By now the story told here has become a familiar motif in the ongoing internecine struggles of urban warfare in which "gang is pitted against gang," neighborhood against neighborhood," and in some cases (as this one), even family members against each other. This story is important not just because of its easy and much over wrought cover theme of "redemption of a lost soul through Christ," but mainly because embedded within and behind this familiar pretext remains enough truth in the underlying subtext of the book to decode the "Rosetta Stone" of urban violence. This not so well hidden code, the last remaining psychological barrier to understanding why there is so much "black-on-black" crime and violence, lies "hidden in plain sight" both at the center of this story and at the center of the tragic cycles of petty internecine warfare that for the last half century has provided the backdrop for a major part of the urban American social drama. The strongest clue to this underlying secret is the uncanny way in which the "code of the streets" defines, dictates, utterly dominates and then ultimately undermines all "individual self-construction projects" of the life of young urban black men. Its centripetal force of peer group pressures, like an evil gravity in the ether, captures them at an early age, and then inexorably "pulls them in," by their noses, their Dicks, their spirits and their souls. And importantly, it does so well before they have had a chance to decide on healthier choices and alternatives, which, in any case, are, as often as not, missing in these diminished circumstances. Mr. Williams got an early start in his own "manhood self-construction project" and was already well on the ladder leading down into the urban social abyss and to his inevitable demise, by age seven.
Where the larger Culture Meets the Black Male Self-Construction Project
It is in the subconscious where the individual's self-definition and self-creation projects are hatched and where they eventually intersect with societal rules to help shape ones personality. Even though it is taking place in the background, it is at this vital juncture, this interface between the "individual mind" and "larger cultural rules and forces" where all the tension and action of the struggle for self-discovery is centered. And because self-construction is a "private affair," indeed a solitary project even for young kids, shaped mostly by peer pressure, intervention can often be next to impossible: Independence mandates that self-discovery be closed to too much external interference, assistance and teaching. Thus, it seems to matter little whether there is a strong or a weak parental figure, or positive or negative role models involved. The results are all the same: The "call of the streets" the theater of self-discovery for urban youths, is always stronger than the strongest of "role models," and stronger than all but the most determined parental authority.
Put simply, the real story here lays not so much in Mr. Williams' tale itself (which, meaning no disrespect to the author) we have seen repeated ad nausea. The real story lies in the psychology behind (beneath and between the lines of) his carefully woven "self-styled" autobiographical tale of his own urban heroics. His story of survival against society's grim reaper, and his eventual redemption through Christ is now the signature story of the urban ghetto denizen's rise from a mostly self-imposed "pre-determined failure" to "limited success through religion." It is now the familiar and expected tale of "the urban warrior's" struggle against "the man" or more accurately, against the recycled urban jungle that his own actions have helped to create and sustain.
Mr. William's tale is the archetypical version of this story: The hero begins by learning at an early age how to fight, then moves on to petty thefts and muggings, how to engage in risky and mindless sex, gets thrown out of several schools, learns how to gamble, stabs and gets stabbed (by his own cousin Tyson no less); shoots and gets shot (again by his own cousin Tyson), and on up the ladder to dealing drugs (following in his already jailed father's footsteps), and then as his life hangs in the balance, just before death or a lengthy prison sentence puts a natural or societal end to his climb, he has an epiphany: a "comes to Jesus moment" in which his life is miraculously turned around. Now the newly "saved" (like our lame duck President, GW Bush) also due to his own over night conversion, becomes the new recruit for Christ, a new "Proselytizer in Chief," and the new ever-wise and ever-self-righteous and morally superior "savior" himself.
The Rosetta stone: the "psychology of the missing hyper-masculine non-white male," reincarnated as the "Urban Hustler."
There is something eerily similar about the tales told here by Mr. Williams and by all the erstwhile "urban warriors like him:" from Johannesburg and Pretoria, to Rio and Sao Paulo, to Kingston and Marrakech, and from Detroit to Newark and LA, and back to Southeast DC. These "hero's tales" have identical shapes and themes: they are about actions designed to create and sustain a reputation as "self-created full men" in societies which only want "societally adjusted" and "psychologically (if not sexually) neutered" or "truncated men of color," men whose humanity is cut off and stops "just above the waist," and who are denied access to the things that could lead to normal societal respect and descent reputations. And thus these stories differ only in their inessential details -- whether they are told in the U.S., South Africa, Brazil, Portugal, Morocco or Kingston. They are all based on, and driven by the same Rosetta stone: the "psychology of the missing hyper-masculine non-white male model."
