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University of Kansas
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terms with his own racial and ethnic identity, and to accept and
embrace his "blackness."In his undeveloped or immaturephase
(that is, in the early portionof the bildungsroman,when he still has
everything to learn), Piri consistently rebuts essentialist biological
explanationsof race, rejecting the idea that race is a stable, natural
category based on biology. Yet his repeatedrefusal to accept that
biology, signaled by physical characteristics, reveals race is
obviously motivated by the desire to "defend" himself from
"accusations"of blackness, despite his dark skin and kinky hair.
Consider for example the following confrontationwith two Italian
boys:
"Hey,you,"he said."Whatnationalityareya?"
I lookedat him andwonderedwhichnationalityto pick. And one of
his friendssaid, "Ah,Rocky,he's blackenuffto be a nigger.Ain't
thatwhatyou is, kid?"
My voice was almostshy in its anger."I'mPuertoRican,"I said."I
was bornhere."I wantedto shoutit, butit cameout like a whisper.
(24)
Piri struggles with context: should he assert his status as an American citizen (and one, furthermore,born on the mainland) against
the possible accusationof foreignness, or should he asserthis sense
of PuertoRican peoplehood in the face of Italianethnic pride? The
choice becomes moot, however, when he is confrontedin the next
question with the possibility of being black, where blackness
would seem to pre-empt, as a category, the possibility of any
(other) nationality.
Implicit in this exchange is the intimateconnection of race with
nationality that is inextricable from the history of the evolving
concept of race.12 In Ivan Hannaford'smassive Race: The History
of an Idea in the West,he identifies early (pre-) manifestationsof
modern conceptions of race in a search for national origins, as in
Francis Tregian's poetic urgings that the English "learnthy name,
thy race, thy offspring" and Richard Verstegan's claim that
"Englishmenare descended of Germanrace, and were heertofore
[sic] generally called Saxons" (180; emphasis Hannaford's).But in
the logic of emerging Europeannationalismswhich gave rise to the
concept of race as we know it today, blackness and nationalism
were mutually exclusive. To be "black,""negro,"or "negroid"(a
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or stickof living."(83-84)
Against the hinted "accusation"that he is African American like
Jerry,Piri defends himself by presentinga radical image of identity
as constructed, a product of borrowing and crosspollination, such
that external "signs" such as accent or language or lifestyle are no
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grounded in Thomas's autobiographyis not the issue of capitulation to or resistance of racial ideology, but the issue of claiming or
rejecting racial privilege. Indeed, Piri's acceptance of "blackness"
is positioned within the bildungsromanstructureas a positive step
towards racial solidarity, rather than a negative one indicating
surrender to society. When, during his arrest after a botched
robbery, Piri responds to a cop's slur of "black bastard"with the
statement "If you don't mind, I'm a Puerto Rican black bastard"
(235), we are clearly meant to measure how far he has come from
the days when he said to Brew, "I ain't no damn Negro" (123).
"Puerto Rican" is now no longer used to defend him from the
lower social status of blackness that is markedby the cop's linking
of "black" with "bastard."His ethnicity is only an additional
modifier of "black bastard";it no longer serves as a qualifier
limiting that blackness. Relying largely on what seem like essentialist categories, Piri now disavows racial privilege, while formerly he had used the fluctuating boundaries of the social construction of race to assert difference and distinction. Thomas's
autobiographysuggests that an awareness of the social construction of race is, in and of itself, not resistant, any more than the
acceptance of biological explanations of race is, in and of itself,
conservative. In the text, all definitions of race call out to be
judged contextually,in terms of the strategicpurposesthey serve.
The scene of Piri's arrest,less than one-thirdfrom the end of the
book, for all practicalpurposes ends the portion of the autobiography that deals with racial issues. The remainder of the text describes Piri's prison sentence and eventual release, and, as Mohr
has noted, "Piri seems less troubledby the identity question"while
in prison (53). His acceptance of "blackness"in response to the
cop's slur, throughhis refusal to back out of prejudiceby insisting
on a racially different status as a Puerto Rican, seems to have
resolved this particularconflict, althoughhe continuesto replaythe
need to claim privilege within a hierarchyin different, non-racial,
forms, in prison.
Taken as a whole, Thomas's text contains a sophisticated
understandingof racial politics. Repeatedly, Thomas undermines
essentialist biological notions of race, exposing the ways in which
it is rathera socially constructedcategory only arbitrarilylinked to
ideas of "blood." Thus he does much to shake the foundationsof
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racial thinking that, as we have seen, continues to persist in popular culture, despite the long-standing and more recent "evidence"
of science. Yet at the same time, Thomas's text suggests that
non-essentialistunderstandingsof race are no guaranteeof political
progressiveness, while strategic essentialism can be used effectively, even against more "radical"notions of race, to assert and
construct a solidarity based on the exigencies of American life.
Down These Mean Streets thus offers an interesting counterpoise
to Appiah's critiqueof Du Bois, and to all searches for a "purified"
discourse of race. The mean streets are a long way from the ivory
towers of academe and are ill-informed about the discoveries that
are made there. But that does not make them any less a site for
subversion,even if such subversiondeploys the "tainted"discourse
of race. It turnsout that, to play in the mean streets, you sometimes
have to get dirty.
Notes
This investigation was supportedby the University of Kansas General Research
Fund allocation #2301138-003.
1. Sainchez,notably, also begins her article on Down These Mean Streets with a
discussion of this scene, althoughthe thrustof her opening discussion is that the
racially-loaded nature of the conversation is dissipated by a segue to the
essentializing language of male privilege: "Pussy's the same in every color"
(Thomas 191; qtd. in Sanchez 117).
2. It is worth pointing out, however, that the characterGerald seems to have no
knowledge of an intellectualbacking for his racial claims.
3. Near the conclusion of "The Uncompleted Argument,"Appiah admits that
"Discussing Du Bois has been largely a pretext for adumbratingthe argument"
against race (35). That is to say, over seventy years after the publication of the
Crisis issue in which scientists denounced race, Appiah still felt it necessary to
create a "pretext" so that he could review and elaborate on the scientific
argumentfor his academic colleagues.
4. In an example from an academic setting, a 1998 textbook by Cornell and
Hartmannspends three pages reviewing the problems with biological arguments
for race, ending this section of the discussion with the statement that "most
contemporaryscholars dismiss the entire idea of race as a meaningful biological
category"(23). Our students,apparently,still need to be "taught"this lesson.
5. The use of the rhetoric of contamination ("tainted")ironically echoes the
loaded language of biologically-inflected understandingsof race as "blood,"
whether "pure"or "tainted."Similarly, for scholars like Gilroy, the rhetoric of
race contaminates or infects radical politics: "Raciology has saturated the
discourses in which it circulates.It cannot be readily re-signified or de-signified,
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