Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America(33)

“Don’t you go to school, boy?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Don’t you know how to say that right?”

“Yes.”

“Then do that from now on. That’s why you go to school.”

I could feel his self-doubt mingled with his deep desire for his son to do better than he had. But at Cranbrook that day his self-doubt led him to take refuge in caustic judgment. He projected his limitations onto me even as he wanted me to have more opportunity. This is the racial catch-22 that too many of us face. This is what whiteness does to the black mind.

*

I saw what being thought of as a nigger did to my father. I also see what it does to millions of my people who struggle every day to be recognized as human beings.

But I’m different, right? You may think you know me. That I’m a middle-aged man with a PhD, a minister, a public intellectual, a media personality. That I am an exception to your idea of blackness.

I am burdened and privileged by this idea of me, your idea of me. It is a fiction that traffics in long-held beliefs about race. My privilege rests on the idea that I am special, that I am different, that I’m not like “them.” That difference is partly why I get to address you directly, beloved. Why I am considered more capable of speaking to the problem of race, more articulate than “regular” black folks.

But I am not this fiction. I am like every other black American, a person caught between two perceptions. A Jekyll and Hyde of race. Dr. Jekyll is the professor that many of my people, and many of you, love. Mr. Hyde is the black man who grew up on the streets of Detroit, who needs do little more than return home to see a fate that could have become my fate in the face of my brother Everett, locked behind bars for more than a quarter century now.

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.