The Country – Nashville, Texas Hold’em and Anticipatory Loss

If you have never surfed before, you can watch videos, you can read about it, you can watch people do it, but until you get out on the waves and get knocked off your feet, you don’t know. Culturally in the US, there is a reluctance, even a distaste to say “I don’t know.” Somehow, it’s falsely associated with stupidity, when the real stupidity is to claim you know when you don’t.

The allure of Boston for me is the availability of a lecture, an interview, a program to attend live every week. This week was a program that featured Juliet Hooker and her book, Black Grief/White Grievance, The Politics of Loss – How race shapes expectations about whose losses matter at the Boston Athenaeum. One of the themes of the book is the impact of “anticipatory loss.”

”…white grievance is mobilized in response to anticipatory loss. “Anticipatory loss,” as I am using it here, is experienced – often quite intensely -despite not actually coming to past (yet), and despite not necessarily being accurate. Loss can be anticipatory in the sense that it may be experienced as harm without having yet occurred, and it can also be inaccurate. This combination is particularly virulent. That such losses are neither realized nor realistic matters little to the intensity with which they are feared. Aggressive nationalism often deploy anticipatory loss rhetoric.

Juliet Hooker- Black Grief/White Grievance, The Politics of Loss p.13. Princeton University Press 2023

For the question and answer portion of the program, the first person to anxiously command the microphone was an elderly white gentleman who read 3 statements on why the author was wrong. Clutch the pearls, shut the door, rewind the tape. What? I will paraphrase and summarize. First, police shoot white people just as much as they shoot black people, second, black people are not being terrorized and third, he he has no issue with more black politicians.

As he spoke, or rather read a paragraph on each point, I did rebuttal calculus in my spinning head. Yes, I know the numbers of police shootings, what the man either neglected to say or more likely did not account for, with blacks being 13% of the population, there may be the same number killed, it’s disproportionate and the math shows, more blacks are killed. In addition to more shootings, there are innocent black people shot by police like Philandro Castile (that broke me) Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson and Botham Jean to name a few.

He was tone deaf in a week where the Great White South, Neo Nazis just marched down the streets of downtown Nashville Tennessee. He said blacks are not terrorized. Terrorize is to create and maintain a state of extreme fear and distress in people. This is the week of uproar over Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ’em reaching number 1 on the country charts. Elvis was praised for both gospel and rock yet radio stations have refused to play “Texas Hold “em because Beyoncé is not known to be a country artist. The indignity of campaigns to not recognize the song as number 1 in the country charts this week along with Beyoncé becoming the first black woman in history to top the chart.

Do the country music old guard not know the orgins of country music? Downtown Nashville is home to the amazing Smithsonian National Museum of African American Music. The introductory film in the museum shows how country music has its root in African music and African instruments of theenslaved people in the United States. One could say Beyonce just took country back to its roots, particularly with the instrumental version that features the banjo which originated from the West Africa instrument, the banjar.

Politically, the Crown Act is in response to hair discrimination. This act and similar laws protect against race-based hair discrimination by making it illegal to deny employment and educational opportunities based on natural hair texture and protective hairstyles. While Federal laws are stalled, many states have instituted the Crown act including Texas. However this week, a Texas judge says the act does not apply to Darryl George, a Houston-area high school student. Even with a law in place, as an African American, we’re still denied freedom afforded to the current majority population. Now that is Texas Hold ’em. On a more basic level, I could have describe to the gentlemen the experience of Klan coon hunting and other numerous tales I have personally experienced and sarcastically ask, what is your definition of terror. My last thought black politicians. Sir, sir, sir, please consider the ridiculously gerrymandered voting maps, the changes and attempts to change voting laws that disenfranchise people of color. Fear of the being shot while innocent and Neo-Nazis marching down the street, denied education because of hair, denial of air play because the artist is black and has success in other genres where the thoughts in my head. But this was not a debate, this was not a discussion.

When he finished he took the posture of loud and proud as I thought strong and wrong. Someone in the audience commented, was there an actual question in there. There was a palatable tension in the room. Ms Hooker very eloquently and gracefully, responded, “I disagree.” In that moment, I wondered if the gentlemen realized, he was the very example of white grievance and anticipatory loss.

I’ve been black for most of my life and it’s a good life. Jon Kabat-Zinn said, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” Racism and discrimination come at me like waves both large and small and to that I say, I know, I’m an excellent surfer. Have a great week y’all; I’m about to catch some waves.