406 – 435 Attica to closed society (old book 262-281)
Vincents text
Norsk Ny
dansk bog
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406 My journey has taught me that I can no longer hate any single person
or group or even class of people, not even the worst exploiters. If I said
that I hated the Rockefeller family, I’d quite simply be lying. Certainly
it’s true that Nelson Rockefeller ordered the massacre at Attica and murdered
41 inmates who were only demanding prison reform. But even though I was
present at the mass funeral and heard the armed Black Panthers in the church
shout “Death to Rockefeller! Jail the rich, free the poor!”, and even though
I knew several relatives among the weeping families, and even though I once
again saw the color of blood in the African-American flag ... yes, even then
I was not capable of hating Rockefeller. The longer I wandered as a vagabond in this system, the more I lost
the desire to ever again become a part of it. Everywhere the system had given
people a false face. The more distinctly these deformed masks outlined
themselves for me, the stronger was my urge to get behind them and look out
through the eye slits. It was never a beautiful sight—just hatred, fear, and
mistrust. I had no desire to become a part of that hatred. I learned it’s
much easier to hate and condemn than to understand. Hatred is based on simplified one-sided considerations and most people
are so absorbed in the pain of not being able to live up to the norms of
their milieu that it’s easier for them to reduce reality to symbols rather
than understand it. It’s far easier when reading a book like this one to hate
whites than to try and comprehend us because that way you avoid fighting that
part of the system in yourself. Not until we realize how we ourselves are a
part of the oppression can we understand, condemn, and change the forces that
dehumanize us all. I was able to survive outside the system because I always sought the
human being behind the false façade. But behind these façades I always saw
the defeat of love. The fewer the threads connecting people in a wholesome
society, the more petrified and impenetrable seemed the masks I had to
penetrate to survive. But even within this oppression, it’s possible to find
many shades of humanity. Even if love between people has been killed in this
system, we all know love can still shoot up through the asphalt whenever ...
wherever ... “There is no love like ghetto love”. After four years of vagabonding in the ghetto I ended up getting
married to it. Annie is the only woman I recall having taken an initiative
with. As she was sitting there in a restaurant in New York - irresistibly
beautiful - it was evident from our first glances that we needed each other.
Both easy victims: she knew nobody, having just returned from ten years of
exile in England to attend her mother’s funeral, and I was in one of my
depressed periods of vagabonding. We were both children of ministers and had
in different ways rebelled against our backgrounds. She was deeply moved by
my photos and wanted to help me publicize them. She had a strong literary
bent and a far greater intellectual breadth of view than I, so I soon became
very dependent on her to make the pieces in my puzzle fall into place. Annie had to a large degree freed herself in her exile from the
master-slave mentality which makes marriage almost insupportable for those
few unfortunate Americans who fall in love athwart the realities of the
closed system. For “intermarriage” is indeed a subversive act. Even liberals
grope for an answer when the question comes: “Would you want your daughter to
marry one’?” I usually found common segregationists starting conversations
with, “I don’t care whether people are white, black, purple, or green...” Ten
sentences later they would be sworn enemies of “intermarriage.” Yet until it
was prohibited in 1691, there were plenty of intermarriages between white and
black indentured servants, and prior to the reduction of blacks to slavery
the “poor white” hatred of them was unknown. In most other countries, even
post-slavery countries like Cuba and Brazil, there is nothing resembling the
fanaticism of Americans towards intermarriage. Although I come from a
conservative rural area I cannot recall having heard a single negative remark
in my childhood about the frequent international marriages of Danes to
African students. On the contrary I sensed a strong solidarity and even envy
towards those moving to distant lands. But in America no interracial marriage
can be viewed as simply a natural union. In Hollywood, black promoters wanted
to invest a lot of money to publicize my slideshow, but first they wanted me
to take out the section on my wife: “It destroys your message, makes you look
like just another liberal.” Many blacks and liberals will for the same reason
fall away in this chapter. A black woman was furious after seeing my
slideshow with photos of several naked black women (unaware as she was of my
Danish culture in which nudity is highly cultivated: family beaches and inner
city parks are packed with nudes barely minutes after the sun breaks
through). “Aren’t you aware of how irresponsible you have been having had
relationships with all these mentally unbalanced women? Aren’t you aware that
slavery makes us all mentally ill?” She hit the core question: How can I
interfere as a neutral in a master-slave society without becoming a part of
the problem? And yet she made the same mistake as most Americans of
automatically assuming that a photo of a naked woman equals a sexual
relationship with her. I am fairly convinced that most women would not have offered me
hospitality if they had not sensed the non-aggressive component in me. Since
I always saw my vagabonding as a passive role and thus neither avoided nor
initiated sexual relations I think it is interesting to analyze what actually
happened when I came close to women. After a few days, if we got along well
together, white women would express sexual aggression. But even if we became
intimate and embraced each other, usually nothing more would happen with the
black underclass woman, especially in the South. It was as if something
misfired in us both - a shared acknowledgement that this was too big a
historical abscess to puncture. She could not avoid consciously or unconsciously
signaling that this was a relationship between a free and an unfree person,
which immediately gave me the feeling of being just another in the row of
white sexual exploiters. Most of my sexual and long-lasting relationships
with black women were therefore with women from the middle class or the West
Indies who, although more conservative than white and underclass women I met,
had nevertheless freed themselves from this slavery to a higher degree. Some
Americans would say that if you are aware that certain people live in slavery
you should not as a privileged white get yourself into such intimate
situations where a sexual relationship or “intermarriage” could arise. But
slavery is a product of not associating with a group completely freely as
equals, thereby isolating and crippling it. Annie was one of my exceptions with the underclass. For although her
surface seemed very “middle class” after her long leave, she was in her
fundamental outlook marked by her underclass upbringing. Such a relationship
could probably have worked with much trust and effort by both partners, but
because of my racism, sexism, and above all that unseeing “innocence” which
will always be the ultimate privilege of the ruling class, this wasn’t what
happened. Instead it became such a painful crushing defeat for me that I for
instance couldn’t reconcile it with my original book. Even the beginning went
wrong. We got married Friday the 13th of September, with no place to live. A maid let us spend our honeymoon in the luxury apartment of the South
African consul who had been called home by his apartheid regime. Afterwards
we ended up in the worst area of the ghetto. We had hardly paid the first
month’s rent before all Annie’s savings were stolen. We lived on the fifth
floor of a building with only prostitutes, destitutes, addicts and welfare
mothers. Annie had not lived in underclass culture since her childhood and it
was a terrible shock for her to end up here. Due to her looks and the place
we lived she was constantly “hit on” by pimps and hustlers, who tried to
recruit her. When I had to hitchhike away for some days Annie was kidnapped
by a prostitution ring who forced her at gun point to strip naked while they
played Russian roulette with her “to break her in.” At night she managed to
flee through a bathroom window without clothes out into the city streets.
