A Tale of Two Creons: Black tragedies, White anxieties, and the Necessity of Abolition
“The first phase of this attitude [stamping out the intellect of the Negro] reached over from about 1700 to 1820: and as the result, almost Egyptian darkness fell upon the mind of the race, throughout the whole land. Following came a more infamous policy. It was the denial of intellectuality in the Negro; the assertion that he was not a human being, that he did not belong to the human race. This covered the period from 1820 to 1835, when Gliddon and Nott and others, published their so called physiological work, to prove that the Negro was of a different species from the white man. A distinguished illustration of this ignoble sentiment can be given. In the year 1833 or 4 the speaker was an errand boy in the Anti-slavery office in New York City. On a certain occasion he heard a conversation between the Secretary and two eminent lawyers from Boston, Samuel E. Sewell and David Lee Child. They had been to Washington on some legal business. While at the Capitol they happened to dine in the company of the great John C. Calhoun, then senator from South Carolina. It was a period of great ferment upon the question of Slavery, States’ Rights, and Nullification; and consequently the Negro was the topic of conversation at the table. One of the utterances of Mr. Calhoun was to this effect “That if he could find a Negro who knew the Greek syntax, he would then believe that the Negro was a human being and should be treated as a man.” Just think of the crude asininity of even a great man! Mr. Calhoun went to “Yale” to study the Greek Syntax, and graduated there. His son went to Yale to study the Greek syntax, and graduated there. His grandson, in recent years, went to Yale, to learn the Greek Syntax, and graduated there. School and Colleges were necessary for the Calhouns, and all other white men to learn the Greek syntax. And yet this great man knew that there was not a school, nor a college in which a black boy could learn his A, B, C’s. He knew that the law in all the Southern States forbade Negro instruction under the severest penalties. How then was the Negro to learn the Greek Syntax? How then was he to evidence to Mr. Calhoun his human nature? Why, it is manifest that Mr. Calhoun expected the Greek syntax to grow in Negro brains, by spontaneous generation! Mr. Calhoun was then, as much as any other American, an exponent of the nation’s mind upon his point.”
— Alexander Crummell, December 28th 1897, “The Attitude of the American Mind Toward the Negro Intellect” speech delivered at the American Negro Academy (various emphasis mine)
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War is old — so is sex
Let’s play god — you go next
Hands go up — men go down
Try my luck — stand my ground
Die in church — live in jail
Say her name — twice in hell
Uncle Sam kissed a man
Jim Crow Jesus rose again
— Janelle Monae, “Americans” in Dirty Computer (2018)
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Nearly two hundred years ago in the midst of the neoclassical antebellum American South, a White politician put forth his opinion to abolitionists on the proper way to protest against the conditions Black peoples were facing under the regime of slavery: simply find him a Black person who could understand the finer nuances of Greek syntax and he would be convinced of their right to humanity. Alexander Crummell gave him a thorough read over 60 years later in his address to the American Negro Academy, quoted above.
In 2020, as a Black scholar of classical myth and ideology who reads Ancient Greek and Latin on a daily basis, Calhoun’s statement still brings an amused “hmph” to the depths of my belly as one of the classic examples of White supremacists attempting to cloak and smother Black abolition through respectability politics. I find it amusing because of course Whiteness would utterly shoot its wad on the scale of respectability before the Civil War — creating a height of unattainable academic excellence that would quickly be attained by the end of that century. Sadly, the early Black classicists blooming out of Reconstruction were the first to learn that the ability to understand Greek syntax would afford them no humanity from the White man.
This is the heart of being a Black scholar studying Greek and Latin in America: you realize how much your field of study, much like yourself, has been re-utilized to ornament ideas of Whiteness.
And if you really think about it, that’s essentially the heart of policing in America — poor Whites restoring ornaments to rich Whites for socio-cultural clout (and a notion of genetic supremacy to cling to when these nascent capitalistic systems are extracting all other resources from you). Given that the Antebellum South is commonly referred to as the “golden age” of Classics in America, I’m always thinking about Black identities trying to escape from that neoclassical architecture and being forced to return, the strange material relationship between Black bodies and classicizing aesthetic, and the deep potential for radical excess in those connections.
But our country was founded on a lie. The lie was White supremacy. Because it just doesn’t exist. However, America went out of its way to cling to the notion, even after the European countries that had birthed the ideology in their imperial/colonial projects had become less taken with the scientific aspects of it. Given that America had made it the bedrock of our entire capitalist system, the need to reinforce it was paramount. But it was a lie. And it was a lie that came to light on the global stage, exploding in global war in the 20th century.
But why is it so hard for White Americans to deal with White supremacy? I would hazard a guess that White Americans are so used to pushing their emotions off onto Black bodies without consent (after enslaving Black people to take care of their bodies and emotions) that they don’t really know how to cope without trying to constantly still do that to us. The history of this country is a history of White anxiety about being caught taken out on the Black bodies that dared to remind them that they were wrong. White emotionality around Blackness recognition defines the 20th century.
