sy Joun Evcan Wieman THE DIVISIBLE MAN ‘This highly acclaimed novelist write about the contemporary African-Amerizan experience. Valentine's Day, 1988, sun shining, sky ble and I find myself climbing the stairs outside New Afri House, where the Afro-American Studies Depart- ‘ment of the University of Massachusetts, Am- hhrst is located. Black student, outraged by r= cial altacks and harassment, have occupied New Arica House and sent out wordthey aren't leaving ‘until changes are made. This quiet Sunday ater ‘noon no barricades, no cap ears yet, or milling crowds, no geggle of TV trucks, but trouble's here ‘sure enough, trouble with explosive potential the recurring national nightmare—restiess natives the neverending busines of pacification, reasser tion of hegemony and preservation ofthe natural onder, whi over black ‘Mounting those steps I begin to visualize the faces inside the building. Their youth, vulnerebil ty, beauty, righteous anger, and Iwant to seream, ‘shout, tear down that building and lots more. I've been here before. Oh, yes. Twenty years before, ‘when Iwasa profesor atthe University of Penn. spylvani,blackstudentehad taken over Penn's Cl- lege Hall Then asnow most of my eo leagues and students were white ‘Then as now I was a man in the mie dle, witness, victim, protester, ten- tured member of the establishment students were challenging Thee T smn remembering faces, anteipating faces, Not white o Baek, but real col ors, real faces, like my eildren's. Yours ‘The inheritors of our racial confusions and hate, What hurt me in 1968 and acerates me again is that I Dave much to say that will eonfrm and almost nothing to offer that will alleviate the problems driving these ‘Young people tothe edge of despair. Why are students still locking ‘themselves within walls forced by the very form of their protest to repro- duce the segregated society they can- not abe? Where are the alternative institations—educational, economic, paltcal—we dreamed of creating in ‘the “606? Wouldn't this student dem- onstration be fellowed by a food of apologies, promises, the inevitable backsliding and backlash leaving the circle of rac unbroken? I recalled ‘the publication nearly 25 years ago of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s The Negra Family: The Casefor National Acton. Didi it confuse the neture of rae re lations? Tt took the view that the “American Dream was net failing, it ‘was falling only for backs. A falze d= scription leading to faze remedies: Let's determine what's wrong with blocks so we ean eure them, bring them, or some of them, aboard our Good Ship Lollipop. Hadn't Mr. Moy- nihan heard James Baldwin's elo- (quent refusal to be integrated into @ burning house? The plethora of Grest Society social pro- grams that perpetuated « dectorpatient, patron- client, master-slave relationship between whites snd blacks remainsa withering testament to fail ‘ureof vision. ‘Tébeen raised inthe briar patch Mr. Moynihan attempted to describe with hie statistis, catego. es and comparisons, eo I could dismiss many of bis conclusions ns nonessential and misguided, the kindof response to me and mine I'd been warding off all my Ife. Metonymy: a part signiges the ‘whole, My color, poverty, hai, speech, anger, any- ‘thing diferent ebout me ised toexplainine. Inthe phrase “black men,” black subaivides man long Deforeman ever arrives on the seene, Huds Afro Americans always been a divisible people: Afri fans doomed to slavery by anguments claiming they were less than human, the slave defined by the Constitution as three Ath ofa person, the wr ‘ban poor perceived not as peoplebut asa threaten ing swarm of erippes,eriminals and mists? Conditioned to treating us as Other, the major- ity doesn’t react to atrocities visited upon the leek community asif those horrors arehappeningtofel eeaeaaeeaeaeeataaeaeerae ee] low Americans ond slkimately, inevitably, to themselves. We are shock troops, guines pigs. ‘Blacks remain clustered atthe bottom ofthe eco- ome ledder, so te plight of the undereiass op- pears to have something to do with eolor. Check it ut. The exit doors of industry are erowded with ‘people being pushed out of jobs, and not all the faces are black ‘The original voodoo eoonomiee works some ‘thing like this. Take a black dll. Ste pn in its chest. See ft eringes,hllers, ris; seeif anybody notices, if anybody cares. Then you know how ‘uch you can get way with. How much of the white man’s burden can be borne by’ the black ‘There are not black people or white people in America. Tere are Americans of eurtless colors. ‘The wrong questions are always the ones we esk about ourselves. Wrong beeause they are framed intermsof back and white. A color jones rides us. We're addicted. The terms of separation are the terms of our dependency. If we are not black or white, what are we? Though biologists and genet cletshavediseredited the notion of race asasigaife cant measure of difference among the world’s peo- ples, the world goes on. punishing people for skin color, hair texture and the absence or presence af epicanthie | foldsin the eves. Jt is euture that ere: tes the evaluative frame that gives meaning to individual lives, To pars phrase @ Kongo proverb, aman with- fut a culture is ike « grasshopper ‘without wings. Tam intensely proud of my Afro- ‘American heritage and of my color. But color ean also be a cage and eolor conseiousness ean become @ terminal condition. Fer more than 250 years ‘Americans identifed as black have been using the cege of eolor to deny and affrm, toelaboratecne culture, 10 refuse another. remember a time when Ameri cans all across this remarkable land ‘were awakening to sen that some- thing was drastically wrong, that our history burdened us with fallurs and responsibilities, thet we might held in ‘our hands the power tochange what it ‘vas that worried us, I remember e tertaining the possibility ofa better life. Realy better. A hfe in which ‘words like freedom, justice conscience hed a place. T recall Martin Lather King exhorting us to imagine ou selves as partiipants in the ancient drama of sacrifice, redemption and salvation. A dream of better, not ‘more. Tyuly better, Not more pigs slopping at the trough, not a larger bite of rotten pie, not more, but bet ‘er. For everyone, and everyonemesm ing really everyone. ‘roach out tothe door of the New Africa House, oa a us