THE BLACK MAN’S REVOLUTION
Looking back with MICHEL WALLACE’S brilliant book “Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman.”
BE YOURSELF
Black man designation, what does it means to be yourself? It sounds like an easy thing to do, but in reality, it’s a lot harder than it sounds. It’s a continuous struggle, to be yourselves. Being oneself is the reason I admire “Pride.”
community. That’s an unimaginable acceptance hill to climb socially and personally. To join “Pride” you have to overcome a superego, which is what everybody you know and care about things. The struggle is not coming to terms with your sexuality but overcoming the beliefs of your loved ones.
MICHELE WALLACE
In reading Michele Wallace’s: “Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman.” The notion of being yourself is revealed in this fascinating book. I have to admit I did not know who Michele Wallace was. I knew who Faith Ringgold is, the brilliant Afro-American visual artist. I first saw her superb work:
Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger in a slide lecture at the Maryland Institute College of Art sitting in Leslie King-Hammond’s wicked class: Africans In the New World. I love that class. It was a revelation seeing myself reflected in art, a subject about which I’m innately passionate. It’s something the larger culture would not understand; I’m guessing. White folks objectively speaking are well represented in museums and galleries, they’re arts, as we know it. Also, artist Faith Ringgold is Michele Wallace’s mother as well as the dedication of this brilliant book.
And the book is dazzling and straightforward in so many ways, a true piece of art. Michelle Wallace explains what it was like to live at that time of the Civil Rights Movement. Of the black revolution. Feminism black and white- yes that too is segregated. And of becoming a young middle-class black woman. With the gnawing guilt of not taking the punishment that poor black was taking in her stead of falling for the simplemindedness of ghetto life, of avoiding the purgatory of being middle class or not black enough.
BLACK MEN
Of growing up surrounded by black men – not an easy thing, for a group without an established culture. But rather a group that is looking to identify with a culture or reinvented a culture based on its differences with the dominant European culture. So everything had to be African or whatever that means. And with Africa, women’s roles are not Chief, they’re likely but not necessarily subordinate to their men. Not much different from European culture but perhaps a few centuries behind. After all, it was Europeans who first revolted against their kings to establishing a republic moving equality a little bit forward.
GHETTO LIFE
However, chilling and accurately. Michele explains how she fell for the general definition of ghetto life. “it was erotic, wild, free, intense, and liberating in its poverty and the violence of its extremes.” And having myself worshiped at the temple of the king of punk-funk Rick James, dancehall reggae, and hip-hop I concur, ironically finding oneself in a group.
BLACK MAN SEXUAL OUTLAW
Michele Wallace shed light on American stalwarts like Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro” and his assertion of the black man as a sexual outlaw its influence on the culture at the time, even now. Rap videos are the personification of the “black buck” every rapper wants to be the Black Macho with their video homage to Al Pacino’s 1985 “Scarface” that little paradigm to manhood. And as Michele points out, Euro-Americans
“by controlling the black man’s notion of what a black man was supposed to be, it would successfully control the very goal of his struggle for “freedom.”
ALWAYS A CON GAME
And by far it was the brutal buck who was the threat to the white man’s family his legacy and, of course, his wealth. Toni Morrison makes lots of sense when she states. “Racism was always a con game…” however, Toni Morrison for as brilliant as she is, her insight is ignored. Because as Michele observes. For black folks, the pursuit of manhood is what stirred the collective imagination back then and now. Michele: “in fact, that the black man risked everything – all the traditional goals of revolution: money, security, the overthrow of the government- in pursuit of an immediate sense of his own power.” – wow! What a badass observation. It’s no wonder we never heard of Michele Wallace.
