LITR 5731:
Seminar in American Multicultural Literature: Minority
Sample
Student Research Project
Leah Guillory
December 2, 2007
De-niggerization and Democratization by means of Voice and Choice
As a graduate student in Chloe Diepenbrock’s Composition Theory class last spring, I became especially passionate about the power of literacy. While we were immersed in the study of literacy narratives, a crucial question came up: Did Frederick Douglass steal literacy? The consensus among the graduate students was yes, he did steal literacy—since it was, back then, in antebellum America—“the time in the life of a slave that signaled his status as a piece of property,” against the law to teach a slave to read (Gates 100). However, it was my contention that Douglass could not steal something that was innately and inherently human to seek out—like eating and drinking and bonding. It is inherently human to grow—to produce—to cultivate—to develop—to nurture; thus—it is inherently human to cultivate the development of our voice. In fact, Michael Oakeshott, in an essay titled “Conversation and the Nature of Thought and Knowledge” argues that “what distinguishes human beings from other animals is our ability to participate in unending conversation” (419). In other words, he answers the implicit question: how can we tell a human being from a brute? The inherent human need to nurture and construct voice—the need to be heard is the difference between the two.
As the naysayer in the class—the only black graduate student, I maintained the rest of the class—all white graduate students—was projecting white supremacy ideology on Douglass’s absurd situation—the absurd situational irony that exists in being both human and a slave in America “whose black body is viewed as an abomination—whose black thoughts and ideas are perceived as debased and whose black pain and grief are rendered invisible on the human and moral scale” (West 101). I determined that they were marginalizing and criminalizing and “niggerizing” our black American “master of the verbal arts” (Gates 108). It wasn’t until I read something by Dr. Cornel West who teaches African-American studies and philosophy at Princeton University, that I realized that we were possibly looking at the problem through two different lenses of comprehension—they perhaps through the lens of niggerization, and I perhaps through the lens of de-niggerization. Niggerization, according to Dr. West in Atlantic Monthly’s one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary issue celebrating “The American Idea” is “neither simply the dishonoring and devaluing of black people nor solely the economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement of them. It is also the wholesale attempt to impede democratization—to turn potential citizens into intimidated, fearful, and helpless subjects. De-niggeraization then is niggerization’s antithesis—democratization: “The best of the American idea—in principle and practice. The sublime notion that each and every ordinary person has a dignity that warrants his or her voice being heard in shaping the destiny of society” (20). I left that class at the semester’s end angry and resentful not only as I considered the fact that the consensus was Douglass was a thief, but I also grappled with another question: were my contemporaries in the class niggerizing Frederick Douglass?
In this essay, I will not grapple with the fundamental question about Douglass or try to answer it—perception is reality—and from my location—a black, left-handed female in America whose kindergarten teacher, umbrage of white supremacy, once told her indignantly, “Shhhh! You talk too much!” –I contend one cannot steal something or silence something that exists inherently in him or her not being a brute. In fact, according to Henry Louis Gates Jr. , Jacques Derrida, author of Speech and Phenomena contends that “no consciousness is possible without voice” (106). In other words, to be conscious is to have a voice, and to have a voice is to be human. And Douglass was undeniably human. Moreover, Douglass asserted his humanity—he engaged, he conversed, and he sought out what he needed—he sought the advancement of his voice. And after that, he sought the advancement of others’ voices.
With that said—we see that Douglass is the best of the black political tradition; so the intention of this essay is not to prove that Douglass was not in my view a thief—the essay’s intention is to showcase an exceptional black American who despite his “guttural cries” (West 213) wrote himself out of the nightmare of niggerization by means of what the literary critic Robert Stepto calls a “narrative of ascent” (167). Frederick Douglass is a black American example of de-niggerization—which is one in the same as democratization— someone who “stepped out of nothing and landing on something.” Like Douglass, I too rose of out mediocrity—which is no small task in a society where you’re counted last—especially if you’re a female and left-handed. With that said, I will then extend the essay by providing my own personal narrative of ascent.