And now we’re in the 21st, in the digital age, with so many new technologies of expression and surveillance. Again, the question has come about around the correct way for Black people to protest the power structures that are forced against them. Black people in this country have found every conceivable possible way to protest White supremacy. However, one area that is possibly the least archived in the history of Black abolition is the protesting through/with/alongside Greek and Roman culture. Whiteness was the standard that Classics and Black identity had been molded and shaped around at the beginning of the American project. But emerging out of Reconstruction, a radical new tradition emerged into a fascinating new epistemological partnership: Black people responding to the Classics, and the Classics responding to Black culture.
My attention was first drawn to this in a big way by the controversial Antigone, and the fact that her play kept reacting to the Black Lives Matter movement.
I first read the Antigone sometime late in high school because my little brother had been in the chorus for a production. I didn’t get to see the play as it was in another state, but I was also in drama writing plays, and I wanted to keep up-to-date with shared interests I had with distant siblings.
When I was 18, Trayvon Martin — who was only six months older than my little brother — was shot.
After Michael Brown was killed and his body left in the streets, prompting the period of time in history that we all collectively refer to now as Ferguson, a St. Louis production of Antigone reacted in kind.
Following Michael Brown’s death, Theater of War conceived of Antigone at Ferguson with community members to place the ancient play right in the context of contemporary policing. They recently did a quarantine cover of one of their songs in solidarity.
Things came to a head for me after my first year of studying my masters in Classical Studies in NYC, when I worked as a waitress over the summer a few blocks from Marcus Garvey Park. There was an Afropunk production of Antigone that the Classical Theater of Harlem was putting on that explicitly linked Antigone specifically with the struggle of silence around the deaths of Black women, borrowing language and imagery from the #SayHerName movement. The conversations I would have with theater-goers and organizers and cast members while I waited on them — not to mention endless free access to the production — directly resulted in me spending the latter half of my masters utterly obsessed with Antigone and race.
At the end of attaining my masters in classical studies, I wrote my thesis on the Antigone, abolition, and reacting to power structures. I went through the text rigorously and looked at the poetics of action and reaction that formed, thinking through all the different lenses of identity and trying to understand the different layers they formed in the text especially around protest, authoritative speech, bondage, and imprisonment. I was particularly excited to talk about how elements of Sophocles’s language and the carefully tight rhetorical devices he deploys in the text mimic aspects of racecraft.
But then, at the annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies at the start of 2019, a fellow Black classicist had his presentation on racial representation in published scholarship co-opted by two White women’s feelings about the idea of Western Civilization, and I begrudgingly yanked the entire racecraft thread out of my thesis. It wasn’t because of the event itself that happened — though that was enough to get me to finally commit to joining SCS so that I could show up and represent the next year — but rather my colleagues’ responses. Watching them flounder to think through diversity but to do no actual work, to create endless email chains that led to nowhere, to ignore my comments on seriously looking to aspects of Black studies to answer their queries, to feel the need to perform what a shame it was to me while never asking how I actually felt about it.
I had to learn how exhausting White classicists could be when all my colleagues but more importantly the professors suddenly turned into sputtering children in need of an intellectual mammy in the face of some truly (when it comes to the sheer potential for classicized racial violence) small potatoes racism.
My greatest regret about the entire situation was that I allowed it to affect my research, even as I was telling myself that it wouldn’t. I should have trusted my gut with my research and not allowed myself to be impacted by White anxiety when I’ve tried so hard my entire life to extricate myself from such. And ever since the start of COVID-19, as so many other pressing matters have been pulling my focus, a small corner of my brain hasn’t been able to shake all the unused ideas around Antigone, abolition, and race.
Due to the virus, I had to leave NYC. My living situation was too dangerous to try and quarantine safely so I had to retreat to family back in Seattle. I’ve been wanting to return, but with each day I’ve stayed away I become more and more worried that I won’t be able to do that anytime soon. This last week I was going to start seriously considering buying a ticket back — even amidst a White woman’s anxieties attempting to murder a Black man in Central Park — before Minneapolis happened.
And suddenly the trepidation I’ve felt this entire quarantine about writing about Antigone is gone. There’s simply no time for my own anxieties anymore. Much like the primary antagonist of the play, I can’t keep ignoring the obvious.
I love New York, I miss Harlem. As I’m home in Seattle marching with my family and community here, I ache for the communities of New York, of my friends in Minneapolis, my family in Georgia, and so many loved ones all across the country.
Greek tragedy is all about Athenian anxiety playing out on the acted stage. On the American stage, White anxieties have necessitated Black tragedies and reactions in the very fabric of our society. Why wouldn’t I return in kind by highlighting it through my own academic lens, with one of the most famous plays from all of antiquity?
Antigone resonates. Her uncle flouts justice by playing god with her brother’s corpse, and she refuses to let him be at peace, even after her death in prison. It’s why her play has been so reactive around the Black Lives Matter movement: No Justice — No Peace.
