Because of racial uplift: "Something Street" by Carolynn Ferrell

You ever have an experience where you're so sure something is going to be hard, it takes you forever to realize it's not that hard and you can actually enjoy yourself? That's what happened to me with "Something Street" by Carolynn Ferrell. Two years ago, Ferrell's "History of China" gave me fits trying to come to terms with its meaning. Recently, Mrs. Heretic has been reading the 2018 Best American Short Stories, because I told her it was my favorite one, and she had to skip "History of China," because she couldn't get through it. So I came to this story carefully reading every word, not wanting to get lost this time, which actually made it take much longer for me to realize this story is pretty approachable. 

It's a story very rooted in the history of black culture since Reconstruction. It mostly takes place at Hampton University, which, as Hampton Institute, was one of the first black institutions of higher learning after the Civil War. One could go very deep with how this story is commenting on and influenced by black culture. An expert on the subject would have enough for a thesis, but even someone like me, who just knows the basic outlines of black history in America, can get the basic gist. It's really not a story that is hiding its secrets, unlike "History of China." My goal here isn't to go thesis-deep. It's to help readers of BASS who might not remember enough of the basics of black history to get at least some idea of where this story is going.

The obvious

Let's start with what nearly everyone will realize: this story is at least in someway alluding to Bill Cosby, the black comedian who was once the biggest star in America, but now is disgraced because of his multiple counts of sex crimes. The protagonist is Parthenia, wife to Crawley Stevenson, better known as "Craw Daddy," hugely successful black comedian now on the downside of his career. What helped put Craw Daddy on the downside of his career were the "Complaints," which Parthenia partially personifies by thinking of them in capital letters. The Complaints were that Craw Daddy had been involved in numerous sexual dalliances, many of which were against the will of those he had sex with. Immediately, the link to Cosby is pretty plain.

I would normally put a photo of Cosby here, maybe one with him wearing a sweater and making a funny face, but he raped a bunch of women, so fuck him. Here's Mahalia Jackson, who is also in "Something Street" and who almost certainly never raped anybody. 

The less obvious

Kenya Barris's #BlackAF titled every one of its eight episodes in its first season with some form of "because of slavery," making the point that nearly everything that is now a major part of the lives of Black Americans can in some way be traced to the historical facts of slavery. Although I generally saw where he was coming from, I'm not sure if a hard historical analysis would support every assertion. Do black men today really like wearing expensive sneakers because slaves were paraded around in Sunday clothes? I don't know. 

Slavery is important to the American human landscape today, of course, but a more directly contributing factor to many of the assumptions contemporary Black Americans live with is what came after slavery, especially when Jim Crow was instituted after the country gave up on Reconstruction. Those assumptions are what drive the decisions made by Parthenia in "Something Street."

A History 101 understanding of America will include some sketching out of contrasting views from black leaders after the Civil War of how to improve the lives of freedmen. Even most white readers who have never taken a class or read a book specifically about black history will be able to name W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington as central figures who emerged a few decades after the Civil War, figures who had somewhat opposing views of the way forward. 

To simplify greatly, Washington believed that it was important to develop a strong black working class, and that if blacks were able to support themselves and show what good citizens they could be, they would eventually find greater acceptance--or at least tolerance--from whites and their lives would improve. Washington believed political agitation for equality should wait. Du Bois's beliefs, on the other hand, could be summarized by one quote: "We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it." Du Bois was critical of Washington's policy of racial accommodation, of wanting to make black people more palatable to whites. (Here's a link to a famous Du Bois critique of Washington, if this is all new to you and you'd like to know more.) 

