I was watching an interview with film director, Nia DaCosta and she was recalling a time when she and her sister traveled with their mother to the Adirondacks on a business trip. As she, her sister and mom were exiting their hotel room, presumably heading to the pool since she and her sister were in bathing suits with towels over their shoulders, a couple from across the hall asked if her mom was the maid. Her mother kindly said, “no,” and the couple apologized, the event resonated with DaCosta. She said she had a realization that that’s what “it,” implying racism is. “It’s less like someone calling you the N word and more of an assumption of where you belong.“
It made me think of a story my mother told me about my great-grandfather and how the sheriff came threatening to burn his house down and called him boy but my great-grandfather stood his ground letting him know that he would do no such thing. Or the time my father traveled down to Mississippi to see my grandfather and when he asked for directions, a White man with a confederate flag in plain sight told him he didn’t belong, to go back where he came from. I don’t want to use the word evolve to describe how we’ve gone from boy and the n-word to innuendo, pointed questions and microagressions because I don’t think the former has been totally done away with. Nevertheless, to DaCosta’s point, whatever the tactic of choice is, it is rooted in the same assertion: that we do not belong. They thought that if they intimidated us enough, insulted us enough, threatened us enough, oppressed us enough, told us enough times that we would accept the assertion that we don’t belong. Except that didn’t work.
Growing up, I didn’t like the phrase, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words may never hurt me.” I was a sensitive child that developed low self-esteem because of the words of others. Because I internalized beliefs and perceptions that were attributed to me, but actually had nothing to do with me or the truth. My mom used to say something to me growing up that felt equally as reductive as the aforementioned phrase when I was a child. She always said, “people do to you what you allow,” and that didn’t make any sense. No way would I have given anyone permission to make me feel bad or inferior and yet, I did.
But now, at 26, I see these phrases with more nuance. The permission is given to hurt me the moment I accept what you say is true. People are entitled to their opinions, however false or shortsighted they might be, but I don’t have to give them any credence or accept their perceptions or beliefs. Saying a thing, however distasteful or hurtful, does not inherently make it true.
If we just accepted what others said about us, there would be no Frederick Douglass who learned how to read despite the assertion that it was not a skill he needed and he would not have become a great orator, writer, abolitionist and statesman. There would be no Harriet Tubman if she accepted the assertion that she and others like her were meant to be slaves. Instead, she became a liberator of slaves and served in the Civil War as a spy and militia leader for Union forces. There would be no Jackie Robinson if he accepted the assertion that there was no place for him in Major League Baseball. Instead, he broke the color barrier, becoming the first Black player in the modern leagues. We would have no Civil Rights Movement if changemakers like Martin Luther King Jr and Ella Baker and Kwame Ture and Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers and Thurgood Marshall and Harry and Harriette Moore accepted the assertion that we were not and would never be equal, that we did not belong in a country that we built. But they weren’t the only ones.
There is a longstanding tradition of we as Black people persisting through and past the low expectations set for us. If Carter G. Woodson had accepted the assertion that our history was not one worth preserving, there would be no Black History Month, no Association for the Study of African American Life and History, no Journal of African American History. We would have no history to trace, let alone celebrate. Finally, if Christ accepted the enemy’s assertions that his power and identity as the Son of God was dependent on Him bowing down to the enemy (Matthew 4:1-11) , if Christ had gotten down from the Cross as men mocked Him, asserting that He was not truly the Son of God (Matthew 27:38-44), we would have no salvation, let alone a heritage to celebrate. He set us free long before the Emancipation Proclamation and it is because of Him and His sacrifice that we, as a people, walk boldly.
This is the 100th year celebrating Black History Month and I have never been prouder to be in the skin I’m in. I belong, we belong, in any room we walk in, and more broadly, in this country, and that truth remains irrespective of what man may say, believe or assert. David and Paul were imminently correct when they said, “Let every man be a liar,” for the truth can only be found in and through Him and His Son(Psalm 116:11; John 14:6; Romans 3:4)! The truth is and has always been that we belong, that we are capable and our perseverance and resilience is a testament of God’s providence. May the lies of others never prevail in the face of the truth of who God says we are. May the assertions of others never penetrate our hearts, minds or souls. May we marvel at what the Lord has done in us, for us, and through us and our people! May His truth endure forever. Happy Black History Month!
