Caution: This post includes mature language and graphic sexual
details. Reader discretion is advised.
I want to have a real discussion on racism and such things. Not a
phony discussion, but a real one. I want to get to the heart of the
matter and talk about the issues that we always dance around and bury
under the covers. I want to talk about racism, as an idea, and the
sensuality of the black body. That sounds like a good title for a
university-level multi-cultural course.
As I was walking to the library I found myself following a black male,
probably about 18 or 19 years old. His loose, baggy clothing was
hanging off of his body, but his pants were bunched up just below his
knees and his shirt sleeves hung low enough to cover his elbows, but
not his forearms.
His brown caramel colored skin reflected sunlight. His skin was smooth
and muscular. By the parts of his body that were exposed - his firm,
solid calves and his solid forearms - the boy exuded strength,
vitality and sexuality. One can only imagine what a wonder his solid
body must be in the bed.
It occurred to me that the African American's baggy clothing is - in a
counter-intuitive fashion - the exact opposite of modesty. While white
boys on campus wore pants and shirts with a tighter fit - clothing
that left nothing to the imagination - black boys conceal their body
in a mass of loose-fitting clothes that seem to be falling off of
their bodies as they walk.
It is the very image of these clothes nearly sliding off of those
black boys' muscular physiques that adds to the erotic appeal of the
boy. One can imagine the boy naked - and because one only sees a
little bit for flesh - on his smooth, brown and muscular calves and
forearms - on can conjure up an image of the boy naked - an image that
may be far more erotic than the boy's actual body would be if he wore
tighter fitting clothes.
In contrast, the white boys' tight clothing exposed pale and hairy
arms and legs without much muscle definition or form.
The black boys' clothes, however, shifted as the boy walked it drew
the viewer in; hoping one might actually witness his shirt falling off
of his shoulders to reveal his naked chest and back; or his pants
sliding off of his ass to reveal his muscular naked butt cheeks and
thighs.
The black boy turned his head to watch for cars as he darted across
the street. His thick nigger dick-sucking lips hung open, demanding to
be put to proper use. His bright red t-shirt contrasted with his black
baseball cap turned backward, but slightly to the side in defiance of
all social norms.
He appeared to me as a modern day pirate, with his black do-rag under
his cap; and do-rag neatly tied in the back of his head. He was cocky,
he was confident, he was sexy.
His very walk and image exuded sensuality - one only wonders whether
or not he was aware of it; and aware of whom his sensuality might
appeal to.
I have always been fascinated by the radically different perspective
on human sexuality that people had in ancient times, as contrasted
against our notion of sexuality in the Western World today. Out of
learned ignorance we assume that our notion of sexuality is "natural"
and inevitable. We argue about the so-called scientific basis of
sexuality and we use genetic deterministic arguments to support our
sexual proclivities. Where once we conceded that sexual attractions
were probably the result of "nurturing" (socialization) and nature
(genetics) we seem now to have slid over to mind-numbing simplicity by
privileging genetic determinism without giving much attention to
socialization and culture at all.
Even the Pope seems to accept biological determinism implicitly - and
he, of all people, should know better! He has decreed that homosexuals
cannot be ordained into the priesthood, whether they practice
abstinence or not. But the Church has historically believed that there
is no such thing as a person who is inherently homosexual. The
Church's historic argument is that homosexuality is a behavior, not a
state of being - therefore, if one no longer practices homosexuality
one is no longer a homosexual, except to the extent that one thinks
about homosexuality and longs for a homosexual encounter - this would
be akin to what Jimmy Carter once called "lusting in my heart."
Nevertheless, the ancients had a different take on homosexuality. In
Greece, while heterosexual relations were the norm, if a person was
wealthy and had leisure time and sufficient resources he could indulge
in a homosexual "opportunity" with a younger boy - especially if he
had something he could teach to the boy.
In the military of some Greek City-States (I think this was especially
true among the Spartans) buggering a teenaged boy was considered more
manly that fucking a woman. For a man to shove his cock in a boy's
smooth ass showed that the man was attracted to masculine strength and
power - only a real wuss would want something soft and flabby, like a
woman. Real men prefer the hard, lean bodies of teenaged boys -
coupled with their tender, gentle faces and androgynous youthful
beauty.
