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Facing Race 2012: Junot Diaz Press Conference
Junot Diaz: Thank you, yeah, you are very kind, yeah.
Question: Andrea Plaid with Racialicious. Um, and one question is-
Diaz: You guys are a great site.
Plaid: Thank you
Diaz: Yeah.
Plaid: very much. Um, one of the questions that several of our readers have brought up
is your use of the word ***. And people are of course, in their feelings about it
and I was wondering how you'd like to respond to that...especially using it in mixed race
company?
Diaz: I guess it depends what's the, I guess it depends what's the, I guess it really depends
what's the question?
Plaid: The question is, some people--well, it's more like a complaint. Some people feel
that um you shouldn't be able to use that. Uh, you shouldn't use that in mixed race company.
You shouldn't use that in your book. So I guess that becomes why did you use it in Oscar
Wao, for example? Um when you--why do you refer to it in your readings when you could
pick another such word that doesn't refer to that word at all? Does that make any sense?
Diaz: So is it that the representation of that reality is problematic?
Plaid: It's--I think there's some people who just feel like I don't understand why he uses
the word at all.
Diaz: So, because?
Plaid: Because.
Diaz: Yeah, I guess I don't get the question. I mean I guess like, I guess, yeah...I'm not
sure I, I'm trying to get the question. Is it that certain peop--because--I guess the
thing like for example, I represent child *** in my books, so is the problem that some
aspects of our reality should never be represented? So that the fact that I mean the way I grew
up, certainly when I immigrated to the United States I was called three kinds of ***
growing up. So what would be my artistic relationship to a reality? The same thing, there was an
enormous amount of *** assault, *** abuse, *** and *** in the community I
grew up. So the question for me is always that what are we--what is the resistance that
folks have about representation? Because for me the question is, is the argument that this
shouldn't be represented? So therefore, for example, certain folks are not permitted to
represent well, well what? I mean having been, you know, spent my entire US childhood being
called various forms of ***, the thing would be does that mean somehow because my
sort of African descent-ness is not phenotypically recognizable enough? Is that the problem?
So there seems to be a passport issue here where the...certain folks are permitted because
their passports um at a phenotypical level register something; and other folks are questioned
because there's something about their phenotype that doesn't register something.
And I guess that this goes back to that old problem that we have which is--by we I mean
the communities of color that I'm familiar with, which are not all the communities of
color even by the stretch, but this problem of authenticity, um where as a community we're
constantly pulling passports checks on each other. And for a Dominican who grew up partially
in the Dominican Republic and partially in the United States, there's something very
deeply problematic about that because in the Dominican Republic there was a genocide against
the Haitian community and Haitian-Dominican community that was predicated on this similar
reflex of that certain folks have more humanity than other folks. And depending on the way
we sort of spin the humanity--in this case we're spinning the humanity of a certain level
of blackness...and through Trujillato. It was the same thing, it was the same exact
formula. The Trujillato used that formula to exterminate. In this case we're using the
formula to say well, if you pass, you'll be good enough.
But again, these economies share a very similar tendency which is something that's called
ergo conquiro, which is this uh, this ideal of subjectivity at the heart of we call modernity,
which creates a suspicion around people of color's of full humanity. So ergo conquiro
we see playing itself out in Obama, the way that every single person was like in this
sort of right wing madness kept questioning him and saying well, give us your passport,
give us your birth certificate because there was a belief that a black dude couldn't really
be fully human...and by fully human, of course in this case, the shorthand was an American
citizen, but this constant suspicion.
So I guess I don't know what's the beef? You know, because also, not to go on, also there's
my sense is that the n-word is certainly when I came up, remember, I came up before social
networks. Hip hop basically evolved with my childhood. I mean you know, Rapper's Delight,
which was for most of us that didn't like in the Bronx or Brooklyn was the album which
began this idea of sort of hip hop practices and made it really aware--made us really aware--we
were 11 when this *** came out. 06:02 And so what was so interesting growing up in this
period that the ideas about blackness and the ideas for example, of who and what the
n-word was going to be used, was actually local culture, and that there were local ecologies
about this. And that you know, what's interesting is that there's some rules in some local ecologies
and they don't necessarily transfer to other local ecologies, yeah, so that some group
of people could be using this word, but if you pull them out and send them out of Norfolk,
it doesn't fly because these local cultures don't necessarily communicate with each other
or have the same standards. So I guess the way I was thinking about it,
I was just trying to describe the sort of local ecology of the n-word in a place like
central New Jersey, which was a very mixed African American, Puerto Rican, Dominican,
Caribbean community where the word was generalized among all the kids who grew up in the neighborhoods
that I grew up in.