But it is clear enough for anyone willing to see it, that the psychology that is really at work here is indeed a kind of "false consciousness," rooted in the "imagined and urgently needed heroics" of the hyper-masculine black male image. Although only an image, The "Super-fly" Hustler is as real in its impact on the "code of the streets," and in its consequences on urban black life, and on black values more generally, as the "false psychology of the Western Cowboy" is real to mainstream white American boys and its corresponding impact on mainstream American values. It is just that the rough and stumble cowboy image on the one hand, is made to seem that it has redeeming positive qualities, while that of the hyper-masculine "Super-fly" non-white male, on the other hand, most assuredly is made to seem that it does not.
This symbol of the Hustler is the cultural answer to the deficiency, the gapping hole that lies at the center of the black male psyche. The "urban street Hustler" is the "Field General" on the urban battlefield.His image, that of the "hyper-masculine black male hero," is the psychological gestalt, standing in counter-position to that of the meek "societally adjusted neutered black male," which in any case is a wholly unattractive, unappealing and unacceptable hero to any young male of color struggling to become a "full," rather than a "truncated," or "psychologically neutered," man. James Baldwin has written about this phenomenon at length.
It is the image of the "Hustler" that is magnified beyond reason and that becomes a larger-than-life condensation symbol, one that serves to compress and then tries to integrate into the larger culture, all of the missing psychological elements of pride, ego, stifled sexual prowess and diminished societal status. Not accidentally, these just happen to be all of the same elements that a racist society works so relentlessly to deny and remove, both from the reality, and from even the image of the "the young criminal to be," black male buck. The crucible in which the "hustler's" image and psychology is created, incubated and nurtured is thus American racist society confined by racial segregation to the urban sub culture. It is a day-to-day grind, "being always on the struggle," the drama of tension against racism, poverty, over-crowdedness, alienation, harried and weak parental authority, and always weak disproportionately single mother-run families.
The cruelest of societal paradoxes is that black youths like Mr. Williams, when they engage in internecine struggles of violence, as they search vainly for the missing parts to their male psyches, are in actuality not so quietly engaged in a larger psychological conspiracy with the very racists who are bent on denying them their manhood: The more they kill each other, the more they lose their own self-respect and the respect they so desperately seek as individuals and as a group. And the more they fill up the morgues and the jails, the more they prove to their real enemies, the racists, that they are the wild animals who are un-deserving of the withheld parts of their missing psyches.
The urban battlefield is thus a vicious psychological circle without any redeeming qualities.
In the process of "becoming," that is, in the process of fashioning a life of which one can be proud and thus can become an assertive force and "agency" in defense of their own survival, young men of color have no choice but to elect to "become" through the false reality of their self-made heroes fashioned from their own self made sub cultural materials. Men of color cannot become, or even see themselves as "whole people" in the constricted leftover psychological space provided by racist white society. And as is typical of "missing" and "needy" psychological elements, both the individual and the collective ego, refashions the new hero into an exaggerated larger-than-life caricature of these urgent and vital needs. And from this we get the grotesque inversions of values, the mindless urban warfare, exaggerated preoccupation with sexual conquests, and a false feeling of invincibility.What is most assuredly at work in the psychological background of "Super-fly" is of course, self-hatred, the grand inquisitor of personal worth: If "we" lack those elements the white man has stolen from us, then it must mean we did not deserve them in the first place, right? Thus, there must be something wrong with us?We either are not brave enough, strong enough, masculine enough, or moral enough to fend for our own existence.
This thus becomes a vicious individual psychological problem that can only be solved at the level of culture. Thus enters the "street hustler:" The new "colored" urban cowboy, the buccaneer extraordinaire, the hyper-sexed woman killer, the psychological fixer of last resort, the "Mack," "Super-fly himself. The "hustler" is not just suave and smooth as silk, but also athletic, street smart and fearless, dressed to envy and to kill, with money to burn, packing heat and not in need of Viagra. And like all heroes, "the Hustler" too is an urgently necessary psychological fiction, an evil imperative called up from deep within a culturally deprived psyche and soul. Men fear the Hustler and all women want to make love to him. Amen.
This was the trap in which Dawayne Williams' tail was caught. And he is right, reputations based on a "false consciousness," do indeed fade away. But "false consciousnesses" can also have beautiful self-righteous faces too. Now he must see his new situation with his discovery of Jesus, as not an end in itself, but one in which the struggle continues, but this time with a "healthier self-concept," and a committed invisible ally at his side. With Jesus and self-knowledge now on his side, Mr. Williams must redouble his commitment and continue the struggle with even more zeal.
Five stars
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