The Great Negro Writer, Charles Johnson

A friend of mine forwarded me an essay by the great Negro writer, Charles Johnson that I didn't like all that much.

Part of the reason I say "Great Negro" is because Mr. Johnson strikes me as someone for whom the term "Negro writer" would be an insult. It seems to me that Mr. Johnson is one of these Negroes that thinks that all Black people, regardless of their experience or understanding, should somehow, by some means suddenly acquire his experience and perspective and forsake their own personal Negro Histories.

Here, I will address the problems in his essay, The End of the Black Narrative which can be found here:

1. This piece is way too long. Not because of how many words it has, but mainly because it's flawed. I'm sure Mr. Johnson would agree, that if someone is wrong, it's better that they be brief. As the Great Black Playwright Shakespeare wrote, in Hamlet

...since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief...

2. When Mr. Johnson states,

This unique black American narrative, which emphasizes the experience of victimization, is quietly in the background of every conversation we have about black people...

I do not agree. This argument makes the error commonly known as petitio principii or otherwise known as "question begging". Mr. Johnson assumes falsely that victimization is the background for discussions about Black People. I have certainly not found this to be the case. The only Black people I know who consistently state that Blacks are screaming, "victim", are Negroes like Charles Johnson, who place themselves in the position of having to explain themselves and the Black race to the very White people who actually do believe, that Black folks have assumed the victim role. "Black People" or at least, the vast majority and vast minority, quite naturally, and inescapably are lead to the contemplation of the question of the historical and present day inequality of American justice. Just because White folks call this American tradition of natural, inescapable questioning "victimization" does not make it so.

I sense in Mr. Johnson's essay a lack of compassion as well as truth. If he were to live in a Black community, like I do, or Work in social services with Black folks, like I do, he would find that in Ghetto's, Mental Institutions, Jails, Public Health centers, Public Hospital Emergency Rooms, Schools, Foster Care Agencies and in courts, Black folks rarely, if ever consider themselves victims.... Or at least not any more or less than any other nationality, or group that finds themselves in similar circumstances.

It has been my experience that almost all people, regardless of color, in casual, or formal discussions, do not accept Black victimization as a basis of understanding. The most predominant feeling is one of admiration, beauty, creativity, athleticism, resiliency, disparity, injustice, inequality, intelligence, innovation, cultural cohesiveness and perseverance. Another general assumption made about Black people is that they are human beings, faced with issues that all humans are faced with, and with the added burden of 400 years of unabated racism and discrimination. That is the basis of conversation in virtually all groups, when the topic of African-Americans is discussed.

3. I must give Mr. Johnson credit for quickly and lucidly recounting the African experience in America, as well as his worthy praise of the African-Americans accomplishments in this country of ours. He also does a good job of talking about the overshadowing of the present day accomplishments of African-Americans. That is nice. Then for some reason, Mr. Johnson turns for a moment to kick at a prone and irrelevant Louis Farrakhan, which is.. I don't know... Silly? Does Mr. Johnson believe, along with all White, right-wing radio hosts that Mr. Farrakhan truly speaks on behalf of Black America? Or does he bring up Farrakhan to more firmly establish his cuddly nature with those who thrust Farrakhan, Sharpton, Rev. Wright, Bill Cosby and other off-kilter, Negroes in the woods as the apcryphal Black "true north"? Once again, I must ask, what Black America does he speak of? Certainly not his Black America, or my Black America. Once again, his argument is flawed and tainted by a strong hint of White refusenik/Black apologist flavor.

4. Mr. Johnson finally wends his way to his prime example, Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., and the Oxford University Press’s 40-volume Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers. Mr. Johnson focuses on the fact that it has recently been discovered, or at least alleged, that Emma Kelley-Hawkins never was Black. Mr. Johnson goes on to talk about Dr. Gates undertaking "damage control" over this discovery. At this point I would like to point out one very important fact that was not mentioned about this "controversy", and that is, that African-Americans have never had power to define who was and who wasn't "Black" in American. Seeing as Ms. Kelley-Hawkins lived before and after the turn of the 20th century, it's fair to wonder just who said she was Black? was it Black people? I doubt it. We did not have the power to define that.

In any event, Mr. Johnson apparently was not satisfied with Dr. Gates statement as weighed against the historical backdrop of America's Race Politics and the reality of the dubious racial definition of America's defined Black population. Johnson instead stokes the flames of the imaginary fire by saying, that Holly Jackson, (who discovered Kelley-Hawkins was white) acted as a "true scholar" and "would not allow this intellectual scandal to be swept under the rug." and that she makes 2 important statements and asks 2 equally important questions.

