Pale Face, Black Literature

...Thinidng Aloud PALE FACE, BLACK LITERATURE BY MARTIN TUCKER I HAVE BEEN teaching African literature at an urban university for the past four years I am a male Caucasian My classes have been predominantly black (approximately 65 per cent), and occasionally disagreements have broken out over methods of interpretation, or during discussions about identity But until recently, everything had gone as smoothly as could be expected in an urban university m the 1970s In general, I was "accepted" by both my black and white students I should make clear that by acceptance I do not mean to suggest "integration " That will come years from now, if it comes at all Indeed, listening to young blacks today, I find integration is a word that no longer excites or interests them, they want to get on with "it," their careers and futures Acceptance, therefore, is merely a truce, a truce between hate and condescension, envy and compassion And as such it is anguished, full of jagged gropings that must cope with the despair and disillusionment caused by the disrup-tiveness of a few polar whites and blacks I know this from personal experience A year ago, I was devoting several introductory sessions to standards of criticism One of the main topics of our discussion inevitably concerned who could properly evaluate African literature Were Africans alone capable of judging it, because they were part of the milieu out of which the writing emerged, and because they had intimate contact with what was being illuminated'' Or could African literature be judged by a non-Afncan critic if he studied and worked hard at it' Precisely how, in any event, do we define "African'"' A black undergraduate—usually alone, but at times joined by two or three others—repeatedly maintained that, as a white and an academic, I had no right to an opinion on African writings Though he never said so explicitly, he conveyed the idea that black literature?and African literature—was an expression of the people, a street literature, a folk communication By the middle of the term I had begun to count on a lively debate with this student whenever I entered the room I looked forward to his challenges, in the MARTIN TUCKER, a past contributor, is a professor of English and the author of Africa in Modern Literature sense that they seemed to provide an opportunity for achieving two important goals The first was turning a hostile situation mto a tenable relationship—a pleasure for any teacher Second, I felt that if I could reach this young black man, who saw me as a white, establishment, ivory-tower academic, entirely removed from the fray, then I would be breaking down a wall that never should have existed My contact, or connection with him, in whatever small way, would be my contribution to fighting intolerance, to getting underneath the poses people assume when they credit others with greater inhumanity than they credit themselves Yet was I trying to play God...

...t replied Atter the discussion ended, the scene went on It seemed successful, and may in its own way have contributed to a sense of rapport For in spite ot the chill of the racial casting, the class enjoyed the performance The motives ot any person, teacher or student, are hard to determine What rubs off on one person rubs against his neighbor My militant student laughed during the enactment of the scene, and on the days after, continued to attend classes, on occasion even agreeing with some of my literary interpretations Needless to say, on other occasions he disagreed I never decided whether he came for knowledge, for observation, or for plain spite (some students attend waiting tor the perverse opportunity, when the professor stumbles, to kick up their heels), but toward the end ot the semester another seemingly innocent occurrence led finally to an open break ONE OF MY students was a white girl who had become fascinated with African folklore and had bought, on her own initiative, many books on the subject collections of tales, critical studies, anthologies, histories of folk-tale-collecting Committed to a professional writing career, she had chosen to rewrite several folk tales of varying genres and comment analytically on them as a project for her term paper Earlier she had written an original fable in the style of the Nigerian fabulist Amos Tutuola, and her enthusiasm for the material remained so strong that her term paper turned into a book-length manuscript—some 120 pages with bibliography—which she handed in early I thought it an excellent job, and displayed the oversized manuscript to the class as a model Unfortunately, I did not realize my militant black was enraged that a white student had appropriated African material Her accomplishment was of course a threat to his beket that only black students could know African literature, white students might be able to taste it, but they could not feel it When I informed the class of the paper's excellence, my militant student exploded with rage Within a few weeks I was to know the full biunt ot that rage Without speaking to me, or to my department chairman, or to the dean, he wrote a 1,000-word letter to the college newspaper accusing me of dividing the blacks in my class, of causing them to fight among themselves and to "stab each other in the back ' He called me "an