To begin with, the classic ascent narrative involves a dialectical process that “launches an enslaved...questing figure on a journey….” (Stepto 167). Douglass describes his initiation of “stepping out of” when he is chosen to leave the plantation to go live in Baltimore. We sense that he eagerly participated in this launch considering the fact that his tone that does not evoke grief, regret, sorrow or loss in his departure:
The ties that bind children to their homes were all suspended in my case. I found no severe trial in my departure. My home was charmless; it was not home; on parting from it, I could not feel that I was leaving any thing which I could have enjoyed by staying. My mother was dead, my grandmother lived far off, so I seldom saw her. I had two sisters and one brother that lived in the same house with me; but the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories… (37)
Next, according to Stepto, the questing protagonist’s journey is charted through signs that he must read in order to be increasingly literate and increasingly free. We first experience Douglass’s reading of signs when he discerns he can trust Sophia Auld—“a white face beaming with the most kindly emotions; it was the face of my new mistress…I wish I could describe the rapture that flashed through my soul as I beheld it. It was new and strange sight to me, brightening up my pathway [his ascension] with the light of happiness.” Douglass’s experience with trust—which “put[s] [him] fully at ease in her presence” allows him to “enter upon [his] duties with the most cheering prospect ahead” in which he learns the “A, B, C… and to spell words of three or four letters” (39). This is a significant experience despite the fact that this would be the last instruction Douglass would receive from his mistress since her husband forbade her to “teach that nigger how to read” (41). Because Douglass trusts her though—albeit it was only a short time—but because he feels comfortable in her presence, he learns some crucial information—letters. Furthermore, Douglass’s reading doesn’t end with the learning of a few letters. Because Douglass is so discerning of signs —because he is able to “read into” the significance of why his mistress is forbidden to teach him—he discerns why literacy is so crucial—he understands that “if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell” (41). Sofia Auld gave Douglass the inch—a few letters—and he took the ell—a manifold more:
These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understand what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I least expected it…I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. (41)
Douglass’s reading of the signs that literacy is crucial if one wants to be free “served to inspire [him] with a desire and determination to learn” (43). He learned countless letters and then wrote himself out of slavery and ascended into freedom.
Furthermore, Douglass’s quest for literacy and freedom involved not simply the practical ability to read but also the transcendental ability to read people and predicaments around him with deeper understanding:
I look upon my departure from Colonel Lloyd’s plantation [to master Auld’s in Baltimore] as one of the most interesting events of my life. It is possible, and even quite probable, that but for the mere circumstances of being removed from that plantation to Baltimore, I should have to-day, instead of being here seated by my own table, in the enjoyment of freedom and happiness of home, writing this Narrative, been confined in the galling chains of slavery. Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity. (39)
Douglass describes viscerally that reading the sign that literacy “would make [a black man] discontented and unhappy” from is master was not only crucial, but was also serendipitous and a great gift.
Finally, according to Stepto the ascent narrative ends with the “questing figure situated in the least oppressive social structure afforded by the world of the narrative as he gains sufficient literacy to assume the mantle of articulate survivor” (167). This “least oppressive social structure” doesn’t happen overnight for Douglass. Douglass is at first, an abandoned boy “kept almost naked—no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing but a coarse tow linen shirt… [and he] had no bed” (36). With no home to mourn the loss of, no name, no birthday, no mother to whom he feels closely attached, no father to whom he can be acknowledged—he is an exile in his native land. As an outcast, and having nothing more than his own human resources to rely on, Douglass has to improvise—that is, he has to fabricate an identity out of what he has conveniently on hand—his ability to trust (others when they can be and then himself when they show they cannot be) and his ability to discern. But at the narrative’s end, Douglass is no longer an abandoned slave boy, he is an American hero.
What differentiates Douglass’s pursuit for improvement from other American heroes is that his motivation to free himself is so deeply and sincerely related to his motivation to help others free themselves. The pinnacle of his story is not just his own escape but that when he escapees, he helps others find their way too. This is what Alburt Murray has observed about Douglass’s fearlessness, valor, and great courage:
Compared with other American icons seeking freedom—Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone, from example—the case of Douglass stands out. Nobody was chasing Daniel Boone! Not even such justly canonized Founding Fathers as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson represent a more splendid image and pattern for the contemporary American citizen. On balance, not even Abraham Lincoln was a more heroic embodiment of the American as self-made man. After all, Lincoln like Franklin and Jefferson was born free. (19-20)
Frederick Douglass is an extraordinary black American example of de-niggerization—which is one in the same as democratization— who “stepped out of an American nothing—a land of exile and illiteracy and landed on an American something—a land assimilation and self-improvement.
