Just Another Lazy Man

[Chenyin Pan]

“That’s the problem of servitude: when you domesticate a member of our species, you lower his productivity, and however little you give him, a barnyard ends up costing more than his worth. For this reason the colonists are forced to stop breaking him in halfway. The result: Neither man nor beast, but the ‘native.’ Beaten, underfed, sick and frightened, but only up to a certain point, yellow, black, or white he always has the same character traits-lazy, sly, and thieving, who lives on nothing and understands only the language of violence.”

–Jean-Paul Sarter

Morgane and I had dinner together last Friday at an Arabic restaurant in town. A resident of Dresden, Germany, Morgane is fresh from high school and currently wrapped herself up in college application. When she earlier professed her interests in politics, I was surprised, if not doubtful. Started with Allied Army’s horrendous bombing of Dresden at the end of World War 2, the whole time we were engaged in brilliant conversations relating politics, intermitted with my startling of how well this high school kid well-versed about politics and international affairs, ended with me in a polemic tailspin.

I regret that I haven’t read anything done by Jean-Paul Sarter yet, I’ve already started with Frantz Fanon’s the Wretched of the Earth and as the words on the top is extract from Jean-Paul Sarter’s Preface for Fanon’s master piece.

I recalled a then teacher of mine has been worked for Red Cross in Zimbabwe for awhile, she said men she encountered there were slackers while women were always hustled around doing things. “I couldn’t agree more with your teacher!” Morgane uttered not without any indignation. Been in Africa once as volunteer of a kind, she further filled me with her own African experience.

An African young man squatted along an unutilized land in the country, when he saw Morgan and her coworkers came along to his direction, he approached her and her coworkers asking whether they can bring him along to work for them. Knowing that white people pays better, the African men would rather sit their butts till they find a white employer than laboring in the field where jobs do exist. Morgane asked why he doesn’t try to work in that unutilized land. The African man sneered that growing crops is job for old people.

“It is their own fault!” Morgane’s tune in many ways resembled Americans’ puttered mouths when the world is trying to put the ornery of CO2 emission cut on their shoulders.

But who would in his right mind to do the back breaking labor when a better paid “white” job is, flimsy though, around?

Europe accumulated her wealth through great, great, great grand fathers’ looting, exploiting and oppressing of Africa. The great, great, great grandsons today can only see Africans “always has the same character traits-lazy, sly, and thieving“.

Though improvised of materials, it is to the ingrained detriment of the African men and folks of other lands suffered through colonization for their paralyzed souls. While a black man or a yellow man accosting a white man on the streets for work, for money. It’s a shame to both sides, both are paying for their great, great, great grandfathers’ debts all the way down.

While a man trying to asserting his manhood by finding a non old man’s job only got the blunt reply suggesting him to stay in his field, how large the chance for his girl or woman to either not busy around or find a more caring partner.

Reading Frantz Fanon’s the Wretched of the Earth is a depressing experience. The reality of thousands and thousands of émigré landing in France every day and the poverty, the corruption and inherent dictatorship betrayed the sonorous and elegant statements ascertaining a free, equal and independent Algeria.

Just as I was having this point come across, the two Americans conversation interrupted my thinking. The primitive nature of the squat toilet and the disgust scene of a Chinese toddler pooping on the sidewalk (which supposedly he should be wrapped up in diaper) still haunted one of them and the other grimaced in shock. And of course, spitting is the last straw.

Rich country people’s miscomprehension of the turpitude in the Third World, in many cases, is just as egregious as poor peoples’ inability to understand where's the wealth in rich countries comes from. While both sides were unwilling to either dissuade their fictitious sense of superiority or embrace the other more congenial (well, the French was there to colonize indigenous ones, not to love them), violence applied out of disgrace and humiliation.

Though violence shouldn’t be endorsed, but the predicaments for both third world men and women should be stressed. Fully integration was faced and still, is facing the ever disappeared color line while assuming cultural independence and identity isolation are not only fragile but impossible.

Once the non-Christian Chinese has not only been converted into Baptism but also learnt to put up mattress on top of the box to sleep. But she might still read books in Chinese for wisdom, browse Youku instead of Youtube for entertainment. Outwardly she looked like been fully integrated as the Roman, but the off-white pigmentation betrayed the true hue when racial thunderstorm pours and ethnical hot-air blows. The Roman never quivered his support for Chinese’s integration, but at critical time, the white skin and the mother tongue still decide to whom to lay the preference.

Would my heart cringing in front of Morgane’s harsh criticism of that African man’s working ethics? Probably not, cuz just as you goes to the TA office next time, close the door, open the desktop, the Weeds show is on Netflix, and free streaming! Just another day!