On January 29, 2019, African-American actor and singer Jussie Smollett called Chicago Police to report that he had been assaulted and subjected to racist and homophobic abuse by two masked men. According to Smollett, the two assailants put a rope around his neck, doused him with a chemical substance, and told him that Chicago, including the wealthy Streeterville neighborhood where the alleged attack occurred, was “MAGA country.”
While subsequent developments of the case might tempt us to dismiss it as an overheated farce, the responses to those developments have much to tell us about our competing national mythologies. For the sake of this analysis, we can divide those mythologies into two categories: the dominant, foundational mythology of the normatively patriarchal, white supremacist nation-state; and the numerous mythological traditions of the oppressed and marginalized, of which we shall examine one: the West African trickster, Anansi.
Gods of blood and stone
There are few monuments in the USA that encapsulate the dominant mythology more than Mount Rushmore. Carved out of a mountain that was (and remains) sacred to the indigenous Lakota people, it was conceived and designed to draw tourists to land that was stolen from the Lakota — through open aggression and a series of broken treaties — and is now known as the Black Hills region of South Dakota. The four USA presidents depicted in the massive carving were chosen by designer Gutzon Borglum to represent four key points of the country’s history. It’s doubtful Borglum was focused on Washington’s and Jefferson’s slaveholding and genocidal expansionist policies, or Lincoln’s brutality in dealing with indigenous peoples, or Teddy Roosevelt’s virulent white supremacy and imperialism.
It’s not fair to single out Borglum, of course. The USA’s predilection for celebrating its own monstrous state actors predates him, and it never waned in the years since the Rushmore monument’s inauguration. (This is unsurprising for a republic built geographically and economically upon race-based genocide and chattel slavery.) No matter the depths of depravity of their deeds, prominent U.S. public officials can expect to be rehabilitated if not celebrated as long as their actions can be attributed to ‘national security’ or another loosely defined and allegedly honorable aim, and as long as current political conditions allow for such moral expediency. For example, many roads, public buildings, and even an aircraft carrier and an international airport in the nation’s capital are named after the late Ronald Reagan, a strident reactionary who as President presided over the calculated and massively lethal neglect of the burgeoning AIDS crisis; who signed off on countless murderous interventions in Latin America; and whose presidency will forever be linked with the treason of the Iran-Contra scandal and its diabolical fraternal twin, the flooding of North American cities with cocaine.
The Akan Spider-Man
Perhaps the most durable and well-known mythological figure of West African folklore is Anansi the Spider. Anansi is always portrayed as a trickster, neither hero nor villain, and always acting from acute self-interest. His escapades frequently end up challenging or disrupting an unjust or hypocritical status quo. As millions of West Africans were kidnapped, enslaved, and transported to the Western Hemisphere, Anansi traveled with them. He has lived on in various guises in various Afrocentric cultures here. Anansi is also a keeper of stories, but most important, through iteration by oral tradition he has served as a model of resistance for Africans trapped in oppressive and inhuman circumstances.
A historically informed farce
A decent rundown of the state’s allegations against Jussie Smollett can be found here. The public reactions are more informative, however. Smollett’s account of being nearly lynched by presumed Trump supporters immediately drew support from prominent African-Americans, some of whom also identified as queer. In the days following the alleged attack, as doubts about Smollett’s account began to surface, such support seemed to remain strong.
After February 20, when Chicago police formally charged Smollett with multiple felonies for allegedly having faked the attack, public rhetorical battle lines were quickly mobilized. Fox Entertainment announced that Smollett’s character would be dropped from the final two episodes of the hit drama series Empire, and that the actor would likely not be brought back for the show’s sixth and final season. Though Smollett and his legal team continued to maintain his innocence, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that Smollett’s accusations were a “scar” that the city hadn’t earned. Anyone familiar with Chicago’s history of often gratuitous police violence against its black citizens might consider Johnson’s statement tone deaf at best. Supporters of Smollett could easily have pointed to the city’s very recent history of covering up lethal police violence against black people, as well.
The temperature of the controversy rose sharply after March 26, when all the charges against Smollett were dropped. Both the Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association (IPBA) and the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) found it necessary to issue public statements condemning the decision made by Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx’s office. (One is left to speculate where such adamant advocacy for justice and propriety has been for the last couple of decades as case after case of wrongfully convicted innocent people has surfaced in Illinois.) President Donald Trump, in a bit of historical irony, took to social media to rage against the decision. Worse yet, lame duck Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel went to the media to angrily denounce the dismissal of charges. As of this writing I can’t verify whether the IPBA or the NDAA has yet publicly admonished Emanuel or Eddie Johnson for throwing sanctimonious stones from their blood-stained glass house.
It bears mentioning at this point that the City of Chicago subsequently demanded that Smollett pay $130,000 to cover the cost of the investigation into his story. Given that Smollett did no physical harm to anyone, and did no damage to private or public property, I would argue that is an equitable arrangement that the city should have pursued in lieu of filing felony charges. It also seems an unworthy expense for the FBI to reopen the investigation.
Trump’s bloviation notwithstanding, a curious episode from April Fool’s Day, 2019 may shed some light into what’s motivating the backlash. The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) organized a rally at Daley Plaza to protest State’s Attorney Foxx and demand that she resign. (Full disclosure: I received a notice of this rally from my own union several days in advance. Presumably, the flyer I received as an emailed image was forwarded to my local by the FOP.) The rally was met in the Plaza by a group of counter protestors who were demanding police accountability, and Foxx supporters staged their own rally a few meters away in the Chicago Temple. Notably, a number of avowed white supremacist organizations were also in attendance, clearly taking the side of the police. (I can’t say whether they received the same invitation I did, and from whom.)
Perhaps the best closing statement for this episode, which is still not officially closed, was provided by then-Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot of Chicago. Asked in mid-April if she planned to pursue the issue further, she said, “We’ve got a lot of things on our plate, a lot of pressing issues that are truly affecting people’s lives. This doesn’t rank as a matter of any importance to me.”
As you might guess from my previous essays, it is my contention that the USA is home to a society that has very little in the way of moral bearings. The Smollett drama provides a worthy foil to the country’s hero-canonization process. We evaluate our heroes through soiled and cracked ethical lenses, and label villains for the most disingenuous of reasons. And sometimes it takes an Anansi-style character to bring this sanctimoniousness to the forefront to be laid bare and examined.
I will close by suggesting that Jussie Smollett was acting under the influence of Anansi. It is fitting that an African-American man’s self-serving gambit — if it was such — should challenge the violent, white-supremacist, official order that has remained unchanged in spirit since Smollett’s ancestors were presumably dragged to this continent chained in the belly of a slave ship. I’ll allow myself to imagine that one or more of Brother Jussie’s own kidnapped and enslaved ancestors were on the very ship that carried Anansi to the shores of the New World.