This was the same thing that attracted the Samurai to teenaged boys in
Japan. A code of honor among the Samurai included rejection of
"decadent" sex with soft and mushy female bodies - a real man prefers
holding the muscular frame of a boy's young body close to one's own.
This would be a manly thing to do.
In both cultures, however, there was the notion of a disgraced man -
this would be someone akin to the way that homophobic heterosexuals
think of gay men today - or what teenagers mean when they say, "That's
so gay."
The disgraced man is a fellow who does not so much like to bugger
teenaged boys, but prefers that they bugger him instead. He takes
pleasure in having a young lad pushing up inside of him, working out
his teenaged anxieties and spilling his seed in the grown man's
bowels.
There are stories about practices in ancient and distant lands. When
countries would go to war if a side could be so fortunate as to not
only conquer its opponent, but to capture its bright young princes
then they might be able to secure for themselves a generation of peace
and prosperity. This is how it would work:
They would hold the young princes captive. The victorious general
would bring the boys to his chamber and abuse them in every way
imaginable. He would bugger their young princely asses and choke them
with his throbbing military cock. When he tired of the young boys he
would send them to a cell in a dark and damp dungeon. There, in the
cell, the boys were awakened in the middle of the night. They were
forced to service the other prisons - often common criminals from the
victorious land.
When the other prisoners were not using the boys, the very prison
guards themselves - products of ordinary families of modest means
(poor white trash, as we might call them today) would abuse the young
princes - depositing their commoner cum inside of the boys.
There was method to this madness. The hope that the victors held out
was that the boys would grow up to be too docile and emasculated to
ever wage war again. When they ascended to the throne they would lack
the manly confidence and will to fight; they would rather cede large
portions of their kingdom to the "enemy". Thus, for the victor, there
would be an era of peace and prosperity. For the vanquished it meant
hardship, poverty, and subjugation.
Sadly, there have been recorded instances where this strategy
backfired with tragic results. The boys grew up to hate their captors
for using their bodies in such degrading ways and filling them with
their victory cum. Once the boys came of age to rule the land they
would launch wars of revenge, even though they lacked the means to
emerge victorious. The objective was not to win the war, but rather to
sow widespread chaos. This was the revenge they sought on a world they
hated - a world that had robbed them of their manhood.
The outcome was a level of death of destruction, on all sides, the
likes of which the world has rarely known. This death and destruction
was followed by significant cultural deterioration - as collected
books and works of art were destroyed in the widespread devastation -
therefore leading to the loss of knowledge for many generations to
come.
The period was also followed by widespread famine, as conditions for
even rudimentary hygiene broke down, leading to widespread infectious
disease. These wars also resulted in genocide.
Happily, this miscalculated response to depriving the young princes of
their manhood was rare. More often, they developed a covert taste for
servicing the enemy's hard cock and a deep and abiding appreciation of
the enemy's manhood. The best and the brightest captured young men
were thereby conditioned so that when they assumed positions of
leadership and power amongst their people they would subtly but
assuredly deliver their own people into servitude and perpetuate the
victory of the enemy for three or more generations.
It all comes down to the subjugation and humiliation of the princes of
the land - the best and brightest. From there, everything falls into
place almost like clockwork.
So, imagine a group of boys -- all talented young black recent high
school graduates back in the 1920s -- from the most cultured African
American families in Boston and New York -- going to school in a black
Southern university and being forced, by the president of that
university (who has to please his good white benefactors and members
of the board of trustees) to entertain a room full of white Southern
men in the grimy basement of a building in the city in the middle of
the night. The college president puts those well-bred nigger boys to
work, serving at massah's amusement, to keep the college in the good
graces of the Southern white establishment. The message to Southern
white men is clear: give this school barely enough to keep it
functioning and we'll provide you with a steady stream of young black
boys, who come from the leading families of their race, to serve you
in the most humiliating and degrading ways! What great use and
training for black boys!
Consider a passage from a speech given by W.E.B. DuBois, an African
American intellectual and social leader, at Fisk University (a
historically black college) in 1924.