When I came home she was lying dissolved in tears and pain. The attacks of the pimps continued, and it didn’t help matters that I
was white. One day a pimp scornfully threw a handful of money at Annie on the
bus. With my old vagabond habits I picked it up. Annie was furious with me
and wouldn’t talk to me for a week. There were violence and screams and
frantic pain in the building day and night. Several times in the beginning I
tried to intervene between pimps and the ho’s they were beating. There was
also a pyromaniac. Almost every night during the first months we were woken
up by the fire alarm and saw flames burst out from the adjoining apartments.
We were so prepared that we had everything packed all the time. The first
thing I would grab was a suitcase with all the thousands of slides for this
book. One night when we were all standing half-naked in nightclothes on the
street I asked Annie to keep an eye on the suitcase while I photographed the
fire, but she didn’t hear me in the noise and when we got back to the
apartment. it had been left behind. I rushed down to the street and found the
suitcase still standing there. Everyone in the building called it a true
miracle as nobody had ever seen any valuables left on the street for even one
minute without being snatched. The psychological pressure was at first worse on Annie than on me. We
tried to get welfare in order to move, but got only $7. Almost every night
she lay in tears and despair. In the first months when I still had some
psychic surplus left I tried to penetrate into the world which had so
evidently disintegrated for her. Like most of my other relationships in
America, this one was due to violence. We had met each other as a result of
the murder of her mother; and a few months afterward her stepfather was found
staggering down the street mortally wounded by a knife. A horrifying pattern
from her childhood began to appear for me in these tear-filled nights. When
her 16-year-old mother had given birth to her and a twin sister it was seen
as such a sin in the minister’s family that the mother had been sent up North
and Annie down to an aunt in Biloxi, Mississippi. All Annie recalls from
these first four years was the drunken aunt always lying in her shack, while
Annie sat alone outside in the sand. One day she almost choked to death on a
chicken bone and struggled desperate and alone. Nobody came to help her. The
grandparents discovered the neglect and took her back to Philadelphia,
Mississippi, where she received a rigorous fundamentalist upbringing. All
display of joy, dance, and play was punished. Often she was hung by leather
straps around her wrists in the outhouse and whipped to a jelly. On the way
home from school there was almost daily rock-throwing between the black and
the white kids. One day the white kids turned German shepherds on them and
Annie was severely bitten. Two of these white children later joined the Ku
Klux Klan, and one of them, Jim Bailey from Annie’s street, was the one who
later murdered three civil rights workers in 1964. After this Klan violence, with parades of burning crosses through
Annie’s street, she fled up North and later went into exile. Since she was
the first black to integrate the town’s library, she never dared to return.
The more these tearful nights revealed, the more shocked I was. She was
incredibly sensitive and one night I recall her crying at the thought of “the
white conspiracy” which had kept her and the other black school kids ignorant
about the murder of six million Jews. Finally Annie managed to get a temporary office job in the Bureau of
Architecture where she took care of bills from construction companies. She
caused great turmoil by discovering one swindle and fraud after another. With
her unusual flypaper memory she could detect how the construction companies
had months before sent bills for the same job but in different wording. For
years these Mafiosi had ripped off the city. Every day she came home and told
me about how she had just saved the city $90,000 or the like. When her job
ended, her boss told her she could write any recommendation she desired: he
would sign it. But we ourselves still had no money and it was as if this
corrupt atmosphere helped to further break down our morale. When the rich
steal, why shouldn’t we? When we one day found a purse with $80 in it in the
hallway, it took us a long time to decide to give it back to the owner a
welfare mother. When she opened her door she grabbed the purse without a
word, with a contemptuous look as if to say, “You must be fools, trying to be
better than others here.” From that moment everything slipped more and more
in a criminal direction. It had been our idea that I should use the time to
write a book. Annie and others felt that I ought to write about my ghetto
experiences with the eyes of a foreigner. In the beginning I sat day after
day in front of a blank sheet of paper, but it was impossible for me to get a
word down in that violent and nerve-wracking atmosphere. Gradually we both lost our self-confidence and I gave up. The less
surplus we had, the less hope, the more violent did the atmosphere become
between us. Little by little Annie started to drink in response to my
increasing insensitivity. She began to nag me for being nothing but a naive
liberal. These endless nights are more than anything the reason for attacks
on liberals (or myself) in this book. For the first time in my journey I
began to lose faith in blacks - to look at their actuality rather than
potential. I was becoming Americanized, had become a victim of the
master-slave mentality. The more I lost faith in people (and my own future),
the more I seethed with hatred and anger. To avoid the unendurable atmosphere
with Annie, I began to spend most of my time on the street. The more
powerless I became, the more dismal my prospect, the more she lost faith in
me. One night she shouted, “You can’t even provide! You hear, blue-eyed
nigger, provide!” What was even worse was that although I constantly tried to
get work I started blaming myself. I did nothing but stand in line. In the mornings
I sat and lay in line in the blood bank to get $5. Every day at 11:00 for
eight months I stood in an hour-long soup line and at night I would often eat
in a church. The rest of the day I would stand in line to get work, which was
impossible as l had no skills. If I got there at four in the morning I
sometimes succeeded in being hired for a day to throw advertisements in the
affluent suburbs for $2 an hour. After a while I gave up and spent more and more time with the
criminals in the street. I was never involved in any large-scale criminal
activity, but it was clearly moving in that direction. One night when a guy
was telling me shakenly that his brother had just been murdered in Chicago I
just replied coldly, “What caliber pistol?” Only afterwards did it dawn on me
how deep I had slipped down. During the time I lived with Annie eight people
had been murdered on our block, some of them acquaintances. Theresa, who had
so often given me free food in her coffee shop, was murdered one day by a
customer who couldn’t pay his bill of $1.41. Sometimes even the walls in our
hallway were smeared with blood. When I came home late at night Annie would
often be lying in a fog of tears and booze. I hardly cared any more. In the
end for fear of the destructive quarrels I would not come home until she was
asleep. Our sex life, like everything else, disintegrated. Finally I harbored such hatred for both blacks and whites around me
that I became afraid of myself. One night when Annie had been drinking I
became so desperate that I aimed a blow at her in the darkness. The next
morning she had a black eye like everyone else in the building had had.
