"I Am Not Your Negro"

W. and M., I have decided to "personalize" this blog.*  You both inspired, motivated, and even guilted me into writing on this topic, and even as I type, you are unaware of your affect on me.

It's in your wide smiles. The sparkle of your brown eyes. Your jokes. Your running. Your baseball games. Your bicycle rides. Your virtuous humility. The essential you. You. The luxuriance of your lives feeds me, enabling me to grow, to appreciate life and its value, giving it a renew luminence.

You have given so much in just a few years, with a few words, and not nearly enough hugs.

I have not reciprocated--at least in the way I could have, should have.

With understatement I write, America has been unkind to African Americans. It has already been unkind to you, not in ways that you have noticed but in the minds of too many non-African Americans. Not only whites, other ethnicities as well. Passing you on the street or in stores and maybe even in your mixed-race school, they have peg you differently from themselves, less than themseves, and maybe even a burden to themselves.

They are ignorant, self-absorbed, and probably self-loathing, looking for a scapegoat for their own inadequacies and, therefore, absorb and nourish the metastasizing ailment of bigotry. It eats at them, feeding on their ignorance, their lack of charity, and the absence of empathy.

I'm an old white guy saying this. What gives me the right? I'm your grandfatther. As some individuals may quickly point out, I, nor my forebears, have lived with the torment bestowed on your forebears. I have witnessed it. I have stumbled trying to make a difference.

A few days ago, I was shopping. The woman checking me out was African American. America's streets were alive with protest over the death of George Floyd and all the other indignities imposed on African Americans. I wanted to show empathy. There she was helping me during the COVID-19 pandemic while living in a country that still have not grasped the nature of its own injustices. I asked how she and her family were doing. She assumed I was referring to the pandemic. When she realized I was referring to the protests, an awkwardness emerged. It could have been my phrasing. It could have been uncomfortable experiences talking about racial matters with other whites. She politely shut the conversation down.

I realized Americans--white and black--lack a means of communicating honestly about white America's problem.

It should have been clear to me. In college, I read Native Son by Richard Wright. It moved me like no other book had. Wright made it clear that I didn't understand the American black experience.

I went to the college bookstore looking for another book by Wright. (This is the days long before the Internet.) I discovered Notes on Native Son by an author whom I never knew--James Baldwin. He is brilliant. Should say was brilliant. The man knew how to examine the issue of race, the issue of white oppression of African Americans, and it all seemed so simple and yet not for a young white college kid. Since, I have read most of his works. I taught them in college courses, and in each class, there was one African American student who gave me new understanding of what Baldwin was writing.

Recently, I Am Not Your Negro was produced. For months, I intended to watch it, but as with most movies, I forgot about it. Tonight, I found it on Amazon Prime. It's the story of Baldwin's last work, which he never completed. It's depressing, insightful, and celebratory of the African American culture and its history. If you have not watched it, do. If you have not read James Baldwin, do.

His exploration of himself and America will be the light in America's storm.

*Using your initials isn't personal. For that, I'm sorry. I worry, though. I worry that in this country, some individual may take their dislike of me or my words and penalize you. It may sound overly cautious. Then again, it doesn't.