Eric Leroy
Sep 4, 2018 · 12 min read

HOW BLACK IS BLACK ENOUGH??

Years ago I taught a Freshman course at Florida State University called “Horizons”, which was geared for predominantly black students. I loved it because this was during the period of my life when I had immersed myself in black culture. Prior to that I had been employed as an English professor at Edward Waters, a traditionally Black college in Jacksonville, Florida, and my girlfriend was black also, as had been the one before and the one before that.

Black, black, black — that was pretty much my life back then. I had turned my back as much as possible on my own race. A lot of white women do that, not so many white guys.

Why I felt impelled to carry out this ‘project’ was probably a many-headed monster (maybe a poor choice of words): part of it was my desire to help American society’s mistreated ‘underdogs’ — that was the idealistic bit, and I wasn’t faking. But c’mon, I went way overboard with it.

Some of it (probably most of it) had to do with hating life on my side of the tracks, by which I mean white people. You see, I understood white people, and therefore I grasped thoroughly what a bunch of phonies most of them were. I didn’t know much about black people, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. They had to be better than white folks, I figured. People with any degree of insight always understand how rotten their own culture is, and it is only when they stand outside it that they gain any kind of useful perspective. I was a shy, nervous, herky-jerky, sort of bub, but I had potential and something in me was starting to rebel against the constipated culture I felt trapped in.

This led to the third factor, which was — and I pull no punches here — that behind the staid aspect and dull armor that formed a protective layer across which my middle class ‘whiteness’ was pasted on like a kind of albino-colored wallpaper — there was a compulsive hedonist lurking inside me who was seduced by the flavors and smells of the Slum. Not the glamorous parties thrown by the rich white folks up on the hill — I mean the hardcore danger zones where nice white boys weren’t expected to show up. And I identified with this strange, insidious melody weaving its way into my spirit: the collective spirit of Black people singing, chanting, whispering, gesturing to me. NOT Black people who were trying to find acceptance in the white world (at first, yes, but then less and less, especially as alcohol and then drugs started to impact my life), but street people who gradually took me into a world where black and blackness at the rawest levels were at the root and core of all things happening. Because, in addition to being — in reality — trampled on and downtrodden, these aggressive blacks sure as hell were NOT weak. They had a wildness and craziness about them, as well as the sweetest and softest kind of charm you ever saw. (Back in THOSE days.) They knew how to dance. They knew how to fuck. They had…back then we called it ‘Soul.’

I wanted it.

Laugh all you want to. But I remember how real and powerful those urges were. That energy, wherever it was coming from — stirred by genuine altruistic zeal, stoked by whatever over-compensating needs within myself — together the made up my own personal Pied Piper and I followed the music.

I had read some of the terrific Black authors whose fame was quickly spreading during that time: Alice Walker and Toni Morrison come to mind. I had long before devoured the work of James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and others. For all intents and purposes, I saw myself during that time in my life as Black. When not in teachers meetings, etc. (and even sometimes there too), I talked Black brogue — street talk, as they say. I knew all the slang. The body language. I had it all down pat. I must have been quite a sight.

Looking back on all that, I feel like an idiot. I was making a complete fool of myself, and that I was taken seriously at all was due only to the sheer force of my passion and personality (which can act in my favor or sometimes to my detriment.)

I am stimulated to think about this, and to engage in these reminisces, by a blog I read a few days ago on MEDIUM by a woman who was sad because she was rejected when she asked her black female friend if it was OK to call her “Sis.”

The response: “Hell no.” The author was shattered by this rejection because she considered herself “WOKE” (I will be fucking glad when THAT buzzword passes out of existence) and had paid her dues, etc. but she also understood where the “Hell No” was coming from. (In fact the strength and saving grace of this article lay in the author’s teach-ability and capacity for enlightenment.)

This reminded me of how I — and a lot of like-minded white guys back in the ‘60s and onward for a while — took to calling all the black guys “Brother.” I kept doing this (even though deep down I felt like a bit of a condescending wanker) until finally, one day, a quietly hostile black guy said to me, “I’m not your brother.”

