How to Be Black (20 page)

Somebody I knew who grew up on my block totally pitched me. Like, “Well, I have all these qualifications and I spent all this time in the military, so I'm really good at being a professional Negro.” And I was like, “Wow. I didn't expect this.”

damali is an all-around artist, who works in visual art as well as performance. I asked her about the role race plays in her work.

When I was in college, I always thought I was going to be a writer. I thought I was going to be the next bell hooks, that was my aspiration.

But then when I discovered visual art and conceptual art, I realized I could make things that could meet people at a variety of places on the emotional and intellectual spectrum. So I could just put it out there and literally walk away. And then they would have an experience and I could come back and dialogue with them about it. But I didn't have to be such a therapist.

So, I find art to be one of the most powerful forces for social change.

Finally, as someone who not only performs but also does full-on workshops, I asked damali to comment on the fears many white people have of being called racist.

It shows our values as a culture when somebody says, “I don't want to be called a racist.” Really what they're saying is, “I want you to like me. I don't want to not be liked. I want to still be okay with you.” They don't mean, “What I really want is to know and understand experiences of people of color so I don't sound ignorant.” That would be great.

And so, it just shows that, as I always have said, we are operating at this third-grade level of race relations. And it's that third-grader that goes, “Please like me, do please like me,” versus “Can I understand?” So, that's how I read it.

JACQUETTA SZATHMARI

I was introduced to Jacquetta's work by our mutual friend Julia back in 2009. It was one of those repeat recommendations where every time Julia and I interacted, she would ask, “Have you checked out my friend's YouTube yet?” For the longest time, I kept responding, “Not yet, but it's in the queue.” (Note how Netflix has us all talking like Brits.)

When I finally did check out Jacquetta's work, I understood my friend's persistence. Here was another black person doing it well, being her authentic self and telling her outlandish story of growing up in a rural community of four hundred families on Maryland's Eastern Shore. I knew I had to interview her.

I asked Jacquetta to explain the origins of her one-woman show.

My show is called
That's Funny. You Didn't Sound Black on the Phone.
It's a one-woman show, written and performed by me. It's about three or four stories that I weave together about my experience of considering how to be black and kind of rejecting anyone's idea of black. Because my idea was, “Hey, I'm going to be. No matter what I do. If I eat sushi and dance an Irish jig, that's black, because I'm doing it.”

So it's different stories throughout my life where I've been confronted with trying to be black or not be black enough. At every turn, I've kind of rejected that and moved on just to be myself.

As for the message of the show:

Do whatever it is that you want to do, regardless of who you are and whatever the culture you're in says that you have to be. In the end, I decided the best way to be black is to be awesome and not suck, because what else can you do?

Then get on with your life, you know? You don't have to do anything. How could we not be, how could I not be black? I can't be anything else. I'm not going to all of a sudden be Chinese. It's not going to happen.

On reactions to her show:

I was surprised [by the reaction to my show]. I originally thought that I would get picketed by some really small NAACP kind of anger group. But people of all persuasions, ethnicities, political backgrounds have come up to me and said, “Thanks for telling my story.” So I think there's a lot more people who feel like [outsiders] than I had originally thought.

I had gay people come up to me and say, “That's exactly what happened to me.” I had Italian-Americans tell me that. I've had Indian-Americans, all kinds of people have come up. I've had white guys come up and be like, “That's totally how I felt because I was different from everyone else in my family.” So really it's about being an outsider.

I think what they like about my story is that it's a happy ending, and I feel like a lot of African-American stuff in particular is depressing. Sorry, it's depressing. At the end of my story I basically go on to enjoy the rest of my life after the show.

The other aspect of Jacquetta that intrigued me was her politics. She's a Libertarian. It's not every day you meet a black female Libertarian comedian and writer, so I had to ask her about any connection between her blackness and her libertarianism.

I don't know if there's any intersection between the two except that, and this is a generalization, but I think most African-Americans are hardcore capitalists. Cash money! You know, commerce, get paid, get stuff done. That is a capitalist system.

I studied economics briefly when I was at Sarah Lawrence. I decided that was the only thing left and I was like, “Ugh! I'll do it.” I had a teacher who was very influential, Charlotte Price. And even though I didn't continue with economics, I continued to read on my own and eventually you come across Adam Smith, and eventually you come across the Cato Institute and the [Ludwig von] Mises Institute . . . and you just start to read.

I came to realize that I'm all about liberty. As long as you're not hurting me, I don't care where you stick it, who you stick it to, and I don't want to subsidize it. Enjoy.

My entire family works for the government and I think that they all went in like everyone did in the sixties with great intentions of doing all this stuff, and they saw that a lot of the programs that they were working on became the new slavery or just weren't really fulfilling [their original mission].

I [was disillusioned] with the [Democratic] social engineering of the sixties and seventies, and I can't be a Republican because I just don't agree with their social engineering from the other side. And so, I was looking for something that allowed for maximum liberty and then I discovered Libertarian Party.

