
Race and the Infinite Game — 5; Choices.
It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play. — James Carse, Finite Games and Infinite Games
It may seem that the theatre of race and the spectacles of identity which are performed there are literally ubiquitous. One is born into a role and it seems there is no earthly place where people are ignorant of racial differences and do not know at least some of the meanings ascribed to various racial differences. However, if the race game were literally inescapable, then race would not be a game, it would be a condition: like 64 squares on a chessboard, or having bilateral symmetry, or the weather.
But we know this is not the case, even if it feels to be the case. One way to know this is simply through introspection. So much art has been made around the subject of the race game, it is useful to efficiently explore its dimensions, both in history and in our imaginations. A couple examples from song can help illustrate the inner and outer dimension of the game, and where the choices and pressures concerning race lie:
I’m a white man lookin in a black man’s eyes /Wishin I’d never been one of the guys / Who pretended not to hear another white man’s joke…
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
I heard someone say once I was way too black!
And someone answers she’s not black enough for me! /
I bite my tongue and it bites me back…
…Some people say that it’s coming / And I’ll get it
It must be something I have no control of…(Refrain):Oh, how cruel to make a girl cry!
Joan Armatrading
In both of these lyrics, there is a sense of unwished for and unbidden feelings and circumstance rooted in finite identities. In Isbell’s lyric, the awareness of the injustices and regrets, alluded to can only come from acknowledging the possibility of acting and thinking outside the rules of the finite game. The possibility of being outside the game is echoed in Armatrading’s verse: Even in adopting the voice of someone who feels out of control, there is the sense that what feels uncontrollable is the injustice on the outside, not that there is no choice about whether or not to play along. Calling the game cruel asserts the fact and necessity of a place outside the game.
I would aver all who have been the object of racial aggression or opprobrium, or who have participated in it, or who have merely witnessed it, or who even merely imagine being the potential object of racial thinking, have had the experience of raising an objection to the dictates of the race game: This isn’t about me. I do not assent. One doesn’t have to be a an artist to have articulated similar sentiments.
Even if one fails to articulate such sentiments out loud, objections to the finite game, as it is played out before one’s eyes or on one’s body, it is clear that the mind is one place where the race game need not be played. The finite game of race has an inner and an outer dimension. It may come to pass that the outer game is forced on particular individuals. However, as long as the there is an inner dimension to the game, the choice to play or not to play along is available.
Also, from introspection, we know that in our own histories that we were once too young to care about the social significance of the phenotypes that we noticed. We may not remember that time, but we do know that as adults there are various levels of racial bias, which have been learned. There is little reason to suspect that bias cannot be unlearned or ameliorated, if not eliminated.
Further, we can look at the many stories and histories of situations where the race game is played out but where children subvert the game by forming deep connections with people of another race. Even though force majeure may be brought to bear on them, we know that although these children may be coerced into the outer game of race, that there is no force strong enough to get them to abandon their inner resistance to the game, if they choose to resist. Otherwise, those who were forced to break off their relations would never invent stories or relate histories of regret and nostalgia about the bonds they were forced to sever.
The same can be said of adults. Force majeure is brought to bear, dilemmas arise between the security of finite, polyracist play and infinite, humane play: the conscious adult realizes that choices are available. For example:
A white colleague from South Africa relates how he left his homeland to avoid conscription in an army that was brutalizing his black countrymen and the neighboring countries. Instead of taking up the role being forced on him he devised a way to leave — he walked away from Omelas, if you will. But he nevertheless harbors regrets that he should have stayed to fight to end the game as it was being played out in South Africa.
This last example is not meant to suggest that the rewards and punishments for players of the finite game of race are somehow equal in their severity for all players. Rather, this is simply to point out that the game has an inner and an outer dimension, and that in societies where the race game is being played out, circumstances unavoidably present its members with choices about whether or not to play along in order to get along in the finite game of race, or to assert one’s identity as an infinite player and choose other options.
The slave who stole herself to freedom and the one who died trying are testaments to there being choices regarding the finite game, once upon a time and in this time: Even when the consequences are beyond bearing.
Those who play the game of race play freely. And to leave the game is a struggle, chosen freely, or a choice not taken at all.