Adrienne Rich, feminist, poet teacher and writer in an essay titled “Theorizing a Politics of Location in…Research” asserts that “politics of location” is vital to research in literary studies. She maintains that evidence that is personal is legitimate and fundamental knowledge. (523). Her advice is this: “investigate what has shaped [your] own perspectives…” (525). That is, we should locate ourselves in our literary studies. Her idea is encouraging for someone like me whose rupturing voice is rarely located among the dominant group—for instance—my graduate class last spring. Rich’s point speaks to my marginal position since I believe my undervalued identity can be a powerful resource. Placing ourselves in research is vitally important—it’s a validating experience as an authentic source of knowledge as well as an empowering experience that’s validating. With that said, I will provide my own personal narrative of ascent—a story of another black American—who like Douglass, rose of out mediocrity—which is no small task in a society where you’re counted last—especially if you’re also a female and left-handed.
A Narrative of Ascent and De-niggerization
When I was two-months old, I was a witness to an almost murder on my front porch. My mother who was twenty-five-years-old at the time caught my dad cheating on her with a white woman and shot at him in as he came to visit us driving a brand new car. My dad was twenty-seven years old at the time. He had a wife, a woman-on-the-side, four kids, and another one out-of-wedlock on the way. My half-brother Ernest Jr. was born four months after the shooting.
My dad wasn’t around much as I grew up—which is probably why I was such an easy target for the pedophiles in my neighborhood. I was a pretty girl, with sandy-colored long hair, and according to my mother I was “almost blond—and too-curvy for my age.” I remember one day as my little sister and I walked to the Chinamen store, (our neighborhood grocery store owned by a Chinese family) some man yelled out to me, “Damn you gon’ be fine when you grow up!” On the way back from the store, that same man grabbed my ass, held on to it for a little while, squeezed it and then walked away. My sister and I walked back home stunned in a solemn state of shock.
I was very theatrical as a little girl—I remember changing clothes all the time—I guess I was obsessed with constantly re-inventing my identity. I was the only member of my family who was left-handed and considered “crazy.” I was also the smart one—the one who constantly asked questions and the one who loved to read. My first novel was Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s me Margaret. The protagonist is a Jewish teenager who feels invisible, so she calls out to God for a reminder that she matters and that someone important cares. I was obsessed with that first novel—I read it over and over and over.
In our summers off from school, my older sister Angie educated me and my little sister on the same front porch where my dad was almost killed. I was the student who asked too many questions and who challenged my sister’s authority. But like the Greek goddess Athena, my sister was very wise and gifted with razor-sharp poise—she always said the same thing whenever I talked back too much: “You know why God gave your two ears and one mouth?—so you can listen twice as much as you talk!” –Now mouths quiet! and ears listening!” When we were little girls, we used to “play school” almost every day. She quizzed my little sister and me on addition and subtraction and multiplication problems, and we handled them heroically under her insistent care. I still cherish a certificate from elementary school that cheers: “Hooray! Leah Guillory has mastered the Science of Division!”
I value my sister’s intellectual nurturance, but I found her teaching style of rote- memorization and silence excruciating—and painfully boring. I loved to talk, to discuss and to ask lots of questions, so I wasn’t her favorite—my little sister was the teacher’s pet in her class. I did win the third grade spelling bee though which required hours and hours of remembering hard words like boulevard. Missing the word raisin in the finals still presents a conundrum for my ego. It seems like such a simple word to remember. Yet, I can comprehend why I probably couldn’t remember its spelling; raisins weren’t part of my life. I couldn’t invent a raisin—there was no “contact zone” where raisins manifested. And, they never made it on my mother’s grocery lists. But why would I remember boulevard? The streets in my neighborhood NEVER intersected with a boulevard. Maybe I just liked the way it sounded. Maybe it meant something to me. Maybe I cared about it. Maybe connecting with the word boulevard, I let myself dream; I let myself invent a future existence with a tall, handsome husband and two kids living happily, in a beautiful house, on a boulevard. The only imagery I associated with street was “street walker,” or my mother hollering at the top of her lungs: “Get out the God-Damn Street!” Maybe I clung to the word boulevard because it conjured up desires of suburbia! Maybe, the word boulevard allowed me to invent possibility.
