Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America

by George Yancy

I’m with Baldwin on this one. The question that white America must face is why did you, white people, need the nigger in the first place? Baldwin says that white people simply need to face that question. My reconciliation with this country, the reconciliation of Black bodies with this country, this “Sweet land of liberty,” will remain hollow until white America, white people are able to face that question. For this “sweet land” will remain bitter and “liberty” a mere farce without white people first facing that question, without white people coming to risk themselves, to give themselves over to the truth that they, you, are the nigger, not me. Like Baldwin, I have no use for the term nigger, but you do. I know that I’m not a nigger. Nigger is not my name. Baldwin’s words are as painfully relevant and prophetic as they were when he said them in 1963 to African American psychologist Kenneth Clark. Thus, I end this chapter with Baldwin’s powerful insight and inimitable wisdom: What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, because I’m not a nigger. I’m a man, but if you think I’m a nigger, it means you need it. The question you’ve got to ask yourself—the white population of this country has got to ask itself. . . . If I’m not a nigger here and you invented him—you, the white people, invented him—then you’ve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that, whether or not it’s abl...