WTF?: ON SKINS AND MASKS

Let me start off by saying that “race” is a bankrupt and discredited concept in most scientific and social scientific circles. That is, it has no actual basis in fact, and often really very little to do with actual skin colour. However, clearly the construction of race and its implications continue to have enormous repercussions around the world, and so, construct or not, we have to take these manifestations and meanings seriously.

Recently, an email by Mukoma wa Ngugi made me aware of a completely bewildering story in the Standard. This piece, by Mr. Alexander K. Opicho, was written with the apparent aim of recuperating white African scholarship and writing from the oblivion of under-appreciation to which (black?) person or persons unknown had consigned them. Mr. Opicho accomplishes this noble goal by presenting as exhibits A, B and C Frantz Fanon, Dennis Brutus and our very own and much loved Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, and insists that although all these people are white, they have made extensive and important contributions to African cultural and intellectual expression.

Um…this feels like “Jeopardy” the television game. What was the question to which this is the answer?

When I was a little girl and already badly, in fact terminally, infected with the reading bug, a nerd and a bookworm and a lonely skinny kid with a knobbly forehead, eyes too big, chin too pointed, everything else too thin, and oh, yes, the ultimate: a mzungu mouth (??!!?), and I think also a mzungu nose (???!!?) I had to rely on my resources. I would go to Mrs Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye’s bookshop on what is now Moi Avenue--but I think then used to be called Government Road--and I would sit and read and read and read. Five, six even seven hours later, I would leave, not having bought a book, but having read at least three. I didn’t do this once or twice: I did it at least three or four times a week, for years, treating this wonderful woman’s bookshop as if it were my very own personal library. She not only allowed me to but she also had a comfortable chair set up at the back for me, and if I was there at tea-time, I would always get a cup. My first published piece of fiction appeared when I was, I think, fourteen. Only because of that magnificent set of resources that M.O.M. (isn't that funny how her name works out to be "Mom"?)made available to me--and in fairness, perhaps also because of some of the education I received at the hands of the Loreto Convent nuns, who at the very least inspired a deep interest in theology so I could argue with them--I had a conceptual reach and an imagination and a vocubulary that was all, all of it, gained from being in that bookshop from which I bought nothing and to which I brought nothing but my eager and hungry/thirsty mind. I retrospectively wonder how she made any money out of this bookshop...but at the time, it was my own personal wonderland.

As a result of this generosity, for many years, when I was in college in the United States, the way I knew I could pay for my summers in Kenya was that I could WRITE, and I could sell that story, and that money would be enough for all the partying and all the eating out and all the buying that I needed to do (it supported many drinks at Carnivore). She did much more for me than make it possible for me to see my work in print (this work, I must admit, was pretty horrible, but not bad for a young girl) or even make it possible for a young Kenyan girl to earn some fairly serious money (at some point I was getting commissions!!!.) She made it possible for me to be an autonomous and independent mind, which I have been ever since. Also, she made it seem right and possible that my thinking should appear in print, so that other people could have access to it. Not to mince words, our Marjorie helped to make me the supremely confident, and secure and perhaps even slightly arrogant person I am today, since there is no doubt in my mind that I am as good as anybody else, and better than most, say 99.99% of the rest. (But do we say?) So I am not sure from what point of view anybody would find it necessary to say that M.O.M., although "white" is really "valuable." This strikes me as not only ridiculous, but also insulting. In the interests of our current concern I feel compelled to say that yes, I had noticed that she was white.

I am wondering, since I am clearly not the only Kenyan whose love of books Mrs. Oludhe Macgoye has generously encouraged and supported, why it is that Mr. Opicho felt it necessary to defend her. Against what attack? Has anyone been defaming her (because I would in that case quite like to have a talk with that person)? If not, well, I suppose I could write an article arguing and insisting that Jomo Kenyatta is an important figure in Kenyan history, but how futile is that? Is there someone who doubts this? Has there been a controversy about his importance? If not, why would I want to waste my time and yours—not to mention space—by stating obvious, evident, basic, common-sense things which are so un-profound that I insult you by articulating them?

Secondly, Frantz Fanon would be twirling like a top in his grave to hear that he was considered to be a “white writer.” I really cannot understand Mr. Opicho’s misunderstanding of this basic idea, since it was Fanon’s very blackness that had him write “Black Skins White Masks” in which one the most famous lines is where he remembers a little French boy telling his mother, upon seeing Fanon: “Look Mama! A Nigger! I’m frightened!” Not only is this line one of the most famous in radical literature, it is also the pivotal theme in Fanon’s “Black Skins White Masks”—to fail to understand what this moment meant to him (which he explains at length) is to fail to understand the entirety of not just this book, but his entire corpus and the purpose of his very life, as well as his engagement in the Algerian War. In sum, it is to understand NOTHING about Fanon. I could say more on the matter of Fanon, but let us press on.

Dennis Brutus is South African. Yes. He spent a long time under imprisonment by the apartheid South African government, especially for his role in urging the Olympic Committee to boycott South Africa. Yes. His poetry has considerable power and passion. Right again. We’re doing well here, but there’s just one problem…(sotto voce)…he is not white. I suppose, in the hierarchical system of South African racial groupings, he would be considered what they call “coloured” i.e. mixed-race; but as a matter of political radicalism, all anti-apartheid activists called themselves black as a way of declaring a political and social identity and alliance.

But I am not done. If we are going to go about defending white writers who are important to the African world of thinking, don’t we first have to explain why this is necessary or at least to whom this argument is directed? To what area of our public discourse, or issue that is important to our collective thinking, or hidden meaning of our cultural production is this piece of writing adressed?


If we want a few white South Africans whose work has contributed to our collective imaginary and whose work is also internationally significant, we have no shortages: Coetzee, Breytenbach (who was also jailed in solitary confinement by the apartheid government—if we needed an ex-convict), Gordimer, Jean and John Comarroff, Antjie Krog…etc. etc…there does not seem to be any shortage of examples of the figure of the "valuable white african writer." There are surely enough of them that one does not have to go to the extremes of arbitrarily changing other people's (self-identified) social categories in order to make flesh the notion of the "valuable white writer." I also feel that I must query what this new distinction stands in opposition to: NON-valuable, NON-contributory white African writers? valuable and contributory writers who are white but not African? What?

However, let us be generous in our critique, and give this piece the benefit of the doubt by arguing it on its own merits. If we are going to be talking about “race” in Africa—a scientifically meaningless concept anyway, even if one must recognize its political and social potency—let us at least try to do so with some a)accuracy b)intelligence and c)purpose. Debates and literature about identities, their constitution, their construction, their deployment have been going on for some time now. There is no shortage of sources to consult, nor is there a shortage of people (yes!! Some of them are white!!!!!) who have thought about these matters very carefully. If Mr. Opicho is not equal to the task of undertaking some of these nuances and subtle variations, then there is a wealth of experts on whom he could call. Not to do so assumes a)ignorance amongst his readers b)crudeness of thought amongst his readers c)parochialism—since they clearly are not in a position to know either Fanon or Brutus or any other person and d)complacency that what the media does and prints does not fall under the scrutiny and analyses of those who care about the nature and level of our public discourse. Oh and e)that we don't know enough to appreciate good writing, no matter the particular tint of its author. This is even more of an insult. Really, we can do better than this.