The "problem" of blackness

History up to the present moment makes evident that to be black in America is to be a problem. As a white man, I know in neither my body nor my embodied mind what it means to be a problem in the eyes of passersby. Rather, in America, to embody whiteness as I do is to know that my very body, walking down the sidewalk, stepping on an elevator, driving in a car, is, from the beginning, free from all suspicion, de facto—and, if we’re honest, de jure. To be black, though, is to be held suspect, to be gazed upon carefully, in case one should make any sudden movement. To be black is to be—ontologically and otherwise—essentially problematic, a notion upon which a nation has been built, both figuratively and literally: on the backs and by the sweat, suffering, and death of people of color.

In terms of the everyday experience of “being a problem” (1), W.E.B. Du Bois writes in The Souls of Black Folk of the “double consciousness” borne of prejudice endured in all facets of life—“this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” (2). For Du Bois, to exist as black in America is to exist in a lineage of “strife,” a lineage marked by a “longing to attain self-conscious [personhood], to merge [one’s] double self into a better and truer self” (2). In response to the fact of being a problem, and the psychological fragmentation it can beget, Du Bois posits that African Americans must struggle for freedom by achieving the institutional means to increase their own education, political power, social standing, and economic stability. As acts of fundamental self-assertion over against a history of systematic and institutionalized racial disenfranchisement, such achievements, Du Bois might say, serve to normalize blackness.

While Du Bois’ thorough and multivalent descriptions of being black in America throughout The Souls of Black Folk continue to speak poignantly today, one might well question whether or not Du Bois’ vision for African Americans’ acquisition of freedom still rings entirely true. Despite the fact that many of the realities Du Bois hoped for—increased black education, political power, social standing, and economic stability—have become a reality (though certainly only in part), I would argue that blackness itself very much continues to be a “problem” in the United States of America, often in like manner as Du Bois describes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

For instance, poverty, sustained by a history of racist economic policy decisions, housing practices, and wage slavery that continues today, persists among African Americans, 28 percent of whom live below the poverty level (The Washington Post). Relatedly, African Americans are significantly more likely to spend time in prison than are whites, with 4,347 out of every black Americans 100,000 incarcerated today, as opposed to 678 out of every 100,000 for whites. As Du Bois wrote more than 100 years ago, African Americans suffer “an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the penitentiary” (24). Today’s incarceration rates are upheld in large part by law enforcement and criminal justice procedures that in many ways criminalize blackness (for instance, stop and frisk policies in New York City and mandatory minimums sentencing for certain offenses applied disproportionately to African Americans). As Du Bois outlines—in 1903—particularly in the South, police forces and courts were originally created to monitor, criminalize, and control former slave populations, which means that black Americans “came to look upon courts as instruments of injustice and oppression,” a perspective that continues to resonate today (108).

Considering the fact that many of Du Bois’ hopes for African Americans have come to fruition for many—though far from all—black Americans, and considering the fact that blackness itself continues to be a “problem,” evidenced by the fact that it factors significantly in acquittals for murderers of black children, staggering poverty and incarceration rates, and outright racist legislation surrounding voting accessibility, food stamps, and more, it would seem that an analysis of blackness in American society should enable a response, and a struggle, that includes but extends beyond educational, political, social, and economic equality with whiteness. But developing such a vision for the struggle towards true freedom for African Americans must begin where Du Bois does: with the plain, jarring fact that to be black in America is to be a “problem.” Until we—until I—reckon with and proceed in light of such a fact, despite whatever victories may be won, racism, structural and interpersonal alike, will continue to thrive.

(Episteme #1)