UPPITY N*****S
By Michael Compton
What do you call it when black and brown citizens in this democratic republic of ours demand fair treatment from the state officials elected to represent them? Forward-looking people might call it Standing Up. But those among us who tend to look back fondly on the “good old days” of Southern gentility may prefer an older, quainter phrase — Being Uppity.
The recent special session for redistricting called by G̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ Governor Lee in the Tennessee General Assembly was raucous, scandalous, and likely unconstitutional. No matter. The Republican supermajority repealed the law that banned mid-decade redistricting, and they gerrymandered the state into a pretzel, splitting Memphis, and its majority black population, into three bite-sized chunks.
Before that decision was gaveled down, citizens wrote emails, made phone calls, and got on buses to be heard in protest. And on the chamber floor, Democratic legislators made eloquent, righteous appeals to reason, to history, and to common human decency. Hearing those speeches, one wondered how the bill’s sponsors could not fall on their knees in shame over the moral and ethical transgression they proposed. But they were deaf to all of it. One, who purportedly earned his law degree at The University of Memphis, even pretended that he was unaware that Memphis and Shelby County were majority black.
That lie may have been a tacit admission that he knew he was in the wrong. Or it just may have been a ploy to ward off the racist label that could have called the bill’s constitutionality into question. He needn’t have bothered. Many of his colleagues have not been so delicate in their pronouncements. In any case, it’s a given that while the Republican majority on the Roberts Court may abhor a line that serves to gather minority voting power together, they will never bat an eye at a line that splits it apart.
When talk fails, when reason fails, when justice fails, things can get heated. Things got heated that day at the Capitol, and Republicans have since made it known that they did not appreciate it. On May 12, Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton issued an order removing Democrats from “all standing committees and subcommittees.” This extraordinary measure, he said, was “due to actions taken by members of the Democratic Caucus…aimed at disrupting the democratic and legislative processes and creating disorder on the House Floor.”
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Sexton also called the actions of Democratic House members “dangerous,” although no one was violent or even threatening toward Republican members or law enforcement. Yes, they were loud, they were disruptive, and three Memphis citizens, at least, were arrested because they briefly refused to move when the gallery was cleared because somebody booed. In other words, they were Uppity.
Two moments in particular must have chafed those sensitive organs that belch Right Wing outrage. One was when Rep. Justin J. Pearson cursed at a State Trooper who got too handsy escorting his brother out of the building. The other was when Rep. Justin Jones set fire to an image of the Rebel flag. Oh, the Humanity!
The social media avalanche of vitriolic language and racist memes heaped upon these two young men was as predictable as it was hard to take. I’ve long since given up reporting the most abusive posts I see on Facebook, because it is clear that racism is not offensive to the “community standards” Facebook claims to uphold. Or, considering our present politics, maybe racism IS the community standard. Also unsurprising, and in some ways even harder to take, has been the pearl clutching by moderates and black conservatives. In one exchange I saw on a friend’s feed, a black “digital creator” from Memphis implied Jones was fortunate not to have been charged with “arson.” He further stated that Memphis will never progress until we elect “serious people” and “deal makers.”
Personally, I think you can find more serious people in any Memphis barbershop or rib joint than exist in the entire Republican Caucus in Nashville. If Rep. Pearson — the man who led the efforts to derail the Byhalia Pipeline, to close down the carcinogen-spewing Sterilization Services plant, and to slow the roll of Elon Musk’s methane-powered Colossus AI in South Memphis — if he isn’t a serious person, then I don’t know who is.
It’s not seriousness these people want, it’s respect — or at least their version of respect. Obeisance is more like it. The recognition of some white someone’s assumption of superiority. Toe the line, take the insult, wait your turn. Just don’t act like you think you’re somebody.
In Richard Wright’s autobiographical essay, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” he wrote that just about the worst accusation a white person in Jim Crow Mississippi could throw at a black person was “you think you’re smart.” In the parlance of the day, that was an Uppity N*****, one who was on the slippery slope to that greatest offense of all, to think he was white. To the white racist, the two were virtually synonymous, which shows just how little they understood black people, or their own stupidity.
In these more enlightened times, even the most clueless white nitwit probably doesn’t assume that any Black American actually wants to be white. What still nags at them, though, what strikes fear in their atrophied little hearts, is the suspicion — no, the absolute certainty — that there are Blacks and Latinos and Asians who are smarter, more gifted, more accomplished, and more virtuous than they might ever hope to be. Others have made the observation, and I am convinced it’s true, that Donald Trump and the whole MAGA swamp that we have been mired in for the last decade can be explained by the audacity of Barack Obama to get himself elected President and never have the decency to recognize his “betters.”
It’s not the crime, it’s not the immigration, it’s not the decaying moral values that fuels the White Supremacist tsunami that has swept away our nation’s civil governance. It’s the insult. They’re humiliated, and they mean to make everyone pay. We can ask them nicely for fair treatment. We can follow rules. We can tap gently on the door of democracy, and hope they let us in. Or we can kick the door down. We can shout, and we can rally, and we can vote, vote, vote until we turn back the tide.
Now is not the time to doubt ourselves or fret that somebody might have said something out of line or failed to uphold some phony rule of decorum. If we want to win, we’ve got to fight, and we can’t be afraid of looking ugly or hurting someone’s feelings. We’ve got to stay in their faces. Step on their toes. Stay strong. Stay proud. Stay Uppity.