The timing is everything in Antigone. And timing is the game America has been playing with Black people since 1619. There wasn’t time in the 1830s to give a Black slave a classical training to change the minds of racists. There’s not time for me to stage a production of Antigone to convince the public. So instead I have to innovate and tiptoe the tightrope around the ever-evolving techne of American racism to something new, something hybrid, something all mixed up. But hey, I’ve got one Black parent and one White parent — mixed has always been my vibe.
You want a protest? Here’s a Greekin’ Negroid. I’ll give you a protest.
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Classicists are used to giving texts “reads”. However, I’m going to employ the rhetoric of Crissle West and Kid Fury — in honor of their first ever All-Read episode this week to protest of the endless consumption of Black lives — to give a read to the Mayor of NYC and Governor of NY using my own academic read of Antigone. All Greek text from Loebs (and apologies for the way Medium formats Greek script), English translations Loebs/Me mash-up.
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ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ: καὶ νῦν τί τοῦτ᾽ αὖ φασι πανδήμῳ πόλει
κήρυγμα θεῖναι τὸν στρατηγὸν ἀρτίως
ἔχεις τι κεἰσήκουσας ἤ σε λανθάνει
πρὸς τοὺς φίλους στείχοντα τῶν ἐχθρῶν κακά
Antigone: And now what is this proclamation that they say the general has lately made to the whole city? Have you any knowledge? Have you heard anything? Or have you failed to notice the evils from our enemies as they come against our friends?
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Alright governor, we’re definitely going to start things with you, because you were the one who first got me thinking that I needed to write about Antigone again when you and De Blasio were doing your weird ass male political performance act in the lead up to Corona blowing up in NYC. As a NYC transplant from Washington state, March was a terrifying time for me as I heard the hasty and drastic precautions my family and friends were having to make while my city’s talk show hosts and leaders were scoffing at the possibility of shutting down NYC because of a virus.
Look where the fuck we are now. But it’s more than that with you, Cuomo. You first started pissing me off when you announced that New York would produce its own hand sanitizer with prison labor. When your answer to a potential shortage is “it’s fine, we have bonded labor” during a health crisis, I don’t know how you can be leading as anything other than a sociopath. Because you cannot shelter in place in a prison. You have no autonomy over your health. So on TV, it was like you were assuring some New Yorkers that they would be safe because prisoners would be put in a position where they could potentially be exposed to the virus so that they could package and label the products that New Yorkers needed to help prevent the spread of the virus in the first place.
And what happened within a week of me fleeing to Seattle? Rikers surpassed New York state and Seattle to have the highest infection rate. And you’ve done fuck-all since to #ReleaseRikers despite increased reporting on the issue.
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ΙΣΜΗΝΗ: ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ ἄτιμα ποιοῦμαι, τὸ δὲβίᾳ πολιτῶν δρᾶν ἔφυν ἀμήχανος.
ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ: σὺ μὲν τάδ᾿ ἂν προὔχοι᾿· ἐγὼ δὲ δὴ τάφονχώσουσ᾿ ἀδελφῷ φιλτάτῳ πορεύσομαι.
Ismene: I’m not dishonoring them, but I don’t have it in me to act against the will of the people of the city.
Antigone: You can offer that excuse; but Imma go to heap up a tomb for my cherished brother.
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Then came April 1st when you said that the NYPD had to be “more aggressive” with their policing to get people to follow social distancing guidelines when you know full well which demographics get policed over others in NYC. Stop-And-Frisk was enough to halt 17 year-old me’s dreams of being a playwright on Broadway right in their tracks and not even consider living in the city again until it was repealed. I thought it had to be a goddamn April Fools joke because how could the NYPD be more aggressive without risking spreading the virus?
But I don’t know why I was surprised: at the same time you were threatening to shut down all State Government, including the Department of Health (During! A Global! Health! Pandemic!) if you didn’t get your hamfisted legislation in, including cutting medicaid and giving judges weird ass racecraft-like premonition capabilities to fill jails during a time when jails are blowing up with COVID-19.
Like I said, really hard to see that as anything other than utterly sociopathic.
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ΚΡΕΩΝ: ἐγὼ γάρ, ἴστω Ζεὺς ὁ πάνθ᾿ ὁρῶν ἀεί,
οὔτ᾿ ἂν σιωπήσαιμι τὴν ἄτην ὁρῶν
στείχουσαν ἀστοῖς ἀντὶ τῆς σωτηρίας,
οὔτ᾿ ἂν φίλον ποτ᾿ ἄνδρα δυσμενῆ χθονὸς
θείμην ἐμαυτῷ, τοῦτο γιγνώσκων ὅτι
ἥδ᾿ ἐστὶν ἡ σῴζουσα καὶ ταύτης ἔπι
πλέοντες ὀρθῆς τοὺς φίλους ποιούμεθα.
τοιοῖσδ᾿ ἐγὼ νόμοισι τήνδ᾿ αὔξω πόλιν.
