Afropessimism and Afroparanoia

I was fooling around on mastodon when I found the following video entitled “Afropessimism with Dr. Frank Wilderson”:

Apparently I’m late to the Afropessimism concept because when I did a search on the term for this post in youtube I found hundreds of videos–some of them 10 years old.

As I understand #Afropessimism, it’s essentially the technical term that embodies both “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired” and “race is not real but racism is”

• it shifts the presumptions of pathology towards those who originated and control the concept of whiteness
• it recognizes the mytho-cultural, somatic nature of the association of anti-blackness with slavery
• it explains why the most frequent, anti-black response is always violent
• it explains the rollback of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion projects and the lurch of corporate America towards white supremacy
• it explains why racial hierarchy is created even in presumably Anti-Racist spaces

What I understand, at this first brush, is that Afropessimism explains much of the negative experiences I have had in presumably liberal, “Anti-Racist” spaces–including personal interactions and my own views of myself. This is simultaneously enlightening and disturbing at the same time for me. I’m seeing racism in a new light and my response to it differently than before.

Individual instants are clearer to me as I begin to look backward on my life. I’m (re)seeing instances of racism in presumably anti-racist and liberal spaces because of the meanings people are culturally conditioned attach to my large, brown body. This is why Wilkerson’s book Caste is so apropos. The fundamental parallel between the Indian caste system and White supremacy is that they are both mytho-cultural. In other words, you don’t have to think about why you decide that I need your help with the printer, why I’m dangerous when I stop my car in front of your house on the same street I’ve shared with you for 20 years, or why it’s okay to dismiss me as paranoid when I describe my lived experience of racism in this large, brown, male body. I’m black and therefore fill in the blank.

What is fraught is not color. What is fraught is the “and therefore fill in the blank” part. In other words, it’s the meaning of the color or other appearances that are the problem. And these meanings are assigned in the blink of an eye–faster than you can say the phrase “unconscious bias.”

Afropessimism moves the needle of what we consider as reasonable and normal. The concept is stronger than the progressive “racism is profitable” argument. Wilderson argues that the existence of this society is conditioned on the continued abuse of the black body.

Powerful stuff. I’ll extend and revise this post after I read the book.