But “Black Lives Matter” might just as easily have been the mantra of America’s black elite who, as far back as before the abolition of slavery, sought to establish themselves in communities characterized by privilege and extreme class consciousness.
Stop mowing us down with your hatred, fear and disregard. It’s a way of saying, Stop discounting us.
From a distance the divisions appear a question of class.The phrase “Black Lives Matter,” which emerged as a rallying cry during a year of frequent deadly showdowns between police officers and unarmed black citizens, has almost always been pointed at whites. We think we know about black communities in the US, including an underclass, shut out from opportunity, filling the jails and poorly paid jobs, and an aspirational upper tier, comprising members of Congress, lawyers, business tycoons, generals and journalists. So battered was she by her uncertain status that as a young woman she contemplated suicide. She chooses ‘negro’ as her word for people now called ‘black’ because she finds it a ‘word of wonders, glorious and terrible’, and because ‘“Negro” dominated our history for so long.’ She is determined to succeed, but at a terrible cost to herself. ‘Negroland’ is Margo Jefferson’s term for her advantaged enclave.
This book is personal: an account, brilliant in places, of one light-skinned, well-educated, privileged, upper-middle-class African-American trying (with identity-threatening difficulty) to find her place in the world. Barack Obama, the first black president of the USA, is not mentioned in this memoir of growing up ‘negro’ in America nor are the recent riots that followed the unpunished shootings of unarmed black citizens by white police nor is the historic ‘I have a dream’ speech by Martin Luther King.
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