Creon: I’d never be silent, may Zeus Eternal Panopticon know it, when I saw ruin coming upon the citizens instead of safety, nor would I make a friend of the enemy of my country, knowing that this is the ship that preserves us, and that this is the ship on which we sail and only while she prospers can we make our friends. These are the rules by which I make our city great.
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As the Rikers prisoners were digging mass graves on Hart Island, NYPD officers were attacking essential workers who were doing their best to socially distance in the subways. I waited, tuning into your briefings, waiting for you to realize how the inevitable horror that was to occur if you didn’t act. But you ignored everyone around prisons and social distancing. I had to keep watching it.
NYPD being horrible in the subway is nothing new — I was a part of the protests at the end of 2019 and start of this year against the increased policing of the MTA, protesting for free transit (remember a few months ago when the city was insisting there was no avenues towards free transportation?). How have the NYPD reacted in the wake of this and COVID? By terrorizing Black children in Sugar Hill, Harlem.
Really, Cuomo? This is the fucked up legacy of Black bondage that you want to stand for? You’re fine with being in this strange love-hate relationship death cult pact with De Blasio and the NYPD?
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ΚΡΕΩΝ: ἀλλ᾿ ὅστις εὔνους τῇδε τῇ πόλει, θανὼν
καὶ ζῶν ὁμοίως ἔκ γ᾿ ἐμοῦ τιμήσεται
Creon: No, whoever is loyal to the city in death and life alike shall from me have honor.
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And yeah, on that note, fuck the NYPD. And fuck the disgusting relationship that they’ve had with every single New York mayor in my lifetime, save of course for the man who had his last three months as mayor during my first three months of life before that crackerbox Giuliani took over — David Dinkins. The only Black mayor in NYC history, bearing the legacy as the mayor that the NYPD hated.
Gee. We really fucking wonder why.
Speaking of Giuliani, I grew up in the era of everyone breathily referring to him as the 9/11 mayor. There is plenty to be said about being able to guide people through a tragedy. But I also know how political these things can be. And Cuomo, you’ve never stopped being political. You proved that when you canceled the New York state primary. I think people are going to eventually feel about you the way that they feel about Giuliani if you don’t get your shit together and Decarcerate NOW.
On the topic of mayors though, we finally gotta turn to Bill.
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ΧΟΡΟΣ: σοὶ ταῦτ᾿ ἀρέσκει, παῖ Μενοικέως, ποεῖν
τὸν τῇδε δύσνουν καὶ τὸν εὐμενῆ πόλει·
νόμῳ δὲ χρῆσθαι παντί, τοῦτ᾿ ἔνεστί σοι
καὶ τῶν θανόντων χὠπόσοι ζῶμεν πέρι.
Chorus: It is your pleasure, son of Menoiceus, to do this to the man who is hostile and to the man who is loyal to the city; and you have power to observe every rule with regard to the dead and to us who are alive.
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De Blasio, come on. This draft lingered unfinished here on Medium for over a month because it was mainly geared towards all the warning signs that Cuomo was displaying and I was trying to figure out how to say “hey so you guys are really setting the stage for some sort of whack ass Black genocide to happen here in NYC in 2020 and like…maybe don’t do that?”
But then Minneapolis happened and things just popped off naturally, so here we are.
De Blasio, why are you utterly abandoning the Black community of NYC? You pushed so hard on understanding the hardships of police brutality because you have to educate your kids about it, so why are you acting like an ignorant child who don’t know what’s what right now?
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ΚΡΕΩΝ: τὸ μὴ ᾿πιχωρεῖν τοῖς ἀπιστοῦσιν τάδε.
ΧΟΡΟΣ: οὐκ ἔστιν οὕτω μῶρος ὃς θανεῖν ἐρᾷ.
Creon: You must not give way to those who disobey in this.
Chorus: There is no one foolish enough to desire death.
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First it was banning homeless people from sleeping in subway stations at the start of May because you’ve never had the guts to address the systemic roots of homelessness in NYC. Cuomo’s a political puppet so of course he’s never going to raise taxes on the rich to fund unhoused services. You cite public health, but again, who’s health is it? And why is this idea of public health so flexible when you have swarms of Transit and NYPD officers down in the subways as well? Are you telling me that every single officer enforcing the hour-limit is also adhering to it? Get the fuck outta here, we know they aren’t.
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ΦΥΛΑΞ: φεῦ· ἦ δεινόν, ᾧ δοκεῖ γε, καὶ ψευδῆ δοκεῖν.
Cop: Alas…it is dangerous for the believer to believe what is untrue.
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Then your ass had to show your ass to the whole city when suddenly the pulse of Stop-And-Frisk was returning with the first wave of social distancing arrests.
You were allowing tensions to ramp up in your city, and structural violence to be deployed in the neighborhoods that are already hit worst by this virus, the neighborhoods that often supply the bulk of essential workers who were pretty consistently disparaged prior to mid-March.