And for me that was the end of the “Brother” bullshit. I guess I just needed someone to put me straight. The coup de grace came about when I entered the Horizons class one morning early and the only student there was a young black man who hadn’t said much before but who, I could tell, was always observing me with a kind of.jaundiced eye of tacit disapproval. On this morning he greeted me with, “Well, well, well, good morning Mr. Le Roy, the white English teacher who wants to be black.”

I was offended but I made light of it, cheerfully chirping something like, “You reckon?” Or “The Hell you say?” — I can’t remember.

But that black kid kicked me in the balls well and truly, and I have never forgotten it. He knew I meant well, but he also knew that the whole act was phony as shit. And definitely he was trying tell me something he realized I needed to know. That was in 1983, I believe, and I have never forgotten it. That kid saw through me. He understood me better than I understood myself.

Also true during that period, and in that particular Horizons class, was the fact that I had my students keep a journal throughout the semester. They could write whatever they wanted, as long as it wasn’t a to-do list (“This morning I brushed my teeth and washed my hands and had breakfast”; or a food recipe (‘How to bake a cherry pie”) or a homework assignment from another class doubling as a completed assignment for MY class (“Why Computers are Useful in Our Fast-paced Society”). Other than that they could write about anything.

One of the young women in my class described the pressure she was getting from other black students. She was very attractive in a middle-of-the-road way, racially speaking. She wasn’t coal black, nor was she ‘high yellow’ — rather she was just a coffee-colored, pretty girl. Her features were not pronouncedly ‘black’’ — no flat nose or thick lips, but she didn’t look like Audrey Hepburn either. Her hair was strictly African-American, but not in a wild Afro or weighted down with cornrows or a wig. All-American girl. And she spoke excellent Standard English. She conversed well on all subjects and could eloquently field any question I asked her — to me indicative of her coming from a well-educated, well-read family where ideas were taken seriously, listened to and discussed reasonably.

What was there not to like about her?

Well, it seems that her dormitory roommate was a similarly attractive WHITE girl and the two had become friends. They went about together, shared cafeteria meals together, etc. Moreover, this fine young black lady had a number of white acquaintances and friends. Clearly, her fellow white students admired her for her looks (well, hell, it’s the world we live in: looks matter), respected her advanced level of self-expression, her sophistication, and — here is the subtle part — her abstinence from playing the Race Card or pushing the race issue into their faces at every opportunity. The whites felt comfortable with her, and she felt comfortable with the whites. The buzzword here is “non-threatening”. (Whatever the holy fuck THAT is supposed to mean.) Anyway, this young lady was “non-threatening.” Means she was LIKE-ABLE. But she didn’t sign up for a skin-color transplant. She was still a black woman. And, I would imagine, very content to remain so.

So the problem came not from white people but from members of her OWN race. Yep, certain blacks on campus started sweating her about “trying to be white”, “forgetting where she came from”, “changing into an ‘Oreo cookie’ (black on the outside, white on the inside), and ‘not being BLACK enough.” Her use of Standard English was actually held against her (“Girl — Bitch — why you be talkin’ proper all the damned time, yo ?”).

So what did we have here? A white professor who wanted to be black, and a black student who was judged not to be black enough. I will admit that my own conduct and way of presenting myself was, especially for a guy who was no spring chicken even then, pretty silly in retrospect, but this 18 year old black female student? Not Black enough??

I can certainly say this: teaching at the Black college made me perfectly aware of what one essay described as the “push-pull” dilemma facing black people in America at the time (and now also). In other words, black people should — and NEED — to honor their upbringing and protect their heritage. This means preserving Black speech patterns (rural and inner city) because, as we all know or else should know, our speech reveals a lot about who we are and where we come from. No need, therefore, to flush away Black Identity. On the other hand, for blacks (or anyone else for that matter) to enter mainstream America in the Business and Corporate sense, it was/is necessary to adopt the speech and behavior patterns of the controlling group, and we don’t need to guess who THAT is. In short, you can’t have guys anchoring the CBS or ABC Evening News greeting America by shouting “Yo Mofos, lissen up! Da Sheeit shonuff be goin’ down today in da Bidness woild of Amayrica.”

