN: No, not really.
MEAD: This is the fundamental difference. You are talking like a member of the Russian Orthodox Church… “We are all guilty. Because some man suffers, we are all murderers.”
BALDWIN: No, no, no. We are all responsible.
MEAD: Look, you are not responsible.
BALDWIN: That blood is also on my hands.
MEAD: Why?
BALDWIN: Because I didn’t stop it.
MEAD: Is the blood of somebody who is dying in Burma today on your hands?
BALDWIN: Yes, yes.
MEAD: Because you didn’t stop that? That’s what I mean by the Russian Orthodox position, that all of us are guilty of all that has been done or thought —
BALDWIN: Yes.
MEAD: And I will not accept it. I will not.
BALDWIN: “For whom the bell tolls.” … It means everybody’s suffering is mine.
MEAD: Everybody’s suffering is mine but not everybody’s murdering, and that is a very different point. I would accept everybody’s sufferings. I do not distinguish for one moment whether my child is in danger or a child in Central Asia. But I will not accept responsibility for what other people do because I happen to belong to that nation or that race or that religion. I do not believe in guilt by association.
BALDWIN: But, Margaret, I have to accept it. I have to accept it because I am a black man in the world and I am not only in America… I have a green passport and I am an American citizen, and the crimes of this Republic, whether or not I am guilty of them, I am responsible for.
MEAD: But you see, I think there is a difference. I am glad I am an American because I think we can do more harm than any other country on this earth at the moment, so I would rather be inside the country that could do the most harm.
BALDWIN: In the eye of the hurricane.
MEAD: In the eye of the hurricane, because I think I may be able to do more good there.
Sending you something (brief) to read...to inaugurate the new blog!
Devikecharansparsh,
aseem
You have sometimes heard me say that we await the day when an Indian will pluck up the courage to write an equivalent of Frantz Fanon's 'Black Skin, White Masks'...something like a post-Macaulay 'Brown Skin, White Masks', a book that tells the unbearable truth about how 'Modern Indians' experience race, colour, language, class, and gender.
You have also often heard me use the expression "Know your white man!" I should add another to it: "Know your white woman, too!"
What I am sharing is a classic dialogue well worth reading, esp for those residing or for those who have lived at some point in God's country...and as much for those wishing to reside in it !
www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/19/a-rap-on-race
I met James Baldwin in my first months in America in 1987, just before he died. He had come to Boston when I was studying there. Very gentle man, with a wry sense of humour.
To me, this dialogue between a huge name in anthropology with an African-American writer always demonstrated rather starkly how differently a black man (or woman) thinks about the world, compared to a white woman (or man).
For instance, they exchange this:
MEAD: Did you bomb those little girls in Birmingham?
BALDWIN: I’m responsible for it. I didn’t stop it.
MEAD: Why are you responsible? Didn’t you try to stop it? Hadn’t you been working?
BALDWIN: It doesn’t make any difference what one’s tried.
MEAD: Of course it makes a difference what one’s tried.
BALDWIN: No, not really.
MEAD: This is the fundamental difference. You are talking like a member of the Russian Orthodox Church… “We are all guilty. Because some man suffers, we are all murderers.”
BALDWIN: No, no, no. We are all responsible.
MEAD: Look, you are not responsible.
BALDWIN: That blood is also on my hands.
MEAD: Why?
BALDWIN: Because I didn’t stop it.
MEAD: Is the blood of somebody who is dying in Burma today on your hands?
BALDWIN: Yes, yes.
MEAD: Because you didn’t stop that? That’s what I mean by the Russian Orthodox position, that all of us are guilty of all that has been done or thought —
BALDWIN: Yes.
MEAD: And I will not accept it. I will not.
BALDWIN: “For whom the bell tolls.” … It means everybody’s suffering is mine.
MEAD: Everybody’s suffering is mine but not everybody’s murdering, and that is a very different point. I would accept everybody’s sufferings. I do not distinguish for one moment whether my child is in danger or a child in Central Asia. But I will not accept responsibility for what other people do because I happen to belong to that nation or that race or that religion. I do not believe in guilt by association.
BALDWIN: But, Margaret, I have to accept it. I have to accept it because I am a black man in the world and I am not only in America… I have a green passport and I am an American citizen, and the crimes of this Republic, whether or not I am guilty of them, I am responsible for.
MEAD: But you see, I think there is a difference. I am glad I am an American because I think we can do more harm than any other country on this earth at the moment, so I would rather be inside the country that could do the most harm.
BALDWIN: In the eye of the hurricane.
MEAD: In the eye of the hurricane, because I think I may be able to do more good there.
And for a further curl on this discussion about culture, race and responsibility...read this further source of amusing provocation...when Oprah put her foot in her mouth on her visit to India in 2012:
ReplyDeletehttps://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/oprah-winfrey-defends-criticism-indian-viewers/story?id=16846172