Read The Purple Decades Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
The Purple Decades (32 page)
“I'd gladly give up my salary,” says the Flak Catcher. “I'd
glad
ly do it, if it would do any good. But can't you see, gentlemen, it would be just a drop in the bucket ⦠just
a drop in the bucket!”
This phrase
a drop in the bucket
seems to give him heart ⦠it's something to hang onto ⦠an answer ⦠a reprieve ⦠“Just consider what we have to do in this city alone, gentlemen! All of us! It's just
a drop in the bucket!”
glad
ly do it, if it would do any good. But can't you see, gentlemen, it would be just a drop in the bucket ⦠just
a drop in the bucket!”
This phrase
a drop in the bucket
seems to give him heart ⦠it's something to hang onto ⦠an answer ⦠a reprieve ⦠“Just consider what we have to do in this city alone, gentlemen! All of us! It's just
a drop in the bucket!”
The Samoans can't come up with any answer to this, so the Flak Catcher keeps going
“Look, gentlemen,” he says, “you tell me what to do and I'll do it. Of
course
you want more summer jobs, and we want you to have them. That's what we're here for. I wish I could give everybody a job. You tell me how to get more jobs, and we'll get them. We're doing all we can. If we can do more, you tell me how, and I'll gladly do it.”
course
you want more summer jobs, and we want you to have them. That's what we're here for. I wish I could give everybody a job. You tell me how to get more jobs, and we'll get them. We're doing all we can. If we can do more, you tell me how, and I'll gladly do it.”
One of the bloods says, “Man, if you don't
know how
, then we don't
need
you.”
know how
, then we don't
need
you.”
“Dat's right, Brudda! Whadda we need you for!” You can tell the Samoans wish they had thought of that shoot-down line themselvesâ
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ramâ
they clobber the hell out of the floor.
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ramâ
they clobber the hell out of the floor.
“Man,” says the blood, “you just taking up space and killing time and drawing pay!”
“Dat's right, Brudda! You just drawing pay!”
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
“Man,” says the blood, “if you don't know nothing and you can't do nothing and you can't say nothing, why don't you tell your boss what we want!”
“Dat's right, Brudda! Tell the man!”
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
“As I've already told you, he's in Washington trying to meet the deadlines for
your
projects!”
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
“As I've already told you, he's in Washington trying to meet the deadlines for
your
projects!”
“You talk to the man, don't you? He'll let you talk to him, won't he?”
“Yes ⦔
“Send him a telegram, man!”
“Well, all rightâ”
“Shit, pick up the telephone, man!”
“Dat's right, Brudda! Pick up the telephone!”
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
“Please, gentlemen! That's pointless! It's already after six o'clock in Washington. The office is closed!”
“Then call him in the morning, man,” says the blood. “We coming back here in the morning and we gonna
watch
you call the man! We gonna stand right on
top
of you so you won't forget to make that call!”
watch
you call the man! We gonna stand right on
top
of you so you won't forget to make that call!”
“Dat's right, Brudda! On
top
of you!”
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
top
of you!”
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
“All right, gentlemen ⦠all right,” says the Flak Catcher. He slaps his hands against his thighs and gets up off the chair. “I'll tell you what ⦔ The way he says it, you can tell the man is trying to get back a little corner of his manhood. He tries to take a tone that says, “You haven't really been in here for the past fifteen minutes intimidating me and burying my nuts in the sand and humiliating me ⦠We've really been having a discussion about the proper procedures, and I am willing to grant that you have a point.”
“If that's what you want,” he says, “I'm certainly willing to put in a telephone call.”
“If we
want!
If you
willing!
Ain't no want or willing
about
it, man! You
gonna
make that call! We gonna be here and
see
you make it!”
want!
If you
willing!
Ain't no want or willing
about
it, man! You
gonna
make that call! We gonna be here and
see
you make it!”
“Dat's right, Brudda! We be seeing you”â
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
â“We coming
back!”
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram
â“We coming
back!”
