Adonis Diaries

“Vast land of unconscious suffering”; (Feb. 28, 2010)

“I knew, as I gained consciousness, that none of my dreams were feasible.  Separation in Whites and Blacks was getting pretty clearly a fact.  It was its effects on the personality of the individual that devastated me.  I was no threat to anyone.  At the age I could reflect, I comprehended that, for so long, my individuality and aspiration counted for nothing.  What I did say could not be understood.  There is nothing in human history a worst corrosive attack to individuality than racial discrimination.  Racial discrimination defined an inferior place for blacks.  The Blacks (having the same dreams as Whites and sharing the same culture) reacted by burying deep down their consciousness this difference: I felt isolated and was scared.  Pride led me to hiding my hatred: I could not let the White feels how profoundly he vanquished me; how he is regulating my life.

I used to hide “the hatred for myself” and could not help but hate the one who provoked this feeling.  Most of the day was wasted on a cruel war waged against my emotions and to dominate my tumultuous emotions.  Emotions I wished not to feel at all but could not help but to feel.  I was in perpetual conflict with reality; I lost hold on my means; my judgment for the objective world was impaired.

I ended up hoarding fantastic ambitions in my day-dreaming; I stored them in this still empty part of my personality so that the ship would not sink into the absurd.  Like every American, I wanted a good job, my home, my own status.  I was day-dreaming that I was organizing secret groups of Blacks; if Blacks refused to cooperate with my schemes then I will fight them: I started hating the uncooperative Blacks.

Then I went on to dreaming of feasible projects.  I was re-living a second childhood; a new feeling of limited possibilities emerged in me.  What of these limited dreams could be feasible?  I found none.  It is based on this feeling of void that I focused my energy:  This constant want that cannot be had; of being hated for no reason.  It was no longer fear of being lynched, discriminated against, or submitting to interminable brutalities that harassed my consciousness: It was this psychological ache from contradictory emotions.  I felt there were only a few Blacks who could make any sense of their lives and who could tell about their history.  A Black life is a vast land of unconscious suffering.” (Black Boy: Hunger for equality)

Richard Nathaniel Wright (1908-60) was born in the south, Mississippi State.  He fled to Chicago in 1927 and experienced the big depression.  He witnessed another form of discrimination: class segregation.  In these conditions, father figure relationship testified for the wide psychological rift between races.  How a Black internalizes class discrimination that is a major obstacle for conscious awareness?  A Black is relegated to inaction and society excludes him.  This conscious inaction is the launching board for getting organized to overcoming this hunger for equality.

Wright published “The children of Uncle Tom, 1938” and an autobiography “A kid from the State”.  Then he published “Black Power, 1954” and “Black Boy”.  He was a communist and was persecuted; he fled to France where he had large impact on black intellectuals such as James Baldwin and Paul Gilroy; he was the inspiration for many movements such as Black Consciousness and Black Power in the 60’s.