What literature will help me understand the "black experience" of life?
>>7906032
a raisin in the sun
their eyes werewatching god
anything by toni morrison
that frederick douglass book
>>7906032
Pimp Iceberg Slim
>>7906032
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Native Son
Invisible Man
Between the World and Me
>>7906032
I'm working on a novelization of "Soul Plane" that would really help you out, anon. Let me just get back to it, then.
>>7906052
Please dew :3
>>7906032
Citizen
>>7906032
drink paint thinner to get brain damage
now you experience life just like any black
>>7906032
Depends on what you mean by that, if you're looking for the experiences of intelligent black people then there's plenty, however if your looking for literature on the experiences of nigs and criminals you'd have harder time finding things on it.
Police records would be a good start.
>>7906058
This tbqh.
>>7906036
thanks bro, any other books to pretend to be a tough nig inside my own head?
>>7906060
>however if your looking for literature on the experiences of nigs and criminals you'd have harder time finding things on it.
ya, that is what I meant, because they are the norm, I'm not interesting in rare anomalies, blacks who are white-washed. I want actual black blacks.
>>7906032
Everything by James Baldwin
Ishmael Reed
Charles Johnson
Percival Everett (especially Erasure, where a black professor is disgusted at the success of a novel about 'authentic black experience' called We Lives In Da Ghetto, so he writes his own ghetto novel which unexpectedly becomes a huge success)
the Bell Curve
>>7906032
"Blacked: A Penetration of Whiteness" by Maurice Washington.
Here is a very brief excerpt:
"The wide, round rump straining against the purple lycra pants of the white woman in front of him in line at the corner shop stirred in D'Quan dim, dreamlike memories of the Serengeti buried in his blood, setting his heart pounding like a jungle drum and his long coal-black pestle nudging the fabric of his basketball shorts."
>>7906032
nigger stories threads on /pol/
>>7906072
>decent living and thinking is exclusive to whites
lol the spooks are real
You know your "actual black blacks" think the same stupid shit, right?
>>7906099
>lol the spooks are real
That's what he wants to find out about, real spooks.
>>7906078
That doesn't really make you feel what it is like to be a nig, it just explains why they are that way.
>>7906032
I don't understand why anyone would ask this on 4chan. I can't imagine you would ask if you weren't trying to broaden your sense of empathy, but at the same time you're asking in a place infamous not only for its lack of empathy, but its utter distain for the people you're trying to learn about
Were you not thinking? Did you honestly expect an objective answer? I don't get it
>>7906099
>"decent living and thinking is exclusive to whites"
no that's not what he's saying. he's saying that niggers need to be whitewashed in order to have decent living standards and thinking
>>7906112
His entire basis of questioning is faulty anyway with the typical implied racism. Nothing empathetic about it.
>>7906032
WEB Du Bois is indispensable. His scholarship is pristine, and his soul was deep and literary. A brilliant thinker with an extraordinary output of work.
"The Souls of Black Folk" should be read by all Americans, but for people tired of race and blackness being mysterious and beyond reach, it's a perfect starting point. It will open your mind to new ideas, it will familiarize you with historical facts, and it will also occasionally move you deeply as a human being. It's a collection of essays, some historical/sociological, some biographical. 10/10 book tbbqh
>>7906115
So are Asians "whitewashed" because they have decent standards of living and thinking too?
Do even you understand what the words you're using imply?
>>7906103
>That's what he wants to find out about, real spooks.
oh shit
>>7906032
the other side of that piece of cardboard says "plz gib money 4 food god bless u"
>>7906122
>So are Asians "whitewashed"
asians had culture and civilization prior to encountering white people, so no, it doesn't apply to them. They civilized themselves a long time ago.
>>7906122
what part of my post enabled you to make that stupid comment?
how is saying NIGGERS need whitewashing to be decent the same as "whiteness is the key to decency"?
>>7906058
ebin meme
/thread
>>7906122
>So are Asians "whitewashed"
um yes?
>>7906127
>how is saying NIGGERS need whitewashing to be decent the same as "whiteness is the key to decency"?
By even using the term whitewashing you're implying white culture is some gold standard, which is laughable. Can't believe I actually had to spell this out. You idiots really don't think about the words you use.
>>7906122
I mean, with those Western-style governments and Western-style militaries and Western-style clothes and Western-style technology etc., are they not?
