The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race

by Jesmyn Ward

A place where black life has been systematically devalued for hundreds of years.

First, it confirmed how inextricably interwoven the past is in the present, how heavily that past bears on the future; we cannot talk about black lives mattering or police brutality without reckoning with the very foundation of this country. We must acknowledge the plantation, must unfold white sheets, must recall the black diaspora to understand what is happening now.

I believe there is power in words, power in asserting our existence, our experience, our lives, through words. That sharing our stories confirms our humanity. That it creates community, both within our own community and beyond it.

On good days, being the first black intern meant having my work done quickly and sounding extra witty around the water cooler; it meant I was chipping away at the glass ceiling that seemed to top most of the literary world. But on bad days I gagged on my resentment and furiously wondered why I was selected. I became paranoid that I was merely a product of affirmative action, even though I knew I wasn’t. I had completed the application not once but twice and never did I mention my race. Still, I never felt like I was actually good enough. And with my family and friends so proud of me, I felt like I could not burst their bubble with my insecurity and trepidation.

With them, I did not have to worry that one word pronounced wrong or one reference not known would reflect not just poorly on me but also on any black person who might apply after me.

Keith Stokes, former executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, are writing a book on the subject.

Stokes started by explaining how often the term “servant” is used as a euphemism for “slave” in New England and how there is a presumption that Africans here were somehow “smarter” and treated better than those in the South. This misperception, he pushed, is because people don’t want to remember the dehumanization. Without hesitating, he went on to say, Slavery is violent, grotesque, vulgar, and we are all implicated in how it denigrates humanity.

people were carried like chattel on ships to America; they were sold to other people; they were stripped of their names, spiritual practices, and culture; they worked their entire lives without just compensation; they were beaten into submission and terrorized or killed if they chose not to submit; when they died they were buried in the ground at the far edge of town; and as the town grew, roads and houses were built on top of them as if they had never existed.

Where Do We Go from Here? ISABEL WILKERSON

We seem to be in a continuing feedback loop of repeating a past that our country has yet to address. Our history is one of spectacular achievement (as in black senators of the Reconstruction era or the advances that culminated in the election of Barack Obama) followed by a violent backlash that threatens to erase the gains and then a long, slow climb to the next mountain, where the cycle begins again.

And we must know deep in our bones and in our hearts that if the ancestors could survive the Middle Passage, we can survive anything.

White Rage CAROL ANDERSON

Instead, white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the courts, police, legislatures, and governors, who cast its efforts as noble, though they are actually driven by the most ignoble motivations.

Da Art of Storytellin’ (a Prequel) KIESE LAYMON

This weekend, I’m going to drive down to Grandmama’s house in central Mississippi. I’m going to bring my computer. I’m going to ask her to sit next to me while I finish this essay about her artistic rituals of labor vis-à-vis OutKast. I’m going to play ATLiens and Aquemini on her couch while finishing the piece, and think of every conceivable way to thank her for her stank, and for her freshness. I’m going to tell Grandmama that because of her, I know what it’s like to be loved responsibly. I’m going to tell her that her love helped me listen, remember, and imagine when I never wanted to listen, remember, or imagine again. I’m going to read the last paragraph of this piece to her, and when Grandmama hugs my neck, I’m going to tell her that when no one in the world believed I was a beautiful Southern black boy, she believed. I’m going to tell Grandmama that her belief is the only reason I’m still alive, that belief in black Southern love is why we work.

Know Your Rights! EMILY RABOTEAU