"Race," Writing, and Difference

"Race," Writing, and Difference
Edited by Henry Louis Gates

This book is a hot mess.

And yet, like the protagonists described in every song I know of with that title…it still kind of works.

The book consists of a collection of essays by various people, with an introduction by Gates. Those parts? They're the mess. At the end, though, there are responses to the collection. Those responses are the hot, in more ways than one; every one of them, from Tzvetan Todorov's denouncement of the entire project as falling short of its goal to Gates's response to the responses, has undertones (and sometimes overtones and midtones) of outrage, as they argue over what the goals of the project and individual essays within it were—and debate the actual outcomes of it.

I'm going to try to briefly summarize the primary points each writer makes in her or his response, then discuss how accurate I feel these criticisms of the volume to have been.

Todorov: Argues that the essays are reifying the construct of race and fall into the trap of portraying contemporary critical theory as infallible or at least not in need of deconstruction. Also, people are too mean to Enlightenment philosophy when they accuse it of creating racialism. Writers didn’t do their homework, as evidenced by their failure to refer to "the critical school of thought which long attempted to explain literary differences by racial differences" (375).Accuses Gates of racialism. Criticizes essays as a whole for academic language and inaccessibility. Says there's too much focus on the Other in European literature in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Notable remark:

"In proudly describing ourselves as antiracist, we can give ourselves a good conscience at almost no expense. What else, then, do I recommend that we do? Certainly not endorse the racist credo just for the sake of making a more unconventional choice, but, at the very least, become aware of the problem and carefully question the commonplaces of contemporary good conscience." (378)

Houston A. Baker, Jr.: Suggests that Gates is confused in his goals and desires, having stated a desire for the vernacular but then editing a volume which has almost none of that present. Annoyed that Appiah dismisses physical features as "mere" physical differences in his reliance on genetic science to show that race is not a biological construct, because those physical features are what others react to. Argues that this "we're all the same" insistence ignores reality and obscures racism. Charges several writers with having created a "whitemale confessional" (388). Says that the base argument of many writers and activists is the "we're just as good as" model, which is a fundamentally losing model. Extremely lengthy consideration of Caliban and how if we see Caliban as not a defective version of Prospero but his own individual, he has value in that.

Notable remark:

"[The] signal shortcoming of 'Race,' Writing, and Difference is the paucity of Caliban's sound. The issue chooses instead to repeatedly sound (perhaps, of academic necessity) 'subtle' phonics of academic discourse." (389)

Harold Fromm: Pretty much says that Gates can bite him, then reams Pratt for committing the same error she criticizes in colonial literature. Claims she is using academic discourse as a colonizing mechanism to further her own individual aims and ends by urging that "'Physician, heal thyself'…be the first moral exhortation of the day" (398).

Notable remark:

"[Here] I was, daring to use words without quotation marks, actually believing that I referred to something identifiable when I spoke of black people, Americans, musicians, and whatnot, and being told that it was all just my own narcissistic and preemptive fantasy." (396)

Pratt's response to Fromm: Okay, fine, Fromm has some points about academic discourse, but why's he picking on me? What did I do differently? Who am I colonizing, anyhow? How is it better to have stable categories? Going well till the baffling "can't we all just get along/let's do something completely different" ending which fails to suggest what the different might be.

Notable remark:

"[The] name for such interventions is not colonialism, it is critique—or, ,if you like, critical inquiry. They are attempts to change the culture one lives in." (400)

Gates: Primarily responds to Todorov and somewhat Fromm. Argues for necessity of undermining essentialism. Calls Todorov out on his definition of racism as "the display of contempt or aggressiveness toward other people on account of physical differences," pointing out that that definition is limited and specious (403). Accuses Todorov of creating a straw-man argument in opposition to Gates as a way of attempting to re-legitimatize literature canon. Refutes pretty much all of Todorov's claims about racialism and racism.

Notable remark:

"Todorov can't even hear us, Houston, when we talk his academic talk; how he gonna hear us if we 'talk that talk,' the talk of the black idiom?" (409)

Whew. All right. Now that we have that all out there, let's take a look at some of the claims. I think Gates does a pretty good job of responding to Todorov's claims about what he says in the introduction; Todorov seems to be working from some definition of racism where not being racist equates to "well it's not like I've lynched anybody today," and I'm too tired to play racism bingo today, so we'll just let that one lie. I couldn't resist giving you his baffling discussion of how being antiracist is popular and easy, and the resultant solution that is not, you know, actually acting against racism but is instead to…what? Reconsider whether racism might be a good idea after all? But that's enough of that.