Having never before laid a hand on a person, I was shaken. I had a sudden
fear that I would end up killing her one day. The only way I could break the
ghettoization was flight. We managed to get a tiny room for Annie in a white
home outside the ghetto. After that I went straight for the highway. The
highway I knew meant security and safety, recreation and freedom. For four
years I had lived an escapist privileged vagabond life in ghettos without
being affected. When I became a part of the ghetto, I was destroyed in less
than a year, had ended up hating blacks, had lost faith in everything, and
had seen the worst parts of my character begin to control my behavior. One of
these was an increasing selfishness and aggressive callousness in my
relationship to women. It was no coincidence that I immediately entered a
period of conspicuous consumption of “girls” with my friend Tony in North
Carolina. I had no inhibitions left. And yet I was not exactly a horn
seducer. Time and again Tony whispered to me, “Hey, why don’t you make a
move?” and time and again he ended up having to drive my date home
prematurely. And then every night there were disturbing obstacles. One night
I couldn’t get home with my date because of a shootout in the street. Another
night we all went to see Earth, Wind and Fire in Chapel Hill and I used my
white privilege to “con” my way in for free as I never had money. This so
irritated Bob, who drove the car, that on the way home he suddenly stopped
and said, “Hey, man, you gotta get out, understand?” Since Bob was a double
murderer, having killed both his wife and her lover, and everybody knew he
boiled inside, nobody tried to intervene and I had to get out in the frosty
night in the middle of nowhere. An essential tool in dating is the car. Since I couldn’t take my dates
for a ride I instead invited them for what I loved most of all in the world:
hitchhiking. It was these trips more than anything else which made me aware
of my sex-ploitative frame of mind. I had lived with blacks so often that I
paid hardly any heed to being “on the wrong side of the tracks,” but to
hitchhike with a black woman quickly shakes one into “place” again,
especially if one is as ignorant as I had managed to remain about the
additional master-slave relationship of men to women. Because of my vagabond
attitude that the driver should be “entertained,” if the driver was a woman
or a gay man, I would sit in front to make conversation, whereas if it was a
straight man I would make the woman sit next to him, even if she didn’t want
to. The reactions from the white male drivers were terrifying. If they didn’t
content themselves with psychological torture of the women, they would use
direct physical encroachment. Although most of those I hitchhiked with were
well-dressed daughters of professors and doctors in the North and had the
education and trust in their surroundings which made them - unlike ghetto women
- even dare to go on such a trip with a white, they were considered as
nothing but easy sexual prey or even whores. Several times lustful drivers
violently tried to push me out. For some of these women it was their first
chance to see their country. Most didn’t even last to the state line. One
lasted 4,000 miles through Canada and the Grand Canyon - then broke down in a
hysterical fit which almost had us both arrested. I was still enormously out of balance after my ghettoization and I
decided I needed to recreate myself in a calm family atmosphere. After having
lived in a couple of white homes I searched back to the most harmonious and
stable married couple I could recall having seen in the underclass: Leon and
Cheryl in Augusta, Georgia. Their love and devotion to each other had been so
enriching and contagious that I often thought of them in the course of my own
abortive ghetto love as living proof to myself that real ghetto love could
thrive. While I had lived in their home I had had peace and support, enabling
me day after day to hitchhike out to explore the poverty in the area. But
when I came to their house I immediately felt something had changed. Leon
asked me in, but he was not happy. He seemed to be in a trance as he told me
his wife had died from a disease which was curable but which they had not had
money to get under proper treatment before it was too late. Leon had not
recovered from the loss. He never went out of his house which stood right
next to the elite medical school in Augusta. All day long he sat on the blue
shag carpet in front of his little stereo as if it were an altar, listening
to music while staring at a photo of Cheryl above. Some days he sang love
songs throughout the day, putting her name in them. Once in a while he would
scream out in the room: “I want you! I want to hold you. I want to be with
you again ... We must unite, be one... I want to die... die... “ Never have I
seen a man’s love for a woman so intense. At most once a day would he turn
around and communicate with me, and then only to tell me about how he wanted
to join Cheryl in heaven. Sometimes when he stared directly at me with this
empty look as if I were not there my eyes would fill with tears. I felt a
deep understanding for him, yet couldn’t express it. In the evenings he lay
in his room. His mother or another woman would bring us cooked food in the
two weeks I stayed there. This depressing experience made me look deeper into
myself. I became determined to go back to Annie, and later she returned with
me to Denmark. Our relationship had suffered too much, so after a while we
separated. We achieved a good working relationship and she helped translate
parts of this book and all of the film. Three years later I traveled all over America to give or show this
book to all those friends who made it possible. One of them was naturally
Leon, who had helped me so much and was one of those I had in mind to come
and help run the show in Europe. But when I came to his screen door with the
book under my arm, a strange woman answered my knock. No, Leon didn’t live
there any more. He was shot three years ago - by a white man. All afternoon
his mother showed me the photo album with Leon and Cheryl’s pictures and told
me tearfully about their three happy years together. We sat sobbing in each
other’s arms on the front porch. I know that Leon and Cheryl are united
again. “There is no love like ghetto love.” Written with the help of my ex-wife in her hospital bed. Annie died
after a long period of health problems in 2002 in Denmark.
