Pulitzer confirms: there is “no such thing as good white people”

What are all those prizes for – especially the ones given in literature and journalism – that everybody covets? Oh, they have a number of important jobs to do. They
[1] act like a beacon in that they show which topics and styles are to be copied or developed;
[2] promote particular writers, journalists and poets who display world views approved by those who judge literary effort;
[3] give support to particular political or social causes by promoting authors who advocate such causes, and they
[4] create so-called authorities on moral, social and political issues in that if e.g. a Nobel-prize winner says something or opposes something or proposes something, then people tend to consider such issues seriously and tend to identify with them.

What makes ambitious men and women of letters yearn to possess a prize? The prize has a gravitational pull if it
[1] is of long standing;
[2] provides the winner with big material gratification; and
[3] is talked about by the mass media and respected by prestigious universities and similar institutions.

A prize is a powerful tool. A literary prize is the most powerful of them all because in literature the standards of quality are so variable and so numerous as almost non-existent, but the message conveyed in the works of art is conveyed in no uncertain terms even if the writer does his best to veil it.

This year’s winner of the Pulitzer prize in Poetry – or at least the present-day equivalent of this once noble literary genre – has been awarded to Jericho Brown. France 24 decided duly to delegate Eve Jackson to conduct an on-line interview with the laureate. A noteworthy interview because the interviewer is white and the interviewee is black and it matters a lot in this case. Eve Jackson is apologetic and submissive throughout the talk. Maybe that’s her genuine feeling, maybe through years of practice she has just learnt to keep a straight face.¹⁾Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown: ‘My poem “The Virus” was like a prophecy’, France 24 2020-05-22.

The interview opens with The Tradition that is recited by Jericho Brown, a piece of text beginning with the names of three flowers and ending with the names of three – according to African Americans totally innocent – blacks recently killed by – shall we use a mirror appellation? – European Americans. The message of the poem cannot be lost on its receptors. Flowers have been cut down by the merciless, racist scythe wielded by white people. They continue to be cut down, as both the white interviewer and the black interviewee affirm, because the United States is deep in the racial crisis and because – as the last line of yet another of Jericho Brown’s poems mentioned in the interview states – there is “no such thing as good white people.”

So because there is “no such thing as good white people,” the well-trained white interviewer asks Jericho Brown about how he felt when yet another “flower” (not her words) – Ahmaud Arbery, a peaceful African American – was shot dead in February by – as some of the mainstream media reported – a white European American supremacist and generally what he thought about whiteness.

My oh my! How many years have passed since Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech? Far more than half a century, at least two generations, almost six decades of tireless, persistent, determined, unflagging, relentless combat against racism and racial separation and in favour of affirmative action and all those re-educational movies made by Hollywood, in which blacks are invariably gallant gentlemen, prudent advisors, caring suitors, renowned artists and scientists, handsome, jolly, decent chaps for whose company, acquaintance or friendship everybody would give a lot.

There is “no such thing as good white people” says the black poet and complains about racism and the white journalist who talks to him hangs on his every word, so that you begin to wonder why Jericho Brown was awarded this prestigious prize. Was it
[1] to placate or kind of compensate African Americans for the death of Ahmad Arbery or
[2] to further the process of combating the pervasive and stubbornly expanding racism?

You may like the texts by Jericho Brown and his ilk – a matter of taste and education – but you must admit the following: the standards on poetry have been changed beyond recognition and in such a way as to enable just anybody – let us stress it – anybody to claim the title of being a poet. Before you decide to dispute this statement, look for comparison’s sake to the “grand old masters, to the bards sublime, whose distant footsteps echo through the corridors of time.”²⁾Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done, poets.org.These new standards make it possible to elevate African American writers. The same is happening in Europe, where African Europeans (I suppose that is the proper appellation that will pass through the fine sieve of political correctness) are assigned the roles of poets, which is supposed to place them very high in society.

What does it mean that in the United States – among other abominations mentioned in the interview such as mass shootings, gun violence, female body defilement, sexual assault, rape – racism will not recede even by an inch? Worse, also the pandemic is racist because African Americans fall victim to it in far larger proportional numbers than European Americans. Tough luck. Consider the phenomenon with care. Decades of anti-racist education and the result is a deep race crisis, so deep that even the virus is racist. What is more, the US administration has been importing people of colour by tens of thousands. To help solve the racial problem or to stoke up the racial fire? Have your pick. Is the European Union not doing the same?

Towards the end of the interview Eve Jackson asks Jericho Brown about the role of the poet in society, and he says that the poet is someone whose duty it is to always tell the truth. Granted. Why then the self-flagellating white journalist and her black interviewee impart the viewer with the mendacious message that Ahmaud Armery was an innocent jogger while in fact he had a criminal record and was chased after a house break-in? Why do they leave the viewer with the impression that Travis McMichael shot Ahmaud Armery without reason whatsoever whereas in point of fact he was attempting to make a citizen’s arrest and eventually acted in self-defence?³⁾The Truth About Ahmaud Arbery, YouTube 2020-05-10.

Two final questions. How is a Pulitzer Prize given to an African American who writes straightforwardly, in a publication for all to see, that there is “no such thing as good white people” supposed to contribute to solving the race crisis? What would happen to a European American poet writing that there is “no such thing as good black people”?