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.He used to say that he was going to write a book about whitepeople.It would be entitled The Things They Have Said toMe. He would begin, he said, with a note he received froma graduate student that began, Wallace, Dr.Jamison saysyou should. That disrespect, he asserted, was the essenceof his experience in that department.I often think of Wallace and how I could complete thebook he intended to write.Here are some of the things thathave been said to me over the years.When I taught at another college, I presented that English¢'department with the strongest tenure case it had seen in tenyears.The year before, however, four white males had beentenured, and one of them had been approved unanimously.When the vote on my case was counted, there were twenty-onein favor and one against.I was told that there was one voteagainst me because the person casting the vote knew that hissingle negative vote would not prevent me from getting tenure;he just thought that a white male should retain the status ofhaving the only unanimous tenure vote in that department.In response to my receiving the highest teaching ratings¢'one year, two of my white male colleagues came to me andsaid, laughingly, You d better stop getting such good teach-ing ratings, or we re going to break both your legs. When I was appointed to a special professorship, one of¢'my colleagues responses was: Now that you re a chairedprofessor, what are you gonna do? Buy another big ol car? At the time I was driving a Pontiac 6000; I had never thought[ 158 The Staying Power of Racismof that as a big ol car, yet this person, in her annoyance withmy good fortune, could only stereotype me in the coloredperson buying Cadillac mold.Once when I asked a question in a meeting, one of my¢'white male colleagues responded afterward with, Trudier,you always go for the balls. For asking a question.I doubtthat he would have used the word balls with a whitewoman; I gave him the chance to be risqué.When I was speaking of some of my research about black¢'subjects, one of my colleagues asked, Why don t you teachat a historically black college? The irony is that if I taught ata historic black college, I would probably specialize in Shake-speare or Wordsworth, for in those traditionally black envi-ronments, black teachers specialize in everything; they are notcordoned off, as they frequently are in predominantly whitecolleges and universities, to teach only those things originat-ing from black folks.It s a wonder we re not all crazy or dead.My major preoccu-pation in life is managing madness.So, you ask, how do I dothat? How do I keep on going on in the face of racism thatdoes not exhibit itself in blatant insults or physical abuse, butin the symbolic death of a thousand cuts ? Chester B.Himes, in his novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, depicts a dreamthat his protagonist, Bob Jones, has.He dreams of a fight be-tween a black person and a white person, and he can t figureout for the longest time what weapon the white personis using.Then he realizes that it s a knife no longer than a ra-zor blade.The man just keeps sticking and sticking at theblack man.No one wound, indeed no several wounds, will befatal, but eventually the accumulation can be The Death of aThousand Cuts.159 ] SUMMER SNOWI survive in the face of a thousand insults with an abun-dance of humor and a great family tradition.Zora Neale Hur-ston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, talks in oneof her books about the value of humor to African Americansurvival.Long before I read Hurston, however, I, like manyother black folks, knew that in the face of events you cannotcontrol, you have to find some sanity-saving way of dealingwith them.Humor, like the blues, is laughing to keep fromcrying.I have also been blessed with a wonderful family, especiallymy mother [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.He used to say that he was going to write a book about whitepeople.It would be entitled The Things They Have Said toMe. He would begin, he said, with a note he received froma graduate student that began, Wallace, Dr.Jamison saysyou should. That disrespect, he asserted, was the essenceof his experience in that department.I often think of Wallace and how I could complete thebook he intended to write.Here are some of the things thathave been said to me over the years.When I taught at another college, I presented that English¢'department with the strongest tenure case it had seen in tenyears.The year before, however, four white males had beentenured, and one of them had been approved unanimously.When the vote on my case was counted, there were twenty-onein favor and one against.I was told that there was one voteagainst me because the person casting the vote knew that hissingle negative vote would not prevent me from getting tenure;he just thought that a white male should retain the status ofhaving the only unanimous tenure vote in that department.In response to my receiving the highest teaching ratings¢'one year, two of my white male colleagues came to me andsaid, laughingly, You d better stop getting such good teach-ing ratings, or we re going to break both your legs. When I was appointed to a special professorship, one of¢'my colleagues responses was: Now that you re a chairedprofessor, what are you gonna do? Buy another big ol car? At the time I was driving a Pontiac 6000; I had never thought[ 158 The Staying Power of Racismof that as a big ol car, yet this person, in her annoyance withmy good fortune, could only stereotype me in the coloredperson buying Cadillac mold.Once when I asked a question in a meeting, one of my¢'white male colleagues responded afterward with, Trudier,you always go for the balls. For asking a question.I doubtthat he would have used the word balls with a whitewoman; I gave him the chance to be risqué.When I was speaking of some of my research about black¢'subjects, one of my colleagues asked, Why don t you teachat a historically black college? The irony is that if I taught ata historic black college, I would probably specialize in Shake-speare or Wordsworth, for in those traditionally black envi-ronments, black teachers specialize in everything; they are notcordoned off, as they frequently are in predominantly whitecolleges and universities, to teach only those things originat-ing from black folks.It s a wonder we re not all crazy or dead.My major preoccu-pation in life is managing madness.So, you ask, how do I dothat? How do I keep on going on in the face of racism thatdoes not exhibit itself in blatant insults or physical abuse, butin the symbolic death of a thousand cuts ? Chester B.Himes, in his novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, depicts a dreamthat his protagonist, Bob Jones, has.He dreams of a fight be-tween a black person and a white person, and he can t figureout for the longest time what weapon the white personis using.Then he realizes that it s a knife no longer than a ra-zor blade.The man just keeps sticking and sticking at theblack man.No one wound, indeed no several wounds, will befatal, but eventually the accumulation can be The Death of aThousand Cuts.159 ] SUMMER SNOWI survive in the face of a thousand insults with an abun-dance of humor and a great family tradition.Zora Neale Hur-ston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, talks in oneof her books about the value of humor to African Americansurvival.Long before I read Hurston, however, I, like manyother black folks, knew that in the face of events you cannotcontrol, you have to find some sanity-saving way of dealingwith them.Humor, like the blues, is laughing to keep fromcrying.I have also been blessed with a wonderful family, especiallymy mother [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]