She was a white girl
with Asian eyes
& she hated herself
& she hated the image she presented to herself
& she hated the reality that she kept
hidden from herself &
she hated the fact that she hid who she was
so she could be who she appeared to be
& she hated her appearance & the fact that
she wanted to appear not as she was but how others
saw her & she hated how others saw her
& she hated why she was the way she was &
wasn't & she hated thinking about it & her & others
all the goddamn time & what her parents & her boyfriends &
her girlfriends thought about the fact of her endless hatreds & fears
but she couldn't help herself & didn't want need nor trust anyone else to help
her

You see
she was a white girl
with Asian eyes

...................................................................................................

Race is a Myth But Racism Isn't

It doesn't matter if "most white people" are or are not
racists. The simple fact is that there are racist politicians
and racist doctors and racist lawyers and racist judges and racist policemen/women
and racist engineers and racist accountants and racist teachers and racist bank officials
and racist architects and racist salesmen and women and racist realtors and racist landlords
and racist computer geeks and racist secretaries and racist businessmen and racist
financiers and racist professors and racist military personnel and racist nurses and racist
book and magazine publishers and racist editors and racist stockholders and racist
philosophers and racist scientists and racist artists and racist writers and racist athletes and
racist journalists and racist murderers and racist rapists and racist comedians and racist
producers and racist directors and racist playwrights and racist musicians and racist civil
servants and racist department stores and racist hospitals and racist schools and racist
media and racist governments and racist banks and racist corporations and racist
neighborhoods and even racist children

The truth is that racism as philosophy, as public and private policy as institutional
structure as law as historical custom as economic and cultural value as social instrument as
behavioral model determines and overdetermines exactly what black people can and
cannot do in American society (all "individual successes" notwithstanding) In other words
racism allows "whites" (and those relatively few members of "other" ethnic groups in
positions of authority who deign to exercise said power) the opportunity to discriminate
against, exclude, exploit, oppress, attack, ridicule, undermine, bully, terrorize, annihilate,
and otherwise destroy black people and then justify and rationalize it by falsely & viciously
claiming that said people are intellectually, culturally, socially and morally inferior to them.
These monumental lies are known as HISTORY in the United States a nation made up
entirely of land stolen thru centuries of warfare against the Native populations erroneously
referred to in this bogus history as "Indians", and Mexicans who once owned all of what is
now referred to as Texas, California, Arizona, and NEW MEXICO. The names of these
"states" are of course words taken directly from the indigenous populations of the
Mexican nation and their Spanish colonizers. This means among many other things that
while race is a myth racism isn't and the various ethnic, cultural and linguistic nationalities
that constitute the so-called "United States" are not made up of biological and genetic
phantoms known by the emptyheaded pseudoscientists as "races" but are actually very real
historical and contemporary recipients of the political, economic, social, cultural, religious,
and military tyranny of Racism which as I said is not a myth like the root word from which
it is strangely taken but a very real, always present, and always deadly reminder that while
words and their contingent identities may come and go the meanings and the myriad uses
to which they may be put remain to affect our lives long after the words themselves have
ceased to define what their mythological inventors insisted was the 'truth' behind their lies

    (From the forthcoming There's A Paddle For Every Ass in the Universe:
      New & Selected Poems  by Kofi Natambu, 2000. )
 

...............................................................................................
 

