I Am Not Your Negro.

“What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it is necessary to have a ‘nigger’ in the first place, because I am not a nigger. I’m a man. But if you think I’m a nigger, it means you need it.” – James Baldwin

Have you read James Baldwin? He was a fascinating human and his writing is deep and vast and affirming and chilling. Baldwin’s work makes me feel seen and challenged and invited into a space of evaluation and movement. I imagine James Baldwin as an author that you can only read if you’re actually interested in movement. Whether it’s his fiction or non-fiction you cannot read Baldwin and be stagnant. His work is work of contemplation and self-evaluation and he was critical of our country in a way that still, after all this time, is relevant.

Patrick and I watched ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ the other day. It’s a powerful documentary. To me, James Baldwin always appears heavy on the screen. His shoulders though pushed back and not hunched forward, seem down. Heavy from the weight of systemic racism and oppression. Heavy from the weight of outliving his activist friends (Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers). The weight of needing to leave the country and live in Paris in order to write in peace, without the looming demon of racism over his head.

Oh, how heavy the burden of hate is. Not the hate that we as the marginalized populations carry in our hearts but rather the hate of the oppressors. The hate of the racists. The weight of the hate, that I imagine he felt, as he navigated this world as a Black American man.

The weight of white people threatening his life. The weight of his brothers in the movement being shot dead. The weight of scholars wanting to have academic debates with him about something that was so much more than just a philosophical topic but rather his everyday life. I think he carried that burden and by discussing and writing about racism he wasn’t just trying to change systems but also to save himself.

Oh, the weight of being Black in America when to be Black was to be cursed.  When to be Black was to be a nigger. When to be Black was to be considered less than. To be overlooked. To be pushed around. To be lynched and raped. To be sold, enslaved and separated from your family and history.

Times have changed but they haven’t changed nearly enough or nearly fast enough. I’m no Baldwin expert but I don’t think that he would praise the progress of today. I think that as he looked around at the world that we exist in today, that his shoulders would still look heavy and his eyes still weary. That he would be tired from fighting the same fight, his entire life.

I think that he would still ask the question “why is it necessary to have a ‘nigger’ in the first place?”

I’ve only been called a nigger one time in my life. Well, only one time to my face that is. I was a teenager and it happened so fast and the encounter was so brief that you’d think that I would have forgotten it by now but of course I haven’t. It’s forever etched in my memory. I think back on that day and I wonder why that grown man called me, a kid, that word. I ponder James Baldwin’s words and I wonder why it was necessary for him in that moment that I be a nigger at all.

I imagine that the hate of racism is not only heavy for those that are oppressed but also for the oppressors. Heavier even I suppose. How awful it must be to walk around this planet with hate deeply rooted in your heart. Hate so entrenched in your being that you see a child, a teenager, laughing with her friends and your first thought is to roll down your window and yell “NIGGERS!”

Again, I wonder why it was necessary for him in that moment that I be a nigger at all. Because I’m not a nigger. I’m a woman. A proud, Black, Haitian American woman. I am not your negro. If you think I’m a nigger, it means you need it. But why?