Angry Black White Boy (20 page)

In truth, it would confirm them regardless of what I did. Should
I comport myself badly, it would be taken up as proof of blacks’
inferiority, our flawed and primitive physiologies, as confirmation
of the U.S. Sanitary Commission’s 1865 report stating that mulat
toswere “of inferior vitality” to blacks and whites alike.

I still remember the excitement with which the Darwinists
awaited the census figures of 1880; they were convinced that the
black population would be shown to have dwindled because Negroescouldn’t survive freedom. Scores of fans, likewise, were certainthat I would collapse, mid-season, due to exhaustion. If I did
well, on the other hand, my successes were attributed to enormous,
animalistic strength; surely, my gentleman’s demeanor cloaked a
jungle beast, and it was a good thing my muscles were distracted
with baseball because otherwise I was certain to lunge at the nearestwhite woman.

I suppose we should be thankful that even as America pretends
to advance—as it allows young men like Louis Armstrong and
Booker T. Washington to flourish, men who might never have had
such chances had they been born when I was—we are still providedwith regular displays of brutal, crystalline honesty. We
should be glad, on some level, for the gruesome spectacle of lynchings.Whatever scant morality we retain cries for the killer to stand
over his kill without averting his eyes, to glory or sorrow openly in
the blood on his hands.

Alas, such images no longer hold any power over me now, in
my old age. Instead, when I begin to soften toward America, when
I find my sense of outrage fading, I think not of the lynch mobs I
have seen, or even of the one from which I myself once managed to
escape. More real to me, somehow, and more horrible, is the simplememory of the 1904 World’s Fair held in St. Louis, Missouri,
which I attended with my wife and children.

Perhaps you can recall the exhibit; it has been forgotten now,
but at the time it was quite famous. In St. Louis—where, incidentally,I played my first professional game, on an empty stomach becauseservice was refused me at my team’s hotel—African Pygmies
were imported and displayed like animals. Dropped into so-called
reproductions of their “primitive” habitats, made to sit before
shacks and behind fences and stage mud fights to demonstrate
what life back home on the Dark Continent was like.

In the name of science, the “savages” were used to justify the
white man’s every prejudice. The fair even sponsored an AnthropologyDay, on which the “specimens” were forced to compete in
wholly unknown sports. Nothing—not even an 0-for-8 double-headerfrom the brunette Walker—reinforces the doctrine of Negro
athletic inferiority like the sight of a fifty-year-old sprinter hobblingaround a track, or an African “champion” who has never
before thrown a shot put making comic attempts to learn the techniquebefore an audience of hooting fairgoers munching on snacks.
Fairgoers both black and white, I might add.

The Pygmies were such a success at the World’s Fair that one of
them, Ota Benga, went on display in the New York City Zoo when
the exhibition in St. Louis closed. To no one’s great surprise, he
took his own life in a matter of months. I wonder what the first
visitor who passed his cage and saw the Pygmy’s lacerated body
thought. Zookeeper, oh zookeeper? Is that animal supposed to be
bleeding like that?

Chapter Nine

By Thursday, Macon had been cover boy fifteen times over. When they plugged it in, the phone rang off the hook: redneck death threats, thirteen-year-old punk-rock chicks asking for The Franchise’s hand in marriage, reporters and more reporters. The media had found a new darling, one to whom they had almost total access any time of day or night, and they were eager to convey Macon’s views on things he’d never even thought about. Nique and Andre had developed the habit of spewing whatever bullshit came to mind when they fielded such calls, as a way to blow off steam. So many disembodied voices clamored for answers, and dutifully scribbled down whatever they were given, that it hardly seemed to matter.

“Mr. Detornay’s views on forestry conservation? Brother Macon feels that the felling of redwoods is a metaphor for the felling of young black brothers. Black male sexuality is metaphorically castrated as white men chop down these mighty dusky-colored trees.”

