You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

by Sherman Alexie

Throughout my rural and urban life, among white conservatives and white liberals, I’ve heard many other variations on that same basic sentiment. “Sherman, you’re not like other Indians.” “Sherman, you’re a credit to your race.” “Sherman, you barely seem Indian.” “Sherman, I don’t think of you as being Indian. I think of you as being a person.” “Sherman, you’re not just a Native writer. You’re a writer.” “Sherman, I don’t see color. I see the person inside.” All of these statements mean the same thing: “Sherman, in order to fit you and your indigenous identity into my worldview, I have to think of you as being like me—as being white like me.” I suspect that some of my white friends, if they are reading this, don’t recognize themselves as a person who has said racist things directly to me—who cannot even recognize the racism present in such statements. In being friends with white people, I’ve always had to live entirely inside their circle of experience—inside their white world. And my white friends have rarely, if ever, spent even a moment in my indigenous world. This inequality in my friendships has a lot to do with my own introverted nature; I am far more emotionally available when performing onstage and in the books I write than I am in person. But it happens mostly because “being American” means “being white,” even for a brown boy like me.