What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America

by Michael Eric Dyson

In fact, the brutal battering he suffered at the hands of the Baldwin crew offers an important lesson to white people about how to start real change. And that involves sometimes sitting silently, and, finally, as black folk have been forced to do, listening, and listening, and listening, and listening some more.

The founders and the original citizens made whiteness the default position of American identity and humanity. American citizens were allowed to be white without having to say so. They could rely on the benefits of whiteness without having to name them—one of which was the celebration that attended the notion of the self-made man.

Obama was a walking legitimation crisis, throwing into conniptions the very state he represented because it meant, by implication, or extension, that the blacks it had historically demeaned and excluded were now part of official American identity, were that much closer to being perceived as full citizens. And so an equally powerful wind blew back, insisting that Obama could never be truly American, truly a citizen, truly the symbol of the nation as its putative father because he was, in essence, illegitimate, a bastard president, a political orphan with no lines of kinship to authentic American identity. No matter, or amount, of policy can solve that.

But there is a development with Trump that is unique: he is treating the nation—which, by default, is white and Christian, though technically it is neither—as white folk have treated black folk throughout our history. Trump is treating the entire nation as black. More particularly, he is treating the entire nation as “the nigger.” One of the reasons for the special outrage of many white Americans toward him is that he has forgotten the rules; that sort of treatment is for blacks, not whites. That need not be a conscious belief for it to be true. The reason his views on immigration can be abided is because those immigrants are “them.” However, when it comes to insulting folk, spoiling his office in narcissistic displays, acting vengefully—this is the heart of whiteness, and the force of whiteness against blackness and other colors.

His obsessions and perverse preoccupations are the stuff of a whiteness that never had to be held accountable. Trump’s total lack of knowledge, and the enshrinement of ignorance as the basis of power and authority, is the personification of white supremacy and white arrogance.

If there is a dirty secret in American life it is this: the real unifying force in our national cultural and political life, beyond skirmishes over ideology and party, is white identity masked as universal, neutral, and therefore quintessentially American. The greatest purveyors of identity politics today, and for the bulk of our country’s history, have been white citizens. This means that among the oldest forms of “fake news” in the nation’s long trek to democratic opportunity has been the belief that whiteness is identical to the idea of what it means to be American.

But identity has always been at the heart of American culture. We must confront a truth that we have assiduously avoided: the most protected, cherished, and nurtured identity of all has been white identity.

That whiteness is the nation’s preferred identity becomes painfully obvious when white bigots scamper out of their closets at the first sign of support from our government.

The “other” is the fuel that drives ideas of American society, that feeds American identity. If we are committed to discerning, then defeating, the contemporary logic of racism, we must separate it from its ties to democracy itself. In order to be true patriots, we must become disloyal to chronically prejudiced views of American society that persist in our rather ignoble Trumpian moment. We earn the politicians we deserve, inherit the systems we admire and find useful, no matter our protests to the contrary.

To talk about race in America requires one to face truth in terms of the disparities that exist based on race. And the truth makes people very uncomfortable. There’s a natural desire to have conversations where everyone walks away feeling lovely, and it’s been pleasant. But not so much when you’re talking about race.”

There’s an expression in many African countries when you meet somebody for the first time. The greeting is not ‘Pleased to meet you.’ The greeting is ‘I see you.’ And I see you in all of the dimensions of who you are. I see you in full relief. I see you based on the complexity of your life, like everyone else’s life. And I think that part of it is that we, in lifting up the community, have to require that everyone understands the complexity, or sees the community in full relief. And understanding then that if you’re talking with a black woman, you should understand it’s a black woman’s issue. The economy is a black woman’s issue. Education is a black woman’s issue. Health-care reform is a black woman’s issue. Combating climate change is a black woman’s issue. Black Lives Matter is a black woman’s issue. People talk now about intersectionality. That relates to the various forms that one identifies with, or identifies themselves as being. But I would say that, as leaders, we have to understand that no one constituency is a monolith.”

Kennedy argued that partisanship and political differences alone can’t explain the chaos the nation endures because of the Trump presidency. “This administration isn’t just targeting the laws that protect us; they are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection.”

I think the biggest enemy, and the biggest oppression, in my mind, in all of this, is white supremacy, patriarchy, which is closely related to sexism and religious subjugation, and if you get at all of that, all these other issues get resolved.” Jenkins’ fierce commitment to a broad vision of democracy rests on telling the truth and directing political resources to help our nation’s most vulnerable and traumatized members.