The situation was that Fisk, like many African American institutions
of higher education at the time, had gone through a period of serious
financial difficulty from the period of 1908-1925. Although it is
unconfirmed, there appears to have been a bargain that was made in
which, in order for institutions like Fisk to survive financially, its
administration had to agree to turn over control of the institution to
the wealthy white Southern establishment, which had been insisting all
along that such institutions were not to promote college work of an
academic nature but rather, were to furnish servants for white people
learning manual labor and domestic services.
DuBois commented that such domestic service was "that branch of human
activity which is, as the world knows, the chief source of
prostitution and degradation of human independence."
Whether or not such a deal had been struck - and the evidence seems to
suggest that it was, although (as at Hampton and Tuskegee) it
ultimately failed - certain titillating activities under the
circumstances can be documented. One is reflected in the following
passage, which I quote at length:
As a note to the reader the original document refers to "girls"
instead of "boys," but I am switching the genders and have take great
liberties with the use and definition of the term "entertainment" to
make a point.
Mr. DuBois commented, "I am told that the President of Fisk University
took fifteen or twenty young boys from the Glee Club, boys from some
of the best Negro families in the United States, carried them downtown
at night to a white men's club, took them down an alley and admitted
them through the servants' entrance and had them [entertain the
Southern white men] in the basement, while these men smoked and
laughed and talked."
Upon reading this my imagination raced ahead. Imagine what all those
young black boys did to "entertain" those white Southern men in the
basement of that club at night in order to raise money for the
university. I find it particularly titillating that they came "from
some of the best Negro families." And here they were led through back
alleys at night - these highly cultured and well-educated Negroes,
presumably from families of means - reduced to entertaining white men
in dingy clubs at night. Imagine the insult to their black pride and
dignity.
The promising future of African American manhood - bright young men -
down on their knees servicing these white Southern men to raise money
for their school. The best and the brightest of young black manhood -
brought to Fisk from all across the country - reduced to servicing
white cock in a basement in the middle of the night.
How must these boys have reacted to being reduced to such a
humiliating role that they had not be accustomed to in the North and
other parts of the country that they were from? Remember, these were
elite black boys who only went to school in Negro Southern colleges
because there were quotas or outright bans barring them from Northern
colleges that they were otherwise academically qualified for.
What did these boys look like, sucking all of that white cock? Did
white Southern men use these boys as spittoons also? What were the
boys thinking as they underwent this ordeal? Apparently the president
of the University hadn't prepared them for what they were about to
experience - can you imagine the transformation they were forced to
undergo in order to adjust to the situation that was suddenly facing
them?
This was a long way from cultured Boston and New York, wasn't it? Can
you imagine the lesson they learned, over a very short span of time,
about their actual role and status in white American society? How did
they adjust to this humiliation? What did they have to suppress inside
of themselves that cried out to resist this? How did they endure this
act of betrayal on the part of the President of the University?
DuBois, W.E.B. (1924). "Diuturni Silenti" in Apetheker, H. (ed.)
(1973). The education of black people: ten critiques, 1906-1960. New
York: Monthly Review Press. (Pp. 41-60).
There is a process that takes place in the person's mind who starts
out thinking of himself as a human being but is gradually reduced to
seeing himself as he is seen through other people's eyes - as a mere
object. His mother and siblings may treat him as a person, as might
his aunts and other friends of the family. He has heard about racism,
but unless he is unshielded from its sharpest ideological realities it
doesn't really register with him on the deepest levels of his psyche.
Yes, one can grow up in poverty - and that may be a consequence of
racism. One may be watched, as a child, more closely by store clerks
than his white counterparts are - and that may be a consequence of
stereotyping and racial prejudice. But to see oneself as others see
one, and to deeply internalize it; I don't believe that this happens
before the black boy reaches the age of 13, at the very earliest.
There are levels of internalization, of course. Maybe the most
rudimentary internalization occurs before a black child reaches pre-
adolescence, but a black child - like any other child - is not very
good at seeing himself as others see him, especially if the way others
see him is sharply different from his self-perception. In fact, most
adults (black or white) are not good at doing this.
For racism - as an ideology and an identity - to be internalized by
the black child that child would have to endure the shock of seeing
himself as others see him; and in a way that is vastly different from
how he sees himself. I think this always comes as a shock because he
really doesn't understand how someone else could see him that way. At
first he rebels; but if the social pressures are strong and persistent
enough, he gradually acquiesces.