A despairing minister in Chicago told me that his church was closing
because the congregation was robbed every Sunday. According to the biased
media, a “Christian priest was forced away from his church (in a Denmark
ghetto) by Muslim thugs” when our brown youths expressed, in exactly the same
way, the pain and anger of feeling rejected by white flight. When I did a
reconciliation workshop for them and for the few remaining whites in the
ghetto, I found that the only difference between them and their American
counterparts is how exemplary their behavior (still) is in Europe. The confinement of the underclass is dehumanizing for all. In five of
the homes I lived in, there were twice armed robberies while I was there.
Society spends billions to cure the ill instead of educating us about the
suffering our racism inflicts on ourselves. We intuitively feel that we’re
digging our own graves, but, unable to do anything about it, we turn it into
a trench. A manufacturer I lived with had made a fortune making military
equipment but turned to producing alarms and teargas guns, perhaps because
the country wasted so many resources exporting war that the “war on poverty”
at home had to be abandoned. The more we struggle for “freedom” without
mutual respect, the more we cut ourselves off from it. Thus, many now live behind
steel-bar fortifications. Slowly but steadily the iron curtain is closing in on America. You
walk into a store and find yourself inside a steel cage. The wealthy can
afford to invest billions in invisible electronic fortifications between
themselves and the ghetto. The more electronic rays replace trust, the more
the system closes itself. People, many of whom are trained from childhood in
the use of weapons, are paralyzed with fear. Many arm themselves to death to
“defend themselves against the niggers,” as a suburban Michigan family told
me. I don’t know what is most shocking: that our children of anger feel so
psychologically marginalized that they can kill for a dollar or that millions
of Americans are prepared to take a human life just to defend a TV. The more cars, the more weapons, the more fortresses, the more
military buildup ... the more private industry enriches itself on this
systematic subversion of society. The higher the barriers Big Business
constructs between people, the more it manages to kill the love between
people—and the higher stock prices rise on Wall Street. When we fail to fortify justice, it becomes necessary to justify
force. The more we try to shoot out a shortcut to freedom and security, the
more our actions in flight and desperation resemble those typical of the
ghetto. Just as ghetto inmates look for quick escapes into awe-inspiring
luxury cars and violence, we escape through the use of even more awe-inspiring
armored personnel carriers and military violence, which are directed at the
ghetto, instead of changing the attitudes we espouse that create ghettos. How free are we really in God’s own country when thousands of people
must view the Statue of Liberty from behind windows with steel grates? Her
watchful gaze, which is always turned away from even the most vicious acts of
racism, is increasingly being replaced by Big Brother’s ever-present eye. Our (black) criminal and (white) repressive escape acts are poisoning
the entire population, which is gradually being corrupted by the violence it
perpetrates against the black ghetto. A ghetto is created and perpetuated by
outside forces; it can’t be dismantled from the inside. Paralyzed by fear and
violence, our entire society begins to assume the character of a ghetto. The
population becomes increasingly aware that it’s operating in a closed
system—a system in which we’ve lost even our imagined freedom of action. A
system whose prolonged confinement of (our) undesirables in enormous ghettos
has long since become so institutionalized that it seems quite natural to us.
For generations our “systemic racism” has shaped and crippled us to such an
extent that we can neither imagine alternatives, nor in the short run would
we be able to live with them if we could. And so the entire society becomes a
closed system in the same way the South was before 1865 and before 1954—a system
that, in spite of the efforts of liberals and activists, was unable to change
from within. Northern interference in the Southern closed system didn’t break
the circle; it only found a new higher level of balance, raising the median
black income in the South from 45% to 55% of white income. We whites have the
power to eliminate the ghettos through a change of attitude, but as long as
we passively allow ourselves to be captured by the enslaving pattern of
well-coordinated oppression, I see no possibility of this happening. We don’t
understand the underclass monster we continuously create, and so we turn our
backs to it, destroying our society in the process. |
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406 Jo længere, jeg gik som
vagabond i dette system, jo mere tabte jeg lysten til nogensinde igen at
blive en del af det. Overalt havde systemet givet mennesket et falsk ansigt.
Jo tydeligere disse uhyggelige masker tegnede sig for mig, des stærkere trang
fik jeg til at trænge ind bag dem og se ud gennem deres snævre øjensprækker.
Det var aldrig noget kønt syn
- kun had, frygt og mistillid. Jeg havde intet ønske om at blive en del af
dette had. Jeg lærte, at det er meget lettere for mennesker
at fordømme og hade end at forstå. For er baseret på forenklede ensidige betragtninger,
og de fleste mennesker er så opslugt af smerten ved ikke at kunne leve op til
normerne i vores miljø, at det er lettere for os at reducere virkeligheden
til symboler end at prøve at forstå den. Det er langt lettere, når man læser
en bog som denne at hade de hvide end at prøve at forstå os, for på den måde
undgår vi at bekæmpe den del af systemet, som er at finde i os selv. Først
når vi erkender, hvordan vi selv er en del af undertrykkelsen, kan vi forstå,
fordømme og ændre de kræfter, som dehumaniserer os og gør os alle i bund og
grund ulykkelige. 423
taget et initiativ overfor.
Som hun sad der i en restaurant i New York – uimodståeligt smuk – var det
åbenlyst fra vores første blikke, at vi havde brug for hinanden. Hun kendte
ikke nogen efter lige at være vendt tilbage efter ti års eksil i England for
at gå til sin mors begravelse, og jeg var i en af mine deprimerede
vagabondperioder. Vi var begge præstebørn og havde på forskellig måde gjort
oprør mod denne baggrund. Hun var dybt grebet af mine billeder og ønskede at
hjælpe mig med at publicere dem. Hun havde en stærk litterær tilbøjelighed og
en langt dybere intellektuel horisont end jeg, så jeg blev snart meget
afhængig af hende til at få brikkerne i mit puslespil til at falde på plads. Annie havde i høj grad i sin landflygtighed befriet sig selv for
den herre-slavementalitet, som gør ægteskab næsten uudholdeligt for de få
uheldige amerikanere, som forelsker sig på tværs af det lukkede systems
realiteter. Blandede ægteskaber er nemlig i allerhøjeste grad en undergravende
handling. Selv liberale famler efter svar, når spørgsmålet kommer: ”Hvad vil
du sige til, at din datter gifter sig med en?” Typiske racister startede i
reglen samtalen med: ”Jeg er ligeglad med, om folk er hvide, sorte, lilla
eller grønne ...” Ti sætninger senere viste de sig at være svorne fjender af
blandede ægteskaber. Alligevel var der masser af indgiftning mellem hvide og
sorte tjenestefolk, indtil det blev forbudt i 1691. Før reduktionen af de
sorte til slaver, var det fattige hvide had til dem også ukendt. De fleste
steder – selv i tidligere slavelande som Cuba og Brasilien – er der intet,
der minder om amerikanernes fanatiske modstand imod blandede ægteskaber.
