Aaaaand we’re back. Frank Talk is attempting to create a space on this site in which we can discuss issues surrounding race, culture, gender and the social issues that have grabbed us by the nether regions and held on tight. Why? Because we do a fair amount of commenting on the local and international entertainment scene, a thriving, sometimes beautiful world, and I’d like to see aspects of it critically discussed with an aim towards improving the whole damn thing in whatever way we can. And that’s also what I’m writing about this week.
After writing the first Frank Talk I was linked to a tweet by a user named @NovaHerself, a self-styled Thug Among Women and, to those of you active on Twitter in the circles focused on racial, cultural and feminist discourse, probably a familiar face as well. Before posting a link to my piece, Nova considered how she felt about a person of color who is not black (me) borrowing the term “Frank Talk” for a think-piece. In case you weren’t aware, ‘Frank Talk’ is the name that Steve Biko did much of his writing under.
It’s a question I’d grappled with before actually deciding to use the name for the column because it could be construed as an attempt to co-opt the significance of a prominent black author’s work rather than an act of homage. A sort of cultural appropriation because, surprise surprise, I’m not black.
How do I feel when a person of colour who is not Black names their think-pieces Frank Talk, after Steve Biko, specifically?
— A Thug Among Women (@NovaHerself) June 3, 2014
Considering that Biko’s Black Consciousness begat “Frank Talk”. I guess Biko did make provision for non-Black POC to identify. Did he?
— A Thug Among Women (@NovaHerself) June 3, 2014
Nova’s concerns echoed my own internal monologue about the issue but I explained, if not my thinking then at least my personal emotional link to Biko’s description of ‘black’. Biko himself defined black as “those who are by law or tradition politically, economically and socially discriminated against as a group in the South African society and identifying themselves as a unit in the struggle towards the realization of their aspirations”.
Clarifying things a bit more, he added:
This definition illustrates to us a number of things:
- Being black is not a matter of pigmentation – being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
- Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.
So when I identify as black, I know that racially I am not black and that culturally I may not be black in all regards. I do not refer to myself as black in every situation, often instead deferring to a more complex breakdown of my even more complex heritage because the question “what are you” still irks me beyond belief and I feel a comprehensive response is the only means I have to make people question their expectations based on my skin tone, my appearance and more importantly, their own biases.
But on my personal link to Steve Biko, if I can call it that, I told Nova about something I’ve referred to on more than one occasion on this website: My mother studied with Steve Biko and he was, in a poor paraphrase of her words, the man who made her realize that she could be proud to be who she was, proud of her race, her culture and her background. She’s the reason I got into his writing in the first place and the reason I feel that identification with black-ness as he describes it above. That sense of being one of “a unit in the struggle towards the realization of their aspirations”.
Still, maybe that isn’t enough to make me black and I’m doing my arguments here a disservice by trying to identify as such. By doing so I’m very aware that I run the risk of becoming yet another condescending voice in the supposedly shared struggle to identify and overcome the stereotypes facing black people all over the world.
If anything highlighted this internal struggle to me, it was another reader comment, this time posted on the last Frank Talk, which dealt with issues of race as a defining constituent of someone’s singular identity.
Reader N Coundourakis responded to the article saying, “Well said, Nas. It would be interesting to get the perspective of a black South African who didn’t grow up in a privilaged household with the luxury of education (assuming here that you weren’t a laaitie in the depths of poverty and disadvantage).”
If there’s anything I’m aware of when I’m writing here, it’s my own privileges. Especially when it comes to discussing the struggle of people who haven’t had the same advantages as I have. I’m not black so even though I often face the strange racial biases that some people bring to their interactions with any race (last week it was in the form of a joke about mag wheels and sound systems in India), I’m not getting away with claiming the same issues are mine on a daily basis. But then, that’s not the aim here. If anything the point is to illustrate that, with a little empathy and common human decency, we can all maybe just begin to understand the contexts that growing up without our privileges, whatever they are, might provide.
Maybe we can never be disadvantaged, and maybe imagining it can veer toward the condescending, but I think it’s important to recognize that there are people out there who aren’t having the same easy time that we are and that perhaps there are ways in which we can challenge our own systemic thinking, what Another-Day‘s resident Londonite cosplay hound Dave Sun calls “your bubble”.
My point is: I’m writing this because I feel a moral obligation. Or no, no that’s not it. I feel a sense of empathy. Nope, still not there. I feel a deep connection to the idea of any of my fellow human who is facing Biko’s described political, economical or social discrimination. And I think it’s important to shed further light on an issue that isn’t going overlooked but, if anything, is being challenged every day by people who are ignorant or downright evil, and who would prefer we weren’t having this conversation and striving for a change. I hope.
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While we’re warming this space up and figuring out exactly what it is I’m going to be doing here, I thought it might help to share some more useful information with you, or examples of the stuff I’m reading all over the internet that ties into the discussion. Frank Talk isn’t just for me. If you have a story to share, would like to write about something here, or have a question or a comment, share it below, on Twitter or email me and let’s keep the conversation going.
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This Week In Racism: Famous comic writer-artist John Byrne went on a rant about the casting of black actor Michael B Jordan as The Human Torch in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie. He justified his dislike of the casting decision by arguing that the move was condescending to black people, who should have their own heroes and their own characters created for them, rather than being given white character’s roles to play. It is a familiar argument of possessive entitlement by a white creator looking to justify his position. In this case he’s talking about a fictional character, which only makes his argument seem more petty. I understand kind of what he’s saying, but it’s so caked in bullshit that I can’t find it in myself to agree with him. You can read the full rant here republished on Bleeding Cool here.
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There’s a really informative piece on The New Statesmen on “the cultural history of pain“. Here’s a quote that illustrates just how systemic notions of prejudice were at the time, with actual medical and even criminal behavior being linked to race or gender.
“…many people didn’t believe that all human beings (let alone non-human animals) were equally capable of suffering. Scientists and philosophers pointed to the existence of a hierarchy of sentience. Belief in a great “Chain of Being”, according to which everything in the universe was ranked from the highest to the lowest, is a fundamental tenet of western philosophy. One aspect of this Chain of Being involved the perception of sensation. There was a parallel great Chain of Feeling, which placed male Europeans at one end and slaves and animals at the other.
…
In particular, people who had been placed at the “lower” end of the Chain of Feeling paid an extremely high price for prejudices about their “inability” to feel. In many white middle-class and upper-class circles, slaves and “savages”, for instance, were routinely depicted as possessing a limited capacity to experience pain, a biological “fact” that conveniently diminished any culpability among their so-called superiors for acts of abuse inflicted on them.”
Nas Hoosen