*WARNING: The following post contains language some might consider offensive. I apologize in advance to elder generations in my family, but sometimes you can best convey something awful that happened to you with “nasty” words.*
*WARNING: White people. No you can’t. F@!k around and find out.*
The following account actually happened. Every detail. The names of perpetrators have been changed because I’m trying to move on from the bullsh!t. Don’t test me though.
“Hey Chad. Can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure. What’s up Jonathan?”
“So, do you remember the other day when you, me, and Chet were walking to our cars?”
“Yup.”
“Right. So you remember Chet using the n-word?”
“…yeah…I’m sorry that happened.”
“Thanks. So, I need you to ta—”
“Say no more. I’ll talk to Chet about it.”
“Yeah…okay, thanks. I really need him to know that what he said was not o—”
“—not okay. Totally. For sure. I’ll handle it. It’s the least I can do.”
Six years after this conversation, Chad rapped the n-word out loud at a small gathering where I was the only Black person. More on that moment later, but first let me put some things into context.
Chad, Chet, and I were departmental colleagues at my former institution. Chad and Chet are white guys and about 3 - 4years older than me. At the time of the 1st n-word incident, we were all pre-tenure faculty, meaning none of us had earned the job security that tenure grants university faculty. Tenure makes it virtually impossible to fire faculty without cause. Presumably a tenured faculty could say the n-word and keep their job.
The three of us were walking from our department building to our cars at the end of the day. The particulars of our conversation are hazy, but I distinctly remember Chet suddenly deciding to make the point that he knew the distinction between the words “nigger” and “nigga”.
Mr. Petto in the Boondocks cartoon episode “The S-Word”. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it right now.
When faced with an unexpected racism, I tend to clam up, hoping the moment will pass. I’m not proud of that being my reaction, but I struggle in those moments to find the balance between my shock, rage, and the deep embarrassment I feel for a white person who has just, as we all do, said something they probably wouldn’t have had they thought better of it. I said nothing that I distinctly remember and just let Chad change the subject.
What made this moment so awful was all the potential awful moments of fallout that ran through my head, including how this would impact my career. At the time, Chad and Chet had not yet earned tenure, but they were well on track. Tenured faculty ultimately vote on the tenure cases of junior faculty, so going hard on Chet in that moment could very well have impacted Chet’s vote on whether or not he wanted me as a colleague in perpetuity. If you asked Chet, or any white academic, if being called out for a racism they have done would negatively influence his willingness to remain colleagues with the person who called them out, he would most certainly say no. Then again, academia’s struggle to recruit and retain Blackademics isn’t because white academics are burning crosses in front of our office doors.
Luckily, I had my white ally, Chad, with me to bear witness and intervene. The fact that he had to be prompted to intervene after the fact should have been a red flag (I’m getting to that part, don’t worry), but I was encouraged by Chad saying he would talk to Chet about his use of the n-word. To this day I don’t know that Chad actually did have that conversation. He never reported back to me about it and Chet never acknowledged or apologized.
It took me several days of anxious planning on how to address the “nigger” vs. “nigga” incident because of all the implications. How would the rest of my colleagues respond to one of their own using the n-word? Had this ever happened before? Would they do right by their self-proclaimed welcoming and collegial department culture and rally in the direction of accountability and healing? Would they protect their Black colleague, not from a bad person, but from the engrained racism that pervades society and sometimes bubbles to the surface through well-meaning white people? I was skeptical about any sort of individual or broader self-reflections for some of the following reasons:
1) The department had never hired an African American faculty member. I became there first shortly after Chet’s comment. 2) None of my colleagues had any kind of positive reciprocal relationships with Blackness that I had witnessed. How could I have possibly known? As any Black person will tell you about white folks’ comfort with Black people, we just know (down-ass white people smell different). 3) I was one of 3 African American faculty in the college of arts & sciences (out of nearly 300 faculty). 4) The grad program had never had an African American graduate student. 5) The undergraduate program had fewer than 5 African American graduates in its history.
*Side note: I once asked in a faculty meeting, how many African American graduate students had the program had in its history and let me tell you! It was a buffet of white discomfort.
Needless to say, I was in an extremely white space, knew it, and now Chet had decided it was a good idea to explain to the only African American colleague he’s ever had that he understood that “nigger” and “nigga” had different connotations. What the actual fuck?!