Why American Movies are so Bad

First there's always a white man
he is always the hero
we are expected to feel sympathetic to
even if he is a self-pitying
murderer who thinks he is
superior to everyone he encounters
especially any black man who might mosy
into the frame waiting
to die a horrible death of some
kind, any kind while
dispensing advice & dutiful encouragement
to the white man
as usual the black man
makes love to no one
has no friends or family who look
like him and exists alone & lonely
in an all-white Universe
even when the film is shot on location in New York or
Los Angeles all the black people
Puerto Ricans Asians and Mexicans are airbrushed
out I mean there are no other people who look
different from the white man even though there are thousands
of extras walking by at almost all times throughout
the whole damn movie since this is where they live for real
And the white women?
they spend all their time flipping their hair back & forth while existing
only as the sexual helpmates and/or victims of
the murderous yet sympathetic and complex rage
of the white man who is trying to figure out
why he is not given the respect that he so obviously
deserves even though the white man in the movies
is just like the white man in real life:
He owns every goddamn thing has all the money power and status
it is possible to have and can & does fuck anything/anyone he chooses while
everyone else is consigned to either fucking him or not getting properly fucked at
all and just like in life the white man complains about
everyone else not fully understanding him even with all his $$ and education
and insight and sensitive but tough attempts to 'reach out' to the downtrodden
& the stupid and the lazy and the female and the poor and the one black person he
most knows and loves in all the World and in the movies just like he so often does in
real life he the white hero sometimes trades places
with the white villian (but never with any black villain who is after all too dark and
forboding and horrific) but sometimes like I said the white hero does trade places with the
white villain(s) just for the existential kick of it, you know to test his philosophical theories
of Zen and the 'art of trading places with yr enemies' game the way Nick Cage & John
Travolta did in FACEOFF while doing what whiteboys in movies do all the time and
sometimes even in reel real life & that is play hip sexy niggas excuse me I mean Negroes in
whiteface since blackface is no longer considered a legitimate & acceptable way to do it
anymore the way it was done in The Birth of a Nation & The Jazz Singer & Swing Time
& The Ghost Story & hundreds of other films during the first half century of the American
cinema's historical existence
Anyway just like in FACEOFF the whiteboy gets to play his endless variations on the hip
sexy dangerous yet cool and charismatic & under control at all times even while fucking
eating smoking drinking and thinking nigga, I mean BLACKMAN since nigger is no
longer acceptable in polite and oh so civilized circles & nigga is something niggers say to
and at each other in rap songs & videos and sometimes, well maybe often, on the streets.
But unlike in real life the hip sexy cool I'm the shit baby even when I'm not "come on
pretty mama let's get it on" brotherman persona that Norman Mailer dubbed (and I do
mean dubbed) THE WHITE NEGRO way back when Kerouac a big BIG movie fan and
parttime white negro himself talked about his brownsugar mistress & beautifulblackbitch
muse in the Subterraneans which was yes a movie too with I believe Liz Taylor or at least
someone who looked like Liz Taylor and the brownsugar baby (just like the one in the
Rolling Stones song & yeah aren't the Rolling Stones white negroes as well? gave the
parttime white Negro the strength to write still another o woe is me & the world type
novel and remember that flick that Mick the Trick Jagger made called PERFORMANCE
playing if I'm not mistaken both a white negro hipster dude and a sexy but aloof ice queen
white girl who is sorta like Grace Kelly but colder & Harder in Little Richard type makeup
Anyway Kerouac's babe was named Mardou & she embodied everything the movie
obsessed French Canadien writer couldn't or didn't have while walking the negro streets
not at dawn like in Ginsberg's Jazzy little epic but "in lilac evening" while watching the
"dusky negroes" on dark seductive porches in Denver of all places expressing all that hip
sweet existential raucous yet cool daddy-o negro savoir faire or some such nonsense or as
the whiteboys today say wearing their baseball caps backward the way blackboys used to
back in 1984 but haven't since the whiteboys started doing it ten to fifteen years later
trailing behind on the trendy cultural tip like always "YOU THE MAN!' but anyway just
like in the movies where Kerouac & Travolta & Cage & (Matt) Dillon & just about every
whiteboy actor trying to act like James Dean & Marlon Brando who both got their for
public consumption personas from watching and imitating the likes of Miles Davis &
Thelonious Monk & Charles Mingus & Dexter Gordon & Charlie Parker I mean the real
BIRD not the reel bird that Clint 'Another White Negro' Eastwood clipped the mighty
wings of by making the great Forest Whitaker into just another fat black junkie with a
horn & passive aggressive whitegirl but this isn't a digression at all like they say on
William Buckley's constipated show that comes on at 2am on a Sunday
This is the real reel deal that I'm discoursing on here & anyway I wonder what happened
to Mardou & knowing how opportunist & condescending even Kerouac could be about
women I mean 'the female' he probably used her real name the way that old sissy Willie 'I
don't need a white negro persona because I became an old wise greybeard Negro once I
left Harvard' Burroughs did who I'm told once killed his wife or is it 'his female' while
playing just like they do in the movies William Tell & just like all whiteboys both in the
movies & in real reel life spent no hardtime in prison for his misdeed(s) which unlike in the
movies & especially in real life any negro, nigger, nigga, blackboy/man would spend the
rest of his life in prison for if death row didn't finish him off first
And you know American movies are getting even weirder with good black actors like
Samuel L. Jackson (Yes, the L stands for LEROY) now playing White Negroes
themselves only this time in authentic blackface & not in that oldtimey fake blackface that
Griffith & Jolson & the original Amos & Andy used in both the movies and strangely
enough on radio
So now in the eternal but always temporary name of "keeping it reel real" reel/real niggas,
negroes, colored people, blackpeoples can now enter the pantheon of the golden light that
is the cinema and pretend right along with everyone else that not only white is right but
that it's all about the Benjamins even for losers who only have a few Washingtons in their
pockets but what the hell this movie we call life is reel real even if no hip sexy cool
blackguy ever fucks the whitegirl and the blackgirl remains a fantasy icon locked away in
every dream we ever saw onscreen while waiting for someone onscreen and off to save us
from ourselves

Kofi Natambu is a writer, cultural critic and university lecturer.
He is the author of the poetry volumes The Melody Never Stops
and Intervals as well as editor of the literary anthology
Nostalgia For the Present. He was also former editor of the
literary magazine Solid Ground: A New World Journal (1981-1987).
A native of Detroit, Michigan he lives and works in Oakland, California