Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

The narrator has a strange vision on top of a mountain. A voice much like James Earl Jones’s (known as the voice of Darth Vader) declares that it has been waiting for him. In a room there is a computer bearing a message; the message is at first a command for the professor to express himself. The command is taken from a dialect poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American poet of the late 19th and early 20th century. The machine transmits into the narrator’s head five rules governing when white people accept African Americans’ right to speak and be heard. The professor wakes to find the rules have been transcribed to paper and that Geneva is standing nearby. He shares the rules with her, and they engage in dialogue about the rules.

The first rule is that when African Americans talk about racism or speak positively about another African American person (especially as a recommendation for a job), white people will not take them seriously. African Americans need to take this into account since even an objective or mixed recommendation will lead white people to see the recommendation as negative.

The second rule is that African American victims of racism are discounted in the courts and daily life in comparison to white people because people assume African Americans cannot be objective about matters of race. The impact of the rule is that African Americans are less likely to make it onto juries and that African American judges are even asked to remove themselves from court cases that touch on race. White people who write about African American culture and history are rewarded, while African Americans who do so are ignored. Practically speaking, African Americans who do not address white audiences first will always have less success or not even be heard.

The third rule is that the best way for African Americans to be taken seriously by white people is to criticize other African Americans. The professor highlights the nomination of Clarence Thomas—a man the professor believes was a legal lightweight at the time of his nomination—as an example. The increased status of several African American academics who took African Americans to task and the increased visibility of African American women writers who write about African American men’s mistreatment of African American women are also proof of this rule’s accuracy.

The fourth rule is that if an African American person says something that offends white sensibilities—especially ones that encourage a more militant view of race relations—other African Americans will be forced to condemn that person or risk condemnation themselves. Those who comply will be given much greater standing. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and all the African Americans forced to comment on Farrakhan’s statements deemed to be anti-Semitic are prime examples of this dynamic. This rule means people who want to look at African Americans and their culture critically are always forced to second guess themselves for fear that anything critical they say will just be more evidence confirming anti-Black opinions listeners may already have.

The fifth rule is that there is no escaping the rules. Understanding the rules means knowing in advance how racists will act, what their racism really is, what their goals are, and what to do about them. Sharing what you know in public will not do anything to undercut the rules, however, and the professor notes that Rule 5 poses a challenge to African Americans who want to share the rules.