Medium Post 4
While I had not heard of either of these pieces before engaging with them, I am familiar with the idea of the wake. The wake is usually described as a trail, typically behind a ship, that spreads out and encompasses a wider and larger area as you get farther from its source. Connecting this to Sharpe’s In the Wake, she uses this imagery of the wake to show the negative effects that black people still face as a result of slavery, the ship. Since the dehumanization of Black people through the institution of slavery, this injustice has found a way to live on. It began with a singular point, but has still manifested itself in numerous ways throughout our society today. As part of this wake, black people today have inherited this status of the non-being. They are a part of the “afterlives of slavery.” Even as we distance ourselves from the ship, the wake has not yet disappeared, but rather just spread to new areas.
One of Sharpe’s points that surprised me was the normalization of black death in society. She demonstrates this almost immediately when describing the death of her mother, older sister, older brother, and nephew within the first few pages. She later questions, using a quote bby James and Costa Vergas, “What happens when instead of becoming enraged and shocked every time a Black person is killed in the United States, we recognize Black death as a predictable and constituent aspect of this democracy?” I had somewhat struggled to understand this until our Monday discussion brought some clarity to it. As we have all seen, especially recently, police brutality against Black people has been very prevalent. So, if the institution designed to protect this democracy is out unjustly murdering Black people for our “safety,” then it would appear that Black death is necessary for this “so-called democracy.” While the way she phrased this surprised me and made me think, I think her assertion of this country’s situation is accurate.
On The Daily podcast provided, Toni Morrison’s comment on this normalization of Black death is also mentioned. Bringing up the topic of the United States’ unjust justice system, she had said, “I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back … I want to see a white man convicted of raping a black woman.” If a black man is shot or convicted of rape, it does not seem out of the ordinary. But if a white man does, it is marked as unusual. Both Morrison and Sharpe want this country to witness the commonality of violence against Blacks in its society because it is not hard to see, yet no significant change has been made to prevent this.
