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yourself. American literature reserves a corner call, not said “N.A.A.C.P. lawyer,” if she had
4
for characters who’ve plotted escape: the pass- looked at my face and said, “You look like
DIFFERENTIATION Identity ing novel, wherein Black people eke out a sad Clarence Thomas” or Herman Cain or Ben
8
white life. Certainly, a logic for leaving exists. I Carson (Carson’s goatee has, on occasion, been
Connections to Text must admit I do feel free, often in precisely the only a mustache). What if she had pinned me to
You could connect Morris’s discussion of way that friend of mine insisted I must, because a bootstraps mentality that rejects racism as a
passing and of the relevance of race to my fears haven’t yet come true. I could, in the- root of injustice, that believes you’re your own
identity to Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be ory, join the Black exit campaign and leave, if responsibility? I would have felt cornered, I sup-
Colored Me” (p. 181). If they have read not the race, then certainly the sort of thinking pose. Personal accountability isn’t nothing. This
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
Hurston’s essay, you could ask students to that believes racism is a form of determinism, country just won’t let it be all. The extant num-
compare the two writers’ claims about the affecting the choices we make as individuals. ber of Black firsts, rares, onlys, nevers, not yets
relationship between race and identity. You I’ve tried to empathize with this thinking and not quites attests to that, as does the chronic
could direct students to focus on para- and am always surprised that I can’t close too manys, too oftens and too soons.
graphs 24–29 of Morris’s essay for the deal. I like to think that I would have absorbed her 30
evidence. You might recall that before he became “Clarence Thomas” and regaled her with a sepa-
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.
America’s most notorious double-murder rate lineage. I would have told her that I hail
acquittee, O.J. Simpson insisted he wasn’t Black, from a long line of family mustaches. Uncle
either: He, alas, was O.J. Ensnarement within the Gene’s made him look famous. Uncle Jack’s got
criminal-justice system has this tragic way of bushy after World War II and pretty much stayed
clarifying who you are. Simpson emerged from that way. My grandmother’s last husband,
that national disaster redefined by the Blackness Jimmy, wore his in a style best described as
he forsook. Lately and most cantankerously, it’s “sharpened.” How did she kiss that thing and not
Kanye West who has been daring to level with need stitches? Her first husband, my grandfa-
us. His early musical pushes against Black ortho- ther, kept his barely there. Both their sons had
doxy have mutated, over the last four years, into one. Her brother Marcellus liked his thin. My
pleas for Black people to stop it with the racism mother loved my stepfather’s, because, well, she
talk, to get over it, essentially. His vision for tran- loved him. My father had his phases. Three of
scendence of racism, if not race itself, would be his brothers had them, too; the fourth, Uncle
easier to share if it didn’t appear to lead straight Bill, had an ascot — had you ever met Uncle Bill,
into the arms of racists. you would conclude that the ascot essentially
CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING I don’t believe in that kind of transcendence. was a mustache.
I’m not a Blexiteer, some person who is still It might just have been simpler to say who
“Blexiteer”? “Blexistentialist”? You might convinced that we live in post-racial times. If didn’t have one than who did. I don’t know what
have students discuss the meanings of anything, I’m a Blexistentialist. I encounter everybody’s politics were, but as a clan, we were
these neologisms (and perhaps the mean- something like Barack Obama’s “Dreams from a Thanksgiving spread, a little of everything yet
ing of “neologism”). Perhaps have them My Father,” which is steadfastly the opposite nothing so outrageous that the advancement
first use context clues from the essay, and of the passing experience, and feast on his for colored people would ever be off the table.
then do some internet searching to try to decades-long search for a Black self that suits These were workingmen, providers, not activists
decode the meanings. him. It’s a finding book, a story of becoming. but voters, certainly. Their mustaches strike me
As the Black tent expands, the people beneath
it can keep doing as they’ve always done — 8 Clarence Thomas (b. 1948) is a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
widening its poles. Nominated by President George H. W. Bush, he has served on
I have wondered, though, what kind of spiral the court since 1991. Herman Cain (1945–2020) and Ben Carson
(b. 1951) each campaigned to be the Republican nominee in the
I would have taken had the friend on that video presidential elections of 2012 and 2016, respectively. — Eds.
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CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING
You might want to be sure students under-
stand why Morris might be averse to being
compared to Thomas, Cain, or Carson. You
could have them do a quick search to find
those individuals’ views on race and on affir-
mative action, and ask students to contrast
them with figures such as Thurgood Marshall.

250 chapter 4 / Identity

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