Baldwin's question

"I'm not a nigger. I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, that means you need it. And you have to ask yourself why."

James Baldwin is, without a doubt, my favorite writer, speaker, thinker - EVER.

Rest assured, folks. What he says in that statement above it the question that America, specifically the power structure that is White America, has never dealt with.

When Baldwin puts that up, it goes not only for White Americans that project that sickening idea of the "n word" onto Black people. It goes for any White person who projects any racial notion of inferiority onto any people. Oh, they may use coded words like "I'm just talking about 'these' (group here), not 'these' (different subset of same group)". This is just the White speakers way of telling you that one group of people in the racial/ethnic group have "met up to the White standard of behavior" and another one is not doing so.

It is simply White Supremacy thinly veiled in a self-serving outfit of denial, false-intellect, and ignorance.

The more and more the White person clings to the identity they are finding themselves in, the more and more they need that "other" to hate, the less and less they will find that they actually understand themselves, their lives, and the people around them.

White people needed non-Whites to be crafted in their social context, to be reined in as "inferior" in their daily lives, and to build their entire lives in this context. Then, racism had to become the norm for them to feel okay with it. Whiteness as the norm had to be the water to the fish, that which they didn't even notice. It became their crutch for their intellectual survival, not noticing that it was indeed what would always debilitate not only their intellect, but their very humanity.

Today, much has been overcome, but the signs are abundant that much has still to be conquered, and the need for change is urgent.

When you - in this case a White person in a culture drenched in institutional and cultural White Supremacy - "need" an oppressed prescence to feel whole, to feel alive, that means you know that much less about how to survive without it. You know less about yourself. You can handle yourself less well without it. You are less strong without it.

When you begin to conquer that need that has been institutionalized into you through culture, media, your peers,... when you learn to rip out the root of your own ignorance and walk into the great unknown, that part of you that you have still not discovered after all of this time, you'll find that is the place where you can salvage the part of your humanity that the oppressive nature of your past held hostage.

Until then, your humanity is incomplete. Until then, your self-concept is flawed tragically. Until then, you are consumed, ruled, and driven by your own worst enemy - your ignorance.