Black People : Emmet Till Article
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KILLING EMMET TILL...AGAIN
I am often wounded by the things I read in Essence magazine. I wish I found less Revlon and more Revolution in its pages. I am pained by its proliferation of Black gay men’s voices and the comparative silence of Black lesbian voices. I am disturbed by the eurocentric lesbianism of editor Linda Villarosa and the absence of afrocentric lesbians like myself. I am often angered by too many features like “How to Love Black Men”, when clearly what we NEED are more features like “How not to be Abused by Black Men”, “How to Love Yourself”, or “How to be More than His Baby’s Mama”...
Yet, NOTHING in Essence has ever WOUNDED me as deeply as a recent feature (November 1997) penned by John Edgar Wideman entitled. “The Killing of Black Boys”. I quote:
“...The same urge may have prompted me to carry around a white girl’s picture. No doubt about it, possessing a white girl’s photo was a merit badge for a Black boy. A sign of power. Your footprint in “their” world....Any actual romance with a white girl would have to be underground, clandestine, so a photo served as a prime evidence of things unseen. A ticket to status in my clan of brown boys in White Shadyside, a trophy copped in another country. I could flaunt in Black Homewood...
Okay, Emmet Till. You so bad. You talkin’ bout all those white gals you got up in Chicago. Bet you won’t say "Boo" to that white lady in the store.
Like a magician, Emmet Till pulls a white girl from his wallet. Silences everybody. Mesmerizes them with tales of what they’re missing living down here in the woods...points to the prettiest girl, the Whitest, fairest, longest haired one of all you can easily see...Emmet Till says she is the prettiest, anyway, so why not?
...J W Milam...says “Well, when he told me about this white girl he had, I just looked at him and said “Boy, you ain’t never gone see the sun come up again"...whatever enabled Emmet Till to stand his ground, to be himself until the first deadly blow landed, be himself even after it landed...I ask my wife Judy, who is a flesh-and-blood embodiment of the nightmare J. W. Milam discovered in Emmet Till’s wallet, what she thinks of when she hears Emmet Till...Black man, in my bed, laying beside a pale, beautiful, long-haired woman rubbing my shoulder, a woman whose presence sometimes is as strange and unaccountable to me as mine must be to her...What I say when I lean over and speak one last time to Emmet Till is I love you. I’m sorry. I won’t allow it to happen ever again.”
Wideman’s article BEGGED many questions deep within my African female soul: What do Judy and Wideman think of when they hear white supremacy, Black women, and self love? I would ask Wideman: How do you think marrying Judy or penning serenades for white girls does anything more than bind you to your twisted eurocentric fantasies about the ghost of a suicidal young boy?
Wideman assumes that Emmet would have remained as sexually white supremacist as himself. Malcolm X was once very much like Emmet, a young thug obsessed with white female flesh. But, Malcolm lived and grew to become a sacred revolutionary afrocentric legend. What motivates Wideman to feign clairvoyant license and predict that Emmet would not have done as Malcolm? How dare he assume Emmet may not have become another shining Black prince, royalty like Malcolm, rather than an offensive court jester like Wideman himself.
Wideman and Essence owe me and all of my sisters an apology for this second slaughter of Emmet Till. This repulsive tribute to white women, masked as a eulogy, haunts Emmet’s memory. He was a foolish child clowning on vacation in Hell. He had not yet become the “O. J.-ish” demon that Wideman emulates and reveres.
I am often wounded by the things I read in Essence magazine. I wish I found less Revlon and more Revolution in its pages. I am pained by its proliferation of Black gay men’s voices and the comparative silence of Black lesbian voices. I am disturbed by the eurocentric lesbianism of editor Linda Villarosa and the absence of afrocentric lesbians like myself. I am often angered by too many features like “How to Love Black Men”, when clearly what we NEED are more features like “How not to be Abused by Black Men”, “How to Love Yourself”, or “How to be More than His Baby’s Mama”...
Yet, NOTHING in Essence has ever WOUNDED me as deeply as a recent feature (November 1997) penned by John Edgar Wideman entitled. “The Killing of Black Boys”. I quote:
“...The same urge may have prompted me to carry around a white girl’s picture. No doubt about it, possessing a white girl’s photo was a merit badge for a Black boy. A sign of power. Your footprint in “their” world....Any actual romance with a white girl would have to be underground, clandestine, so a photo served as a prime evidence of things unseen. A ticket to status in my clan of brown boys in White Shadyside, a trophy copped in another country. I could flaunt in Black Homewood...
Okay, Emmet Till. You so bad. You talkin’ bout all those white gals you got up in Chicago. Bet you won’t say "Boo" to that white lady in the store.
Like a magician, Emmet Till pulls a white girl from his wallet. Silences everybody. Mesmerizes them with tales of what they’re missing living down here in the woods...points to the prettiest girl, the Whitest, fairest, longest haired one of all you can easily see...Emmet Till says she is the prettiest, anyway, so why not?
...J W Milam...says “Well, when he told me about this white girl he had, I just looked at him and said “Boy, you ain’t never gone see the sun come up again"...whatever enabled Emmet Till to stand his ground, to be himself until the first deadly blow landed, be himself even after it landed...I ask my wife Judy, who is a flesh-and-blood embodiment of the nightmare J. W. Milam discovered in Emmet Till’s wallet, what she thinks of when she hears Emmet Till...Black man, in my bed, laying beside a pale, beautiful, long-haired woman rubbing my shoulder, a woman whose presence sometimes is as strange and unaccountable to me as mine must be to her...What I say when I lean over and speak one last time to Emmet Till is I love you. I’m sorry. I won’t allow it to happen ever again.”
Wideman’s article BEGGED many questions deep within my African female soul: What do Judy and Wideman think of when they hear white supremacy, Black women, and self love? I would ask Wideman: How do you think marrying Judy or penning serenades for white girls does anything more than bind you to your twisted eurocentric fantasies about the ghost of a suicidal young boy?
Wideman assumes that Emmet would have remained as sexually white supremacist as himself. Malcolm X was once very much like Emmet, a young thug obsessed with white female flesh. But, Malcolm lived and grew to become a sacred revolutionary afrocentric legend. What motivates Wideman to feign clairvoyant license and predict that Emmet would not have done as Malcolm? How dare he assume Emmet may not have become another shining Black prince, royalty like Malcolm, rather than an offensive court jester like Wideman himself.
Wideman and Essence owe me and all of my sisters an apology for this second slaughter of Emmet Till. This repulsive tribute to white women, masked as a eulogy, haunts Emmet’s memory. He was a foolish child clowning on vacation in Hell. He had not yet become the “O. J.-ish” demon that Wideman emulates and reveres.
Nisa said:
This is true, but when the source is considered, it can't be too surprising!
Bad Counsel is 90% Good - It's that 10% You Have To Look Out For
This sounds like it might have been the article that prompted my girl Intuitionmd's strange question.
The reason some will dismiss her article will not be because it is afrocentric but because, once again, homosexual propaganda is piggybacking on a worthy cause that has nothing to do with it.
This sounds like it might have been the article that prompted my girl Intuitionmd's strange question.
The reason some will dismiss her article will not be because it is afrocentric but because, once again, homosexual propaganda is piggybacking on a worthy cause that has nothing to do with it.
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