Skønt jeg kommer fra et
konservativt landområde, mindes jeg ikke at have
hørt en eneste negativ bemærkning i min barndom om den hyppige indgiftning
med afrikanske studerende. (Jeg vil ikke her omtale den negative afsmitning
fra den senere hetz mod indvandrere). Men i Amerika kan ingen ægteskaber mellem racerne betragtes som blot en naturlig forening. I Hollywood ville sorte promotorer
investere en masse penge i at slå mit lysbilledshow stort op, men først
ønskede de, at jeg skulle tage afsnittet om min kone ud: ”Det ødelægger dit
budskab og får dig til at ligne enhver anden liberal.” Mange sorte og
liberale vil af samme grund falde fra i dette afsnit. En sort kvinde var
rasende efter at have set mit lysbilledshow med adskillige billeder af nøgne
sorte kvinder. ”Er du ikke klar over, hvor uansvarlig du har været ved at
have haft forhold til disse mentalt forstyrrede kvinder (uvidende som hun var om min danske kultur, hvor nøgenhed dyrkes i
høj grad: familiestrande og byparker i indre by er fyldt med nøgne kvinder
knap minutter efter, at solen er brudt frem). ”Er
du ikke klar over, at vores udstødelse gør os alle mentalt syge?” Hun ramte
hovedet på sømmet: Hvordan kan jeg gribe ind som neutral i
herre-slavesamfundet uden at blive en del af problemet? Og dog begik hun
samme fejl som de fleste amerikanere ved automatisk at antage, at et nøgenbillede
af en kvinde er lig med et seksuelt forhold til hende. Hun behøver ikke rigtig at bekymre sig, for i modsætning til det,
jeg fandt blandt sorte kvinder i det meste af Afrika, har den sorte
amerikanske kvinde udviklet enorme forsvarsmekanismer mod den hvide mand som
reaktion på århundreders misbrug. Skønt jeg
tilbragte det meste af min tid i det sorte samfund, var mere end 90% af de
kvinder, som inviterede mig til at dele deres seng, hvide. Men mistanken om
den hvide, mandlige, seksuelle udbytter hang naturligvis altid over mig på
min rejse. Når jeg gik rundt i ghettoer om natten i det dybe Syden, spurgte
unge mænd mig: "Sir,
skal jeg skaffe dig en kvinde?" Jeg er
ret overbevist om, at de fleste kvinder ikke ville have tilbudt mig
gæstfrihed, hvis de ikke havde fornemmet den ikke-aggressive komponent i mig.
Da jeg altid så min vagabondering som en passiv rolle og derfor hverken
undgik eller indledte seksuelle relationer, synes jeg, at det er interessant
at analysere, hvad der rent faktisk skete, når jeg fik nære forhold til kvinder. Hvis vi
svingede godt sammen, kom hvide kvinder efter nogle dage med seksuelle
tilnærmelser. Men selv når vi blev mere intime og omfavnede hinanden, skete
der i reglen ikke mere med den sorte underklassekvinde, især ikke i syden.
Det var, som om et eller andet gik i baglås for os – en fælles erkendelse af,
at dette var for stor en historisk byld at stikke hul på. Hun kunne ikke
undgå bevidst eller ubevidst at signalere, at dette var et forhold mellem en fri og en ufri person, hvilket øjeblikkeligt gav mig følelsen af
at være blot endnu en i rækken af hvide seksuelle udbyttere. De fleste af
mine seksuelle og langvarige forhold til sorte kvinder var derfor med kvinder
fra middelklassen og Vestindien, som, selv om de var mere konservative end de hvide kvinder og
kvinder fra underklassen, jeg mødte, ikke desto mindre havde frigjort sig fra
dette slaveri i højere grad.
Nogle amerikanere vil sige, at hvis man er klar over, at visse mennesker lever i undertrykkelse, bør man som privilegeret hvid ikke som hvid
person bringe sig selv ind i sådanne intime situationer, hvor der kan opstå
et seksuelt forhold eller et
blandet ægteskab. Men slaveri er jo netop et produkt af, at man ikke helt frit omgås en gruppe som
ligeværdige, hvorved man ghettoiserer
og forkrøbler den. Annie var en af mine
undtagelser med underklassen. For skønt hun på overfladen virkede meget ”middelklasseagtig”
efter sit lange fravær, var hun i sit grundsyn præget af sin
underklasseopvækst. Et sådant forhold kunne sikkert godt være kommet til at
fungere med lang tids kærlighed, tillid og anstrengelse fra begge partnere,
men på grund af min racisme, sexisme og, fremfor alt, den ikke-seende ”uskyldighed”,
som altid vil være den herskende klasses
ultimative privilegium, var dette ikke, hvad
der kom til at ske. I
stedet blev det et så smertefuldt knusende nederlag for mig, at jeg f.eks.
ikke kunne forene det med min oprindelige bog. Selv
begyndelsen gik galt. Vi blev gift fredag den 13. september uden noget sted
at bo. En tjenestepige lod os tilbringe hvedebrødsdagene i den sydafrikanske
konsuls luksuslejlighed, da han var blevet kaldt hjem af sit apartheidregime.
