On the Use of Force

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little-known documents

On the Use of Force

chester himes Introduction introduction by IN THE MID-1960S, THE UNITED STATES WITNESSED INCREASING SOCIAL diego a. millan UNREST: STUDENTS LED PROTESTS AGAINST THE VIETNAM WAR, AND

many black Americans expressed disillusionment over piecemeal gains of the civil rights movement. Whereas history remembers the antiwar rallies mostly as protests, official records often code black demonstrations in Bos- ton, Cleveland, Buffalo, and the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles as riots. In response to two so- called riots in Newark, New Jersey, in July 1967, Chester Himes wrote “On the Use of Force” for the 24 July 1967 issue of the weekly Gaullist magazine Le nouveau Candide, where it was published in French translation (French version). The essay, never before published in English, offers timely thoughts concerning police brutality and is sure to be valuable for Himes scholarship, the story of black Americans in Europe, and the history of race and violence. The French translation of “On the Use of Force” appeared with no title, under the section heading “Le cauchemar américain,” or “The American Nightmare.” An En glish-language typescript with Himes’s handwritten revi- sions, where the title “On the Use of Force” originates, is in the Ohio State University Libraries Special Collections, and a copy is also in the Amistad Re- search Center’s Chester Himes collection, in New Orleans. Himes drafted the essay in English before it was translated into French, a common practice for the expatriate writer whose later works often appeared first in translation. Because of his transatlantic status and the popularity of his crime fiction, he enjoyed renown as a public intellectual among members of his French literary audience in matters concerning America’s race relations.¹ After do- ing an interview with Adam magazine on whose cover his photo appeared, he even referred to himself as “the best known black in Paris” (My Life 291). DIEGO A. MILLAN is a Presidential Diver- “On the Use of Force” condenses many of the social and political ques- sity Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown Uni- versity. He is completing his first book, tions Himes explored throughout his career, such as the politics of police “Laughter’s Fury: The Double-Bind of aggression and the interrelatedness of sexual and racial violence. He begins Black Laughter,” which examines how with a familiar image: the enduring invisibility of black people. He then enduring legacies of racism inform so- traces the racialization of violence to American slavery, which he argues ciocultural understandings and prac- required the infantilization of black people so that society could justify tices of laughter.

various disciplinary structures. Since these pun- of a Primitive (1955) was “in many respects a crime ishments often turned physical, Himes concludes, novel” and that his more “‘mainstream’ novels are “[T] here is no other race of people on earth as sen- set in a world that is just as violent and obscene as sitive to physical abuse.” He credits this relation the world of my domestic thrillers” (“Chester Himes between physical violence and discipline (gener- Direct” 136). Even while acknowledging that the for- ally perpetrated by “a white policeman”) as the mulaic nature of crime ﬁction limited his approach, root cause of race riots in the United States. he asserts that this formula “didn’t prevent me from Despite its straightforward argument that saying whatever I wanted” (136). Indeed, readers of police violence is endemic to black lives, Himes’s “On the Use of Force” will ﬁnd it reminiscent of both

little-known documents essay offers more than an analysis of historically Himes’s mainstream novels and his crime fiction. entrenched racial tension; the essay refutes schol- The Amistad Research Center has updated its arly presumption that Himes was out of touch with Himes collection to include expanded descriptions the daily struggles affecting black people the world and online search tools, increasing opportunities over. Connecting his discussion of the political mo- for reevaluating the breadth of Himes’s contribu- ment in the United States to liberation activities tions. “On the Use of Force” is an important docu- around the world, he recodes the policing of black ment for this future scholarship because it reminds bodies using terms related to global decolonization us that, at its core, Himes’s work addresses the movements (“in accordance with all the ideologies politics of antiblackness, police aggression, and the of all nations,” resistance “is right and just”). Resist- lived experiences of people who “are never seen ing police could justifiably take the form of armed until they lie bloody and dead from a policeman’s counterviolence, which Himes explored in writ- bullet on the hot dirty pavement of a Ghetto street.” ing through the idea of black revolution (Fiorelli 127).² Perhaps unsurprisingly, the British journalist Philip Oakes referred in 1969 to Himes as “a found- ing father of the Black Power movement” (qtd. in NOTES Himes, “Man” 18), a designation Himes “clearly rel- ished,” according to the biographer Michel Fabre 1. For more on Himes’s literary relation to France, see (xi). Himes certainly echoes facets of 1960s black Eburne. 2. Julie Fiorelli situates Himes’s novel Pl a n B , which political critique throughout the essay; his claim we know Himes was working on at the time of the essay, that black people consider their bodies “inviolable” among a “proliferation of novels by African- American” complements calls to reject assimilationist practices writers exploring similar themes of revolution during the and promote black autonomy during the rise of the late 1960s (127). black power and black arts movements, while the 3. he French title of Himes’s Une afaire de viol (A Case of Rape; 1963) similarly presents this relation be- emphasis on touch underscores affinities between tween violence and sex, and one must wonder whether intimacy and violence that his work often explored.³ Himes had it in mind in his use of “inviolable” here. Despite conceptual and aesthetic shifts across Himes’s fifty- year career, “On the Use of Force” rep- resents a combination of Himes’s writing. We en- WORKS CITED counter the hard-boiled, naturalist writing style of Eburne, Jonathan P. “The Transatlantic Mysteries of If He Hollers, Let Him Go (1945), as well as imagery Paris: Chester Himes, Surrealism, and the Série and language recycled from more surrealistic texts, noire.” PMLA, vol. 120, no. 3, May 2005, pp. 806–21. such as Plan B (1993) and another lesser- known es- Fabre, Michel. Introduction. Himes, Conversations, pp. ix–xiv. say published by Présence africaine, “Harlem: An Fiorelli, Julie A. “Imagination Run Riot: Apocalyptic Race- War Novels of the Late 1960s.” Mediations: American Cancer” (1963). This continuity makes Journal of the Marxist Literary Group, vol. 28, no. 1, sense when we consider that Himes found generic Fall 2014, pp. 127–52, www .mediationsjournal .org/ distinction pointless, remarking once that The End articles/imagination- run- riot. PDF download. 132.2 ] Chester Himes 473