And so again, the idea would be because there's a desire for an imperial blackness, for a
blackness where one person has the keys to what blackness means, there's an idea that
the local usage of the n-word in a place like central Jersey is illegitimate and therefore,
should defer to the imperial blackness of say Brooklyn, or defer to the imperial blackness
of say Baltimore. But try to convince kids on the ground of that.
Plaid: Right.
Diaz: So my thing is again, I would argue that the use of the n-word in my books is
no different from the use of the representation of child ***. It's an attempt to underscore
the sort of complex you know, realities, but also ideas about comparative racializations
and ideas about you know, the way kind of what we would call colonial subjectivities
are rendered in these kinds of spaces. I mean but I don't know. I guess, I kind of wig out
because I don't get the--I never get the issue. Because I wish those people would've been
there to you know, to have been like, "Oh, he's not a legitimate ***, so don't call
him that," when I was being victimized by that, but you know, it is what it is.
Question: [inaudible] reporters and you mentioned about the controversies around the campaign.
I'm wondering if you wanted to weigh-in on the latest from Romney that you know, Obama,
for purchasing the election through gifts to various communities of color, the sense
of you know, where, where this country is headed now and what [inaudible].
Diaz: Well, I mean I'm no expert. I mean this is from just a citizen, yeah, somebody who
is an artist and kind of reflects on this, but I'm not any more qualified than the average
person in some ways. I mean I think if it's emblematic of anything, it's sort of a sclerotic
Republican party that is so addicted to its own rabid delusions that it can't explain
reality in a way that would make sense to somebody outside of their party dogma. I mean
this is just kind of the nonsense that you think that you would see in a fantasyland,
but again, I guess Romney has to get around to explaining how they blew the race and how
those billions of dollars went out the window. And I guess the way he's thinking of doing
it is by doubling down on the sort of predisposition that the folks who are giving the money and
that the organizations that bankrolled him have towards you know, viewing people of color
as parasites, viewing youths as parasites, viewing women as parasite, you know, this
kind of reversal of uh, of what's really at stake, you know, what's really going on. Because
I mean if we ask ourselves, if I got my students from MIT to come in and register how much
does Romney take out of the system vs. how much does you know, some woman in Area 4 in
Cambridge, the only parasite in that formula would be someone like Romney.
You know, so there's this discursive reversal as an attempt to obscure a social reality,
a social reality is that the parasite, you know, and the people who are really mooching
are the ones that are accusing everyone else of mooching.
Question: I think my question is to you, which is are we in, so after Obama was elected the
Diaz: Did it really get very overt?
Female: Well...right.
Diaz: I guess it depends what's your POV? I mean from my perspective it was always business
as usual. You know, it just happened to play on a larger stage. And so for some people
who were not accustomed perhaps to seeing some of these white supremacist regimes in
operation, but you know, it may have been startling, but I think that it was just pretty
much business as usual. I guess I don't know about how things are gonna play out because
again, we're talking about very short term periods. We have to take a look at longitudinal
approaches--I mean I like the sort of plurality that was revealed during this last election,
but again, sort of physical majorities has never been you know, themselves proof against
the kind of nonsense that we're seeing today. It's just like just because people have the
numbers doesn't mean that they're not gonna be captured and controlled by minority elites.
I mean ***, it works well in Latin America, it works super well in Latin America.
So I guess I don't know. I guess the idea that--I mean again, I just feel that the struggle
continues and I certainly don't think that the opposing forces, the people who oppose
the kind of Romney madness, the kind of you know, the kind of sheltering of white supremacy
that the Republican party tends to exercise I don't think that opposition has been activated...has
been activated.
