Re: [Marxism] FWD Strom Thurmond black child/a friend of mine

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

Here's a piece I wrote following the news about Thurmond,
reminded me of a friend of mine:

I write on the message boards of sites dedicated to
(*****************) collectors. I got bit by the (******* bug)
a few years ago; there are million of (*********) sold on the
Internet, and many discussion boards.

A few are online magazines really, and have off-topic boards where subjects 
other than (**********) are discussed.
I've frequented several of these sites over the years, and
right now I'm the administrator on one site and moderate a literary forum on 
another. It's basically a man's world, I'm often the only woman and perhaps 
the only black person who regularly posts. The off-topic boards often go up in
flames on issues of politics and race, and after 9/11 some
ground down to a halt for hours, paralyzed with ugliness.
It is in this environment that I met Willie B. Pencil. (name changed) 

Willie B. Pencil is known throughout the English speaking online (*****)
world as a troll, troublemaker, shit starter, twisted, pompous, racist, 
prick. He dominated the atmosphere on the boards with his daily provocations 
and 
was banned from more
than one site, eventually I banned him from one myself.
He'd write proudly that he hailed from a long line of
plantation owners that went back to the arrival of the
Spanish on the Florida shores on which he lived.

He is a prodigious writer and storyteller and loved to show
off his classical education, and shock the group about his
love for the segregated South in which he had grown up, til
some northern liberal type would have a fit and a fight
would start. 

Willie disappeared from the boards for a while and we learned that he'd had 
been laid low by a stroke, a bad one. Paralyzed on the right side of his body, 
his wife and mistress (both of whom he'd written about) didn't think he'd make 
it. But he did and he returned to the boards, much to the chagrin of many, 
typing with one hand and misspelling a lot. Nothing had changed in his subject 
matter, but there was something different - I could tell he wanted to die. 

After a dismal post in which it seemed he was ready to drag
his broken body into the darkness of an everlasting night,
for some reason, I felt compelled to reach through
cyberspace and try to drag him back from the abyss, back to some kind of 
light. Astonished that I would write to him, depressed by his new limitations 
and 
riddled with meds, he
wrote dark emails to me of the horrors in his mind that had
been there since Vietnam. 

He began to write to me about the South, about his growing up, about how the 
peculiar institution of slavery had left its mark on his small Florida town 
and his life.  We wrote day after day about the complexities of the segregated
south, of people bound by love, terror, dependency, and power. He was curious 
about life in the North.

He told me secrets, one of them being that he a black child
- he, a white man of impeccable rotary club reputation and
Old South family lines, who each fall used his love of
technology for the modern cotton harvest, who ranted and
raged about race.  He had this child and few in his life ever knew.

She was almost my age; born of the secret fumbling between he and his 
girlfriends maid when he was young. She was his firstborn child, yet not even 
his 
wife of decades knew of her, nor his children, nor most anyone in the town - 
and 
those who had known were now dead. He feared that even today that if her 
existence became known, he would be
disgraced, though he didn't doubt that some of his cousins and rotary 
brothers had a love of brown flesh that left a child in it's wake for them too. 

He began to tell the story, email by email, of his young
dalliance and how he took licorice and diaper money from his allowance to her 
preacher father as a way to show some of small support for the child. He soon 
went back to his more public love affairs, and in a soap operatic turn of 
events, the black girl died and the rich white girlfriend for whom she had 
worked 
raised the child. The little girl received an impeccable education with 
travel to Europe, never knowing that the âold friendâ of the woman who had 
raised 
her was really her father, and over the years Mike would send money through 
this woman to his dark child.

The child was now a woman with a child of her own, and had come back to live 
in a nearby town. He was distraught and asked me what to do; he longed to tell 
her about her mother and the problems of living in that time, but he didn't 
know what to say, for this young lady was not too pleased when she found out 
about having a white, âredneckâ father.  

Email by email I/ we conversated: about blacks and whites,
about war, about bi-racial children like mine. He wrote
story after story about growing up in on the white site of
Jim Crow, incidents ordinary and profound.  He was not as
âracistâ as I thought, he never treated me with the bitter
half-restraint of those on the boards railing at the
political correctness of having to address me with a
modicum of respect.

He more often than not rebelled against the chauvinism of âNorthern 
liberalsâ
 on the message boards, who he fucked with incessantly for their apparent 
refusal to believe there was anyone with a brain in the South. We argued and 
debated, wrote hard and difficult emails about how to face the truth of the 
inequalities of his past and how to build a relationship with his child. I told 
things about black women her age, even about the music she might like, though 
he 
couldn't for the life of him understand why.  

