Positing that the Black body exists in constant social death reproduces self-hatred and feeds into white supremacist logics.

By disproving Wilderson’s claim that the Black Body is in a perpetual state of ontological death because of the violence of the Middle Passage and showing that the Black Body is not socially dead, then the possibilities of legal reform and coalitional politics become possible and desirable. For Wilderson, coalitional politics are just attempts to feign the ontological capacity of Blacks to shape their own future. He refers to white people and colored immigrants specifically who try to engage in coalitional politics with the Black Body as “the junior and senior partners of civil society” who pretend as if the Black is coherent and human. (Wilderson, Red, White and Black, pg. 39). It is this kind of ontological absolutism that Wilderson adheres to that David Marriott criticizes when he writes, “Wilderson is prepared to say that black suffering is not only beyond analogy, it also refigures the whole of being. It is not hard when reading such sentences to suspect a kind of absolutism at work here, and one that manages to be peculiarly and dispiritingly dogmatic: throughout Red, White, and Black, despite variations in tone and emphasis, there is always the desire to have black lived experience named as the worst, and the politics of such a desire inevitably collapses into a kind of sentimental moralism: for the claim that ‘Blackness is incapacity in its most pure and unadulterated form’ means merely that the black has to embody this abjection without reserve (p. 38). This logic—and the denial of any kind of ‘ontological integrity’ to the Black/Slave due to its endless traversal by force does seem to reduce ontology to logic, namely, a logic of non-recuperability.” (Mariott, Black Cultural Studies, pg. 37-66). Wilderson’s insistence of absolute negativity destroys the possibility for coalitional politics because it will always frame the Black Body as something that will always stand in an antagonistic position to the world. In engaging in this form of ontological absolutism, Wilderson effectively creates an ”us against the world” logic whereby its best to either succumb to the negativity surrounding the Black Body or destroy the world to free the Black Body. Furthermore, as Mariott points out, this dogmatic ontological absolutism essentializes the Black experience to its most negative point, a kind of negativity that reproduces a form of self-hatred that contributes to the destruction of positive coalitional politics. When one comes to believe that they themselves are ontologically dead, this encourages the logic of political apathy where one refuses to attempt to engage with agents of change because they curse their own identity and believe that there is nothing they can do about their situation because Blackness is an ontological condition. To put it in Lehman’s term, “why go vote if I’m socially dead?”. This form of disengagement from the political is problematic when racism is entrenched in our law, as Ian Haney Lopez points out in his book White By Law when he writes, “law is implicated in the construction of the contingent social systems of meaning that attach in our society to morphology and ancestry, the meaning system we commonly refer to as race. The legal system influences what we look like, the meanings ascribed to our looks, and the material reality that confirms the meanings of our appearances. Law constructs race.” (Lopez, White By Law, pg. 16). If the precedent set by court cases, as Lopez points out, were responsible for creating the precedents that shaped how we see race as a social construction, then the need to challenge racism through legal reform becomes more apparent. Wilderson’s ontological absolutism destroys the possibility to form the kind of coalitions that are necessary to engaging with the legal systems that use the law to shape our social perceptions of race. The kind of self-hatred that Wilderson perpetuates through his ontological construction of Blackness will only re-entrench racism because the Black Body will refuse to engage in the forms of legal reform necessary to change the law and they way it shapes how we view race as a social construction. If the law is what truly shapes the social construction of race and if the Black Body is truly capable of engaging with these institutions, then Wilderson’s Afro-pessimism must be firmly rejected to usher in a politics of hope that is necessary to mobilize coalitions against dominant power structures. The idea of embracing a politics of hope and solidarity is a concept that would seem absolutely foreign to Wilderson. Indeed, with the recent events surrounding the likes of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, the credibility surrounding the Afro-pessimist school of thought is increasing. Yet it is precisely these events that necessitate a politics of hope and solidarity that Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name Bell Hooks, advocates for in her 1996 book Killing Rage: Ending Racism when she writes, “Black Americans are succumbing to and internalizing the racist assumption that there can be no meaningful bonds of intimacy between blacks and whites. It is fascinating to explore why it is that black people trapped in the worst situation of racial oppression—enslavement—had the foresight to see that it would be disempowering for them to lose sight of the capacity of white people to transform themselves and divest of white supremacy, even as many black folks today who in no way suffer such extreme racist oppression and exploitation are convinced that white people will not repudiate racism. Contemporary black folks, like their white counterparts, have passively accepted the internalization of white supremacist assumptions. Organized white supremacists have always taught that there can never be trust and intimacy between the superior white race and the inferior black race. When black people internalize these sentiments, no resistance to white supremacy is taking place, rather we become complicit in spreading racist notions. It does not matter that so many black people feel white people will never repudiate racism because of being daily assaulted by white denial and refusal of accountability. We must not allow the actions of white folks who blindly endorse racism to determine the direction of our resistance. Like our white allies in struggle we must consistently keep the faith, by always sharing the truth that white people can be anti-racist, that racism is not some immutable character flaw.” (Bell Hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism, pg. 269-270). Bell Hooks avoids falling into the colonial trap of Wilderson by speaking for herself and her own experiences. By acknowledging that there are many anti-racist whites, she has created a space where Black folk who believe that they have a future can speak of their own experiences and contribute to meaningful dialogue about how Black folk should take steps forward in the context of legal reform. Unlike Wilderson who universalizes the Black experience, Bell Hooks acknowledges that internalizing racist assumptions of the Black Body, or in the context of Wilderson, their own ontological construction, will only give into White supremacy because the cycle of self-hatred creates a sense of powerlessness that prevents the Black Body from ever getting out in the first place. Furthermore, Wilderson’s ontological absolutism is a tactic of White supremacy, because, as pointed out by Bell Hooks, it creates a sense of distrust that plays into the divide and conquer mentality that is crucial to White supremacy’s grip on society. For Bell Hooks, when the Black community gives into its own pessimism, White supremacists win because there is no motivation for resistance. In the wake of recent events, embracing a politics of hope and solidarity is more important than ever as racism begins to become more apparent. Hope offers the crucial first step towards encouraging the first steps towards resistance, a step that Wilderson’s extreme negativity prevents from ever been taken. Instead of imagining the end of the world, we must imagine a world with a better future.