Bruno Chenu (1942–2003)

—Gotta remind those kids that history is relevant (‘less it’s blackhistory). Gotta get ‘em to ask people about Jesus! (But not slaves! Not. The. Slaves!!!!)

I don’t really think I’m anti-capitalist, (or anti-aristocratic, when you come to it); I think it makes some difference whether or not companies are diverse, although of course they usually aren’t, if you go up high enough…. But I want to give them a chance. I don’t think a “real Marxist” could meet me there, (diversity, give them a chance, etc). And I know how worthless “me vs everyone else” would be, (and that there are many others worse off than me is a commonplace thought for me), and I don’t think we’re going to be done with anomie in this generation, you know. I guess the Marxists might have some just scorn there: there was a lot more neighborhood and community (and therefore class) solidarity in more socialist decades….

Although this is not a communist book; Marx never comes up. I just talk like this because although I am far from thinking the spirituals a materialist or commie code, you know, clearly religion isn’t just a mystic mood but also a community movement. Sometimes it’s mundane. And the slaves did not like being made ‘less than’ based on the color of their skin, you know. Being a slave was not a great thing, but white people beat the crap out of them and/or lied to them in order to feel ‘more than’—and ‘richer than’. It does make me think about the present, when everybody’s supposed to work but not everybody gets nurtured by the economy, you know. Again, it’s a commonplace for me that other people have it worse, but because I’m not especially important, is that a really big point, a big big thing, right? I don’t know.

And it is a values thing, because people in a very literal way value the wrong things, and are valued for, not always worthless things, but sometimes quite dubious things. It’s not that we have unlimited power. There would have been a lot of agricultural workers in the 19th century in any event, for example, and farm work can’t always be easy or rewarding, but obviously slavery and race oppression and lies were a man-made part of the system, right.

And people still value the wrong things and behavior and are valued for the wrong behaviors. There’s an overdose epidemic; there’s a codependent music epidemic. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Whatever any one person does, the worst stuff is selected. It’s a selection crisis. And the question I’ve started to ask myself is, How do you have to feel to create something like that? How do you have to feel inside to create slavery, minimize slavery either at the time or now….?

I’m not going to go into the whole Jesus-As-Exodus thing, because it’s not the style in which I would write religion, you know; I’m a white snob. But I’ll leave you with this:

“Mary don’t you cry.
Pharaoh’s army got drowned.”

…. You can get a sense of history through music, (‘a sense of history’ is not just formal academic history), and the nineteenth century was certainly a different world, even if its history is still not done and dusted—the Black girl ain’t got time to do that now, after all.

…. I guess the one thing I can’t say—I can’t tackle the whole issue of the dispute between the paternalist who says he values the spirituals, has this basically unformed desire to like them, because they’re the Good Niggers, you know—and then, because of all that, the recentists, who can’t deal, if that’s what they are, with anything from before 1977, say, or maybe even 1997, or even later—because, well, they just don’t want to say they like what they don’t like, unlike the paternalist, who wants very much to say he likes what he essentially doesn’t, you know. But it would take a real Tyrannosaurus Rex to really tell that story, not a little Canada goose.… (más)