THE DIALECTICS
OF RACISM: AMIRI BARAKA’S
PERCEPTION
Dr. A. R. Madhusudhana Reddy
Amiri Baraka’s impact on American
consciousness is not only that of a writer but also that of a symbol suggesting
a blending of European radicalism and
‘rebellious energies’. His plays suggest interaction between an ‘action
and its perspective,’ between the present and the past as also the foreseen
time, between the loss of identity and awareness of it in terms of what could
be known as one’s own destiny.
Amiri Baraka’s work carries a high voltage
emotional charge because of its attempting to use the theatre as an agent of
revolutionary change, social, political and cultural, in America in accordance
with his credo spelt out in his provocative essay, “The Revolutionary Theatre.” Defining its role Baraka says:
The Revolutionary Theatre should force
change: it should be change…..(It) must EXPOSE, show up the insides
of these humans, look into black skulls. White men will cower before this
theatre because it hates them. Because they themselves have been trained to
have. The Revolutionary Theatre must hate them for hating……(It must teach them
their deaths...must take dreams and give them a reality...It is a political
theatre, a weapon to help in the slaughter of these dimwitted fat-bellied white
guys who somehow believe that the rest of the world is here for them to slobber
on...This is a theatre of assault. The play that will split the heavens for us
will be called THE DESTRUCTION OF
AMERICA. 1
It may be seen that Amiri Baraka regards the
Black writer as a moralist and the Revolutionary Theatre as a ‘theatre of
victims.’ Baraka considers the political character of black art to be what
distinguishes it from other American art. His view draws attention to the fact
that the movement of Black literature follows the trajectory of the Black’s
history from slavery, the 17th century through partial emancipation in the
1960’s from muted protest to full-throated protest.
Though his plays for the most part are
unrelentingly propagandistic, they draw attention to issues which are not
merely of racist concern but of profound human significance - issues like displacement, loss of identity, alienation and existential
despair. It is not, therefore, surprising that his plays project themes which
have not only socio-political implications because of their being predicated
on the African-American political dynamics but also symbolic and mythical ones
traceable to their use of motifs drawn from religious and folkloric myths.
His plays, indeed, seem to exemplify what
Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois envisioned as a responsibility and role of
young Black artists during the Harlem Renaissance. Elaborating their views
Baraka says:
The Black artist must draw out of his soul
the correct image of the world. He must use this image to band his brothers
and sisters together in common understanding of the nature of the world (and
the nature of America) and the nature of the human soul. The Black Artist
must demonstrate sweet life, how it differs from the deathly grip of the
White Eyes. 2
Amiri Baraka’a most outstanding play to date,
Dutchman brings out the tragic predicament of the American Black as
illustrated by the harrowing experience of a twenty-year old middle class
Negro. Clay in withstanding the attempt of the thirty-year old white woman,
Lula to seduce him in a subway employing arguments reminiscent of Eve and
Satan rolled into one, which results in his being ritualistically murdered by
Lula. Its theme, as spelt out by Baraka; is said to be the difficulty of being a man in America and
a variation on it figures in yet another well-known play of his. The Slave.
The Slave centres on the attempt of a Black leader and poet. Walker
Vessels, to come to terms with his oppressed life or to achieve his sanity
through murder. Visiting his former white wife, Grace, and her present husband,
Easley, a professor and friend of his, he has heated exchanges with them which
end in Easley being killed while trying to overpower Walker and Grace getting
killed by the falling debris due to an explosion.
The Baptism, Baraka’s most outrageous
and blasphemous play, focuses on the struggle of Satan in a Negro Baptist
church with the preacher over the soul of the Son of God, a fifteen-year old
Boy come to be baptised. Accused of being a blasphemer, by the very persons
who hailed him as the Son of God who decide to sacrifice him so as to cleanse,
themselves, the Boy murders the Preacher, the Old Woman and the ‘brides of the
Lord’s Son’ for lacking in charity. The Boy is forcibly taken home to his
father, while God, disgusted with the state of the world, plans to destroy it
with a grenade. Satan decides to visit the bars in the Forty-Second Street and
wonder what ‘the cute little religious fanatic’ is subjected to.
The Toilet is another play of Baraka’s intended to shock the people into
recognizing the hypocrisy that has vitiated human relationships. Set in a
stinking latrine, the play features high school boys, mostly black, and the violent
happenings caused by a love letter written by a White boy, Karolis, to an
intelligent Black boy. Ray Foots. Forced into fighting Karolis by his fellow
Blacks. Foots tries not to hurt Karolls only to find him beaten by the gang.
The play ends with Foots stealthily returning and weeping over the injured
Karolis. The Toilet offers a disturbing image of the mainstream American
society which appears to be clogged by ‘moral filth’ as also that of the agony
involved in attaining a self-identity while beset with opposing cultural
forces.
The significance of Amiri Baraka’s
achievement as a poet, playwright, essayist and political activist, lies in
its being at once a cultural seismograph of the shifts in the American Blacks
in the Black Power Movement and a barometer of the convulsions in the American
Consciousness.
1 LeRoi Jones,
Home: Social Essays (New York: William Morrow 1966), pp. 210-215.
2 Ibid., pp 251-252.