As I grew up and entered high school, I became obsessed with Ralph Waldo Emerson who made me realize that I could transcend “that plot of [ghetto] ground” I was born on—I could ascend—and ‘cut myself a new path” like Maya Angelou declares in her essay “Directions.” Going to college to become an educator instead of prison like my brother was my way of leaving the past behind me—I was “stepping out of nothing.” My brother and I were so similar—both of us resourceful and out-going. But his problem was that the was too much like our father—he was narcissistic—out for number one, a trickster—a cheat—a fraud, womanizing, gone, neglectful—detached from fathering, and self-indulgent. I was more like my teachers—thoughtful, critically alert and sensitive to the plight of others.
Teaching has not been easy though. My most sublime teaching experience was a school situated in the bad part of town. Working there I felt like I was in a war in a third-world country. The students were deprived, cantankerous and dangerous. Some of the teachers were too. I remember one of my first days there. This young “hot” black teacher was in the hallway with what seemed like teenage paparazzi surrounding her. When she accidentally dropped her keys on the floor and no one raced to immediately pick them up, she barked at them as if they were her property: “Pick that up!” But one of her young male fans kicked them down the hallway. “I ought to cuss you out!” She yelled at him like he was her brute. I thought to myself— someone’s been niggerized.
I’m now a graduate student empowered with voice and choice; thus, I’m still as argumentative and as talkative as I was in kindergarten and in my sister’s classroom on our front porch—yet I’m no longer angry or resentful of my classmates. I voiced my opinion that day bluntly and maybe even a bit brusquely. But, as a proponent of de-niggerization, I believe our voice is our most cherished human prerogative. In his narrative, Frederick Douglass informs us that if we’re niggerized “a still tongue makes a wise head” since niggerization’s modus operandi is the proliferation of fear, inertia and impossibility. Cornel West explains that we’re de-niggerized “we follow the better angels of our nature and we honestly and compassionately confront the realities we would like to ignore or deny, like the American institution of white- supremacy.” He declares that “we must never forget that when this grand intellectual forum was established, the precious U.S. Constitution was, in practice, a pro-slavery document”—a niggerizing document.
As a final point, Frederick Douglass is the “representative” black American example of de-niggerization—Douglass teaches that we too can rise of out mediocrity—we too can conjure up the courage required to rise—we too can summon the self-determination that enables us “to dissolve the…bands which…connect[s] [us] with [others].” We too can summon the strength to write our own narratives of ascent.
Like Douglass, now I advocate on behalf of others--I support high school students who like Margaret in Blume's novel don't always feel valued--they need a little bit of their teachers' time, attention and focus. One of my most brightest and brilliant students with the most magnificent smile and singing voice expressed to me in class the other day that he feels insignificant. As I passed him in the hallway later that day, I saw that he was smiling as usual and he seemed as happy as ever. I stopped him and I looked into his eyes and I told him over and over and over that he matters and that someone important cares--and in an instant I knew he had ascended out of the narcissism of nothing and into the of significance of something.
Works Cited
Bryant, Lizbeth A. Voice As Process. Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc. 2005
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave. Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.
Gates, Henry Louis. Figures in Black. Oxford University Press, 1987.
Murray, Albert. The Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture. Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1970
Rich, Adrienne. “Beyond the Personal: Theorizing a Politics of Location in Composition Research.” Cross Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. 2nd ed. Revised and updated. Victor Villanueva. National Council of Teachers of English, 2003. 523
Oakeshott, Michael. “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind.” Cross Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. 2nd ed. Revised and updated. Victor Villanueva. National Council of Teachers of English, 2003. 523
Stepto, Robert. From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative. University of Illinois Press, 1979
West, Cornel. Democracy Matters. The Penguin Press, 2004
West, Cornel. The Cornel West Reader. Civitas Books, 1999
West, Cornel. “Niggerization.” Atlantic Monthly Nov. 2007: 20-20
