I felt like a target, sitting in a dark theater with a hundred college students and only one other professor.
One night after I teaching my courses at Diablo Valley College, I attended the showing of a movie—Sorry to Bother You—written and directed by Boots Riley, who will be coming to campus in March as part of Black History Events.
The movie is an artistic commentary about the negative characteristics of capitalism. The main character Cassius Green, who is Black, gets a job as a telemarketer and finds out that he is successful only when he uses his “white voice,” a nasally, high-pitched tenor with overtones of lassitude and a lack of interest.
Just as the poorly-paid telemarketers unify to demand a union and better pay, Green is promoted to the “Power Telemarketer” floor where he enjoys the luxury of a modern office and sells labor for a company named Worry-Free.
While Green is enjoying the parties, alcohol, and access to the CEO of Worry-Free, he learns that the company transforms humans into horse-like creatures who can work harder and stronger than the average human, creating even more profits for capitalistic, greedy companies. Green’s girlfriend informs him that all labor is slave labor when capitalism controls the corporate culture. The employees work at the mercy of those in power, thus having no rights or voices.
Finally, in the end, Green quits his job, gets back his pure-of-heart girlfriend, and retains his morality.
I walked into the theater right at 4 p.m., thinking the movie would be starting on time. The room: a theater with about three hundred seats that stepped down to a big screen, where a podium stood to the side with a laptop set up to show the movie. An IT woman, that occasionally comes to my classroom to fix technical problems, stood behind the podium.
I looked around before choosing a seat. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I sat in a seat on the right aisle about six rows from the door.
Scattered in the rest of the seats were students who did not reflect the diverse nature of the college. About half were Black, sitting in twos and threes, sprinkled throughout the room. Several Asian students, sitting by themselves, also filled the seats. Three white students sat together. Where were the Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Indians, and Native Americans? I saw no professors—the people in the room were all in their teens and twenties.
Waiting for my English colleague who was bringing her class to the showing, I changed my seat to an aisle seat in the middle section of the room. Definitely felt like I needed some physical support in this room that did not reflect either my age group or my status. Finally, I’ll call her Carol, Carol walked in with her class—an assortment that more reflected our college’s diversity, and I adjusted more comfortably into my seat.
At about 4:15 p.m. a Black man strode down to the podium and turned to face the audience. He wore his hair in a wide, black afro and dressed in casual clothes, not helping me decide whether he was a fellow student or professor. In any case, when he started talking, his sophisticated vocabulary and well-practiced speaking voice let me know that he was used to speaking in front of groups about issues that he supported. He introduced himself. Let’s call him Brian Miller.
Miller explained the focus of the movie. He discussed how students have to use their “white voice” when they speak with their professors.
At this, I squirmed in my seat. I spend lots of time in my English classroom teaching students how to speak and write in Standard English. I explain that they will have to use formal language in the workplace, and that they will be more successful when they attain a command of it. I preach that the acquirement of this language is empowerment.
I also inform them that, once they learn the mechanics of formal English, they will be able to purposefully adapt the language to suit different writing and speaking purposes. While speaking, they can employ a short sentence to give listeners time to think. When writing fiction, they can utilize fragments to create emotions or visual impressions.
But here, this person was inferring that the formal language I teach is not only “white,” but also oppressive. That what I teach in my classroom is a form of domination that subjugates people to conform to those in power, and those in power are the “whites.” I wasn’t sure I belonged in this room, being an English professor and white, but I wasn’t willing to miss learning about how an African American film director was going to portray the white culture. I wanted to know and try to understand, so I stayed deep in my chair.
One scene in the movie showed the CEO of Worry-Free Company surrounded by scantily clad women who fawned all over him. Another scene showed naked women having sex with naked men at a company party. I was certainly offended at the misogyny of the scenes, and commented about it to Carol. My first thought is that people are more concerned about equality amongst the races than they are amongst the genders. Troublesome. A uniquely American issue that continues to plague our whole society.
At the end of the film, Miller asked the audience to rate the film from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. Most people rated it as a 3 or 4 as Carol did. I didn’t even raise my hand. The film was such an in-my-face opinion about the culture that I represented that I couldn’t even decide what to think.
What could I learn from this Avant Garde criticism of America set in Oakland, California? As I drove home from campus, dodging the headlights of dozens of cars whirling around me, my heart fluttered like a moth burned by the heat of a lightbulb.
Why would this director claim that capitalism was “white” culture? Because the white Europeans colonized the Africans in order to rob them of their land’s natural resources such as rubber and diamonds. Because the English aristocrats, who profited from the Caribbean plantations, left the sin of slavery behind when they went back to England to live in their mansions and estates. Because American plantation owners treated the slaves like they were savages and erased their African roots by converting them into Christians and partial human beings. Because African Americans have never felt like the benefactors of the capitalist system. They have slaved before and after the Emancipation without profit and, for hundreds of years now, have been robbed of their human dignity.
When I got home, two new volumes of African American literature were waiting for me on my doorstep. I recently had ordered them from Norton. As I sat at the kitchen table in the hallowed light of the room, I read the Table of Contents of each volume.
The first volume starts with the words of spirituals—religious songs sung by African Americans since the earliest days of slavery. As I followed the long list of songs, I recognized the name Brer Fox, but most of the words were not familiar. In the latter lists, I spotted Phillis Wheatley, a slave who was taught to read and write by her mistress, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Harlem Rennaissance poet Langston Hughes. Volume 11 covers literature up to the 2000 years, and I knew of Melvin Tolson, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
But the lists of people I had never read was longer. The editors of the volumes are two African American professors from elite Eastern universities. Obviously, they have used their long literary careers studying the works of African American authors of all forms and styles. I never even heard of many like Bob Kaufman who wrote Jail Poems or Adrienne Kennedy who is still living and wrote Funnyhouse of a Negro.
I’m not surprised I don’t fully understand the perspective of Boots Riley and other African American writers like him; I have two disadvantages. For one, even though I have experienced discrimination and prejudice for being a woman, I have never worn the dress of an African American. Second, I have much, much more reading to do and more empathy to cultivate until I understand why Blacks distance themselves from me, from someone who wants to be their fellow citizen, but, first, who needs to qualify.
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