Senere endte vi i det værste område af ghettoen. Vi havde næppe betalt den
første måneds husleje, før hele Annies opsparing blev stjålet. Vi boede på
femte sal i en bygning udelukkende med prostituerede, narkomaner,
socialhjælpsmødre og menneskelige vrag. Annie havde ikke boet i ghettokultur
siden sin barndom, og det var et forfærdeligt chok for hende at havne her. I
kraft af hendes udseende og stedet, vi boede, blev hun ustandseligt
forulempet af alfonser og hustlere, som forsøgte at rekruttere hende. Da jeg
var nødt til at blaffe væk i nogle dage, blev Annie kidnappet af en
prostitutionsring, som med pistoler tvang hende til at klæde sig nøgen, mens
de spillede russisk roulette med hende for at ”knække og dressere” hende. Om
natten lykkedes det hende gennem et badeværelsesvindue at flygte ud i gaderne
uden tøj på. Da jeg kom hjem, lå hun opløst i tårer og smerte. Angrebene fra
alfonserne fortsatte, og det hele blev ikke bedre af, at jeg var hvid. En dag
smed en alfons hånligt en håndfuld penge efter Annie i bussen. Af gammel
vagabondvane samlede jeg dem op. Annie blev rasende på mig og ville ikke tale
til mig i en uge. Der var vold og skrig og afsindig smerte i bygningen dag og
nat. Adskillige gange i begyndelsen forsøgte jeg at gribe ind mellem alfonser
og deres ”horer”, som de bankede sønder og sammen. Der var også en pyroman.
Næsten hver nat i de første måneder blev vi vækket af brandalarmen og så
flammerne slå ud fra de tilstødende lejligheder. Vi var så forberedte, at vi
havde alting pakket hele tiden. Det første, jeg ville snuppe, var en kuffert
med alle de tusinder af lysbilleder til denne bog. En nat, da vi alle stod
halvnøgne i nattøj på gaden, bad jeg Annie om at holde øje med kufferten,
mens jeg fotograferede branden, men hun hørte mig ikke i larmen, og da vi kom
tilbage til lejligheden, var den blevet efterladt dernede. Jeg fo’r ned på
gaden og fandt kufferten stående der stadigvæk. Alle i bygningen kaldte det
for et sandt mirakel, da ingen nogensinde havde set nogen værdigenstand
efterladt på gaden i blot et øjeblik uden at blive hugget. Det psykologiske
pres var i begyndelsen værre for Annie end mig. Vi forsøgte at få socialhjælp
for at kunne flytte, men fik blot 50 kr. Næsten hver nat lå hun i tårer og
fortvivlelse. I de første måneder, da jeg stadig havde lidt psykisk overskud
tilbage, forsøgte jeg at trænge ind i hendes verden, som så åbenlyst var
smuldret for hende. Som mange af mine andre forhold i Amerika, var også dette
et resultat af vold. Vi havde mødt hinanden som følge af mordet på hendes
mor; og få måneder senere blev hendes stedfar fundet vaklende ned ad gaden,
dødeligt såret af en kniv. Et rystende mønster fra hendes barndom begyndte at
tone frem for mig i disse tårevædede nætter. Da hendes mor som 16-årig havde
født Annie og hendes tvillingesøster, blev det set som så stor en synd i
præstens familie, at moderen og søsteren blev sendt op til nordstaterne mens
Annie blev hos bedsteforældrene i Philadelphia, Mississippi. Der fik hun en
streng, fundamentalistisk opdragelse. Al udfoldelse af glæde, dans og leg
blev straffet. Ofte blev hun i udhuset hængt op i læderstrimler bundet om
håndleddene og pisket sønder og sammen. På vej hjem fra skole var der næsten
daglig stenkastning mellem sorte og hvide børn. En dag pudsede de hvide børn
schæferhunde på dem, og Annie blev alvorligt bidt. To af disse børn
tilsluttede sig senere Ku Klux Klan, og en af dem, Jim Bailey fra Annies
gade, var en af dem, som senere myrdede de tre borgerretsforkæmpere i 1964.
Efter denne klanvold, med parader af brændende kors gennem gaden, flygtede
hun op til Norden og gik senere i landflygtighed. Da hun var den første sorte,
der kom på byens bibliotek, turde hun aldrig vende tilbage. Jo mere disse
tårefyldte nætter afslørede, jo mere chokeret blev jeg. Hun var utrolig
følsom, og en nat husker jeg, at hun græd ved tanken om ”den hvide
sammensværgelse”, som havde holdt hende og de andre sorte skolebørn uvidende
om mordet på seks millioner jøder. Omsider lykkedes det Annie
at få et job som kontorvikar i Bygningsdirektoratet, hvor hun tog sig af
regninger fra byggefirmaerne. Hun skabte stor opstandelse ved at opdage det
ene tilfælde af svindel og bedrageri efter det andet. Med sin usædvanlige
klæbehjerne kunne hun påvise, hvordan byggefirmaerne måneder før havde sendt
regninger for samme job, men i anden ordlyd. I årevis havde disse mafiosi
flået byen. Ustandseligt kom hun hjem og fortalte mig, hvordan hun netop
havde sparet byen for flere hundrede tusinde dollars. Da hendes arbejde
sluttede, sagde hendes chef til hende, at hun måtte skrive sig selv hvilken
som helst anbefaling, hun ønskede: han ville skrive under på den. Men selv
havde vi stadig ingen penge, og det var som om denne korrupte atmosfære hjalp
til yderligere at nedbryde vores moral. Når de rige stjæler, hvorfor sku’ vi
så ikke? Da vi en dag fandt en pung med 80 dollars i opgangen, tog det os
lang tid at beslutte at give den tilbage til ejeren – en mor på socialhjælp.