And the Flak Catcher is standing there with his mouth playing bad tricks on him again, and the Samoans hoist their Tiki sticks, and the aces all leave, and they're thinking ⦠We've done it again. We've mau-maued the goddamn white man, scared him until he's singing a duet with his sphincter, and the people sure do have power. Did you see the look on his face? Did you see the sucker trembling? Did you see the sucker trying to lick his lips? He was
scared,
man! That's the last time that sucker is gonna try to
urban-factor
and
pre-fund
and
fix-asset
with us! He's gonna go home to his house in Diamond Heights and he's gonna say, “Honey, fix me a drink! Those mother-fuckers were ready to kill me!” That sucker was some kind of
petrified
⦠He could see eight kinds of Tiki sticks up side his head â¦
scared,
man! That's the last time that sucker is gonna try to
urban-factor
and
pre-fund
and
fix-asset
with us! He's gonna go home to his house in Diamond Heights and he's gonna say, “Honey, fix me a drink! Those mother-fuckers were ready to kill me!” That sucker was some kind of
petrified
⦠He could see eight kinds of Tiki sticks up side his head â¦
Of course, the next day nobody shows up at the poverty office to
make sure the sucker makes the telephone call. Somehow it always seems to happen that way. Nobody ever follows it up. You can get everything together once, for the demonstration, for the confrontation, to go downtown and mau-mau, for the fun, for the big show, for the beano, for the main event, to see the people bury some gray cat's nuts and make him crawl and whine and sink in his own terrible grin. But nobody ever follows it up. You just sleep it off until somebody tells you there's going to be another big show.
make sure the sucker makes the telephone call. Somehow it always seems to happen that way. Nobody ever follows it up. You can get everything together once, for the demonstration, for the confrontation, to go downtown and mau-mau, for the fun, for the big show, for the beano, for the main event, to see the people bury some gray cat's nuts and make him crawl and whine and sink in his own terrible grin. But nobody ever follows it up. You just sleep it off until somebody tells you there's going to be another big show.
And then later on you think about it and you say, “What really happened that day? Well, another flak catcher lost his manhood, that's what happened.” Hmmmmmm ⦠like maybe the bureaucracy isn't so dumb after all ⦠All they did was sacrifice one flak catcher, and they've got hundreds, thousands ⦠They've got replaceable parts. They threw this sacrifice to you, and you went away pleased with yourself. And even the Flak Catcher himself wasn't losing much. He wasn't losing his manhood. He gave that up a long time ago, the day he became a lifer ⦠Just who is fucking over who? ⦠You did your number and he did his number, and they didn't even have to stop the music ⦠The band played on â¦
Still
âdid you see the
look
on his face? That suckerâ
Still
âdid you see the
look
on his face? That suckerâ
Â
When black people first started using the confrontation tactic, they made a secret discovery. There was an extra dividend to this tactic. There was a creamy dessert. It wasn't just that you registered your protest and showed the white man that you meant business and weakened his resolve to keep up the walls of oppression. It wasn't just that you got poverty money and influence. There was something sweet that happened right there on the spot. You made the white man quake. You brought
fear
into his face.
fear
into his face.
Black people began to realize for the first time that the white man, particularly the educated white man, the leadership, had a deep dark Tarzan mumbo jungle voodoo fear of the black man's masculinity. This was a revelation. For two hundred years, wherever black people lived, north or south, mothers had been raising their sons to be meek, to be mild, to check their manhood at the front door in all things that had to do with white people, for fear of incurring the wrath of the Man. The
Man
was the white man. He was the only
man.
And now, when you got him up close and growled, this all-powerful superior animal turned out to be terrified. You could read it in his face. He had the same fear in his face as some good-doing boy who has just moved onto the block and is hiding behind his mama and the moving man and the sofa while the bad dudes on the block size him up.
Man
was the white man. He was the only
man.
And now, when you got him up close and growled, this all-powerful superior animal turned out to be terrified. You could read it in his face. He had the same fear in his face as some good-doing boy who has just moved onto the block and is hiding behind his mama and the moving man and the sofa while the bad dudes on the block size him up.
