Open Letter to Bliss Broyard

“How was Bliss?” asked my man Lindsay Robs, via e-mail a few days ago.

He’d wanted to come down from D.C. for her talk, but couldn’t. Me, I’ve been thinking about that very question for over a week now, and I’ve struggled, considering how to put my feelings words. I thought about putting it in a private e-mail to you guys, but then I thought, “You know, there’s nothing I’d say to you that I wouldn’t say to her”---it’s not like there’s some big secret… Still, to prevent me from saying something I have no business saying, I’m going to put my response in the form of an open letter to Bliss herself, just to keep me honest. Bear with me, please---it’s going to take awhile, because it’s not a simple subject, but here goes:

I’m one of many people, Bliss,

who have a love-hate relationship with theory. It’s wonderful to have someone think through many of life’s issues and concerns, and present them in a way that allows me to place my own thoughts or situation in that theoretical context and allow that context to explain certain phenomena. That’s what I like about theory. My problem with theory, however, is that it’s, well, theoretical---it’s in the air, it’s floating context. And I live on the ground.

And the more I think of it, that’s the problem I had with your stance on race---more specifically, “post-race”---at dinner after the talk. Now, one thing I definitely want to do is separate my feelings about your stance with my feelings about you. I liked you, and I enjoyed dinner, and I especially appreciated the way we disagreed. In my world, reasonable people can disagree and still shake hands and walk away smiling. As I’m sure you know, some people can’t quite pull that off, and I’m delighted that we were able to do so. Another thing I’d like to say is that I feel like your post-racial position was fairly representative of how I understand post-race theory in general, so I want you to read what follows as far more of a critique on the concept of “post-race” than on you, personally. Let’s just say you were the first person I’ve had an actual conversation with who held these views, and even though I was wary of post-racial theory before, it’d never been in my face, so to speak, until our dinner.

Now, I said a lot at dinner, and I’ve been thinking over what I said, and to be totally honest, I’m not backing down from any position I staked out. But since this is an open letter, and my fellow Black Men Read?! members weren’t at the dinner---although they did read your book---I’ll try to recount here, as best I can, your position and mine when it comes to what you called “the post-race ideal.”

My first problem was when, as best I can recall, during the Q&A, when asked which race you’d designate for your daughter, you said she knows her cousins, and, as you stood before a projected photo of your blond, blue-eyed daughter and her cousin, a phenotypically black child, you suggested that her racial designation wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things. Those are my words, not yours, and if you feel as if I misquoted you, I apologize for that, but that’s how I heard it. And when we talked later, at dinner, we talked specifically about raising children, and that’s where the disagreement came from.

See, race is, indeed, as the theorists say, merely a fiction, only a cultural construct. True enough. But it’s a fiction that everyone believes in. Let’s compare it with, say, astrology. Astrology is a way of understanding the world, too, just like race is, but while a lot of people believe in astrology, not everyone does, and there’s no penalty for not believing in it. Race is another matter entirely. It is, indeed, how we make sense of the world.

“But do you really think,” you asked during dinner, “that race is the primary way people identify individuals?” Again, that’s a paraphrase, but it’s close enough. The answer is yes, of course it is. Let me tell another story---I told too many illustrative stories at dinner, but here goes (at least) one more: years ago, as a graduate student, I taught a freshman composition class at VCU, and as part of the class requirements, I had the students turn in journals periodically. One of the students, God bless him, turned in his journal, including the doodles and random jottings he was doing on the first day of class, as he sat in the classroom, waiting for me to arrive. And right there, written down in mid-sentence, was his instantaneous reaction as I opened the door and walked into the room: “He’s black!” And the very next sentence was, “Now, why was that the first thing I thought?” I thought it was perfect. He honestly scribbled his top-of-mind reaction, and then (not, at that early moment, knowing he’d be turning it in) critiqued that reaction.

I submit to you that regardless of the race of that student---white, black, or other (and this kid was Asian, if it matters)---, my skin color is the first thing Americans notice about me. That’s what I find so baffling about the post-race crew: what’s so doggone “post” when race is still the initial factor for the person you’ve just met? (I know, I know, some people insist they’re colorblind; I simply don’t believe them, and I don’t trust them. Either they’re naïve, or they’re duplicitous---I can’t fathom any other rationale for the “colorblind” assertion.)

“But don’t you think that’s changing?,” you said to me at dinner. Er, no—I don’t. My blackness screams to others. My social class does also talk loudly, as do my clothes, my hair, my voice and how I use it, along with what I actually say. All those things communicate. But in this country, they communicate in the context of my race. Always have, always will, as long as I live. It’ll be the same for my children’s grandchildren, and likely enough for my children’s grandchildren’s grandchildren. That’s the way it is. I believe most African-Americans will co-sign that assertion. Now, the way it will be is up to question, and although I’ve just given you my prediction, that future is, indeed, up to question. The present, however, isn’t.

