The Day of the Geechee

"You know the damage one ignorant Negro can do?" - Sgt. Vernon Waters (A Soldier's Story)

Every now and then it just can't be avoided.

It happened to me when I was in undergrad. One afternoon, a quartet of us made a donut run to a local Minneapolis pastry shop. Our little syndicate consisted of three black dudes and a cool ass white guy named Dave. While we were ordering, to the amusement of the white patrons, and to the mortification of Dave and me, my two black buddies started a heated argument about which of them had the biggest lips.

It happened to me shortly after I began working. One day, while I was on my lunch break, back when I was unfortunate enough to be living in Milwaukee, I was walking to a Chinese restaurant with a diverse group of coworkers. Along came Troy, a good brother who I knew from a previous job, who spotted me and shouted (at the TOP of his lungs) "MY NIGGA!!!"

It happened to me again this morning. I was getting suggestions from some of the women in my office about Christmas gifts to buy the spouse when a sister (a real country gal and the only other black person in the department) chimes in with, "Well, you might have to niggerate her a gift and make it yourself. You know what I mean? Niggerate?"

I'm sorry to put it this way but if you're black, you will occasionally have to endure another black person coming along and just flat out embarrassing the shit out of you. There's just no circumventing it. I'm not referring to the occasional mangled syntax or inappropriate application of slang either. I'm talking about the kind of migraine-inducing buffoonery that will make you question whether or not the Civil Rights era really occurred and for what, if anything, tens of thousands of freedom fighters gave their lives.

In my experience, these cringe-worthy guffaws are usually committed by those lost, unconscious souls who my wife simply refers to as "The Element." Yes, indeed. Each one of us knows who she means. Those brothers and sisters who talk and laugh the loudest, curse and fight the oftenest, and are the first to be interviewed by your local news station. We all recognize them when we see them. Those hairstyles. Those clothes. The names that they give their children.

The reaction of the black middle class to the actions of the Element is, perhaps, best summed up by the antagonist of one of my favorite movies, A Soldier's Story. Sergeant Vernon Waters who, for my money, is one of the most fascinating and conflicted characters in the history of American cinema, has decided to focus his efforts on culling from his ranks black officers that he finds intolerable. His venomous outlook is perhaps best summed up when he speaks to CJ, one of his victims. "See, the Black race can't afford you no more. There used to be a time, we'd see someone like you singin', clownin', yassuh-bossin'... and we wouldn't do anything. Folks liked that. You were good. Homey kind of nigger. When they needed somebody to mistreat, call a name or two, they paraded you. Reminded them of the good old days. Not no more. The day of the Geechee is gone, boy. And you're going with it."

Sergeant Waters, who represents the so-called New Negro - black folks who through sweat and effort negotiated their way into the middle class - is convinced that the Element must be wiped from the face of the Earth. He believes this because he views their existence as a discomfiture and a threat to his upwardly mobile ambitions. Moreover, he is fixated on the possibility that (God Forbid!) the white man for whom he works will lump him in with the Element. White folks often have difficulty distinguishing between hardworking black folks like himself and ne'er-do-wells like CJ. This won't do. So, instead of attacking the real enemy, the oppressive agent that has historically ground him and his people into dust, he attacks those who languish at the bottom of the pile.

Which brings me to my point. Like it or not, every time we bristle at the regrettable exploits of poorer and/or less educated blacks than ourselves, we side with the Sergeant. If we're embarrassed by the ill-considered actions and words of certain members of the black underclass then perhaps we're the ones with the problem. Perhaps the next time I find myself wincing when another black person opens his or her mouth, I'll step back and take a good hard look at myself.