>>7906139
Right, but he just said he wants to understand. Not to share. I agree there's overlap, but empathy at the very least carries different connotations than merely understanding.
>>7906138
>white culture is some gold standard
But it is if you live in a 'white' country like the US
Native Son
Black author tells the story of a young violent black boy who murders a commie whore who gave him free gibsmedats and tries to frame her commie cuck boyfriend. He is drowning in guilt at first but just befoee be ends up dead, he has a last minute epiphany that is basically 'I din du nuffin'. Somehow the author means to convey that the murder is somehow justified because of the pressures of society and the descrimination he faced that caused him to "lash"(he smothers her with a pillow) out against the girl.
Liberals love to analyze the book but it can just as easily be thrown back in their faces.
>>7906138
not at all what I said. I mentioned niggers as a specific case, haven't said a word about asians or mexicans.
Do you not understand how implications and inferences work?
>>7906191
Doesnt matter if you mentioned niggers or grasshoppers, the fact you even begin to think that adopting the modern white mans way of thinking is some path to salvation is fucking stupid.
And again, as we established, managing to be educated and living well is not exclusive to whites, so the term "whitewashing" as an expression for that is also immensely stupid.
>>7906183
>"No American Negro exists", James Baldwin once wrote, "who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in his skull."
>He silences Mary by pressing a pillow into her face.
>When they lie down together in an abandoned building, Bigger rapes Bessie and falls asleep. In the morning, he decides that he has to kill her in her sleep.
ah yes, very impressive
>>7906140
The west was by far the most advanced society politically and economically by far during the age of imperialism. During this time, many asian nations took up modernization schemes that replaced their domestic systems (e.g chinese military banner system replaced by a western structure). However their military remained highly ethnically divided, a foreign concept to european militaries (ethnicity=! race) As well many of the fundamentals of the ways in which asian socities were organized at an institutional level really didnt change. The concepts of the multinational state (China) and proto-nation state based around ethnic identity/assimilation (Siam) already existed not too dissimilarly from europe). Those are just a few specific examples but you get the picture, westernization meant reconciling uniquely asian structures with western ones or just fineetuning individual instituions, not a complete whitewashing.
>>7906138
not the guy you are feebly arguing with but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewashing_(censorship)
As in Tom Sawyer tricks his friends into whitewashing the fence for him
>>7906216
Dont even bullshit yourself into thinking he didn't mean "whitewashing" in terms of adopting what people would consider white culture.
>>7906216
The term 'whitewashing' has been appropriated to refer to cultural imperialism by whites towards non-whites. It has two meanings.
>>7906217
Yes he appears to misuse the word as well in his racist argument. I only saw your comment since I didn't want to read this shit thread
Infinite Jest, tbqh. Yes, it was written by a white man, but what Wallace achieves in terms of empathy and understanding is pretty remarkable. He even studied African American dialect from a linguistic standpoint to reproduce their speech patterns faithfully in the novel. When you get to the section about Wardine, it's a little confusing, but sometimes white people need to be taken out of their comfort zone when they read. Wallace knew this. He once said, "Good fiction comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable." And Wallace's depiction of the plight of American blacks is sympathetic, heartbreaking, and true.
>>7906032
I suggest you rather just go over to BLACKED and get whatever is bothering you out of your system.
Take couple of days off, hate-fap yourself raw, move on with your life.
>>7906240
lmao
>>7906211
This so much times
it shouldn't even be hard to infer but the politically and historically enlightened /pol/acks have a special aversion to anything that isn't jingoistic absolutism
>>7906234
>And Wallace's depiction of the plight of American blacks is sympathetic, heartbreaking, and true.
Does he talk about the self-inflicted harm they cause themselves and their communities and their knack for diffusing personal responsibility? I really am interested in that angle myself.
>>7906202
>the fact you even begin to think that adopting the modern white mans way of thinking is some path to salvation
I don't say this. I say this holds true for niggers.
>>7906138
>By even using the term whitewashing you're implying white culture is some gold standard, which is laughable
how is it not the gold standard? up until the 19th century it really was the epitome of human civilization, the only cultures that compete now are some East Asians, and only because they piggy-back on european innovations and customs
>>7906032
Is that their mother on the right?
>>7906077
Erasure sounds interesting as fuck.
