PRECIOUS JONES

A MANIFESTATION OF PERPETUAL AND CYCLICAL OPPRESSION

The atypical heroine of the novel Push, Precious Jones, is the ghetto manifestation of inspiration and infinite possibility, embodied in a character who has suffered at the hands of matrilineal disdain, diseased paternal affections, and reckless disregard within the matrix of the white establishment. What author Sapphire has brilliantly constructed in the personage of Precious is a mirror for the legacy of oppression and despair that descendants of slaves have inherited, a microcosmic window shedding light onto the inheritance of dysfunction within the Black community under the auspicious hand of the privileged majority. Precious is, in fact, the archetype for the triumphant human spirit; victorious over the endless barrage of external influences that say that to be poor, Black and ugly is a crime punishable by death.

If one were to examine the plight of Ms. Jones superficially, it would be easy to construct a posture of pity for her seemingly simple yet complex character. Illiterate, sexually abused by both her father and mother, teen mother with no employable skills, she seems to be the quintessential victim. When applied to the Black community, the word victim has come to mean someone who wallows in self-pity. If a crime has been committed against an individual, they are a victim, that is the basic definition of the word. That does not say that that person is a bad, flawed, or invaluable person. It speaks not to his or her character, potential or worth as an individual, nor to the ability they possess to overcome those circumstances. It simply says that someone else has wronged him or her and that they have suffered from an egregious violation. Are the victims of child sexual abuse to be held responsible for their actions that provoked their perpetrators? Obviously no, and thusly, the manifestations of such abuses should not be the responsibility of the victims either.

I’ve been particularly aware of a trend as of late in Black people who consider themselves successful, intelligent and/or ethnically conscious to look down on folks in the ghetto. There seems to be a tendency to blame them for being there, as if it were a conscious choice to be born poor, under/miseducated, and Black in America. Academically and in the proper social circles, these middle class folks might even outwardly seem to have compassion for the underprivileged, but let them have to wait more than 30 seconds for their fast food, and their true sentiments come out. They quickly point the finger and claim that the disadvantaged byproducts of the ghetto are unreachable and unteachable, thus elevating themselves on some imaginary, narcissistic pedestal of superiority. It is my belief that the underprivileged, much like Precious Jones and her classmates, are victims of a society that has purposefully perpetuated their psychic retardation and not given them the proper tools to fully develop intellectually, emotionally, financially, socially and any other “ally” that one can think to throw in there. The ghettos are not filled with people sitting around saying, “I know how to recognize my full potential and I’m not going to do it because I’m content living at the bottom of the social ladder.” Precious didn’t say, “I know that I have the ability to excel academically deep within me, but I’m going to sit her and pee my pants because it’s the cool thing to do.” Real life individuals, much like Precious, don’t know how to get out of their circumstances because they don’t understand the concept of anything other than their reality of poverty and despair and ignorance. It is a cyclical perpetuation that has its roots firmly rooted in the bowels of slavery. It is the reality of millions upon millions of Black people “living”[1] in the urban bastions of poverty and despair called ghettos.

The invaluable lesson that Precious Jones and her companions teach us is that there is a desire for love, happiness, fulfillment and self-actualization within each and every human being, regardless of color, gender, sexuality and class. Our hearts ache at her lamentations of wishing to be seen as the beautiful, skinny white girl that she is sure resides inside of her. The reader can easily empathize with Precious because one can see that her horrific mother and deplorable father have abused her through no fault of her own. But the larger issue becomes to whom does the responsibility fall upon in constructing the true culprits within this story? If one were to hypothetically construct the story of Precious’ fictional mother, it is conceivable that a similar tale could be told. Is it not reasonable to assume that her mother was also a faultless and innocent child desiring love and validation that became the victim of abuse that left her warped and pathologically flawed? Could she not have also been the victim of abuses that damaged her so completely that she became capable of committing heinous acts of abuse on her own child out of a psychologically and emotionally unhealthy perspective?

It would be completely possible to construct a similar storyline of a young, Black man that has suffered exponentially at the hands of economically and emotionally depressed parents who fight daily to survive under the exigent conditions of racism. The main character of this story could be one who was without the benefit and nurturing of a Blue Rain or similar mentor in his life to rescue him from the institutional abyss of white supremacy that we casually call education. He would be repeatedly barraged with messages that he was inferior and he would continuously suffer from societal discrimination and repression. Readers would cheer for him were he to grow up and somehow miraculously recognize his true potential and become a “constructive” citizen in society. The literary critique would boldly proclaim that all one has to do to overcome his or her circumstances is to pull him or herself up by their proverbial bootstraps. Conversely, if the story were to have him grow up with this internalized self-hatred unaddressed and untreated, it might then become possible to see how that individual could operate out of diseased worldview of dysfunction and abuse. It might then become possible to construct a plot whereby that young, nubian-manchild then grows up to try to control and manipulate the one thing in his life that he believes he has ultimate autonomy over—women, or more subjectively, the female form. Carl, the main character in our fictitious tale, would no longer be considered the victim in this story; he would become the deplorable father that incestuously abuses his child whom we look up with utter contempt.

Through Precious Jones’ plight, we can see the potential for the cyclical perpetuation of dysfunction. Without the influence of the Each One Teach One Alternative School, Precious more than likely would have grown up to abuse Little Mongo and Abdul in a similar fashion to the abuses she suffered. It is generational abuse borne out of a reality that stipulates that pain and suffering are an inescapable way of life. Culpability for creating the pre-Blue Precious lies within the establishment that passed her through its system without taking the time to recognize that there was inherent beauty and the potential for brilliance held within this innocent victim of circumstances beyond her control. The majority infrastructure is to be held responsible for this ideological paradigm that renders certain children uneducable and relegates them to menial labor simply by virtue of the color of their skin or their station in life.

Every individual, regardless of color, that reads Push should be charged with the responsibility for acknowledging the Divine potential in every human being and for seeing themselves in every literal manifestation of Precious Jones. Brave and valiant Precious is a heroin and role model in that she was born a perfect and beautiful child and who existed in a society and environment that didn’t nurture her potential. Precious, like innumerous, real nameless and faceless Black children, was born and will eventually die never knowing the reason her reality was peppered with such violence and despair. Somewhere in her lineage, in the lineage of all descendants of slaves, a megalomaniacal and evil slavemaster damaged the psyche of an African who was the victim of unfathomable abuses that he or she has passed down from generation to generation. That enslavement created a viscous cycle of abuse in the descendants of its survivors much like was seen in the pages of Push and in the life of Precious Jones.

[1] The term “living” is subjective in that the conditions of the ghettos can barely be considered livable.