You have the resources to understand the history of policing in this country and in NYC, you shouldn’t have to have an unfunded scholar yelling it at you over the internet! You know policing specifically in this country is rooted in slave patrols, you know that there’s a racist logic to the entire police system that has never been addressed. The original cops were poor Whites who would catch Black runaways and return them to whatever plantation corporate body they’d escaped from. The heart of policing in America is rooted in White supremacist ideology reinforced by violent capitalism. And unless you address that and reach for real abolition, these same issues are going to keep happening.
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ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ: εἰ δὲ τοῦ χρόνου
πρόσθεν θανοῦμαι, κέρδος αὔτ᾿ ἐγὼ λέγω.
ὅστις γὰρ ἐν πολλοῖσιν ὡς ἐγὼ κακοῖς
ζῇ, πῶς ὅδ᾿ οὐχὶ κατθανὼν κέρδος φέρει;
οὕτως ἔμοιγε τοῦδε τοῦ μόρου τυχεῖν
παρ᾿ οὐδὲν ἄλγος· ἀλλ᾿ ἄν, εἰ τὸν ἐξ ἐμῆς
μητρὸς θανόντ᾿ ἄθαπτον <ὄντ᾿> ἠνεσχόμην,
κείνοις ἂν ἤλγουν· τοῖσδε δ᾿ οὐκ ἀλγύνομαι.
σοὶ δ᾿ εἰ δοκῶ νῦν μῶρα δρῶσα τυγχάνειν,
σχεδόν τι μώρῳ μωρίαν ὀφλισκάνω.
Antigone: Yet if I die before my time, I count that gain. Doesn’t whoever lives among many troubles, as I do, gain by death? So it’s in no way painful for me to meet with this death; if I had endured that the son of my own mother should die and remain unburied — that would have given me pain, but this gives me none. And if you think my actions foolish, that amounts to a fool’s charge of folly.
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Black people were already dying disproportionately from COVID and your governor boy was clearing the way to shove as many Black people into jail with as much ease as possible. You and Cuomo are exacerbating the situation.
It’s why Antigone resonates as a character — her entire play is about trying to point out the big picture to her uncle who controls her fate and paying the ultimate price for it. Black people are tired of paying the price for White anxiety, and as someone who has a Black family, I’m astounded that you can’t just come to these conclusions on your own.
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ΚΡΕΩΝ: ἀλλ᾿ ἴσθι τοι τὰ σκλήρ᾿ ἄγαν φρονήματα
πίπτειν μάλιστα, καὶ τὸν ἐγκρατέστατον
σίδηρον ὀπτὸν ἐκ πυρὸς περισκελῆ
θραυσθέντα καὶ ῥαγέντα πλεῖστ᾿ ἂν εἰσίδοις.
σμικρῷ χαλινῷ δ᾿ οἶδα τοὺς θυμουμένους
ἵππους καταρτυθέντας· οὐ γὰρ ἐκπέλει
φρονεῖν μέγ᾿ ὅστις δοῦλός ἐστι τῶν πέλας.
Creon: Why, know that over-stubborn wills are the most apt to fall, and the toughest iron, baked in the fire till it is hard, is most often, you will see, cracked and shattered! I know that spirited horses are controlled by a small bridle; for pride is impossible for anyone who is another’s slave.
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And I’ve gotta use Antigone because so much is at stake. The White viewership to Black death has defined this country in so many way, always twisting and contorting into new shapes from the Greek mythologized κύκλος of the Ku Klux Klan to the mass consumption of the lynching of Black bodies in the digital age on our personalized screens. Black shock doctrine will always be rebranded for White media in this country.
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ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ: ἀλλ᾿ ἡ τυραννὶς πολλά τ᾿ ἄλλ᾿ εὐδαιμονεῖ
κἄξεστιν αὐτῇ δρᾶν λέγειν θ᾿ ἃ βούλεται.
Antigone: But tyranny is fortunate in many ways, in particular in its power to say and do as it wishes.
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Whiteness has always gotten to do and say as it wishes in this country at the expense of all other minorities — that is what it means to have a country built on White supremacy. Do you have any idea how painful it is to see a White man in charge of one of the most powerful cities in the world with a Black family sit aside and let the NYPD do this? But again, I have to remind myself, Thomas Jefferson was critiquing the intelligence of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry to denigrate Blackness at the exact time period Crummell calls an “Egyptian darkness” all the while having a Black family of his own. That is the historical logic, rhetoric, and privilege of White male politicians in America. The unchecked ability to control the spheres of knowledge production, agricultural production, and genetic reproduction.
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ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ: οὐ γάρ τι δοῦλος, ἀλλ᾿ ἀδελφὸς ὤλετο.
Antigone: It wasn’t a slave, but my brother who had died.
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Black people’s necks have been in nooses for 400 years. There has never been a point in that history when Black people have been able to just breathe freely without worrying about that breath being taken away from them. Particularly during a global pandemic that is disproportionately affecting Black people in the respiratory system.