“The Middle East? Brother Macon laments the monies lavished on unstable foreign governments while people barely survive in the ghettos of this country and Rick James languishes in jail. The U.S. has been an unwanted world policeman far too long. Let these people work it out themselves, shit.”

“Extraterrestrials? Fool, Macon Detornay is down with aliens. How you think them Nubian motherfuckers built the pyramids while white folks were still gnawing on pterodactyl wings? The black man, in his glory, been visited by alien races who passed the wisdom of the cosmos to the elders of Ancient Egypt. Knowledge that.”

“Interracial relationships? Let’s put it this way: Back in the day, the most threatening thing a black man could have wasn’t a gun, or an education, it was a white woman. Scared white folks so much they’d lynch him on the spot. Nowadays, what’s the one thing that makes a black man a thousand times less intimidating? A white woman on his arm. So yes, interracial marriage may eventually dismantle racism by producing millions of mixed babies, but not until it’s provided just the kind of symbolic black emasculation that America so yearns for in the first place.”

Organizations checked in around the clock to pledge their allegiance, register their dismay, and confess their confusion. Matzel Toffee Candyworks, a Lower East Side confectionery run by three Jewish brothers, was the first business to declare its support, offering to distribute free sweets at the rally. The proprietors had grown up watching the Last Poets perform in Harlem, and the lyric “they have stuck lollipops up the asses of our leaders to pacify their Black Power farts” had inspired them to get into the candy game.

Many of the businesses Logan approached for Day of Apology sponsorship wanted nothing to do with the rally, so the CEO curved her sales pitches accordingly. Domino’s Pizza, notorious right-wingers, had been happy to commit three hundred pies once Logan explained that she was throwing an all-white rally for racial solidarity.

Most of the major rap record labels, realizing that thousands of white people willing to troll the streets apologizing to blacks represented their dream demographic, had offered free performances and sound systems for the event. Andre, as chief of staff, had booked only the two groups that seemed the most threatening: the Ann Petry Dish, a soul-singing, rhyme-slinging trio from Queens, and the Spooks Who Sit by the Door, a Chicago-based collective of MCs whose self-produced debut, COINTELPROBLACK, spoke passionately about decapitating and skull-fucking FBI agents, schoolteachers, and anybody who didn’t celebrate when Orenthal J. Simpson was declared not guilty.

Macon had invited the People’s Revolutionary Guerrilla Theatre to perform any scene they felt appropriate, and for some reason clear only to themselves they had decided on the marriage of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra from Euripides’ obscure play
Strange But True Greek Wedding Night Follies.
Nique had tried to impress upon them the importance of performing something relevant, and suggested a scene from
Dutchman,
but they replied that they refused to be pigeonholed and Macon advised his Minister of Information to drop it.

Busloads of supporters, including the entire active Killer Crip population of Topeka, Kansas, and a Macon Detornay Fan Club comprising a dozen teenybopper girls from Dallas, were expected to descend on the city in what was rapidly becoming a major tourist event.
Newsweek
’s incendiary “The New Face of Hate” piece had reported on a small but worrisome delegation of bigots from North Dakota, interviewed as they loaded pickup trucks with jerky, beer, and shotguns for the trip to New York, where they planned to “not apologize to no niggers for nothing.”
Teen Steam
Magazine
’s answer piece, “The New Face of Hot,” had launched a few buses itself; Macon’s robust upper lip and dreamy eyes were winning him support among people who couldn’t have cared less what came out of his mouth.

To stave off cabin fever, Team Detornay ran daily wind sprints in the hallway, testing the weight and breathability of the free gear arriving steadily from hip hop clothing companies hoping Macon would rock their shit in public and double their sales in the suburbs, where legions of whiteboys had finally found coolness personified in someone who looked like them.

“I think I’d feel more comfortable with a bulletproof vest,” Macon announced, returning to the room after a visit to the TV lounge. He crossed the threshold just in time to see Logan and Andre jump away from each other like two suddenly charged batteries and pretend they hadn’t been kissing; Andre turned and hunched over his computer, while Logan busied herself with a copy of
High Times
that Nique had left behind. Okaaay, thought Macon. Sure, why the hell not. I’ll play along. Whatever.

