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United States of America, North Carolina, 1950
A decade remains until the end of legalized racial segregation (sic!), a shining example of democracy and equality among men, rights, and duties, born from the ruminations of the misunderstood genius Jim Crow. Some have attempted to "sweeten" the bitterest distinction with an ironic and almost vulgar phrase, "separate but equal." Thus, dedicated structures are created with separate bathrooms, separate seating areas, separate rooms, separate prisons, and the list goes on. Songs about racial hatred, of course. Elliott Erwitt, a French photographer, son of Russian parents and transplanted to the United States, the democratic nation par excellence, the one that has stood out the most in enhancing such atrocities, captured on film several shots depicting one of the filthiest, most ignominious, and disgusting conditions on the face of the earth. Incidentally, well endorsed in Europe too by Nazism and our own beautiful country with the disgusting racial laws promulgated during the fascist twenty years.
In this famous shot, Erwitt illustrates what it meant to be a man of color in the face of "white supremacy" (?). Nothing. Waste material, errors due to a defective embryonic process. The worst of the worst that could exist. Not by chance, on what could be the wall of a public bathroom or a refreshment venue, there is a clean, polished water dispenser with a visible manufacturer's mark. Polished knobs and diffuser. Above, at man's height, a plaque reads "White." For whites. A bit to the side, at a safe distance because you never know, infections, poisonings, epidemics these blacks can emanate from their dirty skin pores or the rotten breath of their mouths, there is something that resembles a third-class carriage sink or a toilet. Something similar to Duchamp's urinal. Obviously enveloped in neglect, filth, and, I wouldn't exclude it, some good percentage for the possible spread of infections. Above, at animal height, an identical plaque as the first. The wording changes, though: "Colored." For blacks, yellows, reds, and other beasts with skin different from white.
In this magnificent country where democracy is evidently at home, for centuries, starting from the slavery of the "Negrieras," men whose fault was having a skin color different from white, have suffered harassment and mistreatment of every kind. This photo can only tell the minimum. Everywhere there was an invisible wall that divided whites from blacks. From bus seats, where blacks were reserved those on the wheels and near the engines, to restrooms where there was the white toilet and the black toilet. The fountains for filling jugs or laundries. Then there were cheerful associations like the Ku Klux Klan, agencies in favor of mixed marriages "No to the mulatto" and filthy hypocrites who masturbated in front of Cassius Clay's victories or Ray Charles's blues. Because some good black was created, after all.
Then, someone dared to change things, like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Clarence Mitchell, or Angela Davis. Some were eliminated, others beaten to a pulp or relegated into oblivion until some other misunderstood genius decided to put an end to such rot, declaring segregation unconstitutional in 1970. But it hasn't ended. A black man remains always a black man. Spike Lee, black and American, with "Do the Right Thing" rightly defends his skin and those rights that are trampled even in Harlem, the black lung of New York. Steven Spielberg, white and American, directs a wonderful film, "The Color Purple," slapping the damned moralists with a formidable cast of black actors. Then no one dares to say that a Charlie Parker, a Jimi Hendrix, perhaps a Denzel Washington, are "darned niggers"? Or a Miles Davis, a Louis Armstrong. For heaven's sake.
This brings to mind three questions, two of which are banal:
- Who decided that a white man is better than a black man? Crow? Hitler? Mussolini? Custer? Cabot Lodge? Oh well, then...
- What does a black man have different from a white man, other than skin obviously?
- For us whites, a black man is a man of color. For a black man, what is a white man?
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