>>7906136
kill urself
>>7906224
REEEEEEE RACISMMM REEEEEEE
>>7906293
Their first few albums are worth a listen but they got really too faggy for my tastes after that.
>>7906294
Japan and Korea were built up by America following WW2 to act as proxy states against communism
China adopted communism and then capitalism (both Western ideologies) and subsequently experienced rapid industrialisation
Hong Kong and Singapore prospered under colonial rule before becoming capitalist
of course they have their own cultures but Western culture has undeniably had a huge influence on them and especially their economic development
>>7906118
>for people tired of race and blackness being mysterious and beyond reach
Nobody in any Western country thinks race and blackness are mysterious and beyond reach. The media and political establishment shoves it in our faces every five fucking seconds
If you mean black americans, then whichever commie / marxist talked about useful idiots and the capitalist classes dividing poor people to conquer them, he was fucking spot on. When I see black americans asking presidential candidates for super special privileges and different treatment from whites I feel like throwing something at the screen and I'm not even a leftist or white or american.
>>7906032
heart of darkness by joseph conrad is the best choice
>>7906517
There are people who know, there are people who think they know, there are people who know they don't know.
You are of the second kind, the post is intended for the third.
>>7906534
American blacks have a history of revolutionary ideals and armed self-defense too though, it's sad to see that it's not as prevalent today as it was 50 years ago
No but reggae, trap and hiphop clubs wil.
>>7906032
The Origin of Species
'We Wuz Kangs n Sheeit' by TaNisha Coates, with a forward by Trayvon Martin
>>7906566
lol you can fuck right off. There is no ungraspable depth to "blackness;" you are just patting yourself on the back by pretending it's some unknowable and difficult subject on par with quantum mechanics.
Tell me one thing about "blackness" that can't be understood. One thing.
>>7906036
i read that post as a poem and for a moment it made complete sense.
>>7906037
He was the coldest cat.
Book? Why do you need a book when all your NEET fucks wake up, live off of someone else, are lazy, don't do shit to improve yourself, and bitch and complain about all the people who do.
YOU ARE LIVING THE BLACK EXPERIENCE, WHITE NIGGERS
>>7907652
Niggers!
>>7907644
also the Tookie Williams autobiography
>>7906071
yeah, invisible man
>>7906037
This.
It's only slightly above the reading level of most of them.
>>7906103
damn son almost blasted coffee out of my face lmao
>>7907605
The "ungraspable" depth is not due to blackness, it is due to humanity, and the blackness merely colors one kind of humanity.
But this is just a re-working of the cliche notion that you can never fully know other human beings.
In America, we are political, social and historical beings in addition to human beings beneath the sky who face certain death. These three former aspects of our person are much more impacted by race than this latter one.
To understand race is to gather a sense of its influence in history, to begin to notice its influence on music, culture and religion, to see its impact on biographies done and still unfolding, to understand ones relationship to it, to know the ethical implications of various components of it (if there are any). It is also to learn the meaning of awkward side glances and social relationships/encounters characterized by an unspoken friction.
>>7908624
So basically there's nothing difficult about it at all
Thanks for that needlessly long post
>>7906032
Read this last year, follows spike lee through the 80s and mid 2000s. He goes through and breaks down every film he made and what was the black person experience at the time. Goes over controversies and such.
It's pretty funny at times. I remember a passage where Spike Lee wanted to make a film about his father's marriage with a white woman. His friend read the script and told him, "'Spike, you can't make this, are you fucking crazy, you have a scene in here where you're calling a white chick a cracker and throwing her down the stairs!' Thankfully Spike never got the money to make that film.'"
>>7908638
It's like studying anything else. Suppose you wanted to know more about what it was like to be a peasant in Tang China. You would start reading about Chinese history, maybe study the language, perhaps travel to China, but the best way would be to spend lots of time reading all there is on the subject.
There's nothing "difficult" about it except that there's a political-cultural barrier that blocks people from recognizing the "issue" of race can be approached with a fascination about human beings past and present, as individuals and in terms of history.
Most people only want to access race so they can assert particular political points or find the answers to particular controversies.
The same thing happens with Islam. People's imaginations, their curiosities, and their sincerity of study are seriously undermined by immediate political concerns.
Do you understand what I'm saying, idiot?
>>7908652
forgot pic.
Young thug lyrics
>>7906037
This.
