Inside the Birdcage
By Nicholas Russell
You arrive outside the store in a taxi. Minimal luggage, a duffel bag, and a backpack that you leave by the front of the store. We’re letting people in again, but with masks, no coffee shop operation, no indoor seating, though we tried doing the outdoor thing for a little while. You’re a white man, dark hair, medium height, fit in a way that, along with the luggage, makes me think you often work out in hotel gyms, that you’re consciously apolitical, that you’re very political in private. You start looking around.
Our book displays have changed dramatically over the weeks, though you’re a tourist so you wouldn’t notice. When we were shut down, online orders were the store’s only source of income. Towers of new releases went stacked on the ground in no discernible order, decorations were removed and rearranged, dust accumulated everywhere. When we came back to work, my colleagues and I moved around each other in wide berths, gloved and masked in a darkened store because there was no reason to keep the lights on. But this isn’t the change I’m talking about, nor is it the reason you’ve picked up the book you’re now flipping through.
Another murder occurred. Another media litigation of who was in the wrong. About how, actually, it was misleading to name the act that had taken place so quickly when the public knows so little. Another reminder, folks, that this is the country we live in, isn’t it. This time, for multiple reasons, the disgust and the outrage at this particular murder stuck. We were, and are, out in the streets because we were, and are, out of jobs, meaning we have the chance to be out when we so often don’t have time to be, even though no one would consider forced unemployment due to a deadly virus a “chance.” The country seemed to grow a conscience, or maybe the country just more openly touted its guilt.
Either way, white and non-Black people started buying a lot of the same books. Anti-racism, intersectionality, anti-carceralism, police and prison abolition, revolutionary history, anti-capitalism, white supremacy, how to end it, how to talk about it, how to think about it, how to rethink what you thought. Learning time. Listening time. It became easy, very, very quickly to see just how bad things had gotten. At least, for those who didn’t somehow already know.
So you’re looking at one of these titles, one with “How To” in the name. You take out your phone, snap a picture, type something. I can’t tell if you’re making a note or showing it off to someone. What does a guy like you, seemingly always passing through because of business and unaffected by most things (see how I’m projecting?), think of everything? After we reopened, after the deluge of orders we received for books similar to or exactly the same as the one you just set down, the store tried to create a display of less obvious titles, ones not so concerned with a white audience, ones less certain about their ability to make you a better person. You look at some of these. They aren’t as popular, but they’re arguably a little more rigorous, a little more confrontational. Around the corner, a small group of white women walks to the checkout counter. You eye them as I ring up their respective hauls. They each buy a copy of the same book. They’re starting an anti-racist book club. You appear to stifle a laugh as they chat loudly about the importance of frank conversation right now.
*
In her book Learning from the Germans, Susan Neiman writes, “...Americans prefer narratives of progress.”
Simple notion, but newly relevant, especially since each sustained wave of protest and violence disrupts what “progress” can or should mean. History is thought of as a line moving forward, or a circle spinning round and round, erasing and repeating. Change is described in terms of what is or isn’t there, what’s been torn down or repurposed. We rely on binaries. Like the old Vegas or the new Vegas. Old downtown, new downtown.
The other day, a friend of mine asked a question I’m still thinking about. What would happen to our pretentious and precious notions of time and life if no one died? If our ancestors never left, not in a spiritual way but really, physically never left. If there weren’t a few generations of difference to argue over, but hundreds. Would there be less or more certainty about what is commonly known?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not exactly a practical line of thought. But it is true that so much energy is wasted on repeatedly, collectively getting “the conversation” back on track. As an example, Neiman writes about how confusing it is that the United States features prominent memorials to the Holocaust. Not because the event, which has become a shorthand for all things evil, didn’t affect the country or its people. No, because “the United States did so little to save Jewish refugees before the Holocaust and so much to insure that former Nazis emigrated to the U.S. after it.” Along with progress, Americans prefer selective memory. I suspect this is why no one argues that veterans fought against fascism, even if they weren’t necessarily fighting to end racism.
Which is to say that words have meaning, until, for whatever reason, they don’t. It’s easy to be blase about this. After all, passive aggression and detachment are supposedly hallmarks of my generation. Mostly, I think it’s frustrating arguing whether or not 2 + 2 is 4.
*
You text me at work. You’re my ex, asking if I’m doing okay.
You’re white and I’m not, so naturally the danger of this situation (picture me gesturing vaguely to the world) is worse for me than it is for you. It’s not that this isn’t nice, the checking in, it’s nice to be thought of. It’s more that I have no idea what you’re getting out of the interaction. We don’t normally talk. Maybe it’s this tweet going around suggesting that people should show they care about the people of color in their lives by “doing something real about it”. Buying them dinner. Sending them supplies. Listening. The possibilities listed all turn on varying degrees of emotional labor. I suspect this is meant to accomplish multiple things: draw attention to the amount of uncalled-for emotional labor people of color, specifically Black people, already do; alleviate microaggressions; promote solidarity. I will say, this round of shaming has been more interesting than others (a few people, two of them complete strangers, Venmoed me money without warning or explanation).
