I’ll be upfront, I do not know much about fascism. With the election of Donald Trump, we saw an increase in the amount of people fighting against fascism in America. There were so many people afraid of the rise of a fascistic movement in America that they came together in an antifascist movement and were deemed “antifa”. While America has not yet become a complete fascist state, in its colonialism, imperialism, and treatment of Black people, America is well on its way. In knowing this, one would assume that Black people would be at odds with fascism.
However, while reading How Bigger Was Born, Wright talks about how Black Americans praised different fascist movements. On Page 440, Wright writes “I’ve even heard Negroes, in moments of anger and bitterness praise what Japan is doing in China, not because they believed in oppression (being objects of oppression themselves), but because they would suddenly sense how empty their lives were when looking at the dark faces of Japanese generals… I’ve even heard Negroes say that maybe Hitler and Mussolini are all right; that maybe Stalin is all right. They did not say this out of any intellectual comprehension of the forces at work in the world, but because they felt that these men ‘did things,’ a phrase which is charged with more meaning than the mere words imply””.
Wright is writing that the Black people who supported fascist movements, were doing so only because they lacked an understanding of what was actually happening in those movements and that they felt those taking part in fascist movements were doing things and not allowing things to happen to them. However, it is unfair of Wright to assume this. To say that Black people were unable to comprehend what was happening in fascist movements and only supported them is naïve or downright insulting.
Mark Christian Thompson, author of Black Fascisms, would agree. During the time period that Wright is talking about, there were Black people who believed in and supported fascism. Thompson included Richard Wright (interestingly enough), Zora Neale Hurston, Marcus Garvey, George Schuyler, and Claude McKay in the mix.
All these people were well written, well spoken, and well researched individuals of the time. Would they be considered unable to comprehend what fascism really was? To go further, Marcus Garvey is known for saying “‘We [Black people] were the first Fascists. We had disciplined men, women and children in training for the liberation of Africa. The black masses saw that in this extreme nationalism lay their only hope and readily supported it. Mussolini copied fascism from me but the Negro reactionaries sabotaged it’” (Gilroy, 2000).
Fascism is always a looming threat for Black people. However, that doesn’t exempt them from supporting fascist movements and fascist beliefs. Even today, you can see parts of fascism in conversations in Black barbershops or in the hotep movement. People can hear the painting of Black people as the one true race, the ones chosen by God, and the ones with the right to demonize other races.
It is not that Black people do not understand fascism and simply idolize the power fascists have. It is that there are Black people who believe in the tenets of fascism and would like to see Black people be fascists and rule over their oppressors, which James Baldwin sort of touches on in Everybody’s Protest Novel. On page 17, Baldwin writes “What is meant by a new society is one in which inequalities will disappear, in which vengeance will be exacted; either there will be no oppressed at all, or the oppressed and the oppressor will change places.”. James Baldwin illustrates a piece of what some Black people are thinking when it comes to freedom. It’s to either become the oppressor or seek equality for all. For many of those who seek to become the oppressor, fascism is an avenue for that.
Author: rbarnes
An Argument For Empathy
Something that I’ve learned in my Psychology classes is that it’s hard for children who grow up in impoverished and tough conditions to develop certain social skills (including empathy) because they are thrown into a situation where they have to adapt for survival. Another reason why it’s hard for children who grow up in impoverished conditions to learn empathy is because sometimes their parents are often out of the home or are simply despondent due to their own fight with poverty.
As such, they don’t have the first social connection to mirror empathy with.
Then, you have to add on top of that, the racialized part of poverty. Not only are you adapting for survival in poverty, you are also adapting to survive racism. The home is not the only place where you’re supposed to learn empathy. It’s in daily interactions, with friends, with teachers, with strangers. The matter of the fact is, if you’re Black, you are often not shown empathy. There’s often no empathy in your classrooms, in meetings with strangers, and sometimes, there’s no empathy in your friendships either.
Bigger Thomas represents all of that. He is a poor Black person on the Southside of Chicago. Although we do not know much about his mother, we can infer from their interactions that while she is warm in certain circumstances (if you could call someone making you breakfast warm), she is also harsh on and critical of Bigger. Vera has no sympathy or empathy for Bigger and oftentimes disparages him and his capabilities. The only person in Bigger’s family who treats Bigger with something akin to empathy (if idolatization can be called empathy) is Buddy. In Bigger’s friendships with Gus, Jack, and G.H., there is no empathy for Bigger. Instead there is fear and the mutual connection of robbing people. Finally, in Bigger’s interactions with white people, there is sometimes sympathy but not empathy.
In transformative justice, there is the question of how do we go about healing in a way that is survivor centered, even when the survivor of harm has caused harm themselves. In most of the books I’ve read for my Prisons and Policing class and Transformative Justice class (both taught by Pam Butler), it’s been seen that there are survivors who have committed harm who still get the help that they need (as in they aren’t turned away). For example, a woman was seeking help through a transformative justice process because she had been sexually abused by a family member. Only for her to realize and admit that when she was a teenager, she sexually assaulted her own sister. Those running the process did not pack up their bags because she was still a person with a great need who wanted to get better and better her life. This is something that we need to understand when we talk about Bigger.
What Richard Wright is asking us to do is essentially flex our empathy muscles. So many people say that they ‘empathize’ with those who live in poverty and with Black people. Yet, that ‘empathy’ always seems to run out at some point. Sometimes over simple things. Often, once a poor Black person commits a crime (or is accused of committing a crime) people take off their ‘empathy’ hats and say “Oh, they’re a criminal, they deserve all the racism and harm that comes towards them”. This strips Black people of their personhood and their deserving of empathy even when the person has not actually committed the crime they are accused of. Knowing this, people who are deemed criminal deserve empathy. To be more specific, impoverished Black people deserve empathy, even when they are deemed criminal. That’s a hard thing to say, especially when it seems like certain people are the embodiment of evil itself. However, if we strip impoverished Black people deemed criminal of their empathy, we are punching downwards. We are not challenging the system that dehumanizes and punishes impoverished Black people. In fact, we are feeding into it.