advocate of Germanic white supremacy,' "the almighty white Shakespeare here at this university," "the most incompetent teacher ever to enter this field, barring none," ' a first-grade demagogue—like a Heil Hitler or a Ete Brute [sic] or a Napoleon, never allowing tor antagonistic opinion to stimulate any provocative analysis into the meaning and explanation ot the work and art " (Actually the condemnation was signed by two undeigraduates The other signer was a black student who two weeks before the letter appeared had written to thank me for my understanding ot his educational goals and difficulties ) The charge was absurd, yet I still found myselt uneasy Perhaps simply by my presence, simply by my role as a white teacher telling blacks about their own culture, I was insulting their self-esteem, placing another obstacle in their march to recognition In other words, innocent as I was, I found myself plagued with feelings of guilt At the same time, I could not accept the logic that inspired those feelings Why, I asked myself, should individuals be judged by the sins of their fathers, their countrymen, their colleagues' In my college days?0 years ago, but a wholly different era of thought—it was considered primitive and barbaric to indict an entire group for the real or imaginary wrongs done by some of its members That was the technique of a Hitler and a Himmler, it was the guilt-by-association tactic of Joseph McCaithy and his henchmen I began to feel like a character in a Kafkaesque novel set m an African locale I wondered what my crime was, why my guilt was punishing me The guilt was there, so there must have been a crime to suit it Fortunately, the good sense of the other people in the course lightened my depression On the day the letter appeared, three students apologized to me for the "wrongs" it contained Many came to see me to express their bewilderment at the charges One phoned to make sure I was "all right" Another, a young man from Nigeria, told me he was going to answer the lettei because he did not believe it was a "truthful analysis " He later showed me a six-page single-spaced reply he had written Still another sent me a three-page note, documenting how the charges in the letter lacked substance, and ending with these words of support "I got a C+ m the course It's not an ideal grade It was the lowest grade I have received in the last two semesters However, I think that the grade that I received was just I never once had the feeling that my ideas and thoughts were being molded or suppressed by you On the contrary, I visited' Africa, my homeland, every Tuesday and Thursday " AS FAR AS the immediate repercussions of the matter are concerned, the story ends here No group of students arose to champion the charges against me Nor is it likely that unfounded accusations will affect my professional credentials or credibility Then why—aside from the personal anguish I feel at being misunderstood and maligned—do I dwell on this unpleasant topic' Because I think that what I went through is not unique A few years ago, when a group of black core members decided the time had come to kick the liberal Jewish leaders out of the organization and assume the leadership roles themselves, the whites involved must have experienced the same despair And I imagine the European colonial administrators must have felt this sense of loss when the African colonies they served became free and chose to be governed by blacks even where the incumbent white administrators were doing an effective job (The novels of Elspeth Huxley are replete with such tales and characters ) I choose the above examples for a reason My feelings are ambivalent One instance allies me with a group—the New York Jewish hberals^that gained little but the satisfaction of their work in civil rights causes, many of them accepted the rationale for their being booted out The other allies me with the colonial mind—debatably benevolent but past its time m any case History, though, is not only the past, it is the future, too My militant student wiote in his angry letter that I should "refuse to teach Afncan literature,' even if I am assigned to the course Is he right' Despite everything that has happened, I cannot agree with him If knowledge and understanding are to grow, then all qualified men should be allowed to participate in it Undoubtedly, an African, from an African habitat and immersed in African ways, is likely to know his literature (and his people) better than a scholar who comes to it through books and travels and interviews and friendships Yet, if African literature is restricted to Africans, then it will surely become of parochial interest Literature is meant to open up vistas, not contain them If only a man who lived in the 18th century can understand 18th-century literature, then we might as well get rid of history as well as literature If only a Jew can understand Sholem Aleichem, then the popularity of Fiddler on the Roof is incomprehensible Black militants harass white liberals because of their commitment to the goal of a black revolution For them, the worst enemy is the "liberal" who is trying to be a limited partner in a cooperative enterprise But the great majority of the blacks in my class—and almost all the whites—do not want polarization They want literature, no matter who teaches it...