He walked through the space between them and picked up an envelope from the stack of hate mail piled atop the dresser. He’d taken to defusing such letters by reading them aloud, bumpkin twang and all—
Whah doan yeew come ahwn down heayur an’ say
them thangs, boy
—and to correcting their grammar with a red teacher’s pen. It didn’t help much. He flopped onto the bed, threw his legs up against the wall, and stared at the dangling laces of his Timberlands, feeling vaguely surprised and dimly wounded. Logan sat Indian-style on the floor, just outside his line of sight, and flipped listlessly through her magazine.

“Vests are illegal,” Andre replied in a deliberate monotone, some thirty seconds after Macon’s comment. “A ton of rappers have caught cases for wearing them.”

“The logic being what? That it’s illegal not to die if someone shoots you in the chest?”

Andre shrugged and went back to drawing up the rally schedule on his computer. “Are we gonna let Professor Jenson speak or not?”

“Sure. She’s the only academic who hasn’t reduced me to a sociological aberration. Put her early, though. She’s beside the point with all that gender stuff.”

Logan cut her eyes at Macon, saw that he’d said it just to irritate her, and turned back to her reading.

“Upski and Danny Hoch confirmed, but Khalid Muhammad and Leonard Jefferies still won’t return our calls. Who else can we get to really abuse motherfuckers?”

Macon swung his legs around and sat up, restless. “I figure if shove comes to push, we can call the Black Hebrews.” He wondered if he was hungry, and tried to remember how many hours had passed since the last time they’d ordered in. Pizza boxes, Chinese takeout cartons, Styrofoam roti containers, grease-soaked Indian food paper bags, and plastic sushi casings had littered the room until half an hour ago, when Andre had decided he couldn’t take the sleaze any longer, dumped everything into a giant cardboard moving box,
Pimp Shit IV: The Wrath of Dolomite,
and left it in the hallway to fester. His latest hobby was baiting the R.A., knowing she’d sooner knock on a wasps’ nest than their door.

“Them cats who be preaching on cable access? The Twelve Lost Tribes of Israel and shit?”

“Yeah,” said Macon. “They’re the only group around who’ll just straight-up call whites ‘devils’ to their faces. I’ve seen people try to argue on the street and they’ll be like, ‘Shut up, cave bitch.’ ”

Andre weighed the suggestion for a moment, then side-nodded in disapproval. “Culpability is one thing; getting a whole crowd of white folks to stand around and listen to some fool in a turban read Bible passages that prove they’re going to hell is quite another. We don’t want a riot on our hands.”

Macon stood up, stretched, rubbed his eyes, and then collapsed into a beanbag. The past few days had been like a fucked-up, never-ending game of musical chairs, with more seats than players. “No comment,” he said, yawning. As Friday approached, Macon had to fight the growing urge to do nothing, to let the Day of Apology float past him and be whatever it was destined to be: hand-holding and kumbayah, fire and brimstone, whatever. He felt helpless to shape it, clueless about what it should look like, and increasingly glib about the whole matter. He wished someone would slap him out of these bouts of rubbery apathy.

Andre rustled a copy of
The New York Times.
“According to the latest poll, sixty-five percent of blacks like the idea all right in theory. But it’s mostly church folks who answer these things. In reality, I’m guessing black people will find the whole shit mildly to incredibly annoying, paternalistic, insincere, and offensive. But there’s so many x-factors. What are crackers gonna say? ‘I’m sorry for the crimes my people have committed’? ‘Sorry I’m racist’? ‘Sorry about slavery, segregation, church burnings, glass ceilings, Jim Crow, and stealing rock ’n’ roll’? What?”

Macon sighed, switched to a desk chair, and tipped back on two legs. “I have no idea.”

Andre dropped his arms and the pretense that he was working and looked straight at Macon. “What do you want them to say, dude?”