Da hun åbnede døren, snubbede hun pungen uden et ord, med et hånligt blik som
for at sige, ”I må være tåber at prøve på at være bedre end andre her.” Fra
det øjeblik gled alting i en mere og mere kriminel retning. Det havde været
idéen at jeg skulle bruge tiden til at skrive en bog. Annie og andre mente,
at jeg burde skrive om mine ghettooplevelser med en udlændings øjne. I
starten sad jeg dag efter dag foran papiret, men det var umuligt for mig i
denne voldelige og nervøse atmosfære at få et ord nedfældet. Gradvist mistede
vi begge selvtilliden, og jeg opgav. Jo mindre overskud vi havde, jo mindre
håb, des mere voldelig blev atmosfæren imellem os. Lidt efter lidt begyndte
Annie at drikke som reaktion på min stigende ufølsomhed. Hun begyndte at
skælde mig ud for blot at være en naiv liberal. Disse endeløse nætter er mere
end noget andet skyld i angrebene på de frisindede (eller mig selv) i denne
bog. For første gang på min rejse begyndte jeg at miste min tillid til de
sorte, begyndte at dømme dem på deres nuværende adfærd frem for deres
potentiale. Jeg var begyndt at blive amerikaniseret, var blevet et offer for
herre-slavementaliteten. Jo mere jeg mistede denne tillid til mennesker (og
min egen fremtid), jo mere opfyldt blev jeg af had og raseri. For at undgå
den uudholdelige atmosfære sammen med Annie, begyndte jeg at tilbringe det
meste af min tid på gaden. Jo mere magtesløs, jeg følte mig, jo mere dystre
mine udsigter blev, des mere mistede hun troen på mig. En nat råbte hun, ”Du
kan ikke engang forsørge mig! Hører du, din blåøjede nigger, forsørge!” Hvad
værre var, og skønt jeg ustandseligt prøvede at få arbejde, begyndte jeg på
selvbebrejdelser. Jeg bestilte ikke andet end at stå i kø. Om morgenen sad og
lå jeg i kø i blodbanken for at få fem dollars. Hver dag i otte måneder stod
jeg kl. 11 i en timelang suppekø, og om aftenen fik jeg tit mad i en kirke.
Resten af dagen stod jeg i kø for at få arbejde, hvilket var umuligt, da jeg
var ufaglært. Hvis jeg mødte kl. 4 om morgenen, lykkedes det mig somme tider
at blive ansat for en dag til at smide reklamer i de rige forstæder for to
dollars i timen. Efter en tid gav jeg op og tilbragte mere og mere tid med de
kriminelle på gaden. Jeg blev aldrig involveret i nogen større kriminelle
handlinger, men det begyndte tydeligvis at glide i den retning. Da en fyr en
aften rystet fortalte mig, at hans bror netop var blevet myrdet i Chicago,
sagde jeg blot koldt, ”Hvilken kaliber pistol?” Først bagefter gik det op for
mig, hvor dybt jeg var gledet ned. I den tid, jeg boede sammen med Annie, var
otte mennesker blevet myrdet i vores blok, flere af dem bekendte. Theresa,
som i sin kaffebar så ofte havde givet mig gratis mad, blev myrdet en dag af
en kunde, som ikke kunne betale sin regning på halvanden dollar. Ofte var
væggene i vores opgang oversmurt af blod. Når jeg kom hjem sent på natten, lå
Annie tit i en tåge af tårer og druk. Jeg var efterhånden næsten ligeglad. Af
angst for de ødelæggende skænderier, turde jeg til sidst ikke komme hjem, før
hun sov. Vores sexliv, som alt andet, gik i opløsning. Til sidst nærede jeg
et sådant had mod både hvide og sorte omkring mig, at jeg blev angst for mig
selv. En nat, da Annie havde drukket, blev jeg så desperat, at jeg langede ud
efter hende i mørket. Næste morgen havde hun et blåt øje, sådan som alle
andre i bygningen havde haft. Da jeg aldrig før havde lagt hånd på et
menneske, var jeg rystet. Jeg fik en pludselig angst for, at jeg ville ende
med at slå hende ihjel en dag. Den eneste måde jeg kunne bryde
ghettoiseringen, var ved at flygte. Det lykkedes os at få et lille værelse
til Annie uden for ghettoen. Derefter styrede jeg lige mod landevejen.
Landevejen, vidste jeg, betød tryghed og sikkerhed, rekreation og frihed. I
fire år havde jeg levet et eskapistisk privilegeret vagabondliv i ghettoer
uden at blive berørt. Men da jeg blev en del af ghettoen, blev jeg ødelagt på
mindre end et år. Jeg var kommet til at hade sorte, havde mistet min tillid
til alt, og havde set de værste sider i min karakter begynde at kontrollere
min opførsel. En af disse var en stigende selviskhed og pågående selvhævdelse
i forholdet til kvinder. Det var ikke nogen tilfældighed, at jeg straks kom
ind i en periode med et iøjnefaldende forbrug af ”girls” med min ven Tony i
North Carolina. Jeg havde ingen hæmninger tilbage. Og dog var jeg ikke just
den fødte forfører. Gang på gang hviskede Tony til mig, ”Hey, why don’t you
make a move?”, og gang på gang endte han med at måtte køre min date hjem før
tiden. Hver nat syntes det, som om der var forstyrrende momenter. En aften
kunne jeg ikke komme hjem med min date på grund skyderi i gaden. En anden
aften var vi alle kørt til Chapel Hill for at se Earth, Wind and Fire og jeg
benyttede mit hvide privilegium til at ”bluffe” mig gratis ind, da jeg aldrig
havde penge. Dette irriterede i den grad Bob, som kørte bilen, at han på
vejen hjem pludselig standsede og sagde, ”Hey, man, you gotta get out,
understand?” Eftersom Bob var dobbeltmorder og havde dræbt både sin kone og hendes
elsker, vidste alle, at han kogte indvendig og gjorde ingen forsøg på at
sætte sig imellem. Så jeg måtte stige ud i den frostkolde nat midt i
intetheden. Et vigtigt redskab i ”dating”
er bilen. Da jeg ikke kunne tage mine dates på en køretur, inviterede jeg dem
i stedet på det jeg elskede mest i verden: blafning. Det var disse ture, mere
end noget andet, som begyndte at gøre mig bevidst om min sexisme. Jeg havde
levet med sorte så ofte, at jeg knapt nok ænsede, at jeg var ”på den forkerte
side af jernbanelinien”, men at blaffe med en sort kvinde ryster hurtigt een
på plads igen. I særdeleshed når man er så uvidende, som jeg stadig var, om ”herre-slaveforholdet”
mellem mænd og kvinder. Da jeg var vant til som vagabond at skulle underholde
chaufføren, sad jeg foran for at konversere, hvis det var en kvinde eller en
homoseksuel mand, mens jeg fik pigen til at sidde foran, hvis det var andre
mænd. Reaktionerne fra de mandlige hvide chauffører var rystende. Hvis de
ikke slog sig til tåls med psykologisk tortur af kvinderne, brugte de direkte
fysiske overgreb. De fleste af dem, der blaffede med mig i den tid, var pænt
klædte døtre af det sorte bourgeoisi, der havde den uddannelse og tillid til
omgivelserne, som gjorde, at de i modsætning til ghettokvinder overhovedet
turde at tage på en sådan tur med en hvid. Ikke desto mindre blev de slet og
ret betragtet som let seksuelt bytte eller endog ludere. Flere gange forsøgte
liderlige chauffører at skubbe mig ud med vold. For nogle af disse kvinder
var det deres første chance for at se deres land. De fleste nåede ikke engang
til statsgrænsen. En enkelt klarede 6,000 km gennem Canada og Grand Canyon –
og brød derefter sammen i et hysterisk anfald, der nær fik os begge
arresteret. Disse oplevelser ødelagde selv de mest seriøse af mine eventyr
med dates. Jeg var stadig helt ude af balance efter min ghettoisering og
følte, at jeg havde brug for at rekreere mig i en rolig familieatmosfære.
