What I'm Talking About When I Talk About Losing My Voice

Racism. I'm talking about Racism.

I'm talking about how I could read James Baldwin and appreciate, accept, believe his point of view and not see my own place in it.

I'm talking about reading Liberation Theology and thinking I was in some way on "their" side while very much ensconced in and benefiting from the legacy of imperialism and colonialism. (I nearly wrote "the colonial past"--as if it were over. Telling.)

I'm talking about hearing Black friends and colleagues talk about their lived experience and believing that they had some how moved on from it. How admirable to see your father stopped and abused by police to rise and to where you are now.

I was concerned, sympathetic, even empathetic to a degree. And I hadn't a clue.

To the extent one can wake up from that place of privileged sympathy, I have started to wake up. I can't say I'm "woke." I can't say I've earned that. But I've started to see, at least a little bit.

I was treating current and ongoing inequities like one might read about a far off land. A tourist's view of India, perhaps--the riches and the poverty--and see it as an interesting place to visit. Except I am living among the riches and poverty of my own nation and seeing myself somehow detached from it all.

It's been paralyzing. What do I have to say about any of this? Maybe I don't. Do I tell my white stories, not too different from other white stories, as if my particular brand of gay (I get to claim one oppressed label!) experience was of any interest among the many gay white stories already in circulation?

I write because I'm a writer. I've continued writing. I don't think I can stop. But I read back on it and it is hollow. Unnecessary. Familiar and without revelation.


That's what I'm talking about when I talk about losing my voice.