So for the black man mau-mauing was a beautiful trip. It not only stood to bring you certain practical gains like money and power. It
also energized your batteries. It recharged your masculinity. You no longer had to play it cool and go in for pseudo-ignorant malingering and put your head into that Ofay Pig Latin catacomb code style of protest. Mau-mauing brought you respect in its cash forms: namely, fear and envy.
also energized your batteries. It recharged your masculinity. You no longer had to play it cool and go in for pseudo-ignorant malingering and put your head into that Ofay Pig Latin catacomb code style of protest. Mau-mauing brought you respect in its cash forms: namely, fear and envy.
This was the difference between a confrontation and a demonstration. A demonstration, like the civil-rights march on Washington in 1963, could frighten the white leadership, but it was a general fear, an external fear, like being afraid of a hurricane. But in a confrontation, in mau-mauing, the idea was to frighten white men personally, face to face. The idea was to separate the man from all the power and props of his office. Either he had enough heart to deal with the situation or he didn't. It was like saying, “Youâyes, you right there on the platformâwe're not talking about the
gov
ernment, we're not talking about the
Of
fice of Economic Oppor
tun
ityâwe're talking about
you,
you up there with your hands shaking in your pile of papers ⦔ If this worked, it created a personal, internal fear. The internal fear was, “I'm afraid I'm not man enough to deal with these bad niggers!”
gov
ernment, we're not talking about the
Of
fice of Economic Oppor
tun
ityâwe're talking about
you,
you up there with your hands shaking in your pile of papers ⦔ If this worked, it created a personal, internal fear. The internal fear was, “I'm afraid I'm not man enough to deal with these bad niggers!”
That may sound like a simple case of black people being good at terrifying whites and whites being quick to run scared. But it was more than that. The strange thing was that the confrontation ritual was built into the poverty program from the beginning. The poverty bureaucrats depended on confrontations in order to know what to do.
Whites were still in the dark about the ghettos. They had been studying the “urban Negro” in every way they could think of for fifteen years, but they found out they didn't know any more about the ghettos than when they started. Every time there was a riot, whites would call on “Negro leaders” to try to cool it, only to find out that the Negro leaders didn't have any followers. They sent Martin Luther King into Chicago and the people ignored him. They sent Dick Gregory into Watts and the people hooted at him and threw beer cans. During the riot in Hunters Point, the mayor of San Francisco, John Shelley, went into Hunters Point with the only black member of the Board of Supervisors, and the brothers threw rocks at both of them. They sent in the middle-class black members of the Human Rights Commission, and the brothers laughed at them and called them Toms. Then they figured the leadership of the riot was “the gangs,” so they sent in the “ex-gang leaders” from groups like Youth for Service to make a “liaison with the key gang leaders.” What they didn't know was that Hunters Point and a lot of ghettos were so disorganized, there weren't even any “key gangs,” much less “key gang leaders,” in there. That riot finally just burnt itself out after five days, that was all.
But the idea that the real leadership in the ghetto might be the
gangs
hung on with the poverty-youth-welfare establishment. It was considered a very sophisticated insight. The youth gangs weren't petty criminals ⦠they were “social bandits,” primitive revolutionaries ⦠Of course, they were hidden from public view. That was why the true nature of ghetto leadership had eluded everyone for so long ⦠So the poverty professionals were always on the lookout for the bad-acting dudes who were the “real leaders,” the “natural leaders,” the “charismatic figures” in the ghetto jungle. These were the kind of people the social-welfare professionals in the Kennedy Administration had in mind when they planned the poverty program in the first place. It was a truly adventurous and experimental approach they had. Instead of handing out alms, which never seemed to change anything, they would encourage the people in the ghettos to organize. They would help them become powerful enough to force the Establishment to give them what they needed. From the beginning the poverty program was aimed at helping ghetto people rise up against their oppressors. It was a scene in which the federal government came into the ghetto and said, “Here is some money and some field advisors. Now you organize your own pressure groups.” It was no accident that Huey Newton and Bobby Seale drew up the ten-point program of the Black Panther Party one night in the offices of the North Oakland Poverty Center.