Michele, to drive her perspective invokes the great James Baldwin. Who in his essay “Many Thousands Gone,” Notes of natives Son by Richard Wright:
“recording his days of anger he has also nevertheless recorded, as no Negro before him had ever done, that fantasy Americans hold in their minds when they speak of the Negro: That fantastic and fearful image which we have lived with since the first slave fell beneath the lash… that admits the possibility of his being subhuman…”
MODEL BLACK MAN REVOLUTIONARIES
James Baldwin too was an excellent observer and unquestionable artist. But questioned James was— by the transformed father of black poetry Amiri Baraka. Who turned Mailer’s sexual outlaw into the role model for the black revolution: the black man as a sexual outlaw by raping white pussy, not groveling for it, Baldwin was also questioned by professional rapist Eldridge Cleaver, a real black man (that was sarcasm). Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his essay From the Stacks: “The Fire Last Time” in the New Republic makes the statement about how Amiri and Clever felt about James Baldwin.
“Baldwin was thus engaged in “a despicable underground guerrilla war, waged on paper, against black masculinity.” Young militants referred to Baldwin, unsmilingly, as Martin Luther Queen.
James Baldwin did not fit the definition of black man’s 1960’s masculinity then and now but to be fair not many can, although they are many who succeeded. And many who benefited from the intoxicating swag it produces.
MYTHOLOGICAL BLACK MAN’S DICK
And if you define yourself as a black man, you will have to confront yourself by what historically has been the oppressor’s fear, the legendary mythological black dick, which will rape and take their white women their property and wealth. It’s a bit of a conundrum, one that finds black men as collaborators with their historical oppressors.
NO BLACK WOMAN
Michel Wallace in pinpointing the differences that these men shared makes a great point in representing their similarities, that of the exclusion of black women. The black men like all men when they failed they move on to the next chapter. For most of those failed revolutionaries of the ’60s, it was another conundrum, socialism that proved to be the next political grab for power.
BLACK MANPOWER
And power is the objective— power for the black man. Recounting an experience at the Harlem Schomburg Collection where a black male librarian confronted Susan Brownmiller when she was working on her book Against Our Will…She asked to see information about black women and rape.
He said… “Then you need to ask about the lynching of black men.” …’I’m sorry, young lady. If you are serious about your subject you need to start with the historic injustice to black men.”
That must be your approach.” Michelle Wallace notes that in the obsession of the black man there is no room for black women.
And that white feminists like Gerda Lener’s made a mockery when she said that black women have a higher status in their community compared with white women for Michele’s reality begged to differ.
BLACK AWFUL TRUTH
And it is here where I think Michele Wallace makes an even greater contribution. She tells the awful truth.
“Any black woman who’s got any sense treads lightly in Harlem.” …Black women, if she’s elegant or highbrow or intellectual, she’s pronounced funny looking, uptight and in need of a good brutal fuck.”
Why this hostility? Because the black women’s historical role as the matriarch was seen then as the emasculator of the black man, it was the black women who were used by the oppressor against the black man. Today that ideology has not changed as rap music continues to celebrate bitches as the go-to antagonist.
BLACK SUPERWOMAN
It was the black slave superwoman who defines manhood. Fannie who rather smash her baby’s brains out on a rock, rather dan letting her live as a slave. (Ophelia S. Egypt, J. Masouka, and Charles Johnson, “Unwritten History of Slavery: Autobiographical Accounts of Ex-Slaves,” Black Women In White America, ed. Gerda Lerner) Sethe from Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved refused to raise her child into slavery but rather cut her throat and kill her first. It’s this superwoman who was forged in the crucible of America’s slavery.
AMERICA’S BLACK SLAVERY
Slavery was not germane to America; it was around long before the discovery of America. But America did forge a political kind of slavery where indentured slaves had to establish a beneficial demarcation. Institute by the minority of slave-owning white men for their protection. These white men wanted a queen to show off their wealth, thus the hard-working white women were transformed into a helpless delicate forbidden flower one that was the complete contrast to the black women who had to works as hard as the men and supply the babies for the workforce.
Under these circumstances and for her survival, the black women had to find allies, even if it was in the bed of a white man, for which many black men have never forgiven her. And her mental power and strength only served to reminded black men of their lack of power. The black women found ways of reinventing herself to move ahead adopting and imitating standards of white women. But hard as she tried the black women entered the Black Liberation Movement of the ’60s as an unwanted participant unless of course if she looked white.