Actor Delroy Lindo in conversation with white news anchor about saying the n-word
I think in the moment, Chet was trying to demonstrate that he was an insider to Black culture; more of an insider than what he imagined I thought him to be (I should have told him he didn’t smell right). He miscalculated tremendously and to protect myself from further horrendous judgement on his part, I erected a wall of sorts between us; a wall he would attempt to breach several times over the years. Amazingly one of these attempts included a trial run of greeting me with the phrase “brotha man”, as in “Hey brotha man!” or “What’s up brotha man!”.
Interestingly enough this attempt to connect coincided with another white departmental colleague’s attempts to connect that ultimately turned into open racial hostility. That colleague was Dr. Smith, who you may have read about in my previous post.
Did I mention that Chet and Dr. Smith are spouses? Yeeaaaaahhhhhh…
Fast forward 6 years and you’ll find me hanging out with Chad and three other white faculty at one of their houses eating wings. Chad had invited me into this group of academics as a gesture of our deepening personal friendship and professional collaboration. If I’m honest with myself, I found this reality a bit surprising as Chad had rubbed me the wrong way from the first time I met him. The dude loved to talk and take up space in ways that seemed to primarily serve his love of hearing himself speak.
Chad had won me over though with a combination of pseudo-sincerity, false vulnerability, and some of the best woke white guy rhetoric I’d ever witnessed. Combine that with my increasing desperation to find any senior white colleagues who had not needed calling out on their white nonsense and I was fully on team Chad; attention seeking way of interacting be damned.
Chad was my guy, my ally, my cool white homie.
Until he wasn’t.
“All day Nigga!”
Those were the words that came out of Chad’s mouth as we ate wings. I don’t even remember what song was playing in the background, but evidently Chad was feeling the song and himself enough to rap those lyrics out loud. What the actual fuckkity fuck?!
Cue my deer-in-headlights reaction and - I don’t remember who - changing the subject.
Do I get up and leave? Do I get up and slap this dude the face? Do I laugh it off? Do I throw these chicken bones at him? Do I berate the other white guys in the room for being silent? Do I rage cry and smash the speaker?
All of these thoughts raced through my head as I’m trying to figure out what to do. I was sick, panicked, and enraged. But then things got worse. So so so much worse.
The gathering ended shortly after that. We said our goodbyes and I even gave Chad a goodbye hug, as was our custom. It would be the last time I hugged him. Still in a daze, I walked to my car, got in, and texted my wife.
“Heading home. Chad rapped the n-word out loud. I don’t know what to do.”
“Noooooooooo!!!! I’m so sorry. Let’s talk when you get home.”
My wife is a white woman, and if I’m honest, I was nervous to tell her about what had just happened. Not because I was afraid she wouldn’t understand or make excuses, but because she had never let go of her misgivings about Chad like I had. I was worried about an “I told you so.”
Thankfully my wife only said as much with her eyes as she gave me a hug. We had a good conversation about what I was thinking and feeling. She listened to my anxieties about confronting Chad and how that would affect my ability to earn tenure in the department. I knew I had to do/say something to him about what he said, but I qualified every possible intervention with “yeah…but”. I needed Chad to survive in this job. Who would advocate for me other than Chad? Besides, he’d done so much for my career already.
My wife interrupted my train of excuses with a question that changed everything:
“Are you sure about that?”
Some of the most profound and life changing moments in my consciousness have come from simple, premise-disrupting questions offered by loved ones. This was one of those moments.
I spent the next few hours auditing my relationship with Chad, accounting for the harms and helps he had brought to my career and personal life over the years. Much to my surprise, his books were not in the black like I had allowed myself to believe they were. My dude was well in the red. Yes, Chad had helped me in some ways, but those helps did not outweigh other niggling (see what I did there) incidents that bothered/disturbed me about how he conducted himself professionally and personally and how, as I came to understand things, our relationship was primarily based on a professional power imbalance. Chad loves to interact when he thinks or knows he has more power than you.
By the next morning I had decided that whatever kind of relationship I had with Chad up to that point was not worth keeping silent about his unconscionable use of the n-word in my presence. In the days that followed, I foolishly allowed myself to hope that Chad would text or call to apologize/explain himself. He did not (none of the other folks present that night ever said anything to me about it) and my resentment grew in concert with my fear of having to confront Chad.
