“Any real change implies the break up of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew: to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free—he has set himself free—for higher dreams, for greater privileges”.
--James Baldwin
For some time I’ve thought about the question of my Black identity. And while I wholly embrace my Blackness, I also realize it is something that has been imposed on me. A designation, a description, a perspective that I am forced to accept and forced to live within. Like Frantz Fanon, Aimé Cesaire, and even James Baldwin before me, I reach a point where I must risk removing the mask... risk a return to my native self... risk bearing witness to the truth of my existence and its impact on the spaces I occupy.
I refer to my Blackness as an imposition because the ideas about this identity and about this state of being are largely someone else’s. When I walk into a room, before I am American, or male, or even human, I am Black. What Blackness is and has been are concepts that were not created by me. Thus I am born burdened with the responsibility of this identity and others’ definition of it until I am at last comfortable enough to determine what it means for me.
I think this is unique to Black people. And particularly Black Americans. Our story is one of displacement and destabilization. Where a Frenchman, or a Moroccan, or a person from Cameroon can more easily reconcile questions of identity through nationhood, language, religion, etc, for Black Americans, we have many different layers to work through before we can begin to ask ‘who am I?’. And even then I am asked, directly or indirectly, to reckon with the ideas of Blackness that exist before me.
Ultimately, these layers - despite the trauma of them - do provide some degree of comfort to us. After all, it is sometimes all we have, and we cling desperately to what we “know” because it feels safe. The End of Safety is an attempt at imaging this very necessary act of removing the layers. It is an attempt at imaging the delicate and dangerous act of seeing oneself for the first time, pure, whole, and unencumbered by the things the world tells you you are.