Statement #1: “There is so much at stake here, because of all the writing that has been done based on a false assumption about race.”
Statement #2: “We have stretched our understanding of how black women have written in America to incorporate texts that do not fit.”
Question #1: “How have her [Kelley-Hawkins’s] overwhelmingly ‘white’ texts successfully passed as black for so long in the absence of any corroborating historical data?"
Question #2: How does this discovery change our understanding of African American literary history?”

To answer these important statements and questions, I turn to Mr. F. James Douglas, author of, "Who is Black? One Nation's Definition". Of this dubious definition, Mr. Douglas writes (and please read all of this, because it's essential to your understanding of one of Mr. Johnson's errors):

In the South it became known as the "one-drop rule,'' meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person a black. It is also known as the "one black ancestor rule," some courts have called it the "traceable amount rule," and anthropologists call it the "hypo-descent rule," meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. This definition emerged from the American South to become the nation's definition, generally accepted by whites and blacks. Blacks had no other choice... Not only does the one-drop rule apply to no other group than American blacks, but apparently the rule is unique in that it is found only in the United States and not in any other nation in the world...The concept of passing applies only to blacks--consistent with the nation's unique definition of the group. A person who is one-fourth or less American Indian or Korean or Filipino is not regarded as passing if he or she intermarries and joins fully the life of the dominant community, so the minority ancestry need not be hidden...a fractionally black person cannot escape these obstacles without passing as white and cutting off all ties to the black family and community....Because blacks are defined according to the one-drop rule, they are a socially constructed category in which there is wide variation in racial traits and therefore not a race group in the scientific sense. However, because that category has a definite status position in the society it has become a self-conscious social group with an ethnic identity...State courts have generally upheld the one-drop rule, but some have limited the definition to one thirty-second or one-sixteenth or one-eighth black ancestry, or made other limited exceptions for persons with both Indian and black ancestry.

Blacks did not say that someone 1/32nd, or with "one-drop" of Black is Black. That's something that Whites dictated to define slavery and Jim Crow for the purposes of control, access and to manage the system of discrimination. Not surprisingly, this definition, ridiculous as it may seem, still holds true today. White and Black culture has become defined by this dubious distinction.

The point is this. Seeing as "one-drop" of Black makes one Black, philosophically, how much difference does Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins' being White have to do with the questions Ms. Holly Jackson asks above? I mean, really? Culturally, Ms. Kelley-Hawkins could be White, which, apparently she was if the themes and stories she told were any indication. But, then again, she may have been "Black" in many respects, otherwise, why the confusion? many Black writers did not write on "Black Themes" most notably, Alexandre Dumas, and, if you believe it, William Shakespeare, neither of whom considered themselves Black men.

Overall, the willingness of African-Americans to embrace and accept Ms. Kelley-Hawkins as Black is an interesting story all it's own, and something that Black Americans have been trained to do. The social and cultural meaning of this, is much more interesting to ponder than the alleged "damage control" that Mr. Johnson says Dr. Gates undertook. Dr. Gates was exhibiting understanding and a realistic assessment of the situation by telling a reporter that the work of Kelley-Hawkins would be removed from future editions of the Schomburg series. What else is to be done? Is that "damage control"?

In conclusion to his essay, Mr. Johnson states,

I’ve gone into great detail about the Kelley-Hawkins story because it is a cautionary tale for scholars and an example of how our theories, our explanatory models, and the stories we tell ourselves can blind us to the obvious, leading us to see in matters of race only what we want to see based on our desires and political agendas.

Once again, I find it interesting, that with the backdrop of America's dubious definition of "Black" Mr. Johnson would use the Kelley-Hawkins example as a "cautionary tale for scholars" of how our stories can "blind us to the obvious, leading us to see in matters of race only what we want to see based on our desires and political agendas." There is nothing obvious about race in America, other than the fact that Race is a powerful dividing, defining and exclusionary force in the working of America, that Mr. Johnson would like all of us to ignore.

5. Mr. Johnson ends his essay with this thought,

In the 21st century, we need new and better stories, new concepts, and new vocabularies and grammar based not on the past but on the dangerous, exciting, and unexplored present, with the understanding that each is, at best, a provisional reading of reality, a single phenomenological profile that one day is likely to be revised, if not completely overturned. These will be narratives that do not claim to be absolute truth, but instead more humbly present themselves as a very tentative thesis that must be tested every day in the depths of our own experience and by all the reliable evidence we have available, as limited as that might be.