He began to send me photos of his daughter, a dark girl
with his face clearly imprinted on hers, and told me of
their meetings on a beach or in a park â hiding in plain
social sight - and of his first time playing with his cafÃ
au lait granddaughter. He finally told his mother on her
dying bed about his black child, she was either to sick or
too old to care any more; he has not yet had the courage to
tell his wife and family. 

I've come to view Willie as a sort of cyber-father; my husband even accepting 
his in-law like place in our life. Willie raged against Muslims after 9/11, 
yet I call him Baba,
an Arabic/African word for papa or teacher, an irony he doesn't seem to mind. 
He sent me a fine digital camera, saying he could no longer work it with one 
hand, but I know he sent it because I too have become his black daughter, the 
one above the Mason Dixon line.  

He refers to himself as a cripple, but he now wants to stay in the land of 
the living. He doesn't effect public policy like Strom Thurmond, nor stand in 
governmental hypocrisy
over the US racial divide. But he is certainly respected in the world in 
which he dwells, and has had to come to grips with the product of his loins and 
his lies. 

I am grateful for the tiny corners of the world that my life has allowed me 
to inhabit, to see the world through his eyes and to allow him to see life 
through mine. One
day, I may post one of Willie's stories, some of his pieces, like about the 
Jim Crow days, are really fine. 

(*****************)

Reply

You remain the writer I aspire to. The purity of heart in describing Willie 
's world, as you allowed him to enter your soul to discover why "he is" - was, 
and as all flesh must do - confront the past and present simultaneously to 
become, is a lesson in basic American morality. Yet I remain firm in my life 
time 
resolve to never visit Florida, the only Southern State I have never entered 
and refuse to enter. The idea of Florida causes pain and I have no living 
memory of this pain and feel very foolish about something I cannot explain. It 
has 
something to do with my real father, whose history was denied me. Tears swell 
in my eyes and I sit hear feeling very stupid about a past I have lived and 
never experienced. 

The events have been forgotten - my memory stammers but my soul bears 
witness. 
 
This is an unbelievable story and all I can do is think of my own pain. How 
selfish. Yet horrible believable, brutally real and who we have, are and will 
be tomorrow. Willie brought the noise and his most personal pain that is our 
shame and it hurts. Here is the essence of what in yesteryear was called the 
African American National Colonial Question. The AANCQ - this dry theory 
concept 
sound rather ridiculous in the face of the actuality that is Willie  . . . and 
you. 
 
I understand why you sought him out. Eye see the higher moral ground that has 
been who you have been and continue to become. The first black women 
President of the (********) Union and at age three the one to become forty-six 
years 
later Willie's daughter. Men of the South have always been your father because 
Joe Sr., dad, was South. 
 
This piece fucked me up. Everything is in here. Rebels, Yankees, rednecks, 
niggas, damn Yankees - Yankees damned and Rebels suppressed. I have not 
forgotten Joe Jr. - your white son, whose very white whiteness I could never 
see 
because he sprung forth from your most pleasing brown secret and perhaps 
because I 
happened to like his father. I remember your pain and it is a pain that I 
forget was within me. The pain born when visiting Joe Jr. and he called you 
"hey 
lady" to protect himself in front of this school friends who could not grasp 
him having a black mother. 
 
My memory stammers but my soul bears witness. Joe Jr. father's - your former 
lover, is "my babies mother'' turned inside out. Remember when you washed your 
babies daddy Chrysler check and he called you a "stupid bitch," which you 
relayed to me during my general stop by to drink from his liquor cabinet?  When 
I 
did not side with your anger and asked why you did not check pants pockets 
before washing them you attitude was basically, "Do I look like the 
mutherfucking maid and housecleaner . . . I'm a goddamn proletarian leader and 
badder that 
both you mutherfuckers put together." We laughed until we cried that evening 
- more than twenty years ago. 
 
I cannot write his name on line - although he would not object, because one 
has a right to privacy. And I want to send all of this to Marxline with names 
changed to protect the innocent. 
 
And I am stuck writing dry ass Marxist presentations that drive me up the 
fucking wall. 
 
I am laughing my ass off - crying and smiling, cause U da Man Baby, the Negro 
National Colonial Question bundled up in one nice package. No one calls it 
the NNCQ anymore - just African American Liberation and Social Revolution. 
 
See what I mean about dry ass Marxist formulations? 


Melvin P. 
 
 

_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism