DISCLAIMER:
Let me start of by saying, before I unintentionally offend my liberal white friends (again), that when I am referring to “whiteness,” I am referring to those that willingly and knowingly submit to what it means to embody a white identity in America, a nation founded on the expropriation of Black slaves to build this nation, a nation that had KKK supremacists and Jim Crow laws, a nation where black men with voting rights were seen as ⅗ of a person, a nation where it was illegal for a blacks and whites to get married, a nation were separate and equal meant truly just meant separate, a nation where a civil rights movement was needed in order to prove that black lives matter, a nation where when you say black lives matter, someone responds with all lives matter. With this being the attributes of our nation, I am coming to say that being pro-black does not equate to being anti-white.
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Jean-Paul Sartre (June 21st, 1905 – April 15th, 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. Apart from his renowned contribution to twentieth century French existentialist philosophy, Sartre is also known for his Marxist, anti-colonialist politics; such is evident in his Préface, “Orphée Noir,” to Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (1948)
He opens up “Orphée Noir,” by interrogating: “When you removed the gag that was keeping these black mouths shut, what were you hoping for? That they would sing you praises? Did you think when they raised themselves up again, you would find adoration in the eyes of the heads that our fathers had forced to bend down to the very ground?”
Sartre’s “Orphée Noir,” was written upon Senghor’s request and seeks to speak in solidarity with the Black population in tandem with their experience in white social-settings. Through using European imaginaries and an understanding of colonialism, natives, slaves and immigrants, Sartre recounts the experiences of Francophone Blacks. Sartre details that Blacks are critical of Europeans namely because Europe is a memory that taunts them. Through his analysis of the black condition, Sartre illustrates Négritude in a similar light of Aimé Césaire; the Black man uses his oppression to reinvent the self. Through the epistemic violence of European logic and reason, the Black man is shaped by oppression and subjugation. For this reason Sartre suggests that the Black man's ultimate goal is to redefine himself and discover the beauty of Afro-Caribbean and African cultures. Through this process of rediscovery, the black man will be able to reverse the subjugating effects of the French language and utilizes the language as a positive force to bring about a negritudist cultural expression, primarily through poetry
Sartre’s analysis of race consciousness can be read in tandem with Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like (1972), in which Biko aims to elevate Black Consciousness in South Africa. For Biko, “the philosophy of Black Consciousness expresses group pride and the determination by the Blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self” (Biko, 68). In other words, Black Consciousness exists beyond a Black/white binary. One must awaken consciously so that the centuries of deliberate oppression can no longer subjugate the Black man. The grass-roots build-up of Black Consciousness will allow Blacks to assert themselves and stake their rightful claim. On the same vein, Sartre considers Négritude as a step in the progression of revolutionary consciousness that will allow the Black man to transcend, redirects the gaze to Europe, and become their essence.
Biko makes strong remarks concerning complacent white liberals who are against the subjugation of Blacks, but make no efforts to use their privilege to change the conditions of Blacks in South Africa. Biko claims,
They are quick to quote statistics on how big the defence budget is. They know exactly how effectively the police and the army can control protesting Black hordes---peaceful or otherwise. They know to what degree the Black world is infiltrated by the security police. Hence they are completely convinced of the impotence of the Black people. Why then do they persist in talking to the Blacks? Since they are aware that the problem in this country is white racism, why do they not address themselves to the white world? Why do they insist on talking to Blacks? (Biko, 65)
In other words, white liberals fail at solidarity because they fail to address the white world. The white liberal will agree with the Black man that they face copious hardships and impediments under the imposed imperial regime, but will not turn to the white man to call them out for their actions. The critique Biko directs to liberal white South Africans can be used to understand the anti-colonialist social and literary work of Sartre.
Unlike the liberal South African, Sartre’s “Orphée Noir” is as an act of solidarity for the Black population. Sartre nuances the Black essence not for a Black audience, but for a European audience that has been marked by historical amnesia.
In a word, I am talking now to white men, and I should like to explain to them what black men already know: why it is necessarily through a poetic experience that the black man, in his present condition, must first become conscious of himself; and, inversely, why black poetry in the French language is, in our time, the only great revolutionary poetry (Sartre, 16).
Despite Sartre’s essentialization of Black struggle, he actually makes the effort to directly address the white world (or white men as he says) and relay his Marxist, anti-colonial sentiments. In catering to European thought, Sartre’s preface is a powerful tool that not only allows the European to understand themselves and their complacent role in the subjugation of Blacks. Sartre’s support for the Négritude movement in “Orphée Noir” aligns him as a strong ally to the Black diaspora. Even so, he knows that his solidarity does not mean he can understand the Black experience through a first hand account (Sartre, 35). Rather, Sartre uses his voice to address the European for their colonial neurosis and their role in the subjugation of Blacks.
A CALL TO ACTION
Although this is highly representative of a male gaze and is contextualized within the anti-colonial period of the 20th century, my purpose in speaking on Sartre and Biko is to show that black oppression continues to be a global phenomenon. My request for all white liberals who wish to see the global liberation of black people, please use your voice to uplift our community. If you have financial freedom, please help the POC around you in need, especially grass roots efforts making substantial impacts on the ground. We are combatting centuries of epistemic, pedagogic, institutional, colonial and capitalist violence. I have included a list of Bail Funds you can donate to. And if you are protesting, please put yourself in between a black person and the police, THEY WILL NOT HURT YOU! And if they do it's the price of war.
RESOURCES
- Donating to Protest Bail Funds
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