Himes, Chester. “Chester Himes Direct.” Interview by ———. French version of “On the Use of Force.” Le nou- Mi chel Fabre. Himes, Conversations, pp. 125–42. veau Candide, 24 July 1967, pp. 11–14. ——— . Conversations with Chester Himes. Edited by Mi ———. “The Man Who Goes Too Fast.” Interview by chel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner, UP of Mississippi, Philip Oakes. Himes, Conversations, pp. 17–22. 1995. ——— . My Life of Absurdity. hunder’s Mouth Press, 1995.

On the Use of Force

IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ABOUT the riot in Newark, New Jersey, one must ap- formed by the sight of the Paris correspondent proach it from the position of total ignorance. for Ebony magazine, an American Negro, One must dismiss every preconception, such driving his Buick Riviera about the streets. as the “objective” reportage of all the world’s he angry, hungry Americans living in their press, along with the actual sight of American fetid slums, brains baking in the heat, resent Negro tourists walking down the Champs Ely- ments swelling and exploding in their over see, eating in expensive restaurants, living in heated minds, or those lying dead in their own expensive hotels, seemingly intelligent, edu- blood from a white cop’s bullet, are the only cated, prosperous, looking happy and satisied. authorities in Negro life in the United States. Because the black people who are rioting Only the dead blacks lying in the dirty in Newark, along with those who rioted in Ghetto streets know what it is like to be a black Watts in 1965 and those who rioted in Cleve man in America. land in 1966, and those who rioted in Cincin So let us, black and white alike, who are nati, Boston, Bufalo and in other American still alive, wellfed, clothed, sheltered, protected cities earlier this year, are invisible. hey are and secure, try to understand a modicum of never seen until they lie bloody and dead from what these dead blacks know. a policeman’s bullet on the hot dirty pave First, there are more blacks living in New ment of a Ghetto street. No one knows that ark, New Jersey, than whites. The way of life they exist. hey sufer abuse, poverty, hunger, there is shockingly similar to that in the large unemployment, malnutrition, rejection, every cities in South Africa. he black majority lives indignity which can be imposed on human in a ghetto, illhoused, illfed, illeducated, with beings, unseen, unheard of, with less identity an unemployment rate ten times higher than than the ghosts of any graveyard. And yet they their white neighbors.1 Because it is accepted compose the majority of the American blacks. by the white power structure, the city and state For every well dressed, seemingly happy and governments, and the systems of free enterprise, satisied American Negro seen walking down that the black majority will resent this situation, the Champs Elysee, there are one million of a large force of heavily armed white policemen these invisible blacks living in slums so foul are employed to keep them in their place.2 even the rats are nauseated, so hot their brains It is admitted by the white authority fry in summer, and so cold in winter their of the United States that these black people joints freeze. living in these fetid, overcrowded ghettos pre One should not be an authority on infor sent a problem. It is a problem the whites wish mation from the capitalist press, or the com they didn’t have.3 They wish this problem munist press, or from preconceptions one has would go quietly away. 474 On the Use of Force [ PMLA