Although Washington and Du Bois represented two ends of a spectrum, with Washington as the conservative end and Du Bois the progressive one, they both shared some assumptions. One was the notion that has since come to be known as "racial uplift." (I'm not linking to the Wikipedia article on this, which I think is a little suspect.) As Kevin Gaines explains (in the linked source), despite the differences between black radicals and conservatives, 

"...black leaders generally countered anti-black stereotypes by emphasizing class differences among blacks, and their essential role as race leaders. From their perspective, to “uplift the race” meant highlighting their function as elites to reform the character and manage the behavior of the black masses. Against pervasive claims of black immorality and pathology, educated blacks waged a battle over the representation of their people, a strategy with ambiguous implications and results. They referred to themselves as a “better class” of blacks, and demanded recognition of their respectability, and privileged status as agents of Western progress and civilization. But in doing so, they ushered in a politics of internal class division...that often seemed to internalize dominant notions of black cultural depravity and backwardness even as they sought to oppose racism. In other words, this method of opposing racism tacitly echoed dominant ideas of class and gender hierarchy. Their view that social progress for blacks was ideally measured in patriarchal terms of male-headed families and homes produced tensions between educated men and women. Such expectations of female deference to male authority and leadership were challenged by many educated black women, such as Anna Julia Cooper and the anti-lynching activist and journalist, Ida B. Wells."

What this all has to do with "Something Street"

Parthenia, wife to comedian Craw Daddy, was raised years after Washington and Du Bois had passed on the mantle of black leadership to others, but the sides those two had helped create still lingered on. Parthenia's own parents seem to have been the more conservative stock. They gave her a classic Greek name (one that has the meaning of "virgin," rather interestingly for the story). They sent her to Hampton Institute when it was still an "institute" and not a university. (Parthenia's dislike of the name change gives away her political conservatism in that an "institute" would focus on Washingtonian job training, while a "university" would focus on higher thoughts that might lead a black person to get "uppity," something Parthenia's mother has apparently warned her against.)

Because Du Bois and Washington, in spite of their differences, shared a number of conservative beliefs concerning racial uplift, her father was still able to appreciate Du Bois enough to "misquote" him. The narrative doesn't aim to criticize either Washington or Du Bois or those who followed either. Parthenia's parents are admirable for all their conservatism. The point isn't to advocate for one or the other political philosophy, but rather to examine how the essential contradictions of racial uplift have created pathologies in those raised to believe them. Parthenia sees herself as part of the "better class" of black and charged with upholding the higher class of blacks, but she's a victim of the very class hierarchy she is supporting. 

For Parthenia, living her live in a way that uplifts her race means several things. It means not being a troublemaker: "Each time I was a student (at Hampton), I was not a troublemaker. I did not wear an Afro, nor did I burn my cotillion gowns." It means trying to learn to imitate white high society through her participation in a club where young black women were taught to behave properly. It means she did not take part in Civil Rights marches. It means not showing her "true colors" when white people are around, meaning white people should never seen black people acting angry or disagreeable. And it means, above all else, that she will "put her hands over her ears" when Craw Daddy seems to do wrong. Because Craw Daddy is a symbol for blacks, who see him as "our man, he will always be our man." He's been hailed as a black comedian who can even make white audiences laugh. To turn on Craw Daddy means to hold a prominent black man up to shame in front of white people, which would be a setback for blacks. Better to hold it in, to "shield the world from my raging emotions, the overflowing cup of my indignations." Better to say "yes" to everything Craw Daddy puts her though.

It's this political conservatism, more than anything, that makes the story reminiscent of Cosby. (Okay, that, and the reference to funny dad sweaters.) Cosby was himself rather on the conservative end, berating blacks who didn't do well in school or who wore their pants down low. He was extremely beloved by white people (I grew up in a nearly all-white town, but almost everyone I knew watched The Cosby Show during its best years). Cosby's own wife has steadfastly refused to accept that charges against him are legitimate, insisting instead that it's all part of a racist plot to bring down someone like her husband. His wife is a loyal soldier of the philosophy of racial uplift, a philosophy which has never really gone away.