Rebekah: We have time for two or three quick questions probably.
Question: Jamilah King, Colorlines.
Diaz: Oh, what's going on?
Jamilah: So I know you were instrumental in founding programs like VONA. I wanted to know
how you've been able to leverage the success you've had to create opportunities for other
artists of color?
Diaz: Beyond that?
Jamilah: Huh?
Diaz: Beyond that?
Jamilah: Beyond--well, including that even.
Diaz: Right, yeah, I mean listen, it's you know, I think the point of it is always is
that you just keep doing as much of the work as humanly possible. I mean I'm interested
in it, I'm like many of the kids in my group, in my kind of cohort, we just came up as young
activists, young community organizers, that's kind of our background. I mean privilege is
privilege. We all have an enormous amount of it. Certainly some of us have more than
others and the idea is like you know, you try to use your privilege for what we would
call you know, the good work. For me, it's attempting to sort of not only encourage writers.
I'm not only interested in writers, I mean that's sort of trying to encourage young artists
of color, trying to encourage students who are otherwise sort of um marginalized to you
know, to go to college, to participate, to support you know, all sorts of programs that
kind of make up the gap between some of our public schools and some of the more local
private schools and you know, there's a whole bunch of crap you do. And a lot of it is programmatic,
like VONA, and a lot of it is just you sort of doing stuff and you try to do as much as
possible. I mean I think for example, The Boston Review, I'm the editor of The Boston
Review. We've published more first time writers of colors in the pages of The Boston Review
than almost anyplace in you know, that can be found. And so there's a subtle way that
one can do this kind of work.
You know, me and my little group have given out you know, a whole series of scholarships,
whether it's students of color trying to go to art programs in Africa, and Asia and Latin
America. You know, you find ways to take care of this stuff--raising money for Obama, raising
money for Deval Patrick, trying to do kind of do the kind of work against privatization
of the schools that was happening in New York City and continues to happen. You know, you
try your best. Yeah.
Question: [inaudible] and I want to ask, I'm not sure how familiar you are with our city
and history, but what perhaps do you see as the promise of agreeing to the keynote address
of this particular conference and this particular city. You seem to clearly appreciate what
the conference itself means. And so could you at least comment on what you think the
importance of having a race-based conference in the city of Baltimore, especially our history
all the way through the the Civil War and before, that as a concentrated racialized
poverty [inaudible] population...having this conversation in this city does mean something,
and perhaps you could speak to what you see as the promise of this conference and why
you accepted the invitation?
Diaz: No, I think that there's no, there's no question that sort of what, sort of the
you know, the way that our national silence around, national silence and national obfuscation
around issues of race, around issues of white supremacy, that that silence echoes profoundly
in a place like Baltimore. I mean nowhere are the sort of evasions of silences of you
know, these cultures made more visible than in places that are most in some ways victimized
by them...where they have kind of a clear sort of historical relationship. Again, you
know, a part of you, a part of me always thinks that the work is so you know, part of the
work that we're all doing or I think we're doing, you know, has a lot to do with multiple
strategies. You're trying a whole bunch of stuff. You're trying to keep your hands in
a whole bunch of things. You never know what in the world is gonna work. You never know
how you're gonna move somebody. It's sort of like being an artist. In many ways, doing
this presentation and this keynote is sort of like writing a story or writing a book.
You have no idea how this is gonna end up. You have no idea that this piece of art that
you're sending out into the world will have any effect on anyone. But there is possibility
because you yourself have been transformed by art as one who has been transformed by
activism...there is a possibility that maybe this could do something. So I think most of
these things tend to be what we would jokingly call faith-based initiatives. You know, I
mean what else is possible, whether it's art or activism that you operate in the good faith
that there's a possibility for transformation and therefore, it's a worthy strategy to pursue.
Female: Next question.
Question: My name is [inaudible]. So given the young people and especially young people
of color elected Obama to office, as a fan of your books I'm just wondering how do you
feel in the future as our generation gets broader and younger, it's gonna change [inaudible]
Like you did mention how numbers don't mean anything, so what do we have to do besides
get bigger and larger?