How was I going to check the last remaining senior colleague (Chad had earned his tenure by this time) I believed I could trust as my advocate? How dare this motherfucker (sorry mom and dad, but liberal white folks who use the n-word like Chad are automatically promoted to the rank of motherfucker in my mind ) not own up his shit! This man actively cultivates the persona of a white ally, but he can’t bring himself to say sorry for this?! What the actual fuckkity fuckle fuck?!
By the time of our meeting that Monday morning at the local coffee shop I was more anxious than I’d ever been in my life (outside of my daughter almost dying minutes after she was born). There was no hint of Chad’s impending confession as we greeted each other, ordered our coffee, and sat down to talk about the other business we were scheduled to talk about.
For the next hour Chad said not a mumbling word about his use of the n-word. Not. A. Fucking. Word.
I don’t remember any detail of what we talked about during that hour because I was too consumed with how I was going to bring up the incident from the previous week. My mind was screaming as we got up, threw away our trash, and talked about driving our cars to the department building parking lot.
Say something you coward! You can’t let this slide!
As I closed my car door and turned the key, I decided to take a more gentle approach with myself. Come on Jonathan, you have to get it together. You cannot let this go. You have to say something. I know you’re scared. I know you’re angry. I know you’re resentful, but you have to say something. You knew he wasn’t going to own up to this, but if you don’t confront him, you will lose any possibility of holding him accountable for future racist fuckshit. No amount of job security is worth your humanity. You can do this!
The last opportunity to talk this out had come. I got out of my car and opened my mouth to speak.
“Hey Chad.”
“Yeah?”
“So, remember the other day at Bob’s hou…”
“I know. I know. Yes, I’m sorry. It’s been on my mind ever since. You shouldn’t be the one to bring it up. I should have said something sooner. I’ve been agonizing over this all weekend. I’m really sorry.”
“Okay…yeah. Thanks for saying that.”
Once again, I wanted to move on as quickly as possible, but this time not because I was embarrassed for Chad, I wanted to quickly move on because I was disgusted with Chad. This motherfucker was going to let this whole thing go if I hadn’t said anything! This self-proclaimed social justice advocate let me stew all weekend, lose sleep, and not be fully present with my family because I was sick with anxiety, when he could have taken some responsibility for what he did and brought it up himself. He could have texted. He could have called. He could have cleared the air from the time he first saw me. He did none of those things. I had to do the work to try and fix his fuck up. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?!
There was simply no coming back from Chad not owning up to what he had done. The n-word was bad enough, but I now saw that his personal comfort was more important to him than his integrity or my humanity. On that day I understood Chad to be, at his core, a coward.
We all have moments of cowardice, but billing yourself as a person with integrity while failing to hold yourself accountable to those you’ve harmed, the people you call a “dear friend”, is the behavior of someone who lies to themselves and is happy to let others believe the lies. Reputation over good relations.
Almost a year after he failed of his own volition to own up to his racist outburst, Chad reacted poorly to a professional success of mine that forced me to tell him about himself. I ended my email to him with a simple request for time and space. I needed him to sit with what I had said, really think, and not do what he always did and steamroll his way through the moment.
Beginning less than 2hrs after my email to Chad, he responded via email…and then responded again…and then again…and then texted…and then two days later he responded with a 10 paragraph email that began thusly:
Hi Jonathan,
This letter is not an obligation you need to fulfill by reading it. You asked for a few weeks. I respect that. There is no expectation. I know you didn’t ask me to apologize to you. Or to provide you an explanation of my handling of situations. Or even to respond. I don’t expect you to read. I don’t expect you to respond. I am listening. I know it takes energy - energy at a time when mourning loss of black lives and just trying to be right now. This is just to be archived. It is just another letter that lets you know that I continue to keep you at the center of my mind…
It was at the point that I decided I would not speak to Chad unless I absolutely had to. This 5th communication, a reminder of my initial misgivings about him as a person, told me that my boundaries were not to be prioritized over what he wanted to tell me. Besides, any response I would have given him would simply be a repeat of the issues I had already articulated. Someone once told me that if you have to repeat yourself in a conversation, it’s probably time to stop having the conversation.
I was done. This relationship was over. I was out of fucks to give.
I’m going to end here and hope that your white folks have more integrity than Chet and Chad for their racisms. There’s so much more to unpack about this that I’ll continue to do in this blog, but for now, I’m done.
A nigga tired after recounting/reliving all that nonsense. But, it’s a good tired.
(Sorry for all the foul language mom and dad)