As Noel Ignatiev argued, there is a civil war going on in the mind of each working class white man. That war is between his working class consciousness and his white consciousness. Both are in a state of crisis right now. This poem expresses that civil war as a rap battle.
Working class consciousness:
Vanilla twilight / white noise,
I’m clownin’ on these white boys
Waving around their gun toys
When their pops just got laid off.
Wave that thing at the right boys,
The rich who took your pop’s voice
When they hired him back to destroy
All the factories he’d built up.
Don’t point it at the ghetto boys,
The ones whose dads are destroyed
By prisons, cops, and paranoid
White boys acting tough
Like your brother who got redeployed
Our mother’s sure not overjoyed
Our future’s looking like a void
But you’ve just given up.
We don’t need no racial harmony,
We need some racial rhythm.
The friction of camaraderie
That makes us wanna listen.
We need a commune freestyle
Cypher in the kitchen.
To break out of purgatory-
Fire to the prisons.
White male consciousness:
You must be high as fuck boy
I think you’re fuckin’ nuts boy
Just stack this paper up boys
They’re hangin’ from our nuts.
God knows we’re comin’ up boys
So throw your flagpoles up boys
These white bars are for us boys
Can’t love this land enough.
I treat my hook like a hooker
‘Cause I pimp the whole chorus,
Singin’ rhythm and blues
Till the money come toward us.
Remix the game,
My swag gets me your bitch
To sew me these clothes
In a sweatshop in Juarez.
So fuck your racial harmony,
We need some racial friction.
The rhythm of camaraderie
That sells this new addiction.
This skin means: I’m blessed in,
My mob’s on a mission.
Our O.G.’s in Congress
So we stay out of prison.
Working class consciousness:
If you think it’s gonna stay that way
Then bro, you’re fuckin trippin’.
Half your gang are snitches and your O.G.’s been pimpin’
You out since 1492
Your backbone’s been missin’
‘Cause your boss has your skin tone
You’re back pocket-kissin
His wallet and ass,
Man, you’ve rarely uprisen,
So your flow’s lost its soul
From being cramped in that condition.
Now you wannabe a gangster ‘cause you feel something’s missin’;
Your minstrel mirror black eye is shrapnel from the rhythm
That sputters in your heart in its critical condition;
It’s a fragment of your rage,
40s, molotovs, ignition
That you fantasize ‘bout throwing at some white politician
While you watch Kanye’s black bloc
Revolt on television.
Lonely on youtube, with fantasies of pimpin’ –
You’re scared of this life,
Even more scared of women –
‘Cause when they talk back
And question how you’re livin’,
Your repressed desires
Are catchin’ you slippin’.
When your pale pink lips finally
Rap like Robin Hood,
I can hear strains of the blues
Playing faintly in the woods.
When I watched the end of Fight Club,
I finally understood,
That you and Tyler Durden
Ain’t Boyz n the Hood.
We don’t need no racial harmony,
We need some racial rhythm.
The friction of camaraderie
That makes us wanna listen.
We need a commune freestyle
Cypher in the kitchen.
To break out of purgatory –
Fire to the prisons.
I treat each hook like the motherland,
Birthing our humanity,
And race has been the rift
In her ancient valley’s sanity;
She’s watching all her son’s guns fire out your vanity;
She’s watching corporate someones coach you in profanity.
White male consciousness:
I speak this way ‘cause we grew up
Broke as fuck, just like the ‘hood.
Our parents sippin’ from their cups
Of vodka raised by Hollywood.
Where were you when I was jumped
And called a fuckin’ peckerwood?
You say this skin’s a privilege-
Has it done me any good?
And while we’re on the topic
Of white boys tryna act black
How the fuck do you sound
With that coffee-shop minstrel act?
Preaching all that shit
That’s way too fucking abstract
Then posing like you’re Nat Turner
Firin’ a gatt?
You read some book by a Black Panther
Now you think you’re Robin Hood
What the fuck have you done
To rise up like you say we should?
Working class consciousness:
You know I can’t do that
‘Till you join me in the fight,
With millions of others
Who are ready to incite
A time when our dialect
Won’t be black or white
‘Cause we’ll sing a new rebellious blues
We won’t have to bite;
We’ll watch this racial purgatory
Fade into the night.
Both you and I will fade into
The crowd’s multiplying life,
Reborn in the cypher, 7 billion hues,
No spotlight
To bleach out our skin
With centuries of hindsight
Or freeze us in our shoes
Like a prison tower’s searchlight.
Multitude in motion,
We’ll ignite vanilla twilight
Pink and black with blue tattooed
Graffiti of the moonlight,
The revolution’s muse
Our spine rising upright,
Our dialectic blooms
The colors of the night.
————–
The analysis in this poem is inspired by the article “Fight Club” by Amiri Kudura Barksdale, published in Race Traitor, 15 (Fall 2000), p. 53-90. Thanks to Noel Ignatiev for sharing it with me, and for a great conversation about why the Decolonize/ Occupy Seattle camp reminded me of Fight Club.
It is also influenced by the song “White People Suck” by the comrade Desert Rat.
The title is sampled and remixed from Owl City’s song “Vanilla Twilight”.
This is right on point.
Thanks!
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Nice work, Matt. Reading it out loud in different voices—I got the rhythm you’ve written!
Thanks Amiri. I really enjoyed your piece on Fight Club, it helped me understand why and how I’m becoming a revolutionary. It also got me interested in studying dialectics more deeply.