Voter ID - 'Who Dat?' - Up From Slavery, An American Fable

Pharoah Jones grew up in rural North Carolina, the son of sharecroppers and the great-grandson of slaves.  His mother named him Pharoah after Pharoah of Biblical times, the tyrant who kept the Jews in bondage and only when God endowed Moses with the power to part the Red Sea, were the Chosen People able to escape to the Holy Land. 

 

When asked why she named her son after the Egyptian tyrant and not Moses, the liberator of the Jewish people, she said that the ancient Egyptians were black, Pharoah was a powerful ruler, and no little North Carolina black baby was 'gwine to carry a Jew name'. 

Pharoah, now the drug kingpin of Anacostia, the deep inner city of Washington, DC, looked back with love on his days in the piney woods tarpaper shack where he tended the chicken run, drew water from the well, and chopped wood until his arms ached.  That's the kind of boy he was, uncomplaining and full of warm affection for his mother and grandmother and respect for his father. 

This was the way of the colored man, the Negro, and the black man in the South; but for Pharoah it was nothing but background and no different from that of any cracker white boy from the hills.  They were both born barefoot and poor but destined to become Americans - successful, respected, and rich. 

Pharoah had no hatred for the white man or anyone else.  Slavery? That was a thing of the distant past not to be dwelled upon or featured in one's life.  To do so would be to revive or perpetuate it, to continue to be a slave, to live forever in a broken down shack eating cornpone and fatback.  No, the young boy knew that he was not long for the piney woods, and someday he would buy his momma a brand new house in the big city. 

Pharoah was a smart boy, smarter than most, and born with uncanny savvy.  He knew when to yassa the white man, when to scurry back and forth doing his errands, when to stand up and be counted, and when to cut bait and fish in a bigger pond. 

He could turn on the charm when it came to that - he was the boy in the Ebenezer Baptist Church choir that the pastor noticed and took a shine to.  Pastor Williams gave the boy special chores around the church, honed his sense of duty and responsibility, and was more than willing to help him make his way in the world. 

Pharoah, however, needed no help.  Despite his choirboy image, Pharoah was quick to learn a trade - one of the few open to black people from the backwoods at the time.  He learned how to engage, cadge, and filch from the ingenues- those who were taken in by the young man's charm and affection and trusted him - and he soon learned the classic American lesson - 'A fool and his money are soon parted'.  

He soon had more money than his pappy and granddaddy had seen in years, but rather than spend it on corn liquor and women, he decided that he would invest in both; and before long in partnership with parties from Charlotte, he built a reputation as a canny investor, top manager, and brilliant entrepreneur. 

He muscled out the white boys, the backcountry road hotrodders running white lightning, and took over the trade. He assembled a crewe of young men like himself - agile, strong, and determined black men - and soon he was the man to see in North Carolina. 

This, however lucrative and socially appealing, was slim pickin's for the ambitious Pharoah Jones, and before long he made his way to Washington, DC where he apprenticed to Leroy Jackson, the drug kingpin of Anacostia.  Jackson was not unlike Frank Lucas, the Godfather of Harlem, the drug lord of New York, born and raised in rural North Carolina who became the most influential black man in the Tri-State area.  

Jackson not only ruled Anacostia but all the inner city neighborhoods of Washington.  He was versatile and accommodating, and made millions off whatever was the drug of choice - weed, cocaine, crack, heroin, and Fentanyl.  He owned a stable of hundreds of women and managed the business via his loyal managers who were not just pimps but masters of commerce.   

Pharoah quickly learned everything there was to know about Jackson's operation, but remained loyal and faithful to him; and only when the old, revered man retired to Bimini, did Pharoah take over the business.  He was just as savvy and ruthless as Jackson, and made a fortune. 

Now, Pharoah not surprisingly was a man without a face - a man without any official identity. No driver's license, no Social Security, no bank account, no social media, no nothing. It was as though he did not exist.  He left no trace, no telltale signs, nothing. 

This was America, Pharoah thought.  He was a pioneer, a rugged individualist, an off-the-grid master of all he surveyed and had never once capitulated to the confining, defining, corrupting demands of society.

As always, there was no racial bias or hatred in his attitude.  Whether white or black, politicians were as zealous for power and authority as anyone; but because they had the Constitution behind them, arrogation of power was a simple matter. Pharoah might buy politicians, police, and judges just like his predecessor and the Italian mafiosi before him, but he would never capitulate, give up his individualism and join the mainstream. 

Which is why Pharoah laughed at the flap over Voter ID and the patronizing, self-serving, venal attitude of progressive Democrats towards black people whom they assumed couldn't put two and two together let alone get a driver's license.  

Every one in the 'hood from the dopers and johns to the dealers and pimps who serviced them had identification, had bought into the system. As much as these men were social outliers, living on the margins of white society, they still had been co-opted, something Pharoah would never do. 

It was indeed laughable that here he was at the very pinnacle of American success with a treasury of millions, atop one of the biggest enterprises in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area, but perhaps the only black man within miles around who couldn't show a valid source of identification.  The fact that this official anonymity was his modus vivendi, his signature, and his persona - a deliberate, willful act to remain beyond the clawing forces that were out to unman him - was ironic. 

He was as clean as a wiped I-phone, a non-person but never a non-entity.  Non-entities do not hear cash registers ringing and filling offshore coffers with millions. They rule the roost, command respect and attention.  They are as American as apple pie but just don't show up anywhere. 

Voter ID?  What a joke, thought Pharoah.  What a pathetic, transparent, ridiculous charade. It meant nothing at all, a fantasy, a political chimera while the real business of black people was managed by none other than the invisible man, Pharoah Jones.

The feds knew who he was, but could never find him - he was the elusive chameleon of the ghetto, changing shape and color, the human boson, the quantum physics of probability. He was a genius, local boy made good, the model of the American dream, and all the suits wanted to do was to put him behind bars. 

Never, not in a million years.  True heroes never die.