Efter at have boet i et par hvide hjem søgte jeg tilbage til det mest
harmoniske og stabile ægtepar, jeg kunne mindes at have set i ghettoen: Leon
og Cheryl i Augusta, Georgia. Deres kærlighed og hengivenhed for hinanden
havde været så berigende og smittende, at jeg ofte havde tænkt på dem i
perioden med min egen mislykkede ghettokærlighed. De var for mig et lysende
bevis på, at virkelig ghettokærlighed kan trives. Mens jeg havde boet i deres
hjem, havde jeg haft den ro og støtte, der gjorde det muligt for mig dag ud
og dag ind at blaffe ud og efterforske fattigdommen i området. Men da jeg kom
til deres hus, mærkede jeg straks, at noget var forandret. Leon bød mig ind,
men han var ikke glad. Han virkede, som om han var i trance, da han fortalte,
at hans kone var død af en sygdom, som var helbredelig, men som de ikke havde
haft penge til at få under ordentlig behandling, før det var for sent. Han
var aldrig kommet sig over tabet og gik ikke uden for sit hus, som lå lige
ved siden af eliteskolen for lægestuderende i Augusta. Dagen igennem sad han
på det blå ryatæppe foran sit lille stereoanlæg, som var det et alter, og
lyttede til musik, mens han stirrede på et billede af Cheryl ovenover. Nogle
dage sang han kærlighedssange med hendes navn i. En gang imellem råbte han ud
i lokalet: ”Jeg vil ha’ dig. Jeg må holde dig. Jeg må være sammen med dig igen...
Vi må forenes, blive et... Jeg ønsker at dø... dø...” Aldrig havde jeg set en
mands kærlighed for en kvinde så stærk. Højst en gang om dagen vendte han sig
om og sagde noget til mig, og da kun for at fortælle mig om, hvordan han
ønskede at være sammen med Cheryl i himlen. Undertiden, når han stirrede
direkte på mig med dette tomme blik, som om jeg ikke var der, fyldtes mine
øjne med tårer. Jeg følte en dyb forståelse for ham, og dog kunne jeg ikke
udtrykke den. Om aftenen lå han i sit værelse. Hans mor og en anden kvinde
bragte os varm mad i de to uger, jeg boede der. Denne deprimerende oplevelse
kastede mig ud i dyb selvransagelse. Jeg var fast besluttet på at tage
tilbage til Annie, og senere tog hun med mig til Danmark. Vort forhold havde
lidt for meget, så efter et stykke tid blev vi separerede. Vi opnåede et godt
samarbejde, og hun hjalp med at oversætte dele af denne bog og hele filmen.
Tre år senere rejste jeg rundt i USA for at give eller vise denne bog til
alle de venner, som havde gjort den mulig. En af dem var naturligvis Leon,
som havde hjulpet mig så meget, og var en af dem jeg havde tænkt på at
invitere over for at køre showet i Europa. Men da jeg kom til hans
trådnetsdør med bogen under armen, besvarede en fremmed kvinde min banken.
Nej, Leon boede der ikke mere. Han blev skudt for tre år siden – af en hvid
mand. Hele eftermiddagen viste hans mor mig fotoalbummet med billeder af Leon
og Cheryl og fortalte mig tårevædet om deres tre lykkelige år sammen. Vi sad
og hulkede i hinandens arme på verandaen. Jeg ved, at Leon og Cheryl er
forenede igen. Der er ingen kærlighed som ghettokærlighed. Skrevet
sammen med min ekskone Annie til den amerikanske udgave af bogen. Annie døde
i 2004 efter lang tids sygdom i Danmark.
Indespærringen af
ghettoen er dehumaniserende for os alle. I fem af de hjem, jeg boede i, var
der væbnede røverier to gange mens jeg var der. Samfundet bruger milliarder
på at helbrede ondet frem for at undervise os om de lidelser, vores racisme påfører
os selv. Vi føler intuitivt,
at vi er i gang med at grave vores egen grav, men er ude af stand til at gøre
noget ved det og laver den derfor om til en skyttegrav. En fabrikant, jeg
boede hos, havde gjort sig rig ved at lave militært udstyr, men lagde hele
produktionen om til alarmer og tåregaspistoler måske fordi landet ødslede så
meget på krig ude i verden, at ”krigen mod fattigdommen” hjemme måtte
opgives. Jo mere vi kæmper for ”frihed” uden gensidig respekt, jo mere
afskærer vi os selv fra den, og mange må i dag bo i tilgitrede forskansninger.
Således ender hele samfundet med at blive
et lukket system på samme måde som Syden var det før 1865 og før 1954 – et
system, som på trods af sine liberales og aktivisters indsats ikke var i
stand til at ændres indefra. Nordens indgriben udefra i Sydstaternes lukkede
system brød ikke cirklen. Den fandt blot et nyt, højere niveau af balance, idet den sorte
medianindkomst i Sydstaterne steg fra 45% til 55% af den hvide indkomst. Vi hvide sidder inde med magten til gennem
en holdningsændring at eliminere ghettoerne, men så længe vi passivt lader os fange af det
slavebindende mønster af velkoordineret undertrykkelse, ser jeg ingen
mulighed for, at dette vil ske. Vi forstår ikke det underklassemonster, vi konstant skaber – og
vender derfor ryggen til det – og ødelægger vores eget samfund i processen.
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