THE BLACK MAN A SLAVE MORALITY
In 1969 Michele Wallace writes of the surprise many black women had, that black men were coming to their defense. Nonetheless, the black women had to know her place; misogyny was an integral part of the Black Macho, a slave morality its philosophy of victimhood declared the black man was more oppressed than the black woman that the black man with his sexual superiority because the black man did agree with Mailer’s assertions of a sexual outlaw, was entitled. However, heading into this revolution the black woman believed that it was her time to be rescued. That finally someone will do the fighting for her. She was not aware of the contradictions of the time that her designated responsibility for the revolution was to have babies.
THE BLACK MAN GRAB FOR POWER
It wasn’t a revolution for black people after all, but a grab for power for the black man. Justified by and entitled to the injustice against black people. It’s what humans do; now the victims, the black men are exploiting the people who help their revolution. The women.
ENTER THE DRAGONS
But not all women took that shit laying down. Many were ambitious and understood how the game is played. Enter Angela Davis and Nicki Giovanni, Like Huey Newton Angela Davis and Nikki Giovanni are every bit the revolutionary badasses. And will use any and everybody to achieve their goals, like the men who fucked their way true the black revolution. Remember defining manhood is the goal. Admittedly like a great performer they had to become what their audience expected them to be strong black leaders. And Angela Davis and Nikki Giovanni are just that to this day.
For me, Michele Wallace made a revelation in telling Angela’s story, regarding her relationship with George JacksonSoledad Brother,
“a man who had made it eminently clear that he considered black women enslaving.”
Michele quotes. I got to be honest here. I never understood the infatuation of intellectual young black women with incarcerated inmates, the jailed ‘brothers’. All the ‘sistas’ love them; people wonder why young black males copy the pants-down prison fucking ugly Chic look. Well, Michelle gave me a Genesis, Angela Davis. Why did she fall in love with this man? Granted the ideology, but hell. Every black person was a socialist at the time. She could easily find a black man who shared her ideology that was not incarcerated.
AUDRE LORDE!
But then, I return to The Pride movement, Angela Davis did not have ‘Pride’, 60’s black power did not include ‘Pride’ although Audre Lorde was around. But Just look at the treatment James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin got. What’s closeted gay a girl to do? Fake the hell out of it. And fake it Angela Davis did. Like all closeted homosexuals, you go to extremes to hide your sexuality. By doing so Angela Davis to this day has set the standard for black women, thank goodness not all of them. But Michele Wallace is right! Angela Davis, for all her achievements, she was seen as the epitome of the selfless. Sacrificing “good Woman”- the only kind of black woman the Movement would accept. She did it for her man, they said. A woman in a woman’s place, the so-called political issues were irrelevant.” Slave morality! So much so that some women in jail take pride and solace, because they did it for their man. This is some next level phycological shit.
SOMETHING TO LOVE
An ad to the list of gay women fitting-in while staying in the closet is Nikki Giovanni. I got to admit, I love her work, she definitely has talent so does Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver, though. But ideology is different. And Michele Wallace points out the damage her ideology cost at the time for her support for the movement, by asking the women to have babies so they could have “something to Love,” a self-reflecting stamen for sure. By the time she advised them to wait until you can afford a baby, Michele said it was too late for a lot of women were on welfare. Can’t blame Nikki Giovanni for that, it was all part of the atmosphere of the time if you wanted to fit in, to be black.
WHITE SUPREMACY?
Michele Wallace’s book is insightful, I’m glad I read it. Her perspective was one I did not see. Then and now, the lives of the black women are ignored as long as the black man is still a victim, systematically under attack by the pedagogy of white supremacy. We will not hear her voice unless under the subtext of the struggle of the black man. I drank the Kool-Aid, like many people who wanted to believe that there is a just and social order that will take care of me. I mean this is the lie, fight for the black man is a fight for you, but the reality is a grab for power by a small minority. However, in the land of opportunity, it’s up to you to get up and get it. Michele Wallace and Faith Ringgold did just that.
Michele Wallace Black Macho and The Myth of the Superwoman: Looking back with MICHEL WALLACE’S brilliant book “Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman.” who you are will be revealed in this fascinating book. https://www.mpalacioart.com/the-black-mans-revolution/
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