Likewise, you can’t have Cockney (white) English on the BBC or Glaswegian (white) drug dealer talk — like in “Trainspotters”. Nor Belfast Revolutionary Irish (white) that sound like they have 20 pints of Guinness down their gobs. No ! They have to sound mainstream WHEREVER they come from.

It is not just directed at Black people.You have to play the game. It’s that simple. I hate it, you hate it, we all hate it. So figure out a way to earn your cheese and your respect outside of the rat-race corporate world or just agree to play the game. Your choice. If your name is Floyd Mayweather you can tell the world to kiss your ass. If your name is Jim Blabbles and you come from, West Fartsville, you had better learn the corporate alphabet.

As I used to tell my students at Ed Waters (it was an Open Admissions college always on the edge with regards to formal accreditation, and so we used to get some real humdinger students along with those who were legit and serious) — that Standard English is NOT ‘Good’ English as compared to ‘Bad’ Black English. It is “Currency”, I said, like a dollar bill that you can spend in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle. It is basic stuff that shouldn’t be about race.

So the upshot of it all was that many Black people felt they had to be White in the workplace and turn Black again before they returned to their own neighborhood and entered their home. I didn’t have that problem. My problems were make- believe compared to theirs. Luck of the draw, I guess. I found my own way, as I have described, of putting the cat amongst the pigeons.

A lot has changed since those days when I went about calling black men ‘Brother’. And, having come from an era where there was REAL racism — stark and dark and often tragic — I grow increasingly weary of the game of semantics it has now all too often become. It is as if we have climbed so high on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that now, instead of worrying about real survival, we have passed on to more subtle — may I say sometimes superficial? — concerns, some of which are worth our attention and some which are not. Let me give you an example.

I saw an advert for a skin cream last year which portrayed three women using the cream,: one black, one Hispanic, and one white. Fair enough? Every relevant race (ah, but no Asians or Jews) was represented. Nothing for anyone to scream “Racism!” about…right? The women were all approximately the same age, level of beauty, etc. Just an ad. Nothing amiss, right?

Wrong. And it was because of the order of the women. Black. Hispanic. White. All using the cream. Have you guessed yet what the supposedly subliminal racist message was?

It was this: If you use this cream, or ointment, or whatever it was, the Blackness will gradually come off. First you will look Hispanic and then you will become White. Like magic. Honest to God, that was the complaint. It was a racist advertisement.

I despair. I really do. What do you say when you can’t open your mouth anymore? Do you keep apologizing or do you just get PISSED OFF?

Now that it’s football season in America again, I have started watching ESPN (yes, it is possible in Bulgaria) and I see, to my immense pleasure, that more and more and more reporters are black. Moreover, they are not tokens. They are damned good, bona fide journalists who have earned their stripes. EARNED IT. They are not victims.

There also remains a place for Up-from-the Roots blacks (usually ex-players who remain “Black”” through and through in speech and mannerism). For example, there is nobody I have enjoyed more over the years than the polemic Charles Barkley. This guy will never sound white. But he deals awfully well in the white world without selling out. A king in my book.

OK OK OK, maybe the wheelers and dealers at the executive level are still mostly male and white. But it is changing. I notice that Florida State (my old alma mater no less) now has a Black Head Football Coach. And the team just got its ass kicked by Virgina Tech. Does that mean the coach is bad because he is black? Hell no, it means he has work to do with this team, and I, for one, hope he gets it done.

Fifty Shades of Grey. Just Win, Coach. I don’t give a flying chunk of fudge what color you are, or, if black, how Black. And if you don’t do the job in a fair amount of time, maybe there is some Jew or Asian or Woman, or Gay Person, or Trans-gender or Martian, or Artificial Intelligence Computerized Creation, or WHITE MAN who can.

But now it’s your turn. JUST DO IT. Stay Black (because the shit don’t rub off), and, above all, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.

As for the girl at FSU years ago who was getting flack from her black constituents — are you married to a white man or a black man now? Who cares? Do you sing? If so, do sound like Aretha Franklin or Barbara Streisand?

Or do you just SING?

Sis.

We Are The World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQpUKxu8m14

Eric Leroy

Hello everybody. My name is Eric. Born in the USA, I have traveled a great deal as an "ex-pat" (hate the term) English teacher. I lived in Russia for 10 years.

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