he majority of white Americans feel they cans have become opposed to the practice of didn’t make this problem. hey didn’t bring this concept in Viet Nam, that if the United these black slaves over there;4 they didn’t hold States applies suicient force the problem of them in bondage; they didn’t benefit from communist iniltration will disintegrate. Too their slavery. Inwardly they resent being faced many Americans have sufered. “And to what with a problem they had no part in making. purpose?” they are asking themselves. The That, of course, is as nonsensical as the concept of the inal solution has become ab- German people rejecting all responsibility for horrent to too many white Americans. the Nazi’s extermination of the Jews. For all At home, in the United States, too many

little-known documents their seemingly political naiveté, social irre- white Americans have rejected the theory sponsibility, and overall stupidity, American that the “Negro Problem” can be eliminated whites know this. hey have a problem which by beating the blacks into submission. they can not dismiss, can not keep hidden, he other reason is the American black’s and do not wish to solve. he only thing let to attitude toward physical abuse. Paradoxically, them is to kill it. the one and only thing an American black With a mentality shockingly similar to the holds inviolable is his person. It is a hangover Nazis, to the white Americans the inal solution from slavery. he greatest indignity to a slave’s of the Negro Problem, as all their other prob- manhood was physical abuse; a house slave lems, is to kill it.5 If the white police can’t kill it to be slapped, a ield slave to be whipped. he with their municipal weapons, call out the state slave accepted it, they had to. But when they militia or the federal soldiers and shoot it dead. were freed it was inished. For the freed slave, “A dead nigger is a good nigger,” is their the most important factor of their freedom conviction. was freedom from physical abuse. Freedom As history will demonstrate, white Amer- from punishment. his habit of physical pun- ica has always relied on force as the solution ishment, more than anything else, revealed the of all problems. If enough force is applied the white master’s attitude. To all white slave own- problem will disintegrate, the agitators will ers, their families and overseers, black slaves be quieted, the injustices will be neutralized. were regarded as children. Slaves resented this If the black agitators don’t shut up, they attitude as one of the most despicable factors will be made to shut up. If black citizens don’t of their enslavement. his is the one strongest realize they are better of than they were in resentment they brought out of slavery, to be slavery, better of than they would be in the regarded as children and punished as such. Congo bush, then apply the inal solution— It remains today as one of the strongest kill them! New Jersey governor Richard J. emotions in a black person’s soul. Since slavery Hughes said the race riot in Newark was black people have endured every other imag- a “criminal insurrection”, which gives the inable indignity. But their person is inviolable. white law enforcement officers every legal Black people in the United States have been right to kill the black citizens who are rioting. known to accept every imaginable form of in- If these black people want to make a problem sult and abuse, along with all the known injus- out of their oppression, the white people will tices, with the one exception of physical abuse. kill the problem, like shooting a hare. Which brings us down to this important But there are two main reasons why this question, in fact the principle question; what can not work with the “Negro Problem” in the is it, exactly, that precipitates a race riot in the united states. here are too many white Amer- United States? icans abandoning the concept of force as the he answer is physical abuse by a white solution of problems. Too many white Ameri- person, usually a white policeman. 132.2 ] Chester Himes 475

