Try to Be an Afropessimist

From introduction: 'Is the concept of Blackness, as it has been defined throughout history, inextricably rooted in colonization? Is there a chance for this racialized classification to be decolonized? Can it ever be permanently removed from its historical association with degeneracy, subordinacy, and sub-humanity? Frank B. Wilderson, in his essay “Afropessimism and the End of Redemption,” proposes ‘no,’ that those associated with Blackness, often those of predominantly African ancestry, are ultimately barred from racial redemption (1). Redemption here, signifying detachment from both the history and the lived reality of slavery and racial injustice, is an ultimate return to perceived equal personhood. Wilderson suggests that the concept of Blackness is synonymous with “Slaveness,” (1), and he synthesizes that this direct association with enslavement is what has served as the foundational premise for all other forms of social domination. Wilderson writes that Black people have always been categorized as perpetual subordinates solely by their perception and reception. The inner workings of this theory of Afropessimism can be seen through African American author Richard Wright’s 1944 column in The Atlantic,​ “I Tried to Be a Communist,” a first-person account of Wright’s initiation and engagement with a predominantly non-Black sect of the Communist Party. Wright’s column, “I Tried to Be a Communist,” through its engagement with issues of perceived Blackness in a political-social space geared toward redemption, supports but also complicates Wilderson’s theory of Afropessimism as noted in his article, “Afro-Pessimism and the End of Redemption.”