I am (still) not your Negro.
“Hopeless rage.”
These are the words James Baldwin used to describe how he felt when he learned Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death. I am not far from what Baldwin felt as I look at photos of Elijah McClain. Since the beginning of this new surge in the movement, I haven’t written anything, read very little, and fallen into despair. I pen this letter to anyone who may feel like me and finds themselves in that state of hopeless rage.
I’ve only ever encountered racism once in my life at a uniform store downtown. While my mom shopped for scrubs, I played with and explored with my DS. A little boy of 6 or 7. After running around and being generally hyper, I put the DS in my mom’s bag. The cashier at the front, in the tone of a detective that’s just cracked the case, asked my mom if I slipped something into her bag. Little did she know she was dealing with a powerful Jamaican woman — a force of fury in her own right. Not a woman of coarse language, she read that cashier her rights and we left.
It would be years before I understood what that moment really meant.
Baldwin’s scathing remarks in, “I am not your negro” are even more powerful juxtaposed against modern tragedies, like Ferguson. It feels as if nothing has, or will ever, change. Yet, as Baldwin said, I am forced to be an optimist. I know I am not a revolutionary figure. I’m no Martin, nor Malcolm. Nor Shakur, nor Newton. Yet there are words abound I can write with this pen, and an urge to see a world better than when I left it. Perhaps this is all I must do, and all YOU must do. To follow what path you’ve been set upon and play a part in changing the world.
Self-work, mental health care, and personal change are all revolutionary acts. I have never felt so defeated than I have the past month. I know I am not alone. Thus, we all have work to do in reclaiming our personal power. Only that way can we rise above the systems that keep us down: within us and without.
We may all not be revolutionaries, but the sharing of talents are revolutionary acts that may bring us from “hopeless rage” to a hopeful, brighter future.