Diaz: Yeah, I mean I don't wanna say number don't mean anything. I'm saying historically--there's
a better way of saying it--historically, there's been very efficient ways to neutralize numerical
advantages, you know. Yeah, I mean that's really a good question. I think part of what
we, I've always thought needs to happen across communities of color needs to be for us to
have possessive investments in each other's achievements and struggles, which is a way
of saying that you know, when you think of someone like, you know, you think of someone
like Frank Chin. Frank Chin, who becomes involved in the Day of Remembrance for Japanese interment
victims, who in fact becomes a person of a, a very important person in this movement,
in the Day of Remembrance. And he's a Chinese American, and yet he felt a, very much a possessive
investment in sort of the identity of the Japanese folks. And one can say well, no,
this is Asian Americans. Well, guys, it doesn't always slice that way the way communities
work. And I think that there's often--I mean we saw with the first question. There's also,
there's almost often a possessive investment in what we call our identities. That we can
barely--we want--we think of these things as commodities and therefore, we hold them
as if we're holding money. Therefore, for example, the white supremacist way that it
uses the n-word suddenly turns into a local treasure that we have to keep other people
from, and that we, that somehow it becomes this thing that we keep our arms around. And
that we can't imagine it as a source of connection; instead it becomes a exclusion.
The way our identities are currently constructed, they are constructed not as points of contacts,
but as exclusionary, proprietary sort of complexes. And I think that we need to think of them
as our differences and our similarities always as launches, always as launchpads for contact,
yeah? And so that if somebody has, for example, if the n-word is common throughout certain
groups, yes, I think it's important for us to have a full conversation of what that might
mean, but at the same time use it as a point of connection, as a point to sort of build
on it. But this proprietary relationship to our kind of ethnic identities I think is going
to haunt us if we don't begin to shift it, if we can't imagine a world where a white
Argentinian can come to Cuba and participate fully in revolution. Can you imagine somebody
permitting that now?
We don't, we, we--I think that's very difficult. I think it's very difficult something like
Jose Marti, who, Jose Marti comes from New Jersey, goes to Miami, goes to Tibor City,
goes to St. Thomas...and this is with troops, troops from Miami, goes to St. Thomas, picks
up troops and money. Then goes to the Dominican Republic, picks up troops and money. Then
goes to Haiti, picks up troops and money. Then goes to Jamaica, picks up troops and
money and finishes the attempt to you know, liberate Cuba, where he of course, dies. But
could you imagine us allowing or thinking our national complexes being that open? Being
like oh, here's 10,000 Cubans in Jamaica, we feel like that you're such a part of us
that we're gonna welcome you. I feel like our identities have become so much more miserly
and so much more closed. And I think that we've got to figure out both at a national
level and within or own communities at a place in the United States, how we can open these
things up.
Question: Just a last question on that, [inaudible] CNN, can you talk about why you think that
is? Why it has become more closed or more miserly [inaudible] identities specific to
whether they're transnational or even just cross-cultural within the US?
Diaz: I mean I don't know if I'm the expert about it, but certainly I think that the fact
that everything in our lives in the last 30 years has been increasingly commodified. And
that the commodifications of national and local identities is I think something that
we haven't really been strategizing around, so therefore, I think that people who don't
got *** feel that there is a little lump of treasure called my identity. And instead
of thinking that this is a passport into connecting with other people who don't got ***, we think
of it as like I've gotta keep this from other people. I've gotta keep other people from
claiming this space. You know, the same way, guys, the same way I think I heard the Republican
party's constant suspicion of Obama as an American. I hear various groups, especially
among you know, organizers, questioning each other's credentials...nonstop. And the flow,
it's incredible how it's the same exact grammar. It's this thing, ergo conquiro, this idea
that even if we think of ourselves as human beings in our group, we rarely extend that
shared humanity to another group. So let's say if I'm African American, I'll be like
I think of myself as fully human, but Asian Americans, I'm not so sure they're really
down. Latinos, I'm not sure they're really down, which is a different way of saying--if
we follow the logic, I'm not so sure they're really human same thing and are worthy of
my love and worthy of sharing this treasure called our identity.