A Treatise on Pessimism

When discussing race relations with peers and acquaintances, I sometimes raise the question of whether there is hope for anything resembling a “post-racial” future in the United States or, more appropriately, if racism and the afterlife of American slavery will ever cease to be so influential to the contemporary state of affairs. Admittedly, I have a pessimistic view on this matter, as do the majority of Black people I ask. We typically share the opinion that slavery and its children (racialized police brutality, housing, and education discrimination, etc.) will continue to negatively impact African Americans for as long as there are any Americans. The same opinion, however, often inspires surprise and disbelief in who I am talking to if they are not Black.

I suppose that at a glance the reason for this seems obvious. People who aren’t Black, and specifically people who are white, are significantly less likely to think of the status of the nation’s racism as irrevocable since they are not on the bottom rung of racialized American (forgive the redundancy) society. When one is permanently eligible for the chopping block, terrorized to no end by police body camera footage and blood-soaked headlines that seem to affirm within them how little their life truly matters in a country that originally viewed them solely as a source of income, and is reminded daily that the simplest possible assertion of their humanity, the phrase “Black lives matter,” is enough to have one labeled a terrorist, cop killer, or, astoundingly, a racist, one may feel that an America beyond racism is an America beyond comprehension. But if one has never experienced any of this and/or simply chooses to ignore that millions of their countrymen live this experience, optimism becomes a bit easier.

This is not to say that the pessimistic view is the correct one. There are legitimate arguments to be made in the opposite direction. It is true that Black bodies are currently receiving bountiful support in the States and worldwide, even if some of it is owed to the trendiness of pro-Black activism. It is also true that the murder of George Floyd incensed and mobilized more Americans than any previous instance of racial injustice in the twenty-first century. These two facts alone are likely enough to prove to some Americans that we have kicked racism to the curb for good, although in the last election, exactly half of the fifty states opted to vote for the guy that believes the Black Lives Matter movement seeks the “destruction of the nuclear family” and is “destroying many Black lives.”

God forbid we consider the plight of one of the latest Black lives to actually be destroyed, one that former (but probably soon returning) Columbus, Ohio police officer Adam Coy claimed for himself less than two weeks ago. Coy murdered 47-year-old Andre Hill in his (Hill’s) garage after the latter brandished a cell phone in a decidedly non-threatening manner. One can even find the staggering impact of racism in the fact that I had to say a man took out his phone non-threateningly. The timing of this murder seems almost by design as if Coy and company wanted to reassure all who were drunk on the unrest and indignation that had become characteristic of 2020 that nothing had changed, and that he would still kill you.

For me and the people, I have spoken with that agree with me, the persistence and longevity of racial violence and other subjugating behavior in America’s past and present is reason enough to believe that the situation is permanent. Both we and our forebears have witnessed the Herculean efforts with which racists destroy everything of ours. The history of our nation, in short, is one of purposeful racist and classist destruction with the goal of safeguarding a privileged group, but it is essential to remember that the history of Blackness is, as Marquis Bey writes, “a history of disruption toward freedom.” Members of the African Diaspora have never been kept down, and if history is any indication, they never will. This is my wellspring of hope, not the fantastical notion that oppressive white elites will one day get tired or think better of reaping the benefits of their iniquity. Simply put, my hope is sourced from what Black people have been able to do in spite of their situation, not from the thought of the situation’s eventual disappearance.

What we have been through in this country is tragic. It fills one up with a dread and apprehension that feels nearly inescapable, but it is escapable insofar as our love and belief in ourselves remain. I am only just now understanding why Du Bois was so insistent on juxtaposing the act of seeing yourself through your own eyes and seeing yourself through the eyes of those that wish you harm. It is exceedingly easy to fall into the latter trap. When we do, we begin losing to those centuries-old opportunists that brought us here to serve them. We begin winning again when we remember that we have never been servants.