Her loyalty to her husband, though, causes her to be terribly callous to the women he has attacked. She has testified against all of them, disbelieving the evidence plainly in front of her nose rather than give the women the justice they deserve. 

Greatness

Unlike the real Mrs. Cosby, Parthenia does eventually get straightened out. (In this sense, Ferrell shows a greater ability than T.C. Boyle did with "The Apartment" to handle real-life material but stay in control of it rather than letting it control her.) Much of the story concerns itself with the question of what greatness is. While Craw Daddy is playing his farewell tour in front of one of the last friendly audiences he can find at Hampton, Parthenia sees the audience bowled over by his greatness. But she also remembers another woman who had the stage at Hampton once, Mahalia Jackson. Mahalia was not accommodating like Parthenia has always been. She was "slow and belligerent" when she walked off after just one song. She was imperious, not even lifting her eyes.

Parthenia finally learns to channel this indifference to worrying about how something will look to others, to stop bottling up the feelings she's bottled up for years. Just to make it clear that it's not necessarily political conservativism the story's railing against, but the effects of a kind of conservatism when that belief makes one unable to stand up for justice, Parthenia goes to Clarence, a man whose "old-fashioned darkyness" her own husband found so charming. Clarence is the one who allows Parthenia to stage her rebellion by refusing to care any more for the grandchild she knows she and her husband should not be raising. 

Eboni

There are all kinds of paths I'm not going to get to go down in this story. It's as rich as a good allegory in how many things there are that represent other things, without having any of the dullness or didacticism an allegory sometimes falls into. I can't resist, though, quickly considering Eboni. This is the girl assigned by the college to tend to Craw Daddy's needs. It's clear that Craw Daddy is messing around with her. For most of the story, Parthenia regards Eboni with class-based judgment for her ashy, lotionless skin, her unkempt scalp, her non-yellow complexion (yellow meaning light-skinned). Eboni, meanwhile, responds with passive-aggressive jabs at Parthenia. 

Eboni could, of course, be spelled "Ebony," which is a near synonym for "black." In fact, ebony is a fairly dark black. Ebony is the name of a magazine that has played an important role for years in the fight for equity for Black Americans. Eboni's reaction to Craw Daddy, then, could be seen as, in some ways, representative of how all Black Americans who want something better for themselves feel about someone like Craw Daddy, someone who once made whites feel better about blacks but who also seems to have done terrible things. 

That feeling seems to be expressed by Eboni when she is taunting Parthenia with the fact that Craw Daddy has been fooling around with her: "I thought right up to now I liked it." Eboni has apparently been one of Craw Daddy's willing partners, although her willingness was likely a product of her being star-struck. Eboni suffered from a form of the same disease that has afflicted Parthenia, the desire to see a black person succeed so badly, she allowed herself to be drawn into his madness.

Eboni and Parthenia both seem to snap out of their afflictions at the same time, with Eboni plotting to have her husband and others beat Craw Daddy after the show just as Parthenia is giving the baby away. Rather than be angry at Eboni for attacking her husband, Parthenia feels love for her. The story closes with Parthenia wanting to connect with Eboni, finding that Eboni is the greatness she has been looking for:

Eboni is stamping down the hill, backlit by moonlight. Her fists are tight by her side--she seems all greatness in her youthful march, her hair gone wild and free as it flutters in gangly strips atop her head--I want to find out if that is true. Are you great? Have you always been great? Hoisting myself from the grass, I stand and wave. Her silhouette inches closer to mine. My arms open, I start to cry. This girl is going to meet me for the first time, even if she doesn't yet know it.

Parthenia's awakening is to realize that the greatness she sought wasn't in some "top tenth" celebrity who could represent the race. It was in people like Eboni, people unafraid to show their true colors and their true color.  

   

Other readings: Jim Harris at Auxiliary Memory (who shared my finding that this story is enough for someone's dissertation)

Karen Carlson at A Just Recompense, who examines water as a motif in the story in a way that I missed.