Everett and I are the two black Americas. I am black America the way white America tells us it could see blackness if only—if only we were all respectable, successful, prominent, institutionally affiliated. My brother is the way America does see blackness—suspect merely for existing, naturally violent, obviously criminal, rightly sentenced, thankfully incarcerated. He is my brother and we are two sides of a family coin, a coin that is both biological and national. I don’t for a moment buy the false dichotomy between us. We are both tied together in a seam of racial destiny as the nigger.
I am reminded of this almost daily as I get letters and e-mails from hateful white folk. Choice examples include: “You and that worthless POS in the White House have brought back and given new meaning to the word nigger!” “You Dick head Dyson, you really are a Fucking Nigger.” Or I’m a “spear-chucking, blue-gum, steppin-and-fetchin’, uncle Tom, field nigger. Get your ass out there and pick some cotton while your mammie cooks some chitlins. Your books are shit just like you.” (I don’t doubt that even some legitimate critics feel that way.)
An especially sensitive writer weighed in with the belief that “[w]hites will always beat niggers down because they are black savages.” Another fan opined: “You being an educated man, I have always felt that you were the worst kind of Nigger, (asshole) smooth talking bastard though you may be.” Another writer could barely stand to pen anything in the body of the e-mail; the subject line said it all: “Shut the fuck up nigger.” Yet another said, “You define the word nigger.” One pen pal said, “[You are] nothing more than a hate filled nigger that was given your position due to the politically correct morons that believe you can give self-respect to those that have no idea how to earn it.” Another told me that hip-hop “is just niggers talking shit to a scratched up record.” (Okay, I have to admit, that description does fit a few rappers.)
Beloved, this is just the tip of the iceberg of hate. This is why I can never pretend that I’m in any way better than the masses of black folk. I know that no matter how much education I’ve got, how well I behave, how much compassion I show to white folk, how well-heeled I am in polite company, no matter how articulate I am, I am still just a nigger to so many white folk. And it’s not just the lunatic fringe that swells with bigots. I’m afraid that angry white folk who consider themselves part of the white mainstream have just as much venom and ire. When I used to appear on Fox News pretty regularly with Bill O’Reilly, I begged him to say on air to his sizable audience that even though he disagreed with me, they shouldn’t send me hate mail and call me “nigger.” He never made that plea. His silence reinforced the racial social contract forged by angry whiteness.
And yet we have the ability to shatter that social contract. You must stop believing that you can’t understand us, when, in fact, you choose not to understand us. You must stop seeing us as monolithic and therefore fundamentally, irrevocably different from you when we are singular and exceptional in all ways. Just like you. Our troubles will only cease when you stop believing what you know is untrue: that we are always poor despite our home-buying drive that makes you flee to the suburbs. When you stop believing that we are radical when we can be more conservative than you, that we are one color when we are a plethora of shades, and that we are related to each other and not you when you are related to us in more ways than you can count or may care to know. We are, finally, not your nigger, not in the best world we can create together.
Like it or not, black humanity has been, and continues to be, the only salvation white American humanity has. Democracy might well be a wounded bird incapable of flight without the poultice of black forgiveness pressed to its wings. When we confront racial catastrophe, black folk insist on fighting back. We have given this country the spiritual will and the moral maturity it lost in the bitter divorce of principle and practice. Our nation can only reach its best destiny when that recognition grounds our shared culture and existence. We want what you want. We want to pursue our dreams without the hindrance of racism. We want to raise our children in safety and send them to good schools. We want our communities to overflow with opportunity and support. We want good jobs and health care. We want gorgeous parks and lovely homes. We want affordable markets and department stores nearby. And we don’t want to die at the hands of either the cops or other black folk.
5.
Our Own Worst Enemy?
Beloved, why is it that every time black folk talk about how poorly the cops treat us you say that we should focus instead on how we slaughter each other in the streets every day? Isn’t that like asking the person who tells you that they’re suffering from cancer to focus instead on their diabetes? Your racial bedside manner has always been fairly atrocious.
But we are not fooled. You do not bring this up because you’re genuinely concerned. You want to win points in debates. You want to avoid any responsibility for how traumatized our communities are. You want to hide from the horror of cops mowing us down like we’re animals.
So you hurl that accusation at us like religion. But there is no righteousness in your retort, no healing in your hubris. We are dying, it is a serious matter, and you must lay down your smug self-satisfaction that we are our own worst enemies and face how you are killing us.
Just this once set aside your litany of accusations and listen. Just this once take the side of the true victims of oppression. Just this once please don’t side with the manufacturers and perpetrators of our death. I’ll be honest and admit that there are ways that black folk are doing ourselves in. But I hope you can admit that even those ways are often linked to our gutless embrace of the bigotries you spew.
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Do you think we like being killed by folk who look like us? Do you think it doesn’t bother us? Our bullets are often aimed at each other because we’re too near the site of pain and heartbreak, frustration and depression. We often lack food and shelter, and we live in homes overrun with bodies, leaving us little room or rest. So we lash out at them, or at an acquaintance, or a partner in crime. Yes, it is true: sometimes we send them, or, perhaps, a stranger nearby, to their eternal reward. This is the geography of despair. It is also the pain of never having control, of always being afraid, of struggling to care for and love what we cannot protect. I learned this lesson in a perilous way.