But furthermore, I’m worried that you and Cuomo have utterly torn apart the remaining structures in NYC that have allowed Black people to be. You are going to get so many Black people killed. New York City has officially become a Sundown City and I’m terrified that we’re gunning towards a total Sundown Country.
And trust me, I hate “future scholars will think x” arguments as much as the next person, but I have been desperately trying to think through a way that this isn’t going to be seen historically as some sort of Black genocide unless some White person acts fast and drastically. And you would HOPEFULLY THINK it would be the White dude in power right now in one of the richest cities in the world with the Black family.
Fucking Jefferson.
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ΚΡΕΩΝ: ἀναρχίας δὲ μεῖζον οὐκ ἔστιν κακόν.
αὕτη πόλεις ὄλλυσιν, ἥδ᾿ ἀναστάτους
οἴκους τίθησιν, ἥδε συμμάχου δορὸς
τροπὰς καταρρήγνυσι· τῶν δ᾿ ὀρθουμένων
σῴζει τὰ πολλὰ σώμαθ᾿ ἡ πειθαρχία.
Creon: But there is no worse evil than anarchy! This it is that ruins cities, this it is that destroys houses, this it is that shatters and puts to flight the warriors on its own side! But what saves the lives of most of those that go straight is obedience!
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Black people have dealt with White respectability politics since before America was even a country. Doing things the right/White way has had little impact on White supremacist power structures divesting their power and privilege.
But this is the right way now, correct? I’m using Greek syntax, something White men in this country love so much, and I’m showing and performing my humanity to you. Isn’t this the gauntlet politicians threw down? Aren’t Black people supposed to prove our humanity through classical study? Because Black scholarship in the field of Classics has never been met with any controversy from Whiteness at all.
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ΚΡΕΩΝ: ἄλλῳ γὰρ ἢ ᾿μοὶ χρή με τῆσδ᾿ ἄρχειν χθονός;
ΑΙΜΩΝ: πόλις γὰρ οὐκ ἔσθ᾿ ἥτις ἀνδρός ἐσθ᾿ ἑνός.
ΚΡΕΩΝ: οὐ τοῦ κρατοῦντος ἡ πόλις νομίζεται;
ΑΙΜΩΝ: καλῶς ἐρήμης γ᾿ ἂν σὺ γῆς ἄρχοις μόνος.
Creon: Must I rule this land for another and not myself?
Haimon: Yes, for there is no city that belongs to a single man.
Creon: Is not the city thought to belong to its ruler?
Haimon: You would make a fine ruler over a desert!
— —
“If those protesters had just gotten out of the way we wouldn’t be talking about this situation.”
Yeah, and if you knew how to be an actual goddamn leader, you wouldn’t be letting the NYPD run rampant and kill your citizens! I literally don’t see your endgame with all this? What’s it going to take to get you to see that the NYPD, like every other police department across the country, is quickly labeling itself as an enemy of the people? I mean god, they’re literally taking down American flags and replacing them with Blue Lives Matter flags. You are explicitly upholding the supremacist legacy of slave-catchers for the world to see and I hope to GOD your children are in therapy.
— —
ΚΡΕΩΝ: ἡμεῖς γὰρ ἁγνοὶ τοὐπὶ τήνδε τὴν κόρην·
μετοικίας δ᾿ οὖν τῆς ἄνω στερήσεται.
Creon: For we are guiltless where this girl is concerned; but she shall be deprived of residence with us here above the ground.”
— —
De Blasio, I don’t understand how this isn’t personal for you. I don’t know how this doesn’t utterly break you. I found myself choking up unexpectedly yesterday watching a few videos of some Southern White teens who had to deal with their family’s callous emotions in the wake of this national tragedy. Teenagers crying and disowning their families because they just don’t understand why people don’t care. And as an educator it utterly killed me. Because so much of what I fight for with what I research is to create spaces where kids can feel safe to express their emotions around larger systemic forces and engage with them in a meaningful way.
Because we shouldn’t have to live in a country where we’re trying to emotionally process whether or not our parents are sociopaths before our frontal lobes have finished fully forming. All amidst a pandemic. But structural racism brings about these conditions. Meanwhile Cuomo’s trying to redo NY education in a big way, which I don’t see going very well given the current circumstances of the state. I’m so concerned for the youths and the state of academia and education right now.
— —
ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ: ποίαν παρεξελθοῦσα δαιμόνων δίκην;
τί χρή με τὴν δύστηνον ἐς θεοὺς ἔτι
βλέπειν; τίν᾿ αὐδᾶν ξυμμάχων; ἐπεί γε δὴ
τὴν δυσσέβειαν εὐσεβοῦσ᾿ ἐκτησάμην.
Antigone: What justice of the gods have I transgressed? Why must I still look to the gods, unhappy one? Whom can I call on to protect me? For by acting piously I have been convicted of impiety.
— —
Stop killing us.
Stop killing us.
Stop killing us.
Stop killing us.
Stop killing us.