...Or, one step lower, acting the missionary9 Was I dreaming myself, projecting myself, back to Africa as a great white teacher helping poor, culturally deprived Africans'' Were my good intentions some form of masked arrogance, a kind ot liberal imperialism...

...These questions were soon to preoccupy me, as they have many other agonizing, soul-searching white teachers and civil libertarians and pohbcians One morning, the black student who had assumed the role of friendly antagonist questioned my right to compare two novels of the same decade and from the same continent He insisted that the books were completely different I was taken aback by his objection, for the point I was making did not seem to be a controversial one Certainly it did not involve that deeper area of black-student-white-teacher relations After the black student had made his remarks, and implied once agam that a white teacher could not understand the motivations of black heroes, a hush fell over the classroom Then another black student—a very pretty, well-spoken but shy girl who too seldom overcame her diffidence—objected, pointing out why I had every right to compare the two novels I think everyone m the room knew instinctively that the exchange was just so much noise covering the unarticulat-ed tensions of a family quarrel, the quakmg roar of a crack in the monolith of blackness between a brother and sister I tried to shift the direction of the lesson, and the class, embarrassed and uncomfortable, lumbered on awkwardly albeit eagerly The crack had manifested itself, it had been felt, no matter how much or how good-naturedly I might seek to distract attention from it MY ATTEMPT AT literary comparison had excited anger in my student-antagonist because I was succeeding where he thought I should be failing And I suppose the encouragement I took from the halting progress being made in my classroom played into his hands For I may have moved too fast when I next chose to "defend" Moise Tshombe in the belief that my small pedagogical victories had brought the class to the stage where it was ready to indulge in abstract speculation We were about to discuss Aime Cesaire's play, A Season in the Congo I was aware that it was the most controversial work of the term, and I looked forward to the battle, to the provocation that would engender sparks of insight and passionate response All education is subversive in this respect—it must upset if it is to get the student to think, to question In Cesaire's play the hero, Lumumba, is cruelly destroyed by a host of adversaries Among them are the Belgian bankers, the expedient Tshombe, the power-hungry Mobutu, and the moralist Hamrnarskjold As a means of getting to Lumumba's ideas, I defended Tshombe to the point of saying he wanted a limited role in life, a status quo He was happy with his middle-class, bureaucratic existence The comments were meant to be ironic, but one of the greatest ironies is to be taken straight when you do not intend to be My remarks infuriated many of my students, and I found myself beseiged by denunciations of Tshombe and apologias for Lumumba As for Hamrnarskjold, the white moralist, the man who decided peace in the Congo was worth more than democratic procedure, he became the embodiment of all the well-intentioned arrogance, condescension and cultural blindness of the white leaders in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries In the course of the discussion, my student-antagonist and a classmate asked to have the play, or at least one scene from it, performed by the class the next time it met I agreed The two then insisted that black students play the black characters and white students the white characters Although the whites objected to this, I went along with the idea on the grounds that it would enable us to judge whether an arrangement of this kind actually provided an insight and understanding not otherwise obtainable Nonetheless, many of the white students felt strongly enough about racial casting to refuse to participate in the reading ot the drama As a result, I consented to play Hamrnarskjold—a part my outspoken student seemed happy to fit onto me After all, Hamrnarskjold in Cesaire's play is an intellectually gifted yet emotionally flawed character, a stubborn idealist with a narrow view of the Road to Right and Light I was a bit apprehensive as I walked into the class the following session, particulaily about my role Few people enjoy selt-mockery There are those who can make fun of themselves, play the jester, and come out of the human comedy with good humor But such a talent, at least such a sustained talent, is rare The hour began with only three students present Little by little, others trickled in Since the actors and the directors (the students who had insisted on the reading) were nowhere to be seen, I launched into a discussion of the play When the two came into the room 15 minutes late, they immediately objected to my speaking "Where is the play'" they demanded 'Where were you when the hour began...