It's been quite the week and not exactly in a good way. Prince died and Harriet is about to give us free all over the $20 bill and naturally, folks have got their knickers in a bunch. Like I said, it's been quite the week!
On 4/20, the planet, OK just the United States of America, was rocked by the word that the campaign to put a woman on the $20 had reached its conclusion. Months earlier, we had heard that online polling had given the people's choice award to Harriet "I'da freed ten thousand more if they knew they were slaves" Tubman. On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that yes, they would indeed be putting Ms. Harriet on the $20 bill, removing ole Andrew 'Trail of Tears' Jackson, relegating him to the back of the bill.....as I read somewhere, one hopes they give us his back so he looks like he's paying due homage to Ms. Tubman's posterior, as would only be right and fitting.
Right on cue, the usual suspects started up with their wailing.
In Tubman we have a woman who, under no kinda circumstance, can be accused of trying to fit in, to accept the status quo, to go-along-to-get-along or any such thing. Under no circumstance is anyone going to look at Ms. Harriet and say that they don't see a Black woman. Ms. Harriet is about as Black as it gets. She ain't passin' and she ain't 'bout to try. Of Ms. Harriet the words, "She transcended Blackness" will not be uttered. Not sooner. Not later. Not ever. Can I gedda, "Glory Hallelujah!"? Ms. Harriet ain't transcend nothing and she ain't about to try. Ms. Harriet is everything a Black woman is aspiring to be but, if you listen to the nayscreamers - cuz they ain't just saying - this is not what we need to be advertising or holding up to honor in our society.
According to one FB poster - pseudonym. the Hippie Conservative - Pochahontas would have been a better choice than Ms. Tubman an "escaped slave and a thief" because you know, heroism doesn't require breaking unjust laws. Heroism doesn't require standing up against tyranny. What's that you say? Those are the very things we revere in the White men who struck out for liberty and independence from Great Britian? Oh well, that's different.
Check out the Hippie's logic. It's....well, read it for yourself. Her logic is entertaining if not really logical.
So um, OK.
And then, on 4/21/2016, we get word of the passing of Prince. Early reports were of a medical emergency of some kind at his Paisley Park home. We were terrified but hopeful. Later it was reported that medics found the late artist unresponsive in an elevator and that efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. And so the reminiscing and the accolad-ing began with Jake Tapper tweeting at some point, "I think of Prince almost as a post racial singer. I didn't think of him as a black singer." Of course, he was not alone in his 'post-racial', 'transcendent Blackness' thoughts.
I juxtapose the 'ascendance' of Tubman (through her elevation to the front face of paper currency) and the 'transcendence' of Prince to make a single point: there is this need that some folk have, to separate brilliance from Blackness. Prince wasn't Black, he transcended Blackness. Michael Jackson wasn't Black, he transcended Blackness. At the same time, we also seek to withhold any signs of such transcendence from those who fight tooth and nail against the status quo like Ms. Harriet, and are unapologetically, don't let you forget it for a moment, Black; folk whose very existence gives the whole 'Black cannot be brilliant' notion heartburn.
So let me just ask this question straight out, since it's hanging there, begging to be asked: what is this terrible Blackness of which we speak, that it must be transcended if we are to be exceptional? Is it some low, dragging, constraining & confining thing that must be escaped, like the pull of gravity which a shuttle or plane must escape before it can take flight? No seriously, I have to ask because every time a Black man or woman manages something brilliant, we have to hear about the various White folk who don't see this obviously Black person as Black. Is that supposed to be some kind of compliment cuz I gotta say, I'm not feeling complimented, either on their behalf or my own.
When folk like me use the words "White" and "supremacy" in a sentence, others get all twitchy but what is this idea of transcending Blackness if not that very twitch-inducing thing? To transcend is to ascend to greater heights, suggesting immediately that wherever you've come from is somewhere below or beneath; a status lower than the status you attain upon transcending.
Supreme (supremacy), is the state of being at the top. Seems pretty clear then that transcendence is about attaining some status higher than the one to which you were born. And you twitch when I say "White supremacy"? I twitch when you say I speak/write well.....for a Black woman, so we're even.
The language is what the language is, and it conveys what it conveys. And the language being what it is, maybe we need to talk about (i) the view that the brilliant among us needed to 'transcend' the limitations of negritude in order to be great; (ii) what it is exactly that colorblind folk think is holding us back, the Black skin or some external force? What's our 'gravitational pull'? and (iii) the scale that puts non-Black above Black. Or maybe the three questions are really just one question, that question being "WTF?" I thought we'd given this up? Guess I was wrong about that. Not the first time, nor the last I'm sure.
Transcendent blackness. Lawdie. Post-racial indeed. We are so post-racial that you gotta tell me I've risen above expectations for my kind. I see what you did there. Neat. Very neat.
