Relg 102 Medium Post #4 -9/23

This week I had much less initial understanding of the material than I have so far because I as a white individual have not shared these experiences. While it is not hard for me to understand that it is much more challenging to be black in America than white like me, I as a white individual can not and will never be able to completely comprehend the extent of this challenge. Specifically, our materials discuss the parts of black life that do not get as much attention, namely the paradox that is the theme of “black death” that is present in black life. For these reasons, I dove into these materials with open eyes and ears and the intent of answering the question, what does it feel like to be black in America?

I initially found Sharpe’s “The Wake” to be confusing because she defined the wake in so many different ways. “Wake” is a word with multiple definitions and Sharpe uses this ambiguity as a jumping off point when redefining the word to fit the black life. This act of “redefining” ordinary words has been popularized by the BLM movement and Sharpe uses her piece to add to this tradition. She began to clear up her point by ultimately arguing a simple fact: blacks and whites live in two very different worlds and for black people in America, this world is called “the wake.” This “wake” is a way of verbalizing what it is like to live in the “afterlife of slavery.” This concept of the afterlife of slavery sparked my interrest, and I immediately thought of the religious afterlife. In most religions, what you do, how you act, and the choices you make in your life on Earth governs what your afterlife will look like. To expand on this metaphor, slavery is life, and the lack of opportunity and presence of inequality in the modern day is slavery’s afterlife. This ties in to Saidiya Hartman’s piece, when she writes, “No one else imagines anything better so it is left to [black women] to envision things… to not be defeated by defeat.” I found that this quote complemented Sharpe’s overall point that black people are at a disadvantage because slavery gave white people a head start. While I agree with this, I believe that there has been progress recently, at least now that there are more white allies for the black community than ever before and, as The Daily podcast points out, even though black people continue to be killed, now the common people are taking to the streets because they are no longer okay with this tradition. I as a white individual feel that it is wrong to urge black people to “keep fighting for equality” when I can never truly know how hard it is, but I do believe that they can continue the to redefining concepts by redefining what the “afterlife of slavery” truly looks like and to take control of what the white community attempted to use to keep them from catching up. This new “look” to the afterlife of slavery is explained in the Daily as an “other world” where black living matters.

Christina Sharpe’s piece demonstrated a multitude of connections to past discussions which helped to reinforce conclusions that we as a class have come to. For one, she defines the wake as, “the unfinished project of emancipation” which supports Du Bois’ argument that America’s black community has yet to reap the benefits of the freedom they earned. Sharpe also writes that, “people assume that, relative to whites, blacks feel less pain because they have faced more hardship… Because they are believed to be less sensitive to pain black people are forced to endure more pain.” This point was particularly heartbreaking and reminded me of the Pushout documentary that I watched for class last week. I think above all, it is disgusting that whites put black people through incredible torture and pain and then turned it around to use it for their own benefit, claiming that now black people have been trained to endure more pain and that their hurt is unacceptable because they should be strong enough now to take it.