A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

by Hanif Abdurraqib

“Well, we have two mothers,” they began to tell me. “The one we keep with us in our hearts, and the corpse we can’t put down.”

Due in part to America’s comforts with slavery and violence, he stated, there is a universal distrust in anything other than individualism as a pathway to survival in the country. The path to success for the American, he observed, meant to carry a healthy desire to set oneself apart from the ideals of others.

no one knows what to make of this, really. What to do when someone has committed themselves to sympathy, but not to mercy.

The thing I find myself explaining most vigorously to people these days is that consumption and love are not equal parts of the same machine. To consume is not to love, and ideally love is not rooted solely in consumption.

I have taken to waving a dismissive hand and telling a friend, “That’s such a Virgo thing to say,” even when I’m not entirely sure what I mean. And no one has corrected me yet, so either I’m right or I have surrounded myself with immensely kind people, which is probably a very Scorpio thing to say.

I’m going to be honest about my scorecard and just say that the math on me being here and the people who have kept me here doesn’t add up when weighed against the person I’ve been and the person I can still be sometimes.