Stop killing us.
Stop killing us.
Stop killing us.
Stop killing us.
Stop killing us.
-an uppity negro, apparently
Black people asking for life and rights has been defined in this country as the wrong way to protest, historically. There has never been a fair playing field, so cut the bullshit. We are labeled thugs for demanding humanity.
— —
ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ: λεύσσετε, Θήβης οἱ κοιρανίδαι,
τὴν βασιλειδῶν μούνην λοιπήν,
οἷα πρὸς οἵων ἀνδρῶν πάσχω,
τὴν εὐσεβίαν σεβίσασα.
Antigone: Witness, rulers of Thebes, the last of the royal house, what things I am suffering from what men, for being caught in an act of perfect reverence!
— —
White people love to witness, they love to watch performances that they can control and extract from. But what happens when they are extracted from in return? What happens when the White person who thinks they’re in power realizes just how precariously set up they are to lose?
— —
ΤΕΙΡΕΣΙΑΣ: ταῦτ᾿ οὖν, τέκνον, φρόνησον. ἀνθρώποισι γὰρ
τοῖς πᾶσι κοινόν ἐστι τοὐξαμαρτάνειν·
ἐπεὶ δ᾿ ἁμάρτῃ, κεῖνος οὐκέτ᾿ ἔστ᾿ ἀνὴρ
ἄβουλος οὐδ᾿ ἄνολβος, ὅστις ἐς κακὸν
πεσὼν ἀκεῖται μηδ᾿ ἀκίνητος πέλει.
αὐθαδία τοι σκαιότητ᾿ ὀφλισκάνει.
ἀλλ᾿ εἶκε τῷ θανόντι, μηδ᾿ ὀλωλότα
κέντει
Tiresias: Think upon this, my son! All men are liable to make mistakes; and when a man does this, he who after getting into trouble tries to repair the damage and does not remain immovable is not foolish or miserable. Obstinacy lays you open to the charge of blundering. Give way to the dead man, and do not continue to stab him as he lies dead!
— —
De Blasio, I’m getting panicked thinking about this because I think you’re the one that needs to be reached. You must defund the NYPD. You must be the first White mayor to break the chain with them. You have to for your kids’ sake! And this is when I’m going to get personal, because this is a very scary and personal time. I’m coming down much harder on you right now because you should know better, being the White parent of Black children.
I know this, because my White mother taught me that White people have to work extra hard to undo all of their internalized socialization around Black people, and that’s work that many of them don’t want to do. I really feel for your kids, as I can imagine growing up in this time period can make you feel your race in a way that you might not have been aware of. It brings up a lot of emotions and realizations. Having parents who can be present through and understand that is so crucial.
While I was protesting in the streets of Seattle and SPD were throwing concussion grenades at us without warning, it was my mother who took my hand when I was five seconds from screaming at SPD when a blast startled me. It was my mother who had part of another grenade bounce off her foot as we rushed back down the street and she shoved her body in front of mine to stand in between me and the cops, her head bowed, hands folded in prayer.
My White Mennonite mother in her pale pink rain coat praying, using her whole body and image and privilege to protect me. I couldn’t stop crying because I was so scared that something horrible would happen to her, but I also felt so incredibly loved and accepted, as she has always striven to make me feel.
I feel so sorry for your children, because that feeling I got from my mom? That was something I really needed from the White person I’m closest to in my life during this time period. As a Black woman. That was so incredibly grounding for me. And I worry that your children might not have that similar grounding.
— —
ΚΡΕΩΝ: οἴμοι· μόλις μέν, καρδίας δ᾿ ἐξίσταμαι
τὸ δρᾶν· ἀνάγκῃ δ᾿ οὐχὶ δυσμαχητέον.
Creon: Alas… I’ll renounce my heart’s purpose and act: I can’t fight any longer against necessity.
— —
The play of Antigone hinges entirely on the quote above. Creon is unable to admit he is wrong and to give in right up until the very point where it costs him everything. And the entire play is in reaction to something he did immediately before the first lines. So much of the play hinges on Creon’s anxiety over establishing his new regime (he’s only been king since the prior night) and ensuring his rules are followed. However his rules are against the fundamental customs of his Theban society (and of his Athenian audience) around burial and the correct treatment of a dead body.
Cuomo, De Blasio, you’re both necessitating Black genocide in NYC and you know the rest of the country is going to follow suit.
— —
ΚΡΕΩΝ: ὢ τάλας ἐγώ,
ἆρ᾿ εἰμὶ μάντις; ἆρα δυστυχεστάτην
κέλευθον ἕρπω τῶν παρελθουσῶν ὁδῶν;
παιδός με σαίνει φθόγγος.
Creon: O my unhappy self, am I a prophet? am I travelling on the saddest path of all the ways I have come in the past? I recognize my son’s voice!
— —
But for real De Blasio, do they genuinely have to kill one of your kids? Is that what will make you realize that maybe the NYPD shouldn’t have been allowed to be the mayor’s cushy private army for the past 25 years? Will it be when they come for your wife?