>>7908660
young thug seems so gay sometimes
>>7908658
>Do you understand what I'm saying, idiot?
Yeah, you're trying to make an incredibly simple topic sound as abstract as possible (and failing miserably)
There's no serious depth to identity politics and race, a middle schooler can understand these topics with ease. Sorry nobody told you
>>7906032
I was just reading Ralph Ellison on this subject.
Black writers tend to cloak themselves in their blackness when they sit down to write, but white readers cloak themselves in their whiteness since they really, really don't want to identify with blacks. It takes two individuals apart, a true writer and a true reader, to take the leap.
>>7908681
Sounds like armchair psychoanalysis from a pseudointellectual to me
>>7908675
What have I said that's abstract, idiot? What are you doing on the literature board if you don't read, idiot?
Why have you made the immediate assumption that reading books about black biographies and historical experience is somehow tantamount to engaging in "identity politics" ?
Do you want to know what it was like to be captured and brought to a new land? Does that interest you as a human being? Do you want to know what cultural and religious activity were deployed to keep an enslaved race afloat through centuries? Do you like listening to good music that speaks of human pain?
Or do you want to sit in your little box, with your stupid ad-hoc opinions on race tinged with a very particular political assumption, and declare that all this hullabaloo is much ado about nothing since, you know, slavery like, ended, like a long time ago, and like, I just don't understand, like, the point?
>>7907605
That's not at all what he was implying, congrats on being dumb
>>7908697
I like to read books by people who aren't obsessed with a meaningless qualifier like race. I don't really care about how sad things that happened to said race centuries ago makes them feel today. I don't really care about "good music" which is usually not very good. I especially don't like to read books by psueds who pretend that race is a magical and unknowable experience which is super duper special and important (it isn't)
If I'd made the assumption that most books about black people are concerned with identity politics, it's because it's not an assumption, it's a fact.
I would rather read a well-written and entertaining book than the eternal and incredibly repetitive whines of an uncreative and simple writer. Unfortunately this 90+% of all black literature
>>7908703
It's exactly what he was implying, congrats on not picking up on it and then smugly chastising another person for your own ignorance
>>7908728
What have you read on race, pseud?
>>7908740
Rushton and Jensen
Spengler
Douglass
What felt like an endless stream of black literature from Morrison to Adichie that was forced into every curriculum in high school and university
It's all any adult will ever need to read on the subject
I'm sorry this conversation is making you upset. I understand that leftists tend to throw temper tantrums when other people don't agree with their poorly reasoned and sanctimonious views
>>7908752
Nice choices.
>>7908752
I haven't said anything sanctimonious. I wouldn't call myself a leftist. Stop assuming things. I've deliberately avoided making concrete political statements. My point is not to make a political argument. My point is to say that, as a human being, it is worth your time to investigate things in this world, especially things close by that are people.
Read "The Souls of Black Folk." American Library Classics has a collected works of Du Bois. It's all fantastic.
Wright and Baldwin are good. Haven't read Morrison or Coates. Coates has good articles in the Atlantic.
From Nickels to Ounces
>>7908752
Racist much?
>>7908752
This. Hated those books in high school and I hated the limp-wristed justification that we couldn't possibly hope to understand the black experience.
The black experience is a life of simple desires and emotional instability.
>>7909739
This board is about literature, please go
>>7906032
black like me by John Howard griffin
>>7906269
>only because they piggy-back on european innovations and customs
They were piggy backing in the twentieth century. With the way it is now they're slowly starting to overcome the western/white world.
>>7906269
i can smell the ideology on your breath
>>7909922
That's not ideology, that's common sense. Almost anything we now simply perceive to be "the human culture", regardless of little unimportant "diversity" quirks like food and clothing, came from Europe, Rome and Ancient Greece. Calling it "white culture" is not exactly correct. It's european culture.
If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer
>>7909953
>That's not ideology, that's common sense.
most ideological line itt
My commander in chief writes and speaks rather lucidly.
>>7908728
>I like to read books by people who aren't obsessed with a meaningless qualifier like race.
lol
the african-americans who write those books would gladly not write about race if they weren't forced to confront it every day in the form of slights, stereotypes, and a general overarching system of white supremacy
>but le racism is dead!!
says the person whom anti-black racism wouldn't affect in any noticeable way
>>7910024
He never said that racism was dead, he just said he didn't care about it
