British Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing Under The Storm
AN OPEN LETTER TO DORIS LESSING
Dear Doris Lessing:
As an American writer who has been, for several decades, consistently critical of the actions of American governments throughout the world and in its perpetuation of atavistic barbarities at home such as capital punishment, the incarceration of whole demographies of African-American youth for petty drug offenses, the disenfranchisement of the poor, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a miniscule percentile of our population, I feel I have the right to address your recent ex cathedra remarks about the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, to wit, "that he will be assassinated if he's elected," or words to this direct effect.
Firstly, let me remind you that you are a white African, that you and other white Africans have presumed to speak for black Africans throughout a tumultuous century of colonization, de-colonization, and the often lamentable aftermath of de-colonization; that it has been white Africans who have collected all the Nobel Prizes and all the credit for "liberating" your colored brethren, and assumed a kind of literary noblesse oblige that amounts to a grotesque form of ventriloquism; secondly, I should like to remind you that you have fallen for nearly every political scam of the last century, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, and finally Capitalism, which, as a British Socialist you quite naturally are most partial to. You have even taken refuge in Sufism, in Interplanetary Visitations, in draconian forms of Feminism, and secular terrorism in a relentless effort to escape yourself, escape your colonialist origins, escape culpability for any of the actions of the Empire which you are and remain a subject of.
We who were born and raised in the United States have an entirely different grasp of our history than you do. For one thing, we overthrew monarchical rule by the nation you inhabit, our struggle against slavery and racism has been waged on the land your British ancestors raped and pillaged from aboriginals, which has, in effect, become a large, unhappy country with its own problems, that people of good will and a desire for the greater good have spent their lifetimes attempting to solve in a constructive manner.
No British subject could be more aware of the potential violence that an African-American presidential candidate could become the victim of than we are, and certainly not more aware of it than the candidate himself. We have experienced sequential assassinations of prominent individuals who sought racial equality in our country. We are well aware that powerful elements in our society have nurtured a culture of violence in which memories of these assassinations are never far from our thoughts when anyone dares to effect systemic change in a deeply racist, homophobic, and misogynistic society. In effect, a society founded by the renegades, freebooters and revolutionists who fled from or were banished from yours.
Yet we do not answer to a Queen or Regent, we have a rich history of revolt against the kind of authority that opposes one oppressed people against another, and we have, in our comparatively brief history, achieved considerable progress towards a genuinely egalitarian society where the many who possess a moral sense have often prevailed against the powerful few who do not. Great Britain, so-called, is so entrenched in an impermeable class system that the values of the late 19th century still inform every aspect of your society, still determine the destinies of individual human beings, and still keep centuries of power in the same diseased hands that have always held it. At least we wash our hands occasionally, and change our socks more than once a month.
To anticipate disaster of the kind you seem smugly to be certain of may reflect your delusion that being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature is equivalent to being appointed the Oracle at Delphi. We did not consult this Oracle for any advice about how to exercise our constitutional right to vote, and if we heeded your appeal to fear and foregone conclusions of catastrophe, no progress could ever be made in this country.
We didn't ask for the benefit of your wisdom, since your ideology and your belief system changes every five or six years, you are not a citizen of the United States, and, as far as being a Nobel Laureate is concerned, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, if you want to know what God thinks about that, just look at the people he sometimes gives it to. The only apt thing to be said about prizes is, "S/he deserves it." Believe me, that is not a compliment.
Very truly yours,
Gary Indiana.