Another Black Man in America
My last dispatch examined a historical moment, the Late Victorian Holocausts, in order to qualify several of my propositions regarding power formations generally and regarding the specific power formation that is imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
This dispatch examines my own lived experience in order to further qualify my propositions. In and through introducing my own lived experience into the mix, I hope to gradually transition from simply describing how power operates to describing how different people experience power in operation.
In this dispatch, I describe how it is that power makes proxies of people who ostensibly want to teach and protect others or, in other words, I describe how power makes people believe that they must do violence in order to teach and protect others. My own lived experience has revealed to me how the workings of optimizing powers are meant to be experienced as being taught lessons and having to teach lessons, as needing protection from oneself and needing to protect others from themselves.
This dispatch is a much revised and expanded version of a text that I wrote and published back in June of 2020 in response to ongoing conversations about the Black Lives Matter movement. I would like to dedicate this revised and expanded text to the memory of my mother, as this text is inspired by her mighty efforts to make amends for the experiences recounted herein.
A portrait of the author taken in 2020, about when the first draft of this text was written.
By the time I was ten years old, the imperative had been drummed into my ears, beamed into my eyes, and even beaten into my flesh: excel intellectually, maintain good manners, be well-spoken, and, by all means, never let your appearance, bearing, and conduct slacken when you are under the Gaze of the White Man (or his proxies), lest you be taken for an uncultured, uncouth, and uncivilized Negro.
Whenever I failed in this regard — whenever I performed poorly at school, whenever I spoke and acted out of turn, whenever my appearance, bearing, and conduct was wild and unruly — I would be punished by my parents, and my punishment would inevitably be accompanied by the refrain, “Keep this up and you’ll become just another Black man in America.”
My parents knew that I knew that being “just another Black man in America” was something dreadful, even though the reasons why this was the case had never been explicitly stated to me by them or by anyone else. There was, of course, no need for them to state the obvious to me, was there? All that they had to teach me explicitly was the imperative that I save myself from the dreadful fate of becoming “just another Black man in America” by and through becoming a “Black man of distinction”.
Now, I must state the obvious here, lest any reader play innocent. To be taken for “just another Black man in America” is to be subject to murder as an unintended consequence of routine disciplinary action, or as normal(ized) accident, or as the collateral damage of society’s pursuit of progressive optimization. My murder requires little extra formal justification if I am taken for “just another Black man in America”, but it requires detailed formal justification if I am taken for a Black man of distinction and not “just another Black man”. Intellectual achievement, good manners, proper diction, a sophisticated appearance, bearing, and code of conduct — all of this signals to the world at large that I may be a Black man of distinction and that my murder may require detailed formal justification. Knowing that my life was in real danger otherwise, my parents quite literally beat the imperative to signal distinction into me as a child, from the age of six up until the age of twelve. I am not alone in this regard: too many Black boys have been and are still being taught the imperative to signal distinction by and through injury and insult, acts of corporeal and communicative violence inflicted upon their bodies and psyches by people whom they call family, friends, mentors, and teachers. This sort of violence is but one of the many scourges of racism.
“What is racism?” Michel Foucault asked at the end of his 1975-1976 lectures at the Collège de France, titled “Society Must Be Defended”. Foucault’s answer to this question has stuck with me. In part, this is because being able to cite the sophisticated conjectures of erudite and esoteric Frenchmen is a mark of distinction for a Black man in America, but it is also because the sophistication of Foucault’s conjecture is actually rather profound. Foucault’s answer runs as follows:
[Racism] is primarily a way of introducing a break into the domain of life that is under power’s control: the break between what must live and what must die. […] In a normalizing society, race or racism is the precondition that makes killing acceptable. When you have a normalizing society, you have a power which is, at least superficially, in the first instance or in the first line a biopower, and racism is the indispensable condition that allows someone to be killed, that allows others to be killed. Once the state functions in the biopower mode, racism alone can justify the murderous function of the state. […] If the power of normalization wished to exercise the old sovereign right to kill, it must become racist. And if, conversely, a power of sovereignty, or in other words a power that has the right of life and death, wishes to work with the instruments, mechanisms, and technology of normalization, it too must become racist. When I say “killing,” I obviously do not mean simply murder as such, but also every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on.
So, what is profound about Foucault’s definition of racism? Well, as Foucault himself puts it, his definition holds that “[t]he specificity of modern racism, or what gives it its specificity, is not bound up with mentalities, ideologies, or the lies of power. It is bound up with the technique of power, with the technology of power.” To be rather more specific, modern racism is bound up with techniques and technologies of normalizing power: normalizing statements, normalizing implements, and normalizing environments. Going a step beyond Foucault, insofar as optimizing powers are variable controllers and modulators of normalizing powers, I hold that prevailing techniques and technologies of optimizing power give rise to modular racisms or “postmodern racisms” that are more “liberal” and “progressive” than the modern racisms engendered when techniques and technologies of normalizing power prevail.
