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Race and Magic

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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 22, 2001
Latest Update: October 22, 2001
E-Mail jeannecurran@habermas.org
E-Mail takata@uwp.edu
E-Mail Olivier Urbain, Soka University

"The pygmy insists that he must marry a white woman,
but cannot discover where to find one."

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors: October 2001.
"Fair use" encouraged.

On Sunday, October 21, 2001, Tiffany Griffin wrote:

Subject: Gourevitch's theory

I thought that the ideas of the pygmy were interesting, because that same view that is based strictly in genocide also affects the Black community in the US. As a black woman that birthed both these Negro men I respond "was I not good enough though I nursed and nurtured you and made you the man that you are today?"

On Monday, October 22, 2001, jeanne responded:

Tiffany, that is an interesting response to Gourevitch. You correctly identified a piece of the thinking that culminates in violence: the mystical belief that somehow connection with the white culture will end exclusion. And so the pygmy wants to marry a white woman, in the superstitious belief that this marriage will end his exclusion from white society and his oppression as a black man.

I think you need to explain that Gourevitch's theory is that people often imagine their world without much basis in reality: "[Gourevitch] tells us that he tells this story of the pygmy "because this is a book about how people imagine themselves and one another --- a book about how we imagine our world."

In contemporary theory we might say that the pygmy came to a spurious conclusion that marrying into the white world would end his fears and anxieties. If marriage provided connections that worked in his world, then it is rational for him to assume that marriage might work the same way in the white world, which seemed at least from his perspective to be better off. Superstition and magic enter our lifeworld when we do not have basic information requisite to understanding the structural context.

I think your answer, Tiffany, presupposes that the black man believes the answer to be marrying a white woman as though that were rational, not magical.Your answer makes sense. "I bore you and I raised you to be who you are. Is that not enough?" But the pygmy is not really comparing black and white women, he is seeking magical entrance into the white world, where he preceives a better life. This is a form of identification with the aggressor. The oppressor has a better life, so the more I can manage to be like the oppressor, the better my life will be, too.