Now, we are not very efficient and we definitely have some crackpots, as everyone does. But right now, that's where I see the most options for people of color, actually, in terms of getting liberty is through the Libertarian Party. For gays, for people of color, for women; liberty. So, that's where I am right now.

DERRICK ASHONG

I've known Derrick since 1995 or 1996. We met during my freshman year at Harvard. He was a junior and big man about campus, heavily involved in black organizations, singing in the gospel choir, Kuumba, and generally being the presence that he is. During my spring semester, I got an e-mail from a non-college e-mail list of black people. I can't quite remember what the list was. It wasn't like an all-black-people-in-America list. It might have been black college students, I'm not sure.

But in this particular e-mail was a casting call for a new Steven Spielberg movie called
Amistad
. They were looking for all kinds of people but especially Africans, so I forwarded that e-mail on to the Harvard African Students Association e-mail list. Derrick received that e-mail, followed up, auditioned, and got a part!

He spun that opportunity into further activities in the entertainment business and now heads the band Soulfège, which describes itself as “Bob Marley meets the Fugees on a street corner in West Africa.” In addition to this, he hosts a new social media–powered TV show on Al Jazeera English, called
The Stream
.

Basically, I'm taking credit for all of his success.

I didn't get into a lot of detail with Derrick about his process of fusing art with message, but as I was about to pack up my recording equipment, he offered to read a poem he had written some years earlier. I honestly cannot think of a better way to fully close this book than to print that poem and Derrick's explanation in this final space.

WATER

by Derrick N. Ashong

Water, fresh on the lips of one

Who has known no rivers.

What kiss could be so sweet

As the lingering taste of life?

Mama borned a baby

and she slept in the arms of hope

In her eyes she grew a lady

deftly robed in a cloth sewn centuries ago

with a needle threaded in tears

and guided by notes of a song

spun softly in a soul saddled

by a spirit so strong no noose

was ever long enough to break it.

Some people couldn't take it.

How could this thing with a different skin

sing so loud as to drown the stinking sin

of a nation?

Mama's baby was born post-emancipation

but pre-liberation, and so the song that she wore

within her skin was less a tale of times past

than a calling.

A calling.

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock

“Who's there?”

It's me. Tell the man I came for my Freedom

It called for me while you were sleeping.

It screamed that the hypocrisy of our fathers was

reeking and it needed to get out of the house.

America the beautiful

Adrift in a reverie of her own making.

Had Freedom locked up so long

we wouldn't recognize her if she were taken

from right beneath the flag.

This dress that she wears

is a song we don't care to sing

We'd rather go carelessly marching into

a war we can never win, for the enemy

Lies within.

Who put the terror in terrorism?

Ask any brother shackled in prison,

whether by the forefather's vision of 3/5ths

of a man, or Supreme Court decision that hands

the American crown to the

prodigal

profligate

prefabricate one.

The heir who cries WAR, when it won't be

his son or daughter left to bleed our dreams

into the flood of the killing fields.

How long will it be before America yields

her thirst for violence to the people's need for Peace?

It is our calling.

I done made my vow to the Lord.

Not the “president.”

We wear the song of a slave, because in this

home of the brave it was the hated one

who had the courage to cry Freedom.

We don't just sing Love, we live it.

For in our song strives the spirit that taught

us what it means to be FREE.

A Black tide carried us through the slaughter,

And so today we sing like

Water, soft on the lips of one

Who has known no rivers.

What kiss could be so sweet

As the lingering sound of life?

Derrick explains:

That is a poem that is based on Negro spirituals. It literally references the titles of a series of Negro spirituals, and a number of chosen Negro spirituals. And it begins with “Momma borned a baby.” And it talks about this baby, we, these people, who are born of this nation, the crucible of it.

I wrote it in 2003. I think it was after the invasion of Iraq. And it was during the Bush administration. I wanted to point out that this idea of freedom and liberty that you keep talking all about, the people who are here right next to you, whom you so disrespect, are the ones who actually show what that means.

So it speaks of water. Water is a theme that I became very much aware of when I was in grad school studying the history of black people in the Americas. Because I was thinking about all of this stuff with oppressed people, and I was like, “You know what? They're like water. Like, you can stamp down on them, you can crush them, you could throw them away, you could do whatever you want. But somehow, they will always find a way to flow in between, into the seas of anything you place before them. They will flow through the good, through the bad, through the ugly, and they can be like Bruce Lee said, like water, soft and yet hard at the same time.”

I brought up that metaphor in an academic context, but academia is very esoteric, and I thought this would be something that I could present to real people if I put it in an artistic form.

So I wrote a muse, a poem that is actually designed to go with a choir, a choral arrangement of an old Negro spiritual.
*
So you hear the spirituals referenced in the poem. You may not know what they are, but the music in the background is showing what they are and it's harkening back to those spirits.

And because I'm African, we revere our ancestors, and we believe that the spirits don't go away, they're still with us. And this was my homage to those people who taught this country what it means to be free.