Techniques and technologies of normalizing power operate in rather obvious ways but, at the same time, they make it easy for some individuals to disavow their rather obvious operations, to mis-attribute their effects, to blame “isolated bad actors”, “being at the wrong place at the wrong time”, and “accidents of birth”. Those who say that the police murder of another Black man in America is just a “normal accident” are disavowing the obvious fact that techniques and technologies of power have effectively normalized the “accidental” murder of Black men by police in America. Of course, those who find it easy to disavow this obvious fact are those for whom “accidental” murder by police has not been so normalized. By contrast, those for whom“accidental” murder by police has been normalized must perform remarkable mental gymnastics if they are to disavow this obvious fact and, what’s more, they risk being murdered if they act in accord with such a disavowal.
Techniques and technologies of optimizing power are more subtle and insidious. Taking it for granted that the murder of another Black man in America is a “normal accident”, optimizing powers aim to find ways to decrease the occurrence of “normal accidents” by subjecting Black men to increased administration and supervision. In other words, an optimizing power asks itself, “How can we better administer and supervise the lives of Black men so as to lower their normal murder-rate?” Optimizing powers tell us that Black males must not be left to their own devices: they “prove” to us that Black males are less likely to be murdered if they are placed into special after-school detention programs as young children, placed into special summer employment programs as young adults, and live their entire lives in neighborhoods patrolled by squadrons of police officers equipped with body-mounted surveillance cameras.
Optimizing powers teach us that Black male populations are “at risk populations” or “populations in crisis” that really ought to be set apart from other populations and put under special administration and supervision. To teach us this, optimizing powers will invariably cite the “fact” that Black male populations are unusually vulnerable to the “normal accident” that is murder, conveniently forgetting that this “fact” is artificially induced, the result of the effective operation of normalizing powers. Next, optimizing powers will “prove” the virtues of special administration and supervision by running more or less “controlled” experiments: they will demonstrate that sub-populations of Black men that submit to special administration and supervision are less likely to be murdered than sub-populations that are left to their own devices. What needs to be understood here, however, is the fact that optimizing powers effectively work to maintain and increase murder-rates in sub-populations left to their own devices relative to those that receive special administration and supervision. In effect, this means that optimizing powers confront Black males with a deathly ultimatum, “If you want to reduce your chances of being murdered, you must submit to some form of special administration and supervision; there is no alternative”.
Optimizing powers, in other words, constitute a protection racket that compels its victims to surrender their autonomy instead of (or in addition to) their money. To recognize this is to recognize that incarceration as a form of socio-political death in the US is only the most obvious part of the New Jim Crow power formation. To get a fuller picture of the New Jim Crow, I suggest you pay closer attention to the organs of the white savior industrial complex that operate within the US: they pass for social services and charitable organizations but they effectively compel Black people to surrender their autonomy, to submit to special administration and supervision, in order to receive protection from physical and socio-political death.
The Black man who signals to the world that they are a “Black man of distinction” is signaling to the world that they are ready, willing, and able to submit to special administration and supervision at all times. The Black man who signals to the world that they are “just another Black man” is signaling to the world that they will resist special administration and supervision. Black parents, fearing for the lives of their Black boys, endeavor to ensure that their boys are always ready, willing, and able to receive special administration and supervision. Indeed, returning to my own example, my parents wanted to ensure that I was ready, willing, and able to submit to extra-curricular administration and supervision but, between the ages of six and twelve at least, I actively resisted submitting to the most basic curriculum of administration and supervision — I was a truant and an underachiever. Knowing that my failure to submit to administration and supervision might very well result in my being murdered, my parents employed injury and insult, corporeal and communicative violence, to teach me a lesson and to compel me to submit. This is to say, in other words, that my parents thought that it was reasonable to employ corporeal and communicative violence against their child if doing so effectively meant keeping their child from being murdered. Raising me up in New York City and Pittsburgh during 1990s, the heyday of the superpredator myth, my parents were by no means alone in this regard.
I need to reiterate that, throughout this text, I have not been referring to “simply murder as such” but “also every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on.” In other words, rather than “simply murder as such”, I have been referring to murder disguised as unintended consequence of routine disciplinary action, to murder disguised as normal(ized) accident, and to murder disguised as the collateral damage of society’s pursuit of progressive optimization. If you will allow me to interpolate a text by Friedrich Engels:
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds […] in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.