So. I'm going to limit this to considering two particular points that were brought up by Todorov, Fromm, and Houston (because otherwise we'd be here all day, especially if I started talking about essentialism, cause that is a whole lot of complicated—a hot mess, you might say, or at least, I might).

First, there is the discussion of language and accessibility. This, I think, is particularly interesting in a volume entitled "Race," Writing, and Difference that has a surprisingly narrow discussion of writing, more discussion of colonialism than race, and barely a nod to difference. It might seem like that's a brutal criticism; it's not. The book may well be mis-titled, but so are many others. What I was expecting, though, was some discussion of how literacy, forced education, and formal education interplay with ideas of race and difference. I probably would have liked that more, but, you know, judging a book by its cover is ill-advised and all that.

While I'm all for writing in the vernacular (you've probably noticed that by now), or at least the approachable…sometimes that's not possible. And for the subject matter of most of these essays, that simply wasn't possible. So that might be an accurate critique on the part of the responders, but it should be phrased as an initial critique of the subject matter, rather than treating terminology, phrasing, and topic as separable items.

This brings us to the second point, which is indeed about subject matter. Todorov points out that the contributors focus extremely heavily on colonial texts of the 19th and 20th centuries, a criticism that Houston echoes when he discusses whitemale confessionals, and an accusation that (I think) lies at the base of Fromm's finger-pointing at Pratt (but I could be wrong about this; Fromm's contentions are difficult to discern).

To this criticism, I say: Word, y'all.

See, I have a confession to make. It's this: I never read Heart of Darkness. I didn't even watch Apocalypse Now, which I'm told is based on Conrad's novel. Back in senior year of high school, I was supposed to do both, but instead I stared out the window, read the copy of Brave New World that was on the bookshelf behind me, and wrote a story about aliens. I tried reading it, but got to the point where I was told that Marlow "resembled an idol," and was annoyed. Then I read Marlow's interminable speech and got to the point where he referred to Africa as previously having been a "blank space" and put the book down and never picked it back up. Moby Dick was after that, and I never read that one, either.

This might make more sense if I summarize the plot of nearly every book on our reading list in A.P. high school English: White guy is sad. Life ain't all it was cracked up to be. Disillusionment. But wait! Conflict with women/people of color/creature-as-stand-in-for-women-or-people-of-color/nature-as-stand-in-for-women-or-people-of-color. OMG. What to do? Oh! I know! Reestablish dominance! There we go. Whew. That was close for a moment there. Anyways, back to business as usual.

By that point in high school, I was seriously tired of reading whitemale confessionals (this is a fantastic term and one that I wish I'd had before). Hemingway. Conrad. Hawthorne. Steinbeck. Eliot. Twain. Fitzgerald. Melville. Thoreau.

The thing is…how many essays do we really, truly need that rehash the same content without providing us anything new? Conrad is mentioned in at least four, perhaps more, of the essays in this book. Conrad shows the colonialist mindset! Conrad shows the postcolonial mindset! Conrad fetishes black people! Conrad highlights the flaws of racialism! Conrad...blah blah blah. While I don't think that Fromm's insistence that Pratt in particular was "colonizing" was supported by sufficient evidence or argument, the fact remains that education, and particularly the literary and art canons, are used to further hegemonic dominance and as paintbrushes for the whitening of history. And so I have to ask: How much is that furthered when every time we talk about race and literature, we talk about the same authors, and oftentimes the same ideas about those authors?

Pratt says that these "interventions" are "attempts to change the culture one lives in." But in academic culture, reinterpreting Twain, Conrad, et al., is part of the standard, the norm, not a change. Some (most) years, Twain and Conrad are in favor. Sometimes, they're out. But they keep coming back, and panning them isn't academically dangerous or risky. In fact, it's about one of the safest things there is. So yeah, as Todorov noted, it's easy to say you're antiracist. I'm going to go ahead and differ on him on the solution, though.

How about we try doing what Gates initially suggested, and look at literature created by black folks? How about we try engaging in an actual critique of some of these books, where instead of constantly revolving around the question of how the Other is portrayed, we question how white maleness is constructed? How about instead of talking about white men, white women as property of white men, black men as threats to white men, and black women as existing only in terms of sexuality, we look at the entire context and see what else is there? Cause y'all, if that's all that's there, why the hell are we still talking about it? We already know. Done and done, checkmate, end game, finis.

Gates edited this volume in 1986. Since then, some people have done it different. But not a whole lot.