A black boy grows up seeing himself as a human being. He knows that
racism is "out there" and he knows that it is "ugly." He knows that
some people see him as less than human or, if human, as a lower level
of humanity. But so long as most of his social encounters consist of
loving family members, his church and his friends - people who are
always on the lookout for his "self-esteem," teachers (black or white)
and social workers, ministers, etc. Then, for the most part he will
see himself as a person and not as an object no matter what some
disembodied "racists" might think.
But then he encounters a white man, who seems reasonable in all other
respects, but who refuses to treat him as anything other than a body.
It can be an employer, a teacher, or a police officer - this person
refuses to interact with that black boy as anything other than a
body.
Think back. Do you recall how you felt when you first left home? You
set up your own place, away from your parents. You started to define
your own set of values - you picked your own friends, no matter what
your parents thought of them. You created your own identity. Now, with
your new set of friends, your new living space, your new ideas, your
new values and your new identity you thought that you were prepared to
boldly return to your parents home during a holiday - and you would
impress them with how changed and mature you had become. And once you
got "home" - home to your parents' house - they wouldn't stop treating
you like the little boy you were before you left the house. Try as you
might to assert your new identity, you were still (if you were the
youngest) the "baby" of the household. You were still little Johnny or
little Evan or little Michael. Gradually it was you who had to adjust
to your parents' perception of you - because they were in a more
powerful position to gently and ever-so-lovingly enforce this
perception. They were older and not given to change even if they
wanted to. You were the one who had to make the adjustment in your
perception of reality.
I think that is what the shock of racism is like when it is finally
internalized by black boys. The black boy who falls in love with the
white girl and truly believes that the girl loves him for his
personality - and in part she does. But then it comes out in instance
after instance that, above all, she sees him as a hot black body - and
he begins to see himself as being nothing more than a hot black body.
You see the awkward black boy - just turned 18 - it is his first time
that he is allowed into the porn video store. He timidly makes his way
into the back where all the nasty old men are. They leer at him -
fresh meat. He cautiously slides into the booth to watch a movie and
finds that there are no doors on it - or, if there are doors, there
are great big "glory holes" in the wall.
He timidly strokes himself off thinking that no one is watching. Then,
out of the darkness, he hears someone whisper, "Yeah, let me see that
big black cock. Show me that nigger cock. Yeah, boy - stroke that meat
for me."
The boy becomes flustered. He didn't know anyone was watching. He
wasn't even sure anyone would want to watch. He quickly fastens his
pants and rushes out of the movie house in embarrassment. But this is
not the end of the story. He comes back a week later. The same thing
happens. This time, though, he stays a little longer, but still he is
uneasy. The following week he stays longer still. Eventually he's
egging the white men on. He's waving around that big black cock while
the white men hoot, "Yeah, let's see that big nigger dick." He's proud
of it. He sees it as an asset. He's proud that white men think of him
as a big nigger cock boy.
This is transformation. It is what you have called "corruption."
Either term will do - they both mean the same thing, except one
attaches a moral judgment to it. And isn't morality implicit in the
act of crafting stories?
So, what happens in the mind of a black male - and this is certainly
not all black males - who finally acquiesces to the idea that he is
not really a mind so much as he is a body; a body to be admired - a
body to be exploited - like on the basketball court or in a porn
video?
Many black males these days grow up thinking of themselves as being
merely (or primarily) a body. Many of them embrace this self-image. It
is not a loving mother or adult friends of the family who shape their
self-image, but images in mass media - particularly music videos. They
grow up thinking that they are destined to become Chingy, or Snoop, or
P. Diddy, or fiddy cent. They grow up thinking they are to become one
of these media constructed images or nothing at all. And their primary
asset is their body, not their mind.
And so, it is no wonder that I used to see young black boys in those
movie booths (this was back in the early-to-mid 1990s, before VCRs and
DVDs and the Internet became all the rage and kept people at home to
privately consume most of their porn). It was no wonder I saw young
black boys being pushed up against those dark walls while an older
hairy white man was holding their smooth dark bodies and humping
inside their tight asses. It was no wonder the boys took special pride
in being used in this way. They had defined themselves as being
nothing but a body - and their body was their greatest asset.
