So this is Christmas and Black Skin is Heavy
By Nimi Wariboko
Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics
Boston University
"So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun" (John Lennon). So this is Christmas, I hope in the New Year black skin will not weigh too heavily on its bearers. Black skin is heavy in the United States. Let's hope 2016 is a good one, without any dead at the hands of rogue police officers. And so happy Christmas, Americans, blacks and whites and all others.
So this is Christmas, I hope the black skin will become lighter on its bearers. In United States there is a certain heaviness born of the sufferings, misfortunes, poverty, and misery of blacks. All blacks have to acknowledge it, bear and shoulder it, discuss it, entreat God about it, and resist it. There is a sense of closed boundary, sense of weightedness of race, made palpable by the intensification of surplus suffering imposed by the external forces of racialized powers and institutions and by fellow citizens. Black is heavy. "But the heaviness is layered, volume piled upon mass, the layers of strata composed of varying substances and differentially born. . . . Bodies beaten and broken, spirits sagged, life-span artificially and dramatically limited, whatever prospect for whatever slither of prosperity sliding from grasp because of the racial weights [and inept, depraved leadership] pulling them back" (David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism, 8–9).
A human being is not supposed to feel the weight of his or her skin. But black skin weighs down its carriers. "So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun." I hope 2016 is good one, without any fear. What have done for black Africans? The weight that Africans bear is constantly shifting from site to site; the weight of race and racism is continually shifting. If yesterday, it was slavery and colonialism, today it is different. The racially weighted world is felt acutely as the burden of poor economies and racism that feeds on levels of gross national product (GNP). Africans not only directly bear the brunt of low levels of economic development, but they also endure the devaluation and degradation of their racial identity as the world increasingly links racial respect to performance of national or regional economies.
There is a wicked theory of GNP afoot in the world; and it is in the face of Africans. Low levels of economic development in Africa have come to be interpreted as black persons' greater vulnerability to death and shame, and have indeed marked them as surplus population, unworthy lives, those to be excluded from the global centers of power. The logic of this hermeneutics of GNP is part of the axiomatics of the current global formation, which before any engagement and dialogue, determine which race or people is to be taken seriously beyond the pale of politically correct tolerance in world economic-political affairs. Today, the connection between GNP and racism is an important and particular site of the destructive weight of the world on Africans. I name this connection the wicked theory of GNP and racism.
This theory serves as a new diagnostic test of the worth of Africans. Actually, it is not new as it has been around for years. The test brings together racism and gross national product as a shorthand index of economic wealth, technical superiority, or sheer intelligence. On one hand, the size, dynamics, and prosperity of a people's economy is considered to say something important about their worth or intelligence. On the other, intelligence, organizational capabilities, and entrepreneurial acumen are believed to be translatable into economic superiority.
The racism here is premised as usual on exteriority: the color of the skin speaks, describes the weight of national economy behind its bearers, and renders the failures or successes of the economy for all to see. For many Westerners, GNP and its growth rates is a veritable indicator of whether Africans or Asians are now getting their socio-economic acts together or not.
On the basis of this wicked theory, the perceived dignity of a nation and the honor extended to its people are based on economic prowess. As a nation's economic strength changes, the ranking of a person's race, color, or nationality changes. China and India have recently acquired more prestige in the eyes of ordinary Westerners and the Japanese as they (China and India) have proven themselves to be global economic powerhouses. In the heyday of apartheid in South Africa the treatment of Japanese in the hands of its rabidly racist government changed for the better as Japan's economic machine roared onto the world stage for attention.
This theory that conjoins racial mistreatment to perceived economic or technological prowess is very pervasive in the world. The politeness an individual receives at international airports or high-end stores is often correlated with his race and color and the national economic power invisibly standing behind him. Give or take here and there hardcore racism that would always consider the Other as inferior irrespective of his or her nation's standing, there is some connection between racism and perceived strength of a person's national economic well-being, its scientific and technological breakthroughs.
Having seen how Americans and Europeans strain and train their ears to understand thick Japanese accents but only to appear irritated and impatient when listening to a Nigerian speaking Queen's English, Nigerians ponder about scenarios like this: The Japanese man in the lush Wall Street office is about to put down millions of dollars in investment. His Nikkei Index and yen's gyrations are closely watched. The Nigerian man is standing in line at a crowded immigration office to ask for political asylum. His Nigerian Stock Exchange Index—what did you say? The naira's movement, what? Indeed skin is heavy; it makes ears dull, it weighs heavily on being, pressing relentlessly on the shoulder, soul, and spirit of its bearers. It is constantly redefining the burden of citizenship in the here and now on the behalf of the future.
"So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun." Let's hope it is a good one and the war on black bodies is over. And so this is Christmas, I hope you have fun. A very Merry Christmas and happy New Year!
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