open letter to C. Liegh McInnis

New Orleans, LA                                                      OPEN LETTER TO C. LIEGH MCINNIS

February 26, 2020



Dear C. Liegh,

Before I comment on your defense of Richard Wright, I quote cogent lines from popular song----



What's love got to do,

got to do with it?

What's love but a second-hand emotion?

Tina Turner



Nobody loves you but your mother,

And she might be lying too.

B. B. King



Love is strange.  Much of the music that informs African American literature is saturated with commentary on love, and it helps to shape belief that love is  most genuine when two people are true to one another.  She or he who claims to love several million people (or a whole nation) is broadcasting what common sense refuses to confirm. And it's impossible to find evidence beyond dispute that the later Toni Morrison loved black people without nuanced qualifications  or that Richard Wright hated them. Close readings of their works make a different case for their representations of hate and love.



Yesterday, you defended Wright against an accusation begot, so your colleague claimed,  by Afrofuture discourse. Your defense was well-constructed, timely, and not besmirched by interpretive errors.  Be assured you spoke truth to the rancid power of delusion.

C. Liegh McInnis <clieghmcinnis@bellsouth.net>

Tue 2/25/2020 1:23 PM

·         You;

·         'Graham, Maryemma';

·         'Howard Rambsy II';

·         'kalamu ya Salaam'



Hey Y’all,

            So, yesterday, after a wonderful day of panels on Toni Morrison’s Sula as we celebrated the African-American Read-In, JSU faculty and students were gathered at the reception, having a great time.  As we always do, there was light banter about topics, especially regarding sexism, feminism, toxic masculinity, and whatnot.  As a continuation to a question that was posed during the Q&A of my presentation, I was asked to clarify what I meant that the males in Sula suffer from being babied by the women in their lives.  For the record, as I had already clarified during my presentation and during the Q&A, I stated that the males in Sula suffer from “internal and external damaging. Internally, they are immature because they have few male role models to teach them to be adults and they are often babied by their mothers or the other women in the lives which stunts their emotional growth even more.  Externally, they are psychologically damaged by white supremacy in the form of WWI and the general umbrella of Jim Crow.”  Yet, somehow, a couple of faculty members completely missed what I said regarding poor male role models and white supremacy and were determined to focus only on my “blaming the women for the men being terrible.”  Once I clarified myself again, a faculty member added, “At least Morrison loves black people.  Wright hates black people.”  I was taken aback for a couple of reasons.  One, we were discussing Morrison so the Wright comment seemed completely from left field.  Two, in all my years of reading Wright, I had never gotten the notion that Wright hates black people.  I was so taken aback that all I could do was simply exit the discussion, which I was able to do because I had a 2:00 p.m. class shortly.  As y’all know, I’m rarely at a loss for words, but at that moment I was.  So, I just left to teach my class.

            However, after giving the comment some thought, I emailed that professor and used Wright’s two collections of short stories to show that I’ve never seen Wright as a person who hates black people.  Then, that professor responded with I’ll concede that he seems to hate black people less in his short stories.  But, she then added, “He doesn't even reveal his hatred for black women as strongly.” She finished her email with “One of the panelists at the Afrofuturism conference last week said ‘he is an evil person who doesn't have a good soul.’  I never thought of him so harshly, but he wasn't my favorite.”  That’s when all the blues and funk in me hit the fan.  Below is my response.  I’m not sharing this to get an amen.  I’m sharing it because I want to be corrected on anything that I may have gotten wrong in my discussion of Wright’s work.  Unlike these fake ass neo-black mofos that call themselves creatives and scholars, an accurate examination of the text is still important to me.  So, again, just let me know if I got something wrong regarding my defense of Wright so that I can correct myself as well.  Thanks.

C. Liegh

 C. Liegh, I make no pretense of understanding the full history of Afrofuturism, including its initial articulation by a non-black person.  I have merely read opinions about it as an effort to make inquiries about rapidly developing technologies, science fiction and speculative fiction,  utopian and dystopian social possibilities, and diverse cultures in the African Diaspora.  I most surely do not understand it as a cultural movement destined to   embrace  fantasy, destined to possess scant quintessential scientific examination of technologies, cognitive transformations, or the probable relationship of Afrofuturism to benign genocide.  But I do understand irrational propositions. The remark about Richard Wright's being evil and devoted to hating black people has the funk of a person who has not bathed for a month.

It would be a boon to black intellectual history and literary/cultural studies for people who idolize Toni Morrison to read, as you have done, all or almost all of Wright's published works before giving voice to nonsense.  If Afrofuturism champions new-fashioned distant reading rather than old-fashioned close reading, I denounce it as a tender trap for  progressive mis-education and benign genocide. You have nothing to correct in your thinking.

With gratitude,

Jerry