Indeed, recognizing this, one must realize that loving Black parents are furnished with motives to inflict corporeal and communicative violence on their children by the proliferation of statements that enable authorities to treat the murders of their children as no more than the unintended consequences of routine disciplinary action, as normal(ized) accidents, and as the collateral damage of society's pursuit of progressive optimization. It is the prevalence of such domineering statements that enables the Black parent to legitimately think and say to a child as they beat and/or berate them, “I am teaching you a lesson that will save your life.”
Looking beyond racism, I find that the sexist powers of patriarchy operate much like the racist powers of white-supremacy. Normalizing powers have made suffering sexual assault into a “normal accident” for women, and optimizing powers have compelled women to seek out special administration and supervision in order to reduce their chances of being sexually assaulted. The forms of special administration and supervision sought after include, but are not limited to, being chaperoned, obeying implicit or explicit dress codes, accepting ubiquitous surveillance, and allowing inquisitors and tribunals to scrutinize other women's sexual histories in order to “evaluate” their claims of sexual assault (but only so as to punish the most obvious and offensive perpetrators). Women who resist being subjected to these and other forms of special administration and supervision are slut shamed, told that they “are asking for it”, “should know better”, and “will get what they deserve”. Too many parents with daughters feel that it is their duty to teach their daughters distinguish themselves from ”other women” by willingly submitting to special administration and supervision whenever possible. Ay, and too many parents preemptively slut shame their own daughters in order to teach them this lesson at home before the harsh world outside teaches it to them. Too many parents overlook the fact that normalizing and optimizing powers are working together, in tandem, to ensure that women who resist submitting to special administration and supervision face an increased risk of being sexually assaulted relative those who willingly submit. In other words, the woman who resists administration and supervision becomes “just another woman” and is subject to sexual assault as unintended consequence of routine disciplinary action, as normal(ized) accident, and as the collateral damage of society's pursuit of progressive optimization. Ay, and it is most important that, when you read “sexual assault” here, you remind yourself that sexual assault comes in many different forms, physical and mental, direct and indirect, fatal and nonfatal.
Following this line of flight further afield, I find that the economic powers of capitalism also operate likewise. Normalizing powers ensure that compounding indebtedness, homelessness, and hunger are “normal accidents” for those who are unemployed; and optimizing powers compel the unemployed to seek special administration and supervision in order to reduce their chances of enduring compounding indebtedness, homelessness, and hunger. Those unemployed persons who resist being subjected to special administration and supervision are told they have “chosen” a life of compounding indebtedness, homelessness, and hunger: their sufferings are construed to be their own fault. Paternalistic public policies are then designed to make life harder for unemployed persons who resist special administration and supervision, with public servants making the paternalistic claim that such policies will “teach people to make smarter choices.” In other words, the jobless person who resists administration and supervision becomes “just another one of the unemployed” and is subject to compounding indebtedness, homelessness, and hunger as unintended consequence of routine disciplinary action, as normal(ized) accident, and as the collateral damage of society's pursuit of progressive optimization.
Putting this all together, there is no worse fate today than being (mis)taken for “just another unemployed black, brown, or indigenous woman” by prevailing white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal powers. To be so (mis)taken is to be subject to murder, to sexual assault, to compounding indebtedness, to homelessness, to hunger, and to have all of this framed as the unintended consequence of routine disciplinary action, as normal(ized) accident, and as the collateral damage of society’s pursuit of progressive optimization. It follows that those who may be (mis)taken for “just another unemployed black, brown, or indigenous woman” are put under the most pressure to submit to special administration and supervision, and they are judged most harshly when they dare to resist administration and supervision. With all this in mind, I beg you to indulge me and consider the single black mother who might easily be (mis)taken for “just another unemployed black woman” but who still has the courage and autonomy not only to resist administration and supervision herself but also to enable her black children to resist administration and supervision. If, like me, you would consider her to be the embodiment of a "free spirit par excellence", you will have no problem dismissing the Nietzschean pretensions of privileged White male artists and philosophers, as you will be thinking far more of Tupac's “Dear Mama” and far less of Also sprach Zarathustra.
Summing matters up, the champions of normalizing and optimizing powers will inevitably say that members of “at risk” population groups ought to submit themselves to special administration and supervision for their own good. By contrast, we who would counter power cannot and will not accept that further administration and supervision is a desirable solution for those who are “at risk”, but what alternative solutions might we offer to the “at risk”? Well, it seems to me that whatever alternatives we might offer will almost certainly involve (i) the deconstruction of existing forms of administration and supervision that contribute to the making of separate and distinct “at risk” population groups, and (ii) the (re-)construction of convivial alternatives to administration and supervision that enable different populations to commune, confluence, and share risks with each other. Under this light, we might rephrase the question we just asked as follows: what constitutes a convivial alternative to administration and supervision?
I will take up this question of convivial alternatives in my next dispatch, drawing bits and pieces from Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality, David Graeber’s The Democracy Project, and Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons.
