From Jamil Smith's, "Invisible Man," Fall '96 From Jamil Smith's, "Invisible Man," Fall '96 With the barrage of messages that bombard us every day, it's no wonder one particularly bothersome theme occupied my mind at a magazine stand recently. I picked up the November issue of Emerge magazine and looked in amusement at the cartoon of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas beside a teaser reading, "Uncle Thomas: Lawn Jockey for the Far Right." In many ways, Emerge's "lawn jockey" reference to Thomas is accurate. As I read the magazine's feature on the way home, I was compelled to think about what Gannett News Service columnist Deborah Mathis once termed African America's "intraracial factionalism." A large number of black Americans do wish to separate themselves ideologically and even culturally from the man who replaced the late Thurgood Marshall on the Court. However, even this disunion indicates a trend within African America that, aside from cultural amnesiacs like Thomas, has wrongfully ostracized successful individuals and further divided the communities in which we live. A year ago, while I was studying in London, a Nigerian acquaintance expressed to me his opinion that the problems of the black American were not due only to white racism. He believed the most urgent issues were the racial self-hatred Thomas personifies and the need for black Americans to gain a better understanding of their African origins, so that they can more accurately call themselves "African Americans." I disagreed with my acquaintance on the latter point, telling him that I use the terms "black" and "African American" interchangeably when I speak of the direct descendants of American slaves. However, his opinions are valid in that African America has a problem dealing with its self-hatred and with its Afrocentrist attempts to reconnect to the land of our enslaved ancestors' origin. Due to the depressed socio-economic climate in which too many black Americans exist, white-controlled corporate powers that be are able to successfully market overpriced items like jackets by Starter and Nautica, apparel by Tommy Hilfiger and sneakers by any number of shoe companies. Although no one's forcing blacks to buy this merchandise, it has become the new signifier of economic status in African America. This is not a new observation. However, when viewed in the context of an argument about racial self-hatred, these trappings of wealth take on new meaning. They have been marketed such that the black urban poor -- who may not be able to afford these expensive items -- still long to own them. Black people from outside communities who enter this poor environment bearing the signifiers of status feel immediately unwelcome. Meanwhile, this unforgiving standard gives a de facto forgiveness to whites. It would be expected that whites would have these signifiers of wealth, simply because they are white. Mathis defines "ghettocentrism" as an attitude on the part of the ghettoized black American that "Either you're with us or you're not. And if you're like us, you must live like us." This attitude is not exclusive to the poverty-stricken black American population. The same mode of thinking is perpetuated in institutions of learning like the University. Whereas well-educated and studious black Americans would have been lauded in their communities in the past, they are now dismissed as "sellouts" and "Oreos." These black achievers may have seen their superior work pay off academically or career-wise, while forcing them further down the social ladder among their peers. Essentially, this is antithetical to the underlying philosophy of a black unity. If progress toward a true black solidarity is to occur, African America must eradicate its ghettocentrist element. Thoughts and ideologies like those of a self-hating individual like Thomas must not continue to affect the way we all live. If they do, more and more decisions that affect African America will continue to fall out of our grasp -- and into those as culturally distant and unwilling to learn as Thomas.
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