Pessimist Engagements

Abstract

Pessimist Engagements Saidat Ilo (bio) Afropessimis Frank B. Wilderson Liveright Publishing Corporation wwnorton.com/books/9781631496141 368 Pages; Print, $18.95 Frank Wilderson's Afropessimism examines the philosophy of Blackness. Afropessimism is a metatheory that dismisses other theories' attempt to tie Black suffering to the suffering of other oppressed peoples of the world. Wilderson contends that Blacks are not humans, are not political subjects, and as such, will never be afforded full human nor political rights. He argues that anti-Blackness is embedded in the fabric of America and voting is a way Blacks choose between oppressors. He came to these conclusions through a series of traumatic events that he experiences from childhood to adulthood. When he reached this realization and became an afropessimist, he literally had a nervous breakdown. These small traumas or microaggressions he experiences began as a child going up in a predominately White neighborhood in Minneapolis. As a child, he experienced racism from his classmates not wanting to hold his hand because they were afraid his skin color would rub off on them, to being called racist names, to his friend's mom asking him what is was like to be Black as if being Black meant not being human. He could not understand why Whites had such disdain or curiosity about him because of his skin color; he believed these experiences were only limited to Whites. In adulthood, he discovers anti-Black violence and sentiment was shared by non-Whites as well. This discovery came from someone he considered to be a dear friend; a Palestinian colleague who shared stories of police checkpoints by Israeli officers and the humiliation of stop and frisk Palestinians endured. His friend, who he believed, he shared a kinship with as oppressed people, said the stop and frisk were the worst when it was an Ethiopian Jewish officer. Wilderson wondered, How is it that the people who stole his land and slaughtered his relatives were somehow less of a threat in his imagination than Black Jews?... What I wondered silently, was it about Black people (about me) that made us so fungible we could be tossed like a salad in the minds of oppressors and the oppressed? He now understood that junior partners (a term he uses to refer to non-Whites, women, and those in the LGBTQI+ community) were also capable of anti-Black violence. Even though he experienced these instances of anti-Black violence, he still was not an Afropessimist. This latest occurrence ended his belief that he, as a Black person, belonged to a community of subjugated people. He contends that there is a hierarchy among the subjugated and Blacks are at the bottom, and no matter how bad junior partners may have it, they can always say with relief that at least we are not Black. The notion that rich Whites, poor Native Americans (he witnessed a Native American call his father the n-word), and junior partners all share the same psyche of anti-Black violence laid the foundation of afropessimism. Black suffering is deep and wide, and although there may be remedies that could lead to liberation and political redemption, those remedies would have to come from the very people who created and perpetuate the suffering. Wilderson became an afropessimist upon the realization that full human and political rights of Blacks can never happen. Black suffering, anti-Black violence, and the social death Blacks experience are necessary for human existence to continue. Likened to the book, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (1973) where a child must suffer for others to enjoy utopia, in Afropessimism, Blacks must suffer for the world as we know it to continue. African-Americans, as Jared Sexon notes, live with, "the hidden structure of violence that underwrites so many violent acts, whether spectacular or mundane." Although we have progressed as a society, abolished slavery, passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and the 1960s, and elected and reelected Barack Obama, the same systematic and institutional racist structures remain. Racism in the twenty-first century is more covert, which can make it difficult to identify. This anti-Black violence, whether conscious or unconscious, is used because Whites and...