The Stories We Tell Ourselves....

Now, it is entirely possible that we may all go under. But until that happens, I prefer to believe that since a society is created by men, it can be remade by men. The price for this transformation is high. White people will have to ask themselves precisely why they found it necessary to invent the nigger; for the nigger is a white invention, and white people invented him out of terrible necessities of their own. And every white citizen of this country will have to accept the fact that he is not innocent, because those dogs and those hoses are being turned on American children, on American soil, with the tacit consent of the American Republic; those crimes are being committed in your name.

- James Baldwin, “The White Problem” (1964)

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As we begin, let me address it straight on: yes, James Baldwin uses what we’ve euphemistically come to call the ‘N-word’ … so I’ve recorded it as he wrote it specifically to highlight how offensive it is to see (which, I believe, was his intent as well…). Perhaps in our discomfort we’ll be motivated to address what the creation of this concept and its use have really mean – and still mean – and, in so doing, to end it….

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As I’ve written previously, at times like these, when I’m dismayed by what I perceive in our society and/or world, I find myself returning to three spiritual-social justice pillars: post-Mecca Malcolm X, post-“I Have A Dream” speech MLK and post-Paris James Baldwin. Their words and wisdom comfort me, challenge me, give me hope and inspire me to keep pressing forward in my commitment to helping to make this world a better, more equitable and more inclusive place.

Last week, I turned to MLK, especially as captured in the brilliant tome To Shape A New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry. This week it’s to Baldwin, especially as captured in the brilliant volume The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, edited by Randall Kenan.

With both of these explorations, I’m most struck by the reality that so much of what they share is still so relevant because so much of the work remains.…

In his 1964 essay “The White Problem,” Baldwin ruminates on the “invented reality” of identity – especially in the particularly virulent form in which it manifests itself in American society, that of race – and how this has negatively impacted our ability to realize the promise of our nation. As he notes:

The crucial element I wish to consider here is that element of the life which we consider to be an identity; the way in which one puts oneself together, what one imagines oneself to be; for one example, the invented reality standing before you now, who is arbitrarily known as Jimmy Baldwin. This invented reality contains a great number of elements, all of them extremely difficult, if not impossible, to name. The invented reality has struck a certain kind of bargain with the world: he has a name, we know he does, and we think, therefore, that we know who he is. But it is not that simple. The truth, forever, for everybody, is that one is a stranger to oneself, and that one must deal with the stranger day in and day out – that one, in fact, is forced to create, as distinct from invent, oneself.

In essence, Baldwin is saying that all of us individually and then collectively create personae that govern the way we interact with ourselves, each other and the world … but this choice* has consequences:

(O)ne begins to discover, with great pain, and very much against one’s will, that whatever it is you want, what you want, at bottom, must be to become yourself: there is nothing else to want. Whatever one’s journey is, one’s got to accept the fact that disaster is one of the conditions under which you will make it. … And you will learn a certain humility, because the terms that you have invented, which you think describe and define you, inevitably collide with the facts of life.

It would seem that in the “Land of the Free,” such identity creation would be virtually costless and that living into it would be almost frictionless, at least in theory, but, as Baldwin elucidates, reality is very different: as members of a larger group, including that of a society, we often have to deal with the consequences of identity characteristics that are thrust upon us by others. Isn’t this exactly what race – which has never been, nor was ever intended to be, a neutral concept in theory or in practice – really is? The “facts of life” for Americans are that race looms large and that it does so with impacts that can at best be politely described as disparate.

In other words, there are the stories that we create about ourselves and about each other, and it’s these latter stories that have a way of being used to include some and, most often, exclude others. Baldwin wisely cautions us to be careful of the stories that we construct, as we too often confuse them with reality to pernicious effect:

The beginnings of this country (it seems to me a banality to say it, but, alas, it has to be said) have nothing whatever to do with the myth we have created about it. The country did not come about because a handful of people in various parts of Europe said, “I want to be free….” (T)he people who settled the country, the people who came here, came here for one reason, no matter how disguised. They came here because they thought it would be better here than wherever they were. … Anybody who was making it in England did not get on the Mayflower. It is important that one begin to recognize this because part of the dilemma this country is that it has managed to believe the myth it has created about its past, which is another way of saying that it has entirely denied its past.