Maleness has functioned in our race much like whiteness has in the larger culture: its privileges have been rendered normal, its perspectives natural, its biases neutral, its ideas superior, its anger wholly justifiable, and its way of being the gift of God to the universe.

It is not that Baldwin and his activist cohort disavowed the hard and necessary work of shaping policies that responded to black need, policies that would offer the social goods black folk deserved. It is that they saw public policy without personal witness as an insufficient spur to genuine social change. This is why Baldwin’s crew insisted that President Kennedy see race as a moral issue and not simply a political one. Legislation and public policy would surely solve many of the practical problems black folk confronted, but they could hardly address the deep investment in black inferiority, or white innocence, that attended the debate on race in America. Bobby resisted witness because it would require that he fundamentally change the way he saw himself in relation to black people.

Baldwin understood that policy could never make white people think differently. The perception of black people often shapes how and when the law is applied. The moral dimensions of race exert a profound influence on how we distribute social goods, apply public policy and laws, and determine the worth and value of human life. It is already against the law for the police to unjustly murder black folk.

Bobby did not want the responsibility of bearing witness to their pain and their rage. Witness often exposes the unspoken claims of whiteness—its privilege to hide, its ability to deflect black suffering into comparatively sterile discussions of policy that take the heat off of “me” and put it on “that.”

The BLM activists insist on the unity of politics and morality: The racist act is connected to the racist intent; the murdering hand is connected to the murderous heart.

The solutions proffered in the name of progressive racial faith—change in law, change in policy—have no answer for the hate that trumps law, the bigotry that adapts to whatever law is on the books and finds a way to twist it to its advantage.

It is clear that witness is racialized, and black witness, as it was in slavery, is never seen as legitimate. Black witness is always perceived as unjustified rage. Blackness has no victims in white eyes and therefore has no right to bear witness to whiteness at all. Bearing witness to racial injustice is always perceived as a direct threat to white supremacy and is therefore an act of hostility that must be neutralized. One of BLM’s greatest contributions is to bear witness to the trauma black folk endure but that is often rendered invisible.

humanitarianism is not a substitute for justice, but may be one measure of its fulfillment.

One of the advantages of white supremacy is that it convinces white folk that they are better than even the exceptional black person. That, however, is a curious equation: black exceptionalism hardly equals white normalcy.

Robinson, Doby, Campy, and Newcombe were the easiest translation of what the civil rights movement aimed for: give black folk a chance, treat us fairly, make one set of rules for us all to abide by, and we will do well. In our day, what Kaepernick and his cohort are shooting for is similar: don’t assume black people are thugs, don’t fear us because we are black, give us a chance to live as we explain ourselves to the police.

The money athletes make may not be as important as the mark they can leave on the minds of those who admire them. Therefore, many of them are compelled to speak up for justice, equality, and opportunity. It makes sense for them to do so: they know that the black people who are unknown to the masses of white folk are deserving of the same decency and respect that they are given. Thus, they can leverage their influence and fame on behalf of the black folk whose love and nurture made them stars.

These athletes see the contradiction between American ideals of fairness and justice and their arbitrary application to people of color. A black person often has to be a superstar athlete and beloved icon to enjoy only some of the perks that many white folk can take for granted at birth.

Privileged white folk must also use their platforms to challenge inequality.

A meeting with a few angry black folk more than fifty years ago taught him a valuable lesson about listening to what you don’t want to hear. It is a lesson we must learn today if we are to overcome our differences and embrace a future as bright as our dreams allow.

In Wakanda, we finally get the chance to just be—like white folk can, and do, every day of their lives.

in other words, whatever and wherever whiteness exists and is seen as normal and necessary, as usual, as taken for granted, as presumed, as invisible and unaccountable and, therefore, not necessary to be named Wakanda. Fantasy ain’t needed when reality already provides what fiction aims for.

Wakanda is necessary for us because our black lives are seen as anything but. Wakanda matters because black lives don’t.

Wakanda exists because what we should have is not here. Justice. Truth. Love. Wakanda exists because for centuries we have struggled to imagine ourselves as the arbiters of our destiny when we are unfettered by hate and fear. In Wakanda our battles have to do with the big ideas and truths that all folk confront on their human journey. In Wakanda there is no second-guessing ourselves, our smarts, our looks, our bodies, except for the normal reasons and insecurities we all possess.

We are tired of telling you that affirmative action is something you benefitted from for centuries except it had another name for you. That name is living.

This is the illusion. This—this notion that oppression is natural, that violence is inevitable, that hate is normal, that whiteness is a birthright, that subordination is good, that empire is a goal, that control is a virtue—this is what is unnatural, false, fake, undesirable, should be banned and bashed and banished.