I wanted to share this fascinating article on the NBA and the black image in popular culture by the Asian American writer Jay Caspian Kang. He really digs into some of the issues that Ellison deals with in his novel and, from another angle, the impetus to critique one’s own position as a writer engaging blackness that Rankine and Loffreda discuss. For me, Kang is doing an exemplary job here of exploring his “racial imaginary” and linking that exploration to antiracist work without resorting to cliches or feelgood nostrums.

Ball Don’t Lie | by Jay Caspian Kang | The New York Review of Books

Thus far, we’ve read multiple accounts on what it means to define one’s identity in relation to race, history, and the social implications that follow. Of all of these, Ralph Ellison, Franz Fanon, and Zora Neale Hurston magnetically drew my attention to the contrast between silence and sound, along with the influence both of these can have on the speaker’s ability to act. While Fanon feels stifled by the burden of silence, and Hurston feels free through her soulful relationship with music, Ellison bridges the gap between the two, emphasizing the bittersweet “blue” beauty of both silence and sound. These moments, found at times in the brief tension between the notes of a song, or in the hum of quiet contemplation, allow the narrator to explore his identity and empower him into action.

One of the more significant themes in Ellison’s Invisible Man is this responsibility to separate oneself from those things that inhibit action, follow what you believe in to make change, and inspire others to do the same. “I believe in nothing if not action”(Ellison, 13) the narrator reminds us, whenever he feels the need to explain why his narrative has taken a particular turn, and one of the first experiences he shares with us is his listening to Louis Armstrong. Explaining how Armstrong “made poetry out of being invisible” and how “my own grasp of invisibility aids me to understand his music”(8), the narrator dives into a beautiful description of how the notes flow, transcending time, and moving the listener to not only hear, but feel the sound. He and Armstrong are both made invisible by society, but they can communicate a feeling that is imperceptible to most listeners who only hear the obvious notes. The narrator describes how “the unheard sounds came through…and waited patiently for the other voices to speak…I not only entered the music, but descended, like Dante, into its depths”(9). This powerful silence in between the notes of sound may not be detectable by everyone, but once it has woken the narrator, it serves as somewhat of an anthem for what he believes he must do. 

Although Fanon likewise explores this significance and weight of sound, he ultimately feels overwhelmed by its burden, while Ellison finds a way to tame and use it. Both Fanon and Ellison’s narrator reject the humility they feel pressured to accept like amputated victims of social circumstance, but Fanon ends his essay on a dejected note: “the disemboweled silence fell back upon me…without responsibility, straddling Nothingness and Infinity, I began to weep” (Fanon). The narrator in Invisible Man however, contemplates the meaning of silence, emptiness, and invisibility in a different light. Drawing parallels between the imperceptible notes of Armstrong’s music, and the silence that followed in the hour he spent quietly contemplating, the narrator concludes that “it was a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence of sound. I had discovered unrecognized compulsions of my being”(Ellison, 13). Unlike Fanon’s surrender to the heavy silence, the narrator embraces it and uses it to gain strength. 

Similarly, Hurston explores the power music can have on those conscious enough to pick up on it’s nuances, though unlike Ellison’s narrator, she doesn’t utilize this awareness to take action. Recounting a moment in time where she sat at a jazz ensemble performance, Hurston takes us on a musical journey similar to that of the narrator’s in Invisible Man. Using breathtaking imagery, she illustrates the soulful highs and lows, the tension in the silence between the notes, and the transcendental experience that results. In disbelief, she explains her white neighbor’s response: “the great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt…He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored” (Hurston). Ellison’s narrator experiences music in a similar manner, but he takes the experience a step further by allowing it to light a fire in him, inspiring him to take action as a result. He states: “there is a certain acoustical deadness in my hole, and when I have music I want to feel its vibration, not only with my ear but with my whole body”(Ellison, 8). While “at first [he] was afraid; this familiar music had demanded action”(12) that he felt he might not be capable of, his belief in action proves much stronger than his fear. 

In the end, Ellison’s narrator embraces his exploration of both silence and sound. Although silence may at times be overwhelming just like Armstrong’s soulful music can be almost unbearably blue, the narrator, feeling a passionate responsibility to be the voice of the unheard and the invisible, decides to swallow his fear and take action.

Claudia Rankine is a monster. Not your typical definition of the word monster found in the white washed Webster dictionary, but the slang term monster, denoting one whose power alone scares those who oppose her. Yes, she indeed is quite the monster, exemplified by her writing against the white writers who believe themselves capable of covering and understanding black issues. Rankine crash lands onto Whiteness and the Racial Imaginary guns blazing with an ideal question: why do white writers fit tropes when writing about other cultures? The question itself sounds slightly combative, but like she says “it mistakes critical response for prohibition”. Rankine’s waltz-like response dances around a singular idea: you’re trying to beat us instead of join us. Although it’s not stated in the passage directly, she juggles this idea of the “white savior complex” which has been a trope in America since 1899 in Rudyard Kipling’s The White Man’s Burden. The idea is that the white man (or woman or non-binary cause this is 2020) is burdened with minorities and it is their duty to save minorities from themselves by utilizing their own privilege to elevate the voices of those deemed “less fortunate”. Yeah, no. She challenges idea with a very simple face: how can you elevate voices that already elevate themselves? And this leads into the main part of the article that she tackles with Beth Loffreda which is this idea of the impossibility of an expansive and limitless racial imaginary. Rankine and Loffreda go toe-to-toe with Emerson’s decades-old idea of transcending beyond the confines of human understanding. They ground his idea by stating that ” our imaginations are creatures as limited as we ourselves are”, understanding that every idea which comes to us was drawn from some sort of real, tangible inspiration and not just taken out of thin air. This applies heavily when it comes to writing context outside of one’s own race as it requires you to essentially step into the shoes of that person and assume their role for not only accuracy, but for the realism that makes a story come alive. This is where the limitation of the racial imaginary comes into play as it becomes almost impossible to correctly assess the culture of what you’re writing about without living it. It’s been done, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always been done well. So until then, Rankine AND Loffreda will be the monsters that they need to be.