Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [6]
“These historically white institutions, they get that one black professor, they put him or her on something they call the ‘Diversity Committee.’ Don’t let them put you there. It’s a slave hold. They’ll fight you: they’ll really want you on the Diversity Committee because if there aren’t any minorities on the committee, the committee isn’t diverse.”
“Man, in my work, I deal with the ghetto. The real shit, you know what I’m saying? Reality,” he told me, motioning around the room with a silver-ringed hand as if our present setting was mere computer simulation. “I’m not trying to run from the folks. I want to be on that committee. I’m a fighter. I want to be on that committee, to bring the fight here.” The hand in the air formed into a fist. I looked around the room, at the twenty or so white liberals taking him in on the sly. They loved it. They loved that fist. If I was still here tomorrow, they would come up to me and ask why I never raised the black power fist like the new guy. Undaunted, I continued.
“No, you don’t, and I’ll tell you why. The Diversity Committee has one primary purpose: so that the school can say it has a diversity committee. They need that for when students get upset about race issues or general ethnic stuff. It allows the faculty and administration to point to it and go, ‘Everything’s going to be okay, we have formed a committee.’ People find that very relaxing. It’s sort of like, if you had a fire, and instead of putting it out, you formed a fire committee. But none of the ideas that come out of all that committeeing will ever be implemented, see? Nothing the committee has suggested in thirty years has ever been funded. It’s a gerbil wheel, meant to ‘Keep this nigger boy running.’ ”
“Ellison.” He smiled. I knew a black author reference would get to him. “Now that cat was straight hip-hop,” he continued. I would have corrected the hip to be, but what’s a difference of black American musical traditions among kin?
“Chris Jaynes. You know, I’ve read some of your early work, your Ellison theory. That had the beat. Why don’t you bring it like that no more?” he asked me, and I glowed at this. Old musicians asked to play their classic songs, they must get this feeling. You’re tired of it, sure, but at least somebody cares. I thanked him, told him how I’ve developed, how I’ve been drawn toward nineteenth-century fiction, Edgar Allan Poe.
As I’m getting up to hit the john, right as I’m turned away, Mosaic Johnson says, “Man, nobody cares about the Poe thing.” And I laughed back at him and told him thanks for getting my pain and in moments I was off to pissing.
In the can, standing in front of the urinal, I was still for the moment. It felt like it was the first time I was truly still since this whole disaster had started. Even when I was pulled into a ball on the floor, I was rocking and reeling internally. But this bathroom, this empty bathroom, it was like a temple. Utterly serene. And within that silence, clarity came to me. I started thinking about my past, and my new friend. And I started to think about everything he had said, and all of his responses. And I was surprised to find a previously undetected negative tone there. Not in his words, but in the little performances in his demeanor. His last statement being the irrefutable proof of this.
“You’re not in the music department are you?” I said to him on my return. I didn’t even sit down. I was standing. I was shaking. My voice was cracking a little bit too, which was beyond my control.
“No, I am not. My instrument is the QWERTY keyboard,” he admitted. Took the last swig from his Hennessy, and then swiveled to face me.
“You’re here to replace me, aren’t you? You’re here to take my job. To take my office. That’s why you’re in this bar tonight, isn’t it?”
“Man, just relax. Ain’t nothing personal. Yes, I’m the new hire. Yes, it was your tenure