As I reflect on it now, I understand what he means so much more profoundly: much of what I was taught as a youth was the myths of our society and especially, in my ‘history’ and other social sciences classes, the myths of our country. While I can’t say that the particularly challenging aspects of our national history weren’t addressed, I think it would be a fair assessment to say that they were softened and, in some cases, glossed over entirely. Our horrific treatment of Native Americans and enslaved Africans come to mind here, as they do for Baldwin:

In this extraordinary endeavor to create the country called America, a great many crimes were committed. … I’m talking about denying what one does. This is a much more sinister matter. We did several things in order to conquer the country. There existed, at the time we reached the shores, a group of people who would never heard of machines, or, as far as I know, of money – which we had heard about. We promptly eliminated them; we killed them. I’m talking about the Indians.… I’m willing to bet anything you like that not many American children being taught American history have any real sense of what that collision was like, what we really did, how we really achieved the extermination of the Indians, or what that meant. … I suspect all those cowboy-Indian stories are designed to reassure us that no crime was committed. We’ve made a legend out of a massacre.

It’s in this context, I hope, that you can understand how for many People of Color the near-constant calls for “law and order” from our white fellow citizens can seem quizzical if not downright hypocritical: it’s easy to call for law and order when you’ve broken all moral (et. al.) laws to create a system in which you’re dominant and then demand that the rest of us respect this. So, too, with wealth inequality in this country: it’s easy to suggest that the vast differences in wealth among members of various racial communities is a reflection of individual initiative and the markets of our hallowed, well-functioning capitalist system when you choose not to acknowledge that much of this wealth was built on the backs of enslaved Africans and that for centuries our government’s policies have proactively privileged whites over the descendants of those Africans (whether it’s land grants after the Civil War or FHA redlining after World War II or…).

In fact, the denial of these realities is a defining characteristic of the society that we’ve built on top of this myth:

What is most terrible is that American white men are not prepared to believe my version of the story, to believe that it happened. In order to avoid believing that, they have set up in themselves a fantastic system of evasions, denials, justifications, which system is about to destroy their great grasp of reality, which is another way of saying their moral sense. 

What I am trying to say is that the crime is not the most important thing here. What makes our situation serious is that we have spent so many generations pretending that it did not happen.

In other words, the myth of our country has shielded us, by design, from addressing some of the structural elements that have led to the reality of it being so very different for a hundred million or more of our fellow citizens. But when the illusion of that myth is shattered as it was by the murder of George Floyd by unfeeling and inhumane agents of the state, captured on video for us all to see, it’s damn near impossible to deny that supremely important aspects of the myth like equal justice for all are anything but fantasies that reinforce our comfort and help us “deny what one does,” to use Mr. Baldwin’s phrase.

I can only hope that the peaceful demonstrations in our country and around the world – by people of all races, colors and creeds – in response to the tragedy of Mr. Floyd’s murder represent a turning point and signal a willingness to rewrite our social contract as well as the myth of it. It is perhaps sad that it takes being confronted so incontrovertibly with the brutality that we’ve allowed – that’s been done in our name, to use Mr. Baldwin’s phrase – to motivate us to do this, but so be it. Despite the unfortunate reason, let’s take this opportunity to create anew a truly equitable and inclusive society and thereby ensure that Mr. Floyd’s tragic death was not in vain.

I can further hope that one of the changes that we choose to make in creating our society anew is not to eliminate race but to expect and encourage its celebration: the former would be to deny the reality that there are some differences among us whereas the latter treats these as the opportunities for mutual learning and growth that they truly are. In this way, we’ll create a community in which it’s OK to be whoever you are and to be celebrated for this idiosyncrasy rather than denigrated for it. When this day comes, we’ll truly be living into our foundational creed that all of us can indeed experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as God-given endowments to be enjoyed individually and shared collectively.…

Thus spake Zarathustra to himself while ascending, comforting his heart with harsh maxims: for he was sore at heart as he had never been before. …

 

Before my highest mountain do I stand, and before my longest wandering: therefore must I first go deeper down than I ever ascended: – Deeper down into pain than I ever ascended, even into its darkest flood! So willeth my fate. Well! I am ready.

 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Wanderer,”
Thus Spake Tharathustra (1885)

*  I'm reminded here of the excellent work of Prof. Kenji Yoshino in exploring the consequences of identity constructs in the context of individuals navigating their affiliations with larger groups. Specifically, I recommend his book Covering highly: it thoughtfully and incisively lays bare the challenge of ‘fitting in’ and the costs, psychological and otherwise, associated with this fundamental human behavior driven by the desire and need to belong.