The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.
- Frantz Fanon
There is, apparently, a thin line between fucking and humiliation.
That should come as no surprise. After all, the same word that we use to describe sexual intercourse also means: to treat unfairly or harshly; to express anger, disgust, or peremptory rejection; to characterize one who is annoying or contemptible; to shirk one's duty; to act stupidly or carelessly; to cause trouble, mess up, bungle, botch, or ruin; to behave in a frivolous or meddlesome way; to not to care at all.
While I cannot attack the historical accuracy of these photographs (black Africans were kidnapped, chained, bought, inspected, defiled, degraded, and sold--right here in America--in precisely the manner reenacted above), I am astounded that any modern black man would willingly debase himself by his participation. But perhaps I shouldn't be.
On the adult site XTube, he calls himself "NastyAzzNig." His profile lists but one turn on: "Freaky white tops who know how to put a nigga in his place." He is an apparition, a fable, a fiction. And with no apparent tether, is it any wonder that he floated into the nothingness depicted in the photographs?
I feel an odd combination of pity and contempt for him. It is extremely unfortunate that he--and the many others like him who, while less obvious in their quests for self-destruction, are no less committed to it--has fallen prey to the myths that have been long sparked the imaginations of whites and terrorized the lives of blacks. But myths, by their very nature, are distortion or outright deception. And there is always grave danger in believing--or, moreover, exalting--things that are not true: He who believes in fairy tales will believe in anything and is, therefore, capable of anything. This black man's treason lies not in his sexual orientation or passivity, but rather in his absolute assuredness that he is the lie that they told him.
The photographs are insipid; provocative only in that they bring to the surface, plainly, what many of us--black and white--think when we see an "interracial" couple; striking only in how publicly the participants expose their psychoses--and the country's. The terror of the photographs is, solely, this:
What if they are acting only as their natures command?
Nature or nurture, NastyAzzNig is a blight to the ancestors and to posterity.
If self-annihilation is what he seeks, part of me wishes that he has the courage to see it through to the end. Then, at the very least, the two white men in the photo would be left only with each other to destroy.