In many ways I agree with Mr. Johnson here. In some other ways, I don't. I generally agree, because I see modern man as simultaneously attempting to escape eight major contemplations. 1. the true past 2. the present 3. the unavoidable (as distinguished from the fantasized) future 4. true identity 5. intimacy/love 6. responsibility. 7. death 8. the meaning of life. I agree with Mr. Johnson that the real richness of subjective/objective narrative is not to be found in the past or the future, but it is to be found in the present, albeit via the past. For the past is the motivation, the dramatic tension, the element of truth that propels us headlong into our existential groping for "present" meaning and our role in it, as well as responsibility for it. Intimate love is the hidden guru, the "other" and a concept that to explain, would be irrelevant as well as to take us too far afield.

New grammar? new vocabulary? yes, but not a wiping away of the past, but a transformation of that past, into a deep meaningful search inside the simultaneous realms of "self" and "present". That is the only escape from an uncontrolled headlong death dance into the future.

I can see Mr. Johnson's point, for if we can not look at the past and be transformed by it and use it to not repeat it, then it can form a type of prison. Black people are not the only ones held dysfunctionally to the past. The Black history of "victimization" does not have the power to destroy the Earth, nor the future of life on Earth. The White history of domination and dividing up the Earth as a resource, does. The American White narrative of Entitlement and soullessness, is definitely closer to the front of the line for a tune-up.

I also disagree. because I have more than just five points of contention on Mr. Johnson's essay, but the overall one that I have, that existed long before Mr. Johnson's essay, is the truth that for the entirety of the Black experience in America, there have been nothing but denials as to the disparities, disadvantages, inhumanity and barred access that Blacks have had to both America and the American dream.

Each successive generation has been placed in the position of having to argue for equality. As slaves, we had to argue that we were human and deserved to be free. As free men, we had to argue that we deserved full rights of citizenship. As citizens, we had to argue for access that was not "separate but equal". As equal citizens, we had to fight for the right to vote, unfettered by racism, terrorism and poll tests and taxes. As holders of the vote, we had to fight for access to home loans, school loans, and the right to buy and rent homes and apartments, as well as access to public Universities and opportunities for public and private jobs. As right holders to Universities and Jobs, we now have to fight to eliminate the ongoing disparities in education, incarceration, and access to opportunities for uplift and advancement.

What's the common theme in all of this?
1. At each stage, we were told that we were taking the role of victims, rather than accepting the "truth" of the circumstances.
2. Our history, our struggle, our pain and wretched treatment, is very real, (like the blanketing of Sancho Panza) and has always been silenced because the White man, and those in power have continually told us, "Now with (whatever minuscule, incomplete concession that Whites in power concede) you are free. Stop talking about your history and just accept that we will never, ever, acknowledge your history, nor treat you as truly free."


As long as the Black American narrative is dismissed, repressed, and not accepted and disseminated truthfully across the nation, it will persist. It must be taken as it is, for all Americans to be able to move on. And to be taken as it is, will be very difficult for America as a whole, because it requires an accounting of not only the past, but as Mr. Johnson points out, "on the dangerous, exciting, and unexplored present" of previously unknown equality.

To render White America vulnerable enough, humble enough and daring enough to take this previously untantilizing Black American narrative at face value, will require The White American narrative, to change substantially from it's present-day soaking in denial, false history, and contempt. Until such a time comes, we will remain in our stubborn entrenched positions. Blacks calling for a full accounting and attendant equalization. Whites calling for a dismissal of previous treacheries and a final acceptance on the behalf of Blacks, as separate and unequal.

I for one hope that the Black narrative persists and continues unchanged and unabated, regardless of the accomplishments of Blacks, because like the Jewish people (whom Dr. Johnson does not mention a single time as "victims" in his essay), it is part of our history.

Deep underneath all of this is one truth that Whites in power cling to, as dearly as their own sense of entitlement, and that is, they think of Blacks as unequal, and so with each incremental concession, it's not that they feel Blacks have achieved equality, rather, that they have acquired all that they deserve to acquire.

We did not ask for it. We certainly did not want it, but there it is. And it is not a story of victimization. It is simply, "our story" complete with accomplishments, great men and women, inspirational leaders and overcoming the odds.

Overall, I must congratulate Mr. Johnson, on a very robust and sprawling document that clearly states not only his opinions, but also his process and position. As a Black man, I acknowledge his position as one of many among the Black race, and as a prime example of the diversity of ideas and traditions to be found in the present day African-American. And for that, I love Mr. Johnson; however, my final note to Mr. Johnson is this; you can end this narrative thing wherever you want to, but your essay as well as this response is where the Black American narrative will always begin.