— —
ΚΡΕΩΝ: ὦ κτανόντας τε καὶ
θανόντας βλέποντες ἐμφυλίους.
ὤμοι ἐμῶν ἄνολβα βουλευμάτων.
ἰὼ παῖ, νέος νέῳ ξὺν μόρῳ,
αἰαῖ αἰαῖ,
ἔθανες, ἀπελύθης,
ἐμαῖς οὐδὲ σαῖσι δυσβουλίαις.
Creon: You look on kindred that have done and suffered murder! Alas for the disaster caused by my decisions! Ah, my son, young and newly dead, alas, alas, you died, you were cut off, through my folly, not through your own!
— —
“I do believe the NYPD has acted appropriately.”
Cops across the country are defying the Geneva convention, they’re letting Alt-Right White guys with guns walk with them and hang out on roofs, they’re arresting reporters and destroying street medic supplies, when are you going to stop acting like you’re not structurally reinforcing a race war and actually pick a goddamn side in this.
Because Black New Yorkers deserve so much better than what you’ve given them this past week. Including your family.
— —
ΑΓΓΕΛΟΣ: λύει κελαινὰ βλέφαρα, κωκύσασα μὲν
τοῦ πρὶν θανόντος Μεγαρέως κενὸν λέχος,
αὖθις δὲ τοῦδε, λοίσθιον δὲ σοὶ κακὰς
πράξεις ἐφυμνήσασα τῷ παιδοκτόνῳ.
Messenger: …closed her darkening eyes, after she had lamented the empty marriage bed of Megareus, who died earlier, and again of Haimon, and at the last had called down curses upon you, the killer of your son.
— —
Are you actively preparing for the potential of your family dying like everyone else with Black family members is in this country right now? Are you truly emotionally prepared for the violence you may unintentionally wield upon them by taking the allegiances you do? Because Black Americans are dealing with the fact that between COVID and White supremacists, we are not going to make it out of this year with all of our loved ones. It’s intense. It’s raw. It’s emotional. And my heart utterly goes out to Gen Z, whose entire life has been nothing but shock doctrine.
And I refuse to let right now become one of those moments in NYC.
— —
ΧΟΡΟΣ: μέλλοντα ταῦτα. τῶν προκειμένων τι χρὴ
πράσσειν. μέλει γὰρ τῶνδ᾿ ὅτοισι χρὴ μέλειν.
Chorus: That lies in the future; but we must attend to present tasks; the future is a care to those responsible.
— —
I’m not going to pretend that this hasn’t been a fraught and traumatic history.
And so much of the history of White engagement with Blackness in this country has been to smother, loot, oppress, dominate, cloak, mask, and all the other sneaking creeping obscuring words. We are quickly becoming a full-on police state because police around the country like executing Black people. There’s no other conclusion to draw after the past week of videos and footage of cops snatching as many Black people as they could, including reporters. You’ve both allowed NYC to become a COVID death trap, and made the prisons even more so, and then created conditions so that the NYPD could shepherd minorities into prison to die of COVID and that was BEFORE Minneapolis popped off.
Now’s the time. This country is starting to ignite and everyone’s looking to NYC as the center. It comes down to you two Creons. The fuck are you going to do?
You should defund the NYPD. You should release Rikers. You should lead towards true abolition that this country has never truly been able to grasp.
But I also know the historical record when it comes to White politicians going back to the founding fathers, so I’ll won’t hold my breath. This performance wasn’t just for you two, after all.
I’m not going down without a fight. I wanna live to return to Harlem once more. And I refuse to let America become a Sundown Country. I refuse to have another era of White Americans stamping out the light of Black Americans and looting their bodies so that they can grow instead.
Besides, despite spending two years in the lofty classical libraries of Columbia University getting my masters, it was through street epistemologies that I first understood Antigone.
— —
“Q.U.E.E.N.” (Queer, Untouchable, Emigrant, Excommunicated, Negroid)
“Are we a lost generation of our people?
Add us to equations but they’ll never make us equal.
She who writes the movie owns the script and the sequel,
So why ain’t the stealing of my rights made illegal?
They keep us underground working hard for the greedy,
But when it’s time pay they turn around and call us needy.
My crown too heavy like the Queen Nefertiti —
Gimme back my pyramid, I’m trying to free Kansas City!
Mixing masterminds like your name Bernie Grundman,
Well Imma keep leading like a young Harriet Tubman.
You can take my wings but I’m still gonna fly
And even when you edit me the booty don’t lie.
Yeah, Imma keep sangin’, Imma keep writin’ songs.
I’m tired of Marvin asking me “What’s Going On?”
March through the streets ‘cuz I’m willing and I’m able.
Categorize me, I defy every label.
And while you’re selling dope, we’re gonna keep selling hope.
We rising up now, you gotta deal you gotta cope.
Will you be electric sheep? Electric ladies, will you sleep?
Or will you preach?”
