ABSTRACT
Transitioning from a white religious outlook to something more equitable, lifeaffirming, and humble requires coming to terms with the “shame” and “dread” described above by literary theorist Harold Bloom as much as it requires learning to “number our days.” Following the efforts of anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff, numbering our days means learning to accept death in all its iterations, opening oneself to the wisdom that such an embrace might offer for reassessing the value of others and recalibrating the cultural artifacts we have inherited (and have often rejected) as means of limiting ourselves in the face of death. This chapter tacks between poetry and narrative, finding and unraveling the uncertain loose ends
provided by stories told in the face of death. Perhaps, through such story-telling, we who worship with white religion might begin to “number our days.” For many white Americans, much shame is attached to momentary recognition
of having worshiped an exaggerated image of oneself. Thinking of tragic social injustices like racism as “poems,” shame and splendor collide in a demand to finally take responsibility for oneself and one’s cultural heritage. These “poetic” features of white life often prevent the telling of a new narrative where the costs of social life are more equitably distributed. Stories transmit partial and at times inaccurate cultural memories, offering “cultural mirrors” able to “present collective knowledge”3 about a community. Now, and in the face of death – what Malcolm X began to understand as “the white man fast losing his power to oppress and exploit the dark world … the white man’s world was on the way down, it was on the way out”4 – narrative offers a means for the “white man” to cope with and accept that loss. White Americans can teach ourselves to “number our days” by beginning to tell the stories of how our days are numbered. That is, acceptance of a loss of perceived or actual power and certainty in social centers is made possible using a methodology offered by physical mortality. This chapter “loses the freedom” of thinking white American cultural heritage
is empty of tools for responding to the most perilous aspects of that heritage, and moves towards the responsibility demanded by the relinquishing of the idea of freedom from physical or social death. Such responsibility might be thought of as the courage to never forgive or exonerate lynching, Jane Crow, gender discrimination, homophobia, the list goes on – as well as moving towards a response that offers a new way to live with the “shame” and “splendor” that comprise white American culture and lead many on the social margins of that culture to characterize or maintain that “the white man is the devil.”5 Surely not all non-whites think or talk in terms of the white man as a devil, and though many whites have turned such talk into yet another black stereotyping mechanism, the notion of white devils is instructive. Malcolm X spoke often of white devils, and helps to ground the charge. Asked by Louis Lomax in 1963 why he called white men devils, Malcolm responded this way:
Because that’s what he is. What do you want me to call him, a saint? Anybody who rapes, and plunders, and enslaves, and steals, and drops hell bombs on people … anybody who does these things is nothing but a devil. Look, Lomax, history rewards all research. And history fails to record one single
instance in which the white man – as a people – did good. They have always been devils; they always will be devils, and they are about to be destroyed. The final proof that they are devils lies in the fact that they are about to destroy themselves. Only a devil – and a stupid devil at that – would destroy himself!6