One of the hottest (if also saddest) scenes I saw in one of those
movie booths was when a white business man, with a starched shirt and
tie, approached a hopeful black lad and told the boy to drop his
pants. The boy dropped his pants, hoping to impress the white man with
is thick black cock, but the man sneered at him and said, "No - turn
around and show me your ass." The boy seemed confused but he slowly
did what the man said. The white man seemed transformed in a most
Satanic way. I am telling you he totally lost his mind. He grabbed
that black boy by the waist and humped so furiously in that black
boy's ass that I think he forgot who and where he was or what it was
he was fucking. And the expression on the black boy's face was
heartbreaking. His eyes welled up with confusion and tears. His face
registered disgust and humiliation. I don't even believe there was a
monetary transaction here - I didn't see any signs of it. I think the
black boy had accepted his identity as a body, but he thought the most
impressive aspect of his body was his cock; but clearly the most
impressive part of his body for this particular white man was his
smooth bubble butt black ass.
There was something in seeing the black boy's bare ass that drove the
white man beyond the brink. The amazing thing was that the black boy,
clearly not expecting or enjoying this kind of "action" - and
apparently not even being paid for it - allowed the white man to bring
his sexual passion to its full fruition in that black boy's ass.
Somewhere along the way that black boy learned to think of himself as
being a body - but on that very night he also learned to allow the
white man to define how that body was to be used and what parts of
that body would be used for what purposes. Maybe the white man wasn't
into black cock because it signified too much power and appeared to be
too much of a threat - so he went after boy's black pussy instead.
Still, you should have seen the expression on that black boy's face
when he realized how that white man intended to use him.
I think of little Elijah in the Stampley Plantation series (erotic
historic fiction found on the Internet). What is the transformation
that takes place in that little black boy's mind as it gradually dawns
on him that in the slave owner James' eyes the boy is mostly an object
to be used for that white man's sexual gratification? Elijah doesn't
have to like it in order to understand and accept it. The
transformation is that he gradually understands and accepts his new
role - again, this does not mean that he has to like it. One of the
most striking incidents in the Stampley series, so far, is when little
Elijah is being buggered by James, after having been trained to give
his master what his master expects of him. James is ruthlessly fucking
the little boy's ass and he asks the boy, "What are you?" And little
Elijah meekly answers, "Ise just a stupid, dirty nigger, ah suppose..."
Is this sad? Yes, it is very sad. Does it still give me a raging hard-
on every time I read it? Does it rain in Portland Oregon?
I have been exploring the theme of black boys becoming objects for
white men in my stories for a couple of years now. There is very
little in fiction that is entirely fictional - very little fiction is
invented out of thin air. Each of my stories was inspired by an
observation or an actual encounter - and the distortion in the lens of
the fiction may have even served to bring out something that is more
truthful than a literal rendition of what actually occurred would have
been. So, not being entirely fiction, my stories tapped into a deeper
energy - I will not say it was a positive or a negative energy - I
will leave that up to ethicists to decide. The great danger of writing
fiction, or any other stories, is that the writer is transformed in
writing the story. This may be for the better; if our stories are
uplifting; but it may also be for the worse, if our stories are not.
And so, as writers and readers we become more and more willing to try
out things that we were not so willing to try out before we started
writing about it and reading what others have written.
This also may be called a process of "corruption."
As the late Kurt Vonnegut put in the mouth of one of his fictional
characters, "You must be very careful about what you pretend to be, or
you may wake up one day to discover that is what you have actually
become."
If it is "corruption" for a black boy to wake up one day and discover
that much of the world does not see him as an embodied soul - a
combination of both a mind and a body - but insists on constantly
treating him as if he were only a body until he finally "wises up" and
acquiesces to this socially constructed reality, then it is also
"corruption" for a white man to wake up one day after years of writing
fictional accounts racial physical exploitation to find that he is
willing to practice it when the opportunity presents itself, and to
engineer such opportunities when they do not readily occur.
That we (as white men) have the power to subjugate black boys and men
in this way is beyond question (this, of course does not mean EVERY
black boy or man). That it is right for us to do so simply because we
have the power to do it - well, that my friend, is another question.
It is a question that pivots on another question: What is the source
or the basis of the values that we subscribe to? It is the kind of
question that should make moral relativists very uneasy.
|