But see, you’re in a position to think post-racially because your skin is white, Bliss---it’s as simple and real as that. No one will assume you are of African descent because it doesn’t show on your surface. I’m sorry, but for you, it’s easy to be post-race---nobody is going to remark about your blackness when you walk into a room. More importantly, you won’t (you never have) had to deal with knowing that your blackness announces your presence. You can be post-race, but how post-race can I be? How does that work?

And you know what else? I going to make a distinction between bi-racial people who look white but have been raised by parents who made sure they were raised with a black identity, whatever “black identity” means to them. True, even in that case their blackness doesn’t announce itself, but when they walk into a room they’re walking into it looking out through black eyes, through culturally black eyes. That matters to me. Matters a lot. I know some black folks will diss them because they’re not black enough, or don’t look black, and that’s unfortunate, but nevertheless, that visually-white-looking black person will know who they are. That matters, too. Hugely.

Ultimately, I can’t blame you for your position, since you never had a black childhood, or a black adolescence either, and you can’t go back and get one or the other. You’ll struggle to deal with what it means to have African ancestry for the rest of your life, and I give you credit for doing so, and doing so in public, and in so doing contributing to this ongoing national conversation about race. But you know what? My sense is that you and the positions you have on race are the best example I’ve yet encountered of the difference between “of African descent” and “blackness.” One comes from the genes of one’s parents; the other comes as a result of lived cultural experience, both within the black community and without. That matters, too.

Put this way: I love Richmond. I’ve lived here for a total of 16 years, give or take. But I was a Southern California child, born and raised, and a California adolescent. Because of my upbringing and my cultural interests, there are a lot of things about Richmond that I can completely ignore---and a lot of things that I enjoy immensely about the city, as well. I know, intellectually, that I’m in the South, living here in Richmond, but I don’t conceive of the city in traditionally “southern” terms. It’s simply not a part of my conception of the city of Richmond, as weird as that may sound. But see, it’s easy for me to do so, because although I’m living in the South and plan to do so for the rest of my life, I’m not southern. Never have been, never will be. But here’s what’s most important: I also know that I’m missing a huge component of what it truly means to be a black man living in the South---in the capital of the Confederacy, no less---because I wasn’t raised here. All the nuances, the loaded cultural meanings, the education of where you’re not wanted,, or the brave insistence of going there anyway?---I missed all that. I can tell you all about the cultural nuances of growing up black in L.A., but not the South---it’s simply not a part of my reality, here, and yes, race in America has absolutely changed to the extent that I feel quite comfortable here, quite possibly unaccountably comfortable, and further, it’s possible that my comfort is largely as a result of my ignorance (in a lived, cultural experience sort of way) of the relatively recent racial past of this city.

But even if I set myself to learning, through books and websites and personal interviews and whatever else I could get my hands on, everything I could possibly want to know about growing up black in Richmond between 1959 and, say, 1980---I still can’t go back and experience it! I’ll still be filtering my historical acquisition of knowledge through, alas, my Southern California upbringing; I’ll never---ever---be Southern. It’s simply too late. I arrived here at the age of 25. Grown.

Similarly, regardless of your genetic connection to Africa, I’m afraid it’s too late for you to truly “get” blackness, absent a black childhood and adolescence. It’s not your fault. But the difference between me and the South and you and blackness is that I believe I understand the nature of my relationship with the South, and that understanding means I’m not about to make any New South (“post-south?) declarations, because I know how much I don’t know---and I know what I’ll never know. I’m not sure I can say the same about you, Bliss, based on your talk and our subsequent conversation. Not only that, I also know full well that I’m in no position to tell, not really, whether or how much things are changing here or not. What do I really know---I mean, really? Not much. For me, that’s the bottom line. I believe it is for you, as well, whether you realize it or not. I hope that doesn’t sound harsh, because I really did enjoy talking to you. But I have to be honest. As a black person, you’re simply not credible.

I’m a black man, Bliss. In my mind, theory-in-the-sky is always the biggest problem with post-race. I live on the ground. And you know what? We all do. You do, your daughter does, I do, my kids do. And we have choices to make, down here on the ground. Both/and is nice to position to posit, and it’s a worthy goal, although, as I said at dinner, my dream for a post-race America isn’t both/and, but respect: unqualified, unbound cultural respect for non-white Americans. Respect for difference; true cultural understanding. That’s my dream. But it’s gonna be a long time coming, because in my mind, America ain’t post-racial. We ain’t hardly there yet.

Sincerely wishing you the best,

Bert Ashe