“Anything. Just as long as they acknowledge something.”

“For all we know, folks might get on some personal confession shit. ‘Sorry I called this guy a nigger in a bar fight.’ ‘Sorry I vote Republican and don’t give a shit about hiring practices.’ Some ol’ feel-good, confess-and-be-forgiven, love-your-fucked-up-inner-honky shit.”

“Mmm,” said Macon, vacant. His hand twitched, wanting Fleet’s book. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

Logan threw her magazine aside. “That isn’t good enough. You think when they asked Oppenheimer what the bomb was gonna do, he was like, ‘I guess we’ll have to wait and see’?”

“He knew the ingredients,” retorted Macon, leaning forward to stare at her. “We don’t know shit. And there’s no need to gang up on me,” he added.

Great, thought Andre, shutdown mode. Neither he nor Logan quite knew how to push Macon past it, or what would happen if they tried. Silently, they agreed to let The Franchise slide, and wished that Nique was there.

Macon sprung to his feet, climbed onto the bed, then walked over to the radiator and scaled that, too, stood atop it with his head brushing the ceiling. “You know what we need around here?” he asked. “One of those Magical Negroes, like in the movies. You know, the black person who’s some kind of mystical guide or font of down-home soulfulness or whatever for the white man? I want one of those. Can’t you be the Magical Negro, dude?”

“I can be the Smack the Taste Out Your Mouth Negro, if you like. Get down from there. Go take another walk or something. You’re driving me crazy.”

“That’s how you talk to the—what did they call me on
MTV
News
tonight? That’s how you talk to the Rap Generation’s Answer to Robin Hood?”

Andre palmed his head, isolated a lock, and began twisting it to tightness with both hands. “I’ma say this one more time,” he told Macon. “If you keep quoting your own press, I’m finding a new roommate.” He snorted. “Robin Hood. What a crock of shit. That money went straight from their pockets to yours.”

Macon stepped down to the bed and began trampolining. The box springs heaved a tired warning. It went unheeded. “Suddenly you have a problem with that?” he asked as he bounced.

Andre shook his head without looking up, still engaged in follicle maintenance. “Not at all. What I have a problem with is the suggestion that a middle-class white dude stealing from other middle-class white dudes is somehow redistributing the wealth.”

“I would argue,” said Macon, stepping back onto the floor, “that the act of robbing those fuckers was, in itself, a revolutionary move.”

“I’m sure you would,” said Andre. “And I’m sure that if we hadn’t blown the cake on bail, you would have used it to start a free breakfast program for underprivileged kids in Harlem, too.”

“Why are you tripping? All I said was—”

“All right,” said Logan, “all right. Enough already. We’ve been cooped up in here for way too long, we’re tense, we’re out of weed, we smell bad, and we need to chill. If we’re gonna talk about something, how about Macon’s opening speech, or transportation to the rally?”

“At least robbing people takes some balls,” said Macon. “What did you ever do, Dre?”

“Yeah,” said Andre, “you’re right, Macon—you’re a real hero. I wish I was so brave. Maybe then I wouldn’t bother to think about the consequences of my actions, either. I could leave that to my underlings to handle.”

“Look, I never asked for anything from you, okay? If you’re tired, jealous, fed up, whatever—fine. I understand. Just bounce. Don’t act like I’m forcing you.”

Andre threw a hand at the window. “Bounce? There’s thousands of people coming here tomorrow, Macon. I can’t just—”

“What? You can’t just what?”

Andre threw his head back in exasperation. “Aren’t you worried?”

“I’m scared shitless!” Macon spread his arms. “What do you suggest we do? Huh? Call it off?”

“There’s nothing we can do.” It was Logan. They both looked down at her. “And yelling at each other won’t help.”

Andre pointed at his roommate. “I want you to acknowledge that this is some irresponsible shit, Macon.”

“What good will that do?” He flicked his hand into the air and let it fall back to his side. “Okay. It’s some irresponsible shit. Happy?”