Being and Blackness: The Significance of Black Lived Experience in Ferguson

by Katherine Whitfield

As with any philosophical quandary, the notion of the tangible and concrete can seem quite fleeting. Philosophy is, by definition, a study of abstractions – subjective ideas that pertain to that which we think, feel and believe, rather than that which we can lay our hands on. But Anderson quickly grounds the reader in the concrete with a simple study of opposites. He reminds us that the actuality of black suffering is constantly pitted against “the impinging threat of nothingness, of nonbeing” (392). According to Gordon, this threat of nonbeing poses the danger of exposing “a world that will ultimately be better off without blacks. Blacks from such a standpoint ‘must’ provide justification for their continued presence” (Anderson 392). Such an argument might seem extreme until Gordon’s words are used to illuminate the existential experience of the Jews during and after the time of the Holocaust – a time when people became so convinced that the world would ultimately be better off without Jews that an entire population became complicit in their systematic extermination. Similarly, American slavery constitutes a time when an entire population advocated for the existence of the black body ­only – using blackness in its most basic, ontological sense to signify “neither a person nor a place but a ‘thing’: situated flesh” (Anderson 392).

Ontologically speaking, Michael Brown was simply a black body, standing at 6-foot-4 and weighing in at nearly 300 pounds. It’s likely that with his hands raised, Mike Brown stood even taller. When viewed through the abstract and hypersimplified lens of “black male body,” one man’s sign of surrender could even wrongly function as another man’s heightened perception of threat. As a body, Brown almost certainly fell victim to the condition known as negrophobia, defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “dislike or fear of black people.” In an op-ed piece written for Time magazine, Brandon Hill more aptly defines the term as an unjustified fear of black people, further positing negrophobia as that which “fuels the triangular system of oppression that keeps people of color pinned into hapless ghettos between the pillars of militarized police, starved inner-city schools, and voracious prisons.” Brown’s death is the quintessential example of how white America’s intrinsic fear of the black body, or being, sets the stage for an endless cycle of unjust treatment, disproportionate distribution of resources and stymied opportunities for meaningful growth.

Anderson identifies parallels for his notion of an economy of black existential hope in the writings and teachings of numerous count
erparts. For example, he draws a connection between black existential hope and what political theologian Terrence L. Johnson identifies as the black tragic soul-life. In the schema of ontological significance, this tragic soul-life situates a moral philosophy within black culture that “centers blacks’ struggle for liberation and ‘human fulfillment’ within a democratic society fractured by antiblack racism, homophobia, sexism, and class alienation” (Anderson 393). Humanist Anthony Pinn describes a similar ideology but defines it as “the quest for ‘complex subjectivity’” (Anderson 394). Black theologian James Cone places similar emphasis on the black soul, which he defines as emerging from the lived experience of existing boldly within a society that threatens your place and your very right to being, and a series of womanist theologians speak of the carefully constructed ethical values that shepherd their economy of “struggle, survival, resistance, and quality of life” (Anderson 398). Anderson highlights variations on a similar theme – his economy of black existential hope – in a number of theologies, all of which are effectively construed as religious pursuits because each “addresses the search for ultimate meaning” (394).

And what of an economy of black existential hope in Ferguson? Certainly, Michael Brown’s death is a specific, situated moment within the black struggle for liberation in a society of white privilege. In his writings on the quest for complex subjectivity, Anthony Pinn admits that said quest “may not result in sustained sociopolitical and cultural transformation, (but) it does involve a new life meaning that encourages continued struggle for a more liberated existence” (Anderson 395). As demonstrators continue to take to the streets in Ferguson, and as people of all races, genders and classes continue to travel to this community to join the protest, that “new life meaning” that lends credence and validation to the struggle for a better, more egalitarian existence takes shape.

Michael Brown was a casualty of a broken system; his death is a tragedy. But those who speak up and advocate for justice in his name – and in the name of countless others – tap into that tragic soul-life; the quest for subjectivity; the black soul; the struggle of continued resistance; the economy of black existential hope. Every such death brings us one step closer to the tipping point – the moment when the inexcusable loss of a black being will no longer be met with tacit social acceptance. In the meantime, Brian Curtis, a 24-year-old Ferguson resident, offers a glimpse into his community’s mindset: “If we don’t get no justice, we got to start taking matters into our own hands; something got to be done to make our voices heard. Me being a young black brother…that could have been me out there” (Eligon).