“So tell me about the first time someone called you n****r,” I said.
My lunch companion paused and got a far-away look in his eyes.
“That’s an interesting question,” he said.
Del thought for a while before he answered. He and I have lunch together at least once a week. We frequently discuss political and social issues besides personal ones. He has been a big part of my support system as I struggle with my son’s death. I have tried to help him as his wife undergoes treatment for breast cancer. He is my friend and at my point in life that means something special. The fact that he has ample sufficiency of melanin while I am melanin challenged makes for interesting conversations.
I am Wonder Bread and mayonnaise white. He is not. He is active on social media and has a long family history of social activism. He is tall and athletically gifted. I am definitely none of those things. But in spite of all the obvious differences we have, our commonalities outweigh everything else. Having written about the N-word (God I hate euphemisms) and followed the different controversies that arisen from its use, I wanted a personal perspective. Del was happy to provide it. As I suspected, being called a n****r was not something he had encountered often in his youth.
Del grew up in a middle class black neighborhood in Oklahoma. And he went to OU and played baseball as a walk-on. Del is also huge: six foot eleventeen inches tall. And he has the solid build of an NBA power forward. He was quite popular in college and very active in his black fraternity. I am sure he was seldom by himself and usually in a large group as he went through his collegiate career. Racists are usually bullies and cowards. So, except for an anonymous note on his door, they left him alone. My question got him to thinking about his first full-on collision with racism and he shared it with me. The details don’t matter for the purpose of this essay. Suffice it to say it involved stopping at a gas station in Louisiana. Use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
But if you can’t, you need to have an in-depth conversation about race with someone who is not melanin challenged. If such a conversation is not recent, then you need to have another one. A lot of melanin challenged people in this country, like our president, think that racism is a relic of the past. Worse are those who seriously believe that whites are the real victims of racism today. President Obama’s election did not wipe out centuries of racist thinking. In fact, it made it worse in some ways.
A lot of politicians and famous people have supported the idea of a national dialogue on race. If you disagree, I offer Colorado State Representative Lori Saine as Exhibit A as to why you are wrong. Representative Saine made the national news after using Dr. Martin Luther King Day as an opportunity to argue that reverse racism is a serious problem. As evidence she claimed that equal numbers of blacks AND whites were lynched in the South during Reconstruction for simply being Republicans.
Confronted with the historical inaccuracy of her statements, Saine doubled down on her reverse racism claims. It’s called confirmation bias and all humans suffer from it. We only gain new knowledge when we set aside our preconceived opinions and seek out facts. If we are to confront racism in this this country, we must first acknowledge its existence. The best way to do that is one-on-one with someone who has experienced it. I ask that everyone who reads this to start a conversation with a melanin enhanced friend. Begin the conversation with, “Tell me about the first time someone called you n****r.”
If you fail to see why it’s important to discuss the word, consider this: the derogatory term that our troops used for Arabs was sand n****r. Don’t believe me? Then ask a vet.
It’s long past time for this national conversation on racism. If you don’t know someone with extra melanin to talk to then there’s your first problem. You shouldn’t be talking about racism at all. You lack a frame of reference. You’re like a city dweller talking about the best way to run a farm. If you have extra melanin then find a melanin challenged person to share your story with. Or send it to us and we will publish the best ones. If you are melanin challenged and you know someone with ample sufficiency of melanin, ask the question and then shut the hell up and listen. You might just learn something. More listening and less talking is something we all need to do.
