WEST POINT GRADS: THE REAL MEANING OF THE BLACK CLENCHED FIST

I am an invisible man.  No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.  I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.  Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man

Thank Goodness, West Point officials have declined disciplining the African American female grads who clenched their fists in their graduation photograph.  The pose created a firestorm of backlash from the usual suspects (frightened white folks and those negroes who fear for them) who perceived the fists as an endorsement of the Black Lives Matter movement. (Any political activity is verboten while in military uniform). 

The same thing occurred almost fifty years ago when Black Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics.  I was in the presence of one such negro at the time whose rage erupted at my youthful/ (truthful?)  inability to grasp the magnitude of the raised fists. (Is that all this hoopla is about? I asked incredulously).    

In both cases the clenched fists were misinterpreted.  According to an article by the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page, Tommie Smith explained that his fist was an endorsement of Human Rights, rather than the Black Power movement. And although the women in the photo could not speak up, prior West Point grad, Mary Tobin, wrote, regarding that experience, “…the only way to survive is to shrink your blackness or assimilate.”  Therein lies the crux of the matter.

While the black women may not have been endorsing the movement, Black Lives Matter, they were, in fact endorsing the message of that movement; black lives matter.  Specifically, their own.  For black folks the raised fist is an existential statement of Being.  It’s instructive that black expressions of self love or awareness are consistently interpreted as political activity.  That’s because, within the context of American racism, such actions ARE political activity.

African Americans are (with the possible exception of Native Americans) the only people in America whose very existence as human beings is a political issue.  Whether we would be defined as whole persons or three-fifths of a person was a political issue.  America fought a civil war based of whether we were human beings or chattel.

The bottom line is that for black folks, politics is not merely a discussion on the size of government.  It is, more often than not, the fight of good vs. evil.  The fight is over by whom we will be defined.  Our very existence is at stake!  The battle between good and evil, right and wrong, becomes obfuscated when evil and good get dressed up in the clothes of politics. Racism is quite acceptable when it is labeled as a political strategy, such as Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” which targeted the Silent Majority”, code for white folks fed up with black folks.   Ronald Reagan achieved near sainthood among conservative white folks simply by affirming their right to be superior.

Journalistic “objectivity” dictates that once Good and Evil dress up as politics, they are now on equal footing.  Furthermore, the more people endorse “Evil,” the more respectability it has.   Donald Trump’s racism, sexism and xenophobia have gravitas now that he has become the presumptive Republican nominee. Those who follow him must now be given greater respect.     

The West Point Grad, Mary Tobin, had it right:”the only way to survive is to shrink your blackness or assimilate.”  Disappear.  Whatever the differences might be.  What the injustices you must endure.  Whatever the psychological trauma that is inflicted upon you or the weight of four hundred years of oppression, none of that matters.  All that is unique to the African American experience must evaporate, if you are to be one of us.

And Jesus said: Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned?

The clenched black fist is an expression of the aforementioned salty taste.  It is Kunta Kinte refusing to accept the name Toby.  It is the black police officers who refuse to allow others to abuse black folks in the name of police solidarity.  It is the teacher who tells her students the truth about the African American experience. 

As a writer, I have had white editors try to drain all the blackness out of my work, even when the work was based on the black perspective!!!!  Salt without a salty taste has no value.  The young women on that photo said they understood that.  The true irony is that the promises of inclusion in exchange for denying one’s blackness, are as false as the treaties that were reneged upon with the Indians.  Those who make the greatest demands that black people deny their culture and heritage are the fiercest in using that culture and heritage to “prove” our inferiority.  Proof?  Can you imagine any one being born more assimilated than a moderate Republican (despite his Democratic affiliation) raised by his white family in an either all white or white and Asian community than Barak Obama?  Now, think quick.  Who is the most disrespected president in history?