Patience: on being Patient with Critical Race Theory.

At forty years old, I still have not learnt patience. You may read this first sentence, and instinctively think, “hmph! I have! How can this Writer be forty and not know that without patience, we only have the selfish, and childish requirements of instant gratification? No such thing. I know patience!”

Please be patient with me. The Cambridge Dictionary defines the condition of patience as,”the ability to wait, or to continue doing something despite difficulties, or to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed.” (1) To suffer. To suffer, without complaining. Who in their right mind; in this day and age, suffers without complaining?

And so, I bring forth Critical Race Theory. It is my thinking that this such necessary criticality was borne within the very notion of Freedom, and for such a condition to exist: in enters, captivity. (2) Because of History; because of the History of the Atlantic Slave Trade; because of the injustices we see today – economic, social injustices stemming from the Human scourge of racism – there is no way, that Critical Race Theory is not a needed sense of criticality, as well as, and in addition to, being a flawed process within its nomenclature. The very use of the word, “Race,” the Human, English word that means skin colour, puts us Humans in competition with each other. As the word, “race,” as a noun, and not an adjective, or an adverb, means, to be in a competitive condition. How much longer must we go on communicably competing? I do hope, not much longer.

Oftentimes, for myself, I refer to the Artwork of Kerry James Marshall. (3) He is brilliant. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1955, now living in Chicago, Illinois, Mr. Marshall, for reasons obvious to some – that he grew up in pre-Civil Rights U.S.A. – more than likely, will never utter that he has never suffered. However, in this thinking, with reference to the extreme racial injustice that has been borne in the United States of America, I have no intentions of promoting detrimental binaries, of us and them; black and white; slave and master. In addition, I would like to mention, that I am fully aware, as a black woman, how such binaries relegate Asians, Native Americans, Oceanians, and Latin Americans, akin to what Luce Irigaray – in my own analogy – may term, “none.” (4) In other words, zero, non-sequiturs; no ones. Where in fact, I feel quite the opposite to such silent dichotomies, rarely verbalised in print or during “race” discussions, as opposed to cultural discourse. Oftentimes, such citizens are posited in the Other conglomerate, however, remain to have a plethora of cultural genius that continues, both scientifically and artistically, to contribute to Humanity.

It is my thinking, that everybody in the World suffers to different degrees. And that patience is a very trying Human condition to master. In my opinion, there may be no other reason as to why this condition exists, other than to get work done! In the poem, “Musée des Beaux Arts,” the British-born poet, born in 1907, died in the early 1970’s, W.H. Auden, takes us on a trip around life, in one museum visit:

“About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

It’s human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.” (5)

This is not the whole poem as you can see, however Auden, with full intent throughout the whole poem, drives home the point of suffering, and its subsequent concomitant: patience; running in tandem, for perseverance, and therefore survival.

So, if patience exists solely for the purposes of perseverance, and therefore providing, literally something to do; work, as we endure this gift we call life; and indeed that it is a Universal experience – then why does racism exist? In posing this question, I do not mean, anthropologically, why does racism exist? I mean to ask, psychologically, why does racism exist? Is it Psychiatric sickness? Perhaps a lack of the important antioxidant ingredient that lies dormant in sweet potatoes? I jest here, but, within this jest, lays the stereotypical racial reference, and frequently used pejoratively. This being that only people of colour enjoy that sweet, starchy vegetable. Where can we go, sans competition, however, not A-Historical? Where do we go in History, or in the future, to find the answers for a real Human community? Is there a place where racial suffering can go to rest? Self-annihilate, preferably. I am waiting; here, I am patient.

Cambridge Dictionary. 26th of June, 2022. http://www.dictionary.cambridge.org. 26th of June, 2022.
Morrison, Toni. playing in the dark: whiteness and literary imagination. Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A., and London, England, Harvard University Press, 1992.
Jack Shaiman. 26th of June, 2022. https://jackshainman.com/artists/kerry_james_marshall. 26th of June, 2022.
Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the other Woman. Ithaca, New York, U.S.A., Cornell University Press, 1985.
A Study Guide for W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts. Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A., Gale Publishing Company, 2017.

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