It sounds loopy and sort of generic, but the idea is: that "reality" often itself plays the role of fiction. A key class of examples is: what goes on when people say something is "more real" than something else – or when they say something is "unrealistic".
Disneyland is not any more or less real than a small town. But you could easily find people who would say it is "more real" (in the sense of being hyperreal) or that it is "less real" (in the sense of being superficial).
Similarly, the ghetto doesn't contain anything "more real" than the condominium complex – but it is common enough for people to imagine that poor people, and especially poor black people, have some special handle on "reality" and "authenticity" that is lacking in their richer and paler contemporaries.
(By the way, "black" and "white" are both obvious fictions, but other than acknowledging that fact, I am going to use these words the way they are usually used in polite conversation.)
The fiction of a hightened "reality" of black experience (and other similar essentializing fictions) will almost without a doubt be used to oppress the groups and individuals who may at first appear to be receiving praise.
And to me, the idea that this or that way of being is "more real" sounds so suspicious, that I can imagine it forming an important part of the basis of oppressive systems in many cases. Perhaps percieved "authenticity" is taken as a green light for exploitation or control?
Here is an example from my own experience.
I think fell prey to the "reality fiction" when I was at the University of Texas. At the time I was an experiencing an inner conflict over what seemed to be a fundamental disagreement between me and the authorities as to the nature of my "real goal" in grad school.
I thought the "real goal" was to further mathematics, and it seemed to me that they thought that the "real goal" was for me to complete the program. It reduced to a matter of approach, and the approaches conflicted with each other over how "deep", how "pressing", and especially how "measurable" they were.
In hindsight, it is fairly clear that on these terms, the system would inevitably "win" – since there were no adequate pathways for measuring the "reality" of my goal-set, or my progress towards it, within the system's rubric.
If I had known then what I've spelled out in this essay, then I would have been sure to distrust anything described as a "real goal". What matters more is the complex of perceived or imagined relationships – which is to say: what matters more than "reality" is the slew of honest fictions describing hopes, dreams, elusive goals, and the other questionable data of mental experience. I would have known that instead of trying to obtain the semantic high-ground by touting the "reality" of my experience, instead I could have humbly sought a receptive audience for my fictions. No one wanted to hear me going on about how my experience was "more real" – because that is certainly very dull – but I could have shared other more entertaining stories and ideas, had I only thought to go out onto the limb of fantasy, instead of hugging the trunk of my so-called real (or even, as I put it tentatively then, "hyperreal") experience.
Indeed, I think that by claiming that what I was doing was "more real" than what the other students in the program were doing, I ended up "ghettoizing myself". And this was probably not a strong choice.
--jcorneli, May 14, 2007