Categorical Thinking

The Negro

Never saw him,
Never can,
Hypothetical haunting man.
Eyes a saucer,
"Yes sir, boss sir."
Dice a clicking,
Razors flicking.
The-ness froze him
In a dance,
A-ness never
Had a chance.

I had to recount this from memory.  I did a quick Google search and couldn't find it.  I can't remember the author.  But the poem (and I hope I haven't made too many mistakes in remembering) sticks with me.  It is quick.  It has wit.  It bites.  Damn near a miracle.

The-ness and A-ness.  Reminds me somewhat of e.e. cummings.  I grew up in a vile, incredibly stupid environment.  Such a thing, if you are any good at all, makes you tough and never lets you forget.  I've told the stories somewhere in the blog of being beaten by a group of black kids for being white and for being beaten by crackers because I was a liberal hippie in the same week.  I wasn't yet old enough to have a drivers license.  I still remember hearing racist songs on the Rebel label, I think it was, stacks of them, with lyrics like this:

Nigger, nigger, tell those lies,
Kinky hair and bloodshot eyes,
Crooked toes and crooked nose,
That's the way a nigger grows.

And so on.

I'm not much for categorical thinking except when it pleases me.  It is, however, surely an evolutionary trait.  I did grad work in anthropology long ago and learned the advantages of prejudicial thinking to one group in competition for resources with another.  It is a survival tool.

For the individual, I don't know.  But as global resources dwindle and populations increase, individualism seems a punishable act.  Populations place their hope instead in leaders, people who will give voice to what the group wishes to hear.  The individual is lost in the herd mentality, and survival depends upon vilification.   Borders and party lines and nationalism grow.

I like stereotypes.  They are funny in times of plenty or among enlightened friends, or even to enrage the "other."  I am quickly bored with successful "isms" even if I agree, because once they gain acceptance, thinking quickly becomes monotonous and routine as people rush to learn to use the vocabulary for personal ascension.  I am no Derridean and probably don't understand his writing as well as many of my friends, but what I've taken from what I think I've understood is his idea of "free play."  It is essential to everything else he has written, I think.  It is what all of us who have "rebelled" against any hierarchy have done since we were in grade school, any of us who were "mouthy" and who got in trouble for espousing contrary ideas.  But Derrida warns us against standing still, against making our argument the center of things.  Our arguments create new structures that must be attacked lest they become as intellectually deadening and dictatorial as the one that replaced.  It is intellectual "play," both serious and fun.

But it is difficult for those who want to control the power.  That is what all arguments are about.  Who has it?  Who wants it?  Who are you willing to throw under the bus to get it?

We live in a world embroiled in a struggle for power.  The arguments are tired and old and worn out.  And comfortable.  What can we do?

Be aware, I guess.  And quit it.  Try to be ironic.  And always remember what The Idiot Savant once said:

Don't follow leaders,
Watch the parking meters.

O.K.  That's enough polemic.  I'll be late to the factory again.  As the song says,

Twenty years of schooling
And they put you on the day shift.