Free Dreamer by Charles Johnson Page B

Negroes. We’re outcasts. And outcasts can’t never create a community. I been to a lot of places and it’s the same everywhere. We’re despised worldwide. You ever thought we might be second-class citizens because generally we
are
second-rate?”
    I almost slammed on the brakes. “Excuse me?”
    â€œYou heard me right. You got to face up to the fact of black—or human—mediocrity damned near across the board. Outside of entertainment and athletics (just another kind of entertainment), we don’t count for shit, boy. Ain’t you never felt that being a Negro means you always got the guilty suspicion you done something wrong but you ain’t sure what? And don’t blame it on bigotry. Nobody believes that tired old excuse anymore. What you got to face, Bishop—hey, watch the road, you’re swerving—is the possibility that we are, as a tribe, descended from the first of two brothers whose best just couldn’t hack it. And, it wasn’t
his
fault. See, if you check that Bible of yours, you’ll find the world didn’t begin with love. It kicked off with killing and righteous hatred and
ressentiment
. Envy, I’m saying,
is
the Negro disease. We got the stain, the mark. Nothing else really explains our situation, far as I can see.”
    It took all my strength to keep from driving right off the road. “That’s insane, it’s certifiably mad—”
    â€œI been that, sure. Got the papers to prove it. I
was
crazy as a coot after what happened to Juanita and her kids. But not now. I’ve been on the
outside
long enough to know that hatred is healthy—even holy—and that until you step away, or they cast you out, you can’t see nothin’ clearly. Truth is, being on the outside is a blessing. Naw, it’s a necessity, if you got any creative spark at all. You know Husserl’s
epoché
, what that does? No”—he squinted at me—“you probably don’t. And that’s too bad, ’cause the way I see it, the problem with all the fuckin’ anointed and somebody like Abel—his name, according to Philo, means ‘one who refers all things to God’—is that they’re sheep. That’s right, part of the obedient, tamed, psalm-singing herd. They make me sick, every one of ’em. See, I ain’t never been good at group-think. You ever notice how safe and dull and correct they all are? Howtimid! And unoriginal? How vulgar and materialistic? Call ’em what you want, Christians or Communists or Cultural Nationalists, but I call ’em sheep. Or zombies—that’s what Malcolm X called the Nation of Islam, you know, after he broke away from Elijah,
his
surrogate daddy. There’s not a real individual in the bunch. No risk-takers, Bishop. No iconoclasts. Nobody who thinks the unthinkable, or is cursed (or blessed) with bearing the cross of a unique, singular identity … except for him.” He paused, kneading his lower lip between his forefinger and thumb; he was thinking, I guessed, of the minister. “Individuality … That scares ’em. In Japan, they got a saying: the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. You see what I’m saying? What’s the goal after integration? Shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue? Is that what so many civil rights workers died for? Me, I ain’t studyin’ ’bout integrating with no run-of-the-mill white folks, or black ones either. But that’s how you get to belong, boy—by fitting in and mumbling the party line and keeping your head down and losing your soul, but I think I can save you from that if you let me.”
    I couldn’t believe he was saying these things; I wondered if he meant them (which I couldn’t believe) or if he was playing with me simply to see what I’d say. I mean, the minister had instructed me to help
him
. At that moment I couldn’t see him as mad. No, I saw him as wicked.