The First Time I was Called a Nigger
“You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger, I tell you this because I love you and don’t you ever forget it.“
— James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time, 1963)
I was called a nigger in the 3rd grade by a little white boy I had never met before.
We had no classes together. I did not know anyone who knew him. Yet one day on the playground he felt the need to approach me and call me that disgusting word.
Without even fully knowing what the word meant I knew why he said it and that it was wrong. This young white child’s desire to belittle me and his attempt to claim power over me was an explicit demonstration of racism. He knew exactly what he was doing even if he himself did not fully understand the word. He yielded a power someone introduced to him or that he witnessed, maybe from an older sibling, his parents, or an old movie.
I reported the incident to my P.E. coach who was responsible for us at that time during recess. Again, I did not know the kid’s name and I assumed nothing was done. I confided in two other black classmates what had occurred, and their shock and anger fueled me. I have a memory of the three of us searching the playground the next day searching for this kid to confront him. I don’t think we ever found him, but I wonder sometimes what if we did? What would I have done? What would our fight or argument at ages 8 and 9 have accomplished?
Later that same year, I found myself face down on the concrete after being aggressively pushed from behind while sitting on one of those hexagon scooter boards. Immediately after feeling the push against my back, all I heard was running feet and laughter grow more and more distant. I never knew who my assailant was, I was playing alone and attacked with no nearby witnesses to have seen. I was left crying and bleeding from the mouth until an adult came and got me.
A part of me always wondered if the same white boy that called me a nigger was to blame. Maybe he was getting revenge after getting in trouble because I ratted him out. Maybe it was someone else sending me a message. I kept to myself in school. I had no enemies that I knew of and was emotionally hurt knowing that someone wanted to cause me pain. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this event would linger with me into adulthood because the fall inevitably chipped my front permanent tooth and cut open my inside of my upper lip. It was something I’d be self-conscious of for years before getting braces and eventually getting it repaired when it eventually weakened nineteen years later.
“What white people have to do,” Baldwin said once, “is try to find out in their hearts why it was necessary for them to have a nigger in the first place. Because I am not a nigger.
I’m a man. If I’m not the nigger here, and if you invented him, you the white people invented him, then you have to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. Whether or not it is able to ask that question.”
– James Baldwin (Letter From a Region in My Mind)
In James Baldwin’s essay, Letter From a Region in My Mind, he explains that the Black man can never be fully liberated unless the White man comes to accept all that he is. All Black people have ever lacked in America is power. No matter the amount of “progress” made from any movement of resistance, white audiences must accept people of color as they are. I believe the public influences the private the same way that the biases white people feel toward Black people can also influence how Black people regard themselves. Everyone becomes complicit in the construction of one’s identity no matter which constructed racial box you choose to subscribe to.
We are in a transitional time in history right now. The level of awareness for White people have come to an alarming height. I believe this is the time and the moment in which white people look themselves in the mirror and come to learn for themselves why it is that they created the concept of a nigger and what was to be achieved if Black people came to believe that for themselves. It is definitely time for reflection and time for Black people to commune and get ourselves together while White people take the time to finally educate themselves and their families.
We are in a moment that will shape the direction and trajectory of race relations in America and identity construction for all. It will take everyone doing their part for proper Black liberation to be achieved.
