Things Just Ain’t the Same: African Americans, Progress Made, and Work To Be Done

Dennis Sanders

Dennis is the pastor of a small Protestant congregation outside St. Paul, MN and also a part-time communications consultant. A native of Michigan, you can check out his writings over on Medium and subscribe to his Substack newsletter on religion and politics called Polite Company.  Dennis lives in Minneapolis with his husband Daniel.

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5 Responses

  1. LTL FTC says:

    This is a really impressive, even-handed article. Ta-Nehisi Coates, who isn’t mentioned here, was the first mainstream Afro-Pessimist of the current generation, IMO. His ability to perform black pain and hopelessness for white audiences defined a style that is widely copied.

    What I find really fascinating is how Afro-Pessimism fit in so seamlessly with white woman self-help: “the work” (against racism or wrinkles or not-having-it-all) is always a losing battle, but one you’re obliged to fight anyway, because what kind of monster are you, anyway?

    The election (the Democratic primary specifically) showed a yawning gap between the moderation and optimism
    of the black electorate writ large and the upwardly-mobile white women for whom activists, academics and other grant-seekers perform their pessimism.Report

    • LTL FTC in reply to LTL FTC says:

      Finally got around to reading the linked New Yorker article, and sure enough Coates was mentioned.

      What I really want to know is this: is Afro-Pessimism actually for a black audience? So many people in that article – Wilderson, Coates, hooks, most of the Cohambee River Collective – have CVs that do not show a reliance on black audiences.Report

  2. Pinky says:

    “But things have changed for the better. But it is hard for people to admit this and I don’t know why.”

    My 2 cents: to admit this is to be seen as breaking trust. As long as there is any discrimination, loyalty is valued. To say that things are getting better is to imply that there are some black people who deserve their situation.Report

  3. Doctor Jay says:

    I’m a bit older than you Dennis, and I watched many of the same things you are describing. Which means I was a bit puzzled by afropessimism when I encountered it (with Ta-Nehisi Coates and other black writers).

    How I understand it now is as an emotional reality – a feeling of helplessness. It’s not something to “agree” or “disagree” with. The question is more whether you feel it, and how much, and in what situations.

    I can relate to something about the situation of black people – not that I have it as bad, but I can relate. There are times when I know of a group that I think is pretty cool, they have something going on that I like, and it would be nice to hang with them and be part of it. And yet there are things in their group discourse that frame someone with my identity as Other, if not outright Enemy. Which makes hanging with them impossible.

    The human tendency to do this runs very deep. In Behave: The Biology of Human Beings at Their Worst and Best he describes how the hormone oxytocin works, and the implication that the tendency for humans to divide humanity in to Us and Them is very deeply embedded. We can mitigate it, but we probably can’t erase it.

    So, recognizing this means recognizing that integration will never be finished, it will never be complete. I can change forms, but will never end. The human tendency we are battling is too deep. So we have to manage this problem, we can’t cure it. Kind of like if you have MS, like my daughter does. (I don’t mean to say being black in America is worse or better than having MS, just that it’s a similar situation).

    So yeah, that’s “pessimistic”. It took me the longest time to understand what Coates was driving at, but I think this is what it was. He can speak for himself, of course, in words that are usually better than mine. I wish he would. I miss his blog and the Golden Horde so much.Report

  4. North says:

    Yeah the extremist positions on both sides make no sense at all. Progress has been made on a myriad of civil rights issues including racism. Pointing at the progress that has been made doesn’t justify pretending racism is gone and ignoring the progress that has been made doesn’t justify the existence of the dumber forms of CRT nonsense.Report