Although Norton undoubtedly meant well, I had nothing to say in response to this incredible "insight," not even a nod, or a gulp. I was simply embarrassed. The assumptions that Norton made were not thrilling, but basic: He figured that because I was black I was underprivileged, though I was educated at private schools, and my advanced education was paid for by my parents, who are also educated. He also assumed that I'm frequently harassed by cops, which has never happened to me in my 10 years in Seattle, or even during the part of my childhood that was spent in Nashville, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. Indeed, the only place I have ever been harassed and threatened by cops was in Zimbabwe; and these were, as the rapper KRS 1 once put it, "black cops," who threw me into jail because of our class differences.
The experiences of black people are often limited to these few broad narratives: being harassed in parks while drinking a 40, or being socially and economically underprivileged, or always being in a gang, in court, or in prison. If we expect to improve race relations in America, we desperately need to expand our current repertoire.
In his new book, I Call Myself an Artist (a bold title indeed), local author, professor, and celebrity Charles Johnson has collected a lifetime of essays, fiction, cartoons, and criticism which confront the limitations imposed on black art and life. For example, in his short essay "Black Images and Their Global Impact" he describes this embarrassing incident which took place in Japan: "Two years ago I was lecturing in Japan on black American literature and culture. After a presentation in Tokyo, my wife and I were taken to dinner by three Japanese educators, one of them being a young teacher who told me of her enthusiasm for American motion pictures. And then, because we were getting along so well, she blurted out, 'I just have to say this: You don't seem at all like Eddie Murphy! You're more like a black Yuppie.' There was silence all around the table. I cleared my throat and wondered what was the best way to handle this. At last, after taking a deep breath, I said, 'I hate to tell you this, but all black people in America don't act like Eddie Murphy does in his movies.'" The point Johnson is making here (a point which recurs in most of the material in this book) is that, even in the wider world, there is a paucity of plots with which to express or imagine what Johnson calls the "life worlds" of blacks. Nothing in the world would make Johnson think that every Japanese he met was a member of the yakuza, as he has more narrative materials with which to imagine who they may or may not be.
Now, I'm not against Eddie Murphy, nor am I opposed to making assumptions (we all have to make them one way or another), but what is at issue -- what is needed -- is the diversification of these assumptions, plots, and settings. This is one of Charles Johnson's main projects as an artist, and he has many projects: He wants to remedy this lack, and add more possibilities, more contradictions, more depth to black "life worlds." The memoir which opens the book is his starting point. Instead of depicting the horrors of white oppression and consequent black psycho-pathologies (as is expected of a black memoir), Johnson explores the normal day-to-day experiences of the black and white people he grew up with in a working-class black neighborhood in Chicago. His tone, his manner, his mode is that of a mini-Remembrance of Things Past, an act of retrieval and preservation of the warm beings who populated his first world. It is the most calm and steady black memoir I have ever read, offering a rare opportunity to experience a black life without guns, without going to prison, without deadbeat fathers, but instead a diversity of other experiences, emotions, possibilities.
Though I do find Charles Johnson's intellectual fascination with phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Monty, and others' attempts to develop a science for consciousness) a little trying, and also find his conservatism and moral stances about sex, religion, and crime too rigid, I absolutely agree with his argument concerning the need for more diversity in the portrayals of black "life worlds" in America. In the near future, I hope to be imagined in more interesting scenarios, rather than just the drunk black man consistently harassed by cops in dark city parks.
