The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim (16 page)

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Authors: Iceberg Slim

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Black superheroes of sports and entertainment (those who get the so-called universal approbation and love of white America) are valid
heroes neither in spirit nor in posture, even though many unaware blacks may admire and love them as such, and envy their fortune and fame. But if we look with clear eyes at some of these usually older brothers, we see a heartbreaking portrait, as we sorrowfully realize that the brothers' very universal acceptance is, in racist America today, an indictment of their pride, integrity and black manhood.

We still love them as black brothers, but pity them for we sense that their balls were hacked off early by the brute blade of this society's unremitting oppression. These unfortunate brothers exist in a terrible psychic straitjacket of grinning, mute denial of the physical and mental atrocities inflicted upon black people in America.

White racist America hated Jack Johnson, Paul Robeson and Malcolm X. What a monstrous crime it is that the black masses did not and were not permitted to love them at least proportionately to the hatred of their white enemies.

There is a strong probability that as new young black heroes come to center stage, they will neither seek nor welcome the universal approbation and love of white America, which is tantamount, in these times, to racial treason and abdication of integrity and manhood.

The old bittersweet memories fall like leaves through sunshine and storm in the autumn of my life. As I face the looming, unknown winter, my mental eye peers back with remorse at the carnal ruin and sorrow of my poisonous pimp wake.

But there is solace and joy in my determination to build instead of destroy during the sunrisings left to me. I feel such pride at my survival, for the miracle is that I am not a marooned wreck on some gibbering mental reef. I am gratified to be alive at this time and place in the history of the black people's struggle. What a joyously painful transport it is to be part of that struggle, to be a besieged black man, an embattled nigger, in racist America.

The End