But in this case, it’s still just you starting an awkward conversation you don’t really intend to sustain borne out of a global situation you don’t intend to dwell on. I tell you I’m okay, thanks for asking. It’s weird sitting here momentarily fast-forwarding through our relationship. Even weirder to think that you’re talking to me specifically because I’m Black and we dated once, which is strange geometry. But I don’t tell you any of that.
*
In his book Life of a Klansman, Edward Ball writes, “I am trying to make this thing visible, whiteness. It looks transparent and flimsy, maybe. Some would say it does not even exist. But I am trying to make it conspicuous, as visible and as plain as blackness. I have to keep working at it.”
Working at a bookstore affords you many opportunities to revisit books you would have written off otherwise had you not been forced to see them multiple times a day. I’m taking a page from Nell Irvin Painter in that I believe it’s more useful to try and understand whiteness than it is to try and learn how to appropriately think about blackness. In each case, the exercise cuts both ways, but one is far less fetishistic than the other. This is one mode of thinking, I understand many people don’t have the patience for it.
But Edward Ball’s endeavor to grapple with whiteness is intriguing, he himself a white man who, in the case of this book, is reconstructing the life of his ancestor, a French Klansman in New Orleans. Naturally, to even begin to do this, Ball has to contextualize not only his family’s complicity and participation in white supremacy (in a previous book, he writes about the history of the Balls, their journey to America, their rise to prominence as plantation owners in the South, and the legacy of over 4000 slaves born and bought into the family business), but also that of the country at large. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the South of old in the present tense, everything always happening, nothing past. He doesn’t believe in self-flagellation in anticipation of harsh judgment or a stained reputation. When writing about horrific things, he simply states them as fact, cleaving any poetry that might be added to soften the blow. Take this excerpt, from a passage about the scientist Samuel Morton: “As whites push south, southwest, and west over the Appalachians, taking land from Native Americans, seizing captives, and killing some who fight the invasion, officers and physicians in the military gather the bodies of Indians, decapitate them, and send the skulls to Morton. Science feeds on war.”
It’s not that Ball’s candor is refreshing so much as it is unwavering. He has guilt, an expectation, but it is complicated by confusion as to what to do about it. There is a difference, he says, between responsibility and accountability. Both are uncomfortable to think about. In the discourse around reading materials and best practices with regards to systemic racism, uncomfortability for white people is prized as a sign that boundaries are being broken or left behind. At the same time, these things are presented in attractive packages. In well-designed Instagram posts, in explainer videos, in heartfelt public gestures by celebrities acknowledging their privilege, in conspicuous tweets about not being conspicuous about your learning journey. If white people are made to feel uncomfortable, it’s never for very long. Which would suggest that shaming doesn’t actually work in the long run. A tough pill to swallow, even if I do think shame is morally useful.
*
You are, admittedly, a customer I dread talking to.
For one thing, if there are other people around, you tend to invade their personal space. For another, you always ask me really weird questions. Today, I’m processing an online order for a customer buying a copy of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. A popular title this summer, often sold out by the end of a given week. I’ve made the mistake of leaving the book on the counter in front of me, visible to you, because after browsing a little bit, you make your way over, point to the book, and say, “Oh god! James Baldwin! Have you read him?” Now, it is not necessarily cool to assume most Black people have read James Baldwin, but given that the last time you were here, we talked about him, you would have some license to assume that very thing, this time, with me specifically. You grab the book, open it at random, and start reading out loud. This is pretty standard behavior for you.
Afterwards, you wander off, eventually coming back to check out. You look around the store then whisper, “Do you think it’s possible for a white woman to be, y’know, spiritually Black?” Points for originality because I truly didn’t think I would ever be asked such a wild question. I say no. “Not even like, two-spirit?” No.
Months later, a white person is outed, this time of their own volition, for pretending to be professionally Black. It’s not you, but it is by turns galling and hilarious. One of my writer friends is outraged. Another tries to play devil’s advocate, suggesting that there may be some genuine, if incredibly misguided, sincerity going on. On one hand, we have virulent racists who demonstrate their racial purity by, among other things, chugging gallons of milk on 4chan. On the other, not-so-racially-ambiguous white people passing themselves as Black history professors or presidents of their local NAACP chapter. In a year already jam-packed with absurdities both amusing and tragic, this no longer feels odd, but oddly fitting.
The anti-racism books have stopped selling as much, though they do sell out. On the horizon is another presidential election, which seems to signify to many liberal-minded people that we have more pressing concerns than trying to dismantle the prison-industrial complex. I will admit that I am worried about the attention span of those who can afford to switch their public personas like tissue paper for the most popular talking point of the moment. Meanwhile, places are reopening. People are still dying. Today, because of the thick cloud of smoke hanging over the city, I was able to look up at the sky and stare at the sun without flinching. There is a philosophy that those who don’t learn from history will have no idea they’re repeating it. You think history is going to prepare you, but you only ever take it at face value. There is a “we” that doesn’t include you. We have an idea of what could happen next. You’re simply not brave enough to imagine it.
Nicholas Russell is a writer and bookseller from Las Vegas.
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