“When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged.” - Camus
“Sisyphus, proletarian of the Gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. If the descent is sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.”
(Camus, 1942)
I often liken the myth of Sisyphus to the plight of the Black being—powerless and rebellious on the American plantation. Stuck in a matrix, forever endeavoring to push the boulder back up the mountain, only to have it roll back down to the bottom. Eyes fixed to the hills, from whence comes their strength, to accomplish the impossible task given as punishment for rebelling against the status quo in an effort to be acknowledged as human beings.
The wretched of the earth—who are aware of how we deceive ourselves and how we are deceived—exist in this reality. This self-deception is most apparent during the descent back down the mountain, to once again begin the futile labor of pushing the boulder back to the top. The lucidity of the Black being constitutes his torture, but at the same time crowns his victory.
If there is one thing that the ancestors became keenly aware of, it is that their fate could be surmounted with scorn. Yet the descent, though often performed in sorrow, could also take place in joy. This is not a call for the Black being to continue suffering in silence, but to reflect on how we have historically broken free from suffering—how we have overcome insurmountable odds to achieve freedom, even if only in limited iterations.
“Nineteenth-century Americans inherited a divided legacy from the nation’s founders. Liberty and slavery, democracy and despotism—these contradictions survived the revolutionary era and grew ever more glaring in the decades that followed. Even as slavery mocked America’s professed ideals, slave labor played a critical role in the nation's growth, expanding westward with the young republic, producing the cotton that fueled the early industrial revolution.”
(Foner and Mahoney, 1990)
The history of Black Americans is foundational to the conceptualization of the American ideal and the splendor we all have the potential to share and enjoy. The retribution for slavery is the boulder that America continues to push up the mountain, only to have it roll back down. From it came the many woes of the institution: the massacres that birthed the Jim Crow era, and the hard-fought victories of the Civil Rights Movement.
To acknowledge this truth is to validate the existence of a pain that society has long tried to ignore—a pain that continues to have negative effects centuries after the abolition of American chattel slavery.
“When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged.”
(Camus, 1942)
The "images of earth" are the lived realities of a lesser condition—the socio-economic relegation to the bottom of society’s well, tied to the foundation of the hegemonic order. Forever endeavoring to rise above, the Black being pushes the boulder up the steep incline, only for it to roll back down. He is then forced to make the descent to reclaim that which symbolizes the nihilistic threat he faces in his reality.
These crushing truths remain because they—and the suffering they represent—have yet to be fully acknowledged or atoned for by society. There are millions of Americans who continue to experience this lesser condition. The Black being is simply one of the first, alongside the Native American, to be relegated to what Derrick Bell posits as “faces at the bottom of the well.”
So—who, and what, are we?
According to Dr. Joy DeGruy, in her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, the true nature of the Black being is defined by industriousness, creativity, forgiveness, spirituality, love, and hope. In understanding this true nature, a cleansed self-concept begins to take shape. The stigma is no longer the boulder we are forced to push up the mountain, but instead becomes a gift we offer to the world: a heavy load that is no longer borne alone, but carried together.
DeGruy, J., & Leary, J. D. (2005). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Joy Degruy Publications Incorporated.
Kaufmann, W. A. (1957). Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre.
Foner, E., & Mahoney, O. (1990). A house divided: America in the Age of Lincoln. W. W. Norton & Company.
Add comment
Comments