his statement calls for a review of the the- policeman’s assault than a black taxi cab documents little-known ory of force as a solution of the “Negro Problem” driver, prize ighter, or ordinary pedestrian. held by white authority in the United States. Black people interpret any and all physi- As American blacks’ resentment toward be- cal gestures applied to their person by white ing treated as children and punished as such was policemen, no matter the nature or the cause, an inheritance from slavery, white Americans as acts of police brutality; and all their violent inherited the theory that physical punishment is physical retaliations are supported by righ- the only means of keeping black people in their teous justiication. hey not only feel right, place. he Ku Klux Klan employed it irst. And but noble, in resisting a white policeman’s ac- white law enforcement oicers ever since. tion of force with violence. Until recently all American law enforce- In fact, in accordance with all the ideolo- ment oicers were white. Blacks were regarded gies of all nations, this is right and just. Because as children, to be kept in their place by stern the obedience and conformance of the blacks language and punished physically if they of the United States are imposed by force, theo- disobeyed. With their inherited resentment retically blacks have the right to resist. against this particular attitude, docile blacks This force has been applied by various who accepted every other type of condescen- means in diferent parts of the country. South- sion and abuse, became as dangerous as rattle- ern sherifs have always had their method of snakes. If you have ever seen a rattlesnake you “handling their niggers,” which is now so well know it will run from an advancing human, known in the world as to need no elaboration. but if it is touched it will coil and strike too But the white police in the northern industrial rapidly for the eye to follow. American blacks ghettos, like the ones in Newark, New Jersey, have this violent, instantaneous reaction to had their own method of curing the black being touched in punishment. A common ex- man’s problems. No matter the nature of the pression of American black people is; “Just so black’s complaint, wife trouble, landlord trou- long as he didn’t lay a hand on me.” hey will ble, hunger, resentment, aching feet, or just accept anything, no matter how great their re- plain stomach poisoning from methyl alcohol sentment, just so long as the white man doesn’t or rotten food, the cure was to take him to the lay a hand on them. here is no other race of basement of the precinct station and beat the people on earth as sensitive to physical abuse. black of of him with leaded hose. hey have been abused enough without this This is known as police brutality. Po- crowning injury. his they will not accept. lice brutality toward black people in the Opposed to this are the white law en- United States is of such common usage and forcement oicers who seriously believe there longstanding to have attained acceptance as comes a time when only physical punishment proper behavior. he theory has always been can control disobedient and rebellious blacks. that the way to treat black people is like chil- No American black person, no matter his sta- dren; that they have to be punished when they tion in life, his position, his wealth, his white misbehave and make a nuisance of them- friends, escapes this attitude of white police- selves, such as asking for their civil rights. man. A white policeman will get out of his Every race riot in the United States has police car and start beating on a black citizen stemmed from the one single fact that a white who might very well be a United States sena- law enforcement officer has committed a tor or Supreme Court Justice, if he has not brutality against a black citizen. his is a lat been informed in advance of the black man’s statement of fact. here are no exceptions. position. he black man of important position he brutality committed by the white law is less likely to retaliate violently to the white enforcement oicer comes irst. 476 On the Use of Force [ PMLA

Whether justiiably or not, whether ofen- problem. There is no Civil Rights Agency sively or in self defense, whether it was deemed to whom black victims of police brutality, necessary or gratuitous, is beside the point. or imagined police brutality, can appeal for The point is that black citizens in the justice or damages. he only resort of black United States have been the victims of bru- people is to retaliate with force. talities committed by white policemen from Police brutality. Retaliation of blacks. Re- time immemorial. There is scarcely a black sult. Race riots! hat is the order of progression. child in the United States who has not wit- To my knowledge, the only race leader in nessed at least once the act of a white police- the United States who realized the immediacy

little-known documents man striking, shoving, slapping, kicking, or of this factor of the Civil Rights problem, was threatening a black citizen. Malcolm X. Malcolm X was fully cognizant he police brutality comes irst! Always! of the resentment of American blacks to be- he race riot is a consequence. ing regarded and treated as children. He was This does not mean that the emotion aware that most American whites, “good” which sustains the rioting and the looting whites or “bad” whites, liberal whites or reac- stems only from police brutality. Once the tionary whites, advanced whites or stoneage black citizens are moved to retaliate against a whites, thought of black people as children. police brutality, all of their many resentments Some benignly. Some malignantly. But all against “whitey” surge to the surface. hey re- with condescension. But Malcolm X was sent whitey because he takes the best and gives killed before he could take any action. He had them the leftovers; because he has the best been subjected to the inal solution. jobs, the best houses, his children go to the best Until the American whites can accept the schools. hey resent whitey because they feel he American blacks as grown people, capable of has oppressed them, cheated them, segregated responsibilities and the forming of opinions, them, made fools out of them in every respect. there can be no hope that the two races will All of their resentments are released. hey live together amicably, in mutual respect and turn over whitey’s automobiles, loot whitey’s cooperation. I do not think there is any pos- stores, set fire to whitey’s tenements even sibility of this being achieved until ater all though they live in them themselves; they get Americans who are now under twenty years out their few weapons and began shooting at of age have become old enough to assume the white policemen from the safety of roof- control of all aspects of American life. tops, from behind their tenement walls. hey feel that if they could just hurt whitey enough where it hurts the most they will at least be more respected even though their problems EDITOR’S NOTES remain unsolved. But the police brutality is the catalyst. 1. Himes added “white” in pen. Always. 2. Here Himes began a new paragraph with the words “[i]t is admitted, as in all other great populated black ghet- It is of no consequence whether the ac- tos, that the problem of black,” but he typed x’s over the text. tions of white police are considered as brutal 3. he original read, “It is a problem it wishes it didn’t or necessary in the circumstances.6 he only have.” Himes made the changes in pen; “it” would have important factor is that black American citi- indicated “United States” from the previous sentence. zens consider it as such. he revision sharpens his criticism and avoids implying that the United States is exclusively white. One of the most unfortunate aspects of 4. Himes changed “here” to “there.” the Civil Rights Movement is there has been 5. Himes changed “will be” to “is.” no legal apparatus formed to cope with this 6. Himes added “or necessary” in pen.