gangs
hung on with the poverty-youth-welfare establishment. It was considered a very sophisticated insight. The youth gangs weren't petty criminals ⦠they were “social bandits,” primitive revolutionaries ⦠Of course, they were hidden from public view. That was why the true nature of ghetto leadership had eluded everyone for so long ⦠So the poverty professionals were always on the lookout for the bad-acting dudes who were the “real leaders,” the “natural leaders,” the “charismatic figures” in the ghetto jungle. These were the kind of people the social-welfare professionals in the Kennedy Administration had in mind when they planned the poverty program in the first place. It was a truly adventurous and experimental approach they had. Instead of handing out alms, which never seemed to change anything, they would encourage the people in the ghettos to organize. They would help them become powerful enough to force the Establishment to give them what they needed. From the beginning the poverty program was aimed at helping ghetto people rise up against their oppressors. It was a scene in which the federal government came into the ghetto and said, “Here is some money and some field advisors. Now you organize your own pressure groups.” It was no accident that Huey Newton and Bobby Seale drew up the ten-point program of the Black Panther Party one night in the offices of the North Oakland Poverty Center.
To sell the poverty program, its backers had to give it the protective coloration of “jobs” and “education,” the Job Corps and Operation Head Start, things like that, things the country as a whole could accept. “Jobs” and “education” were things everybody could agree on. They were part of the free-enterprise ethic. They weren't uncomfortable subjects like racism and the class structureâand giving the poor the money and the tools to fight City Hall. But from the first that was what the lion's share of the poverty budget went into. It went into “community organizing,” which was the bureaucratic term for “power to the people,” the term for finding the real leaders of the ghetto and helping them organize the poor.
And how could they find out the identity of these leaders of the people? Simple. In their righteous wrath they would rise up and
confront
you. It was a beautiful piece of circular reasoning. The real leaders of the ghetto will rise up and confront you ⦠Therefore, when somebody rises up in the ghetto and confronts you, then you know he's a leader of the people. So the poverty program not only encouraged mau-mauing it, it practically
demanded
it. Subconsciously, for administrators in the poverty establishment, public and private, confrontations became a ritual. That was the way the system worked. By 1968 it was standard operating procedure. To get a job in the post office, you filled out forms and took the civil-service exam. To get into
the poverty scene, you did some mau-mauing. If you could make the flak catchers lose control of the muscles around their mouths, if you could bring fear into their faces, your application was approved.
confront
you. It was a beautiful piece of circular reasoning. The real leaders of the ghetto will rise up and confront you ⦠Therefore, when somebody rises up in the ghetto and confronts you, then you know he's a leader of the people. So the poverty program not only encouraged mau-mauing it, it practically
demanded
it. Subconsciously, for administrators in the poverty establishment, public and private, confrontations became a ritual. That was the way the system worked. By 1968 it was standard operating procedure. To get a job in the post office, you filled out forms and took the civil-service exam. To get into
the poverty scene, you did some mau-mauing. If you could make the flak catchers lose control of the muscles around their mouths, if you could bring fear into their faces, your application was approved.
Â
Ninety-nine percent of the time whites were in no physical danger whatsoever during mau-mauing. The brothers understood through and through that it was a tactic, a procedure, a game. If you actually hurt or endangered somebody at one of these sessions, you were only cutting yourself off from whatever was being handed out, the jobs, the money, the influence. The idea was to terrify but don't touch. The term
mau-mauing
itself expressed this game-like quality. It expressed the put-on side of it. In public you used the same term the whites used, namely, “confrontation.” The term
mau-mauing
was a source of amusement in private. The term
mau-mauing
said, “The white man has a voodoo fear of us, because deep down he still thinks we're savages. Right? So we're going to do that Savage number for him.” It was like a practical joke at the expense of the white man's superstitiousness.
mau-mauing
itself expressed this game-like quality. It expressed the put-on side of it. In public you used the same term the whites used, namely, “confrontation.” The term
mau-mauing
was a source of amusement in private. The term
mau-mauing
said, “The white man has a voodoo fear of us, because deep down he still thinks we're savages. Right? So we're going to do that Savage number for him.” It was like a practical joke at the expense of the white man's superstitiousness.
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