This week’s column is more response to letters from readers that I received about my June 23 column. I wrote then about violence amid the recent national discussions on reparations for the descendants of black American slaves.
Dear sister, first, if you have truly read me over all these years and felt my heart but yet now question whether I have suddenly “become a coon,” then you don’t know me from Adam.
It takes more than a difference of opinion to merit receiving the dubious label of having abandoned one’s own race. Really?
I have written a column for the Sun-Times over the past 10 years, sternly standing against racism, uplifting our people, roaring against the atrocities inflicted against black men by white cops, demanding justice for Laquan McDonald and others.
I have a wider body of work, dating back three decades. I have fought battles inside American newsrooms for “our” stories beyond the stereotypical police blotter coverage to which American journalism too often reduces them.
So now I am a possible “coon”? Please. “Deny restorative justice?” Huh? Those aren’t my words. Nor was that even a sub-point in my recent column. I never said I was against reparations. Only that we have a more imminent cause. I am for reparations. For. Not against.
But may I ask: How will reparations alone, should they ever come, cure our ills?
Can an oppressive government that enslaved, maimed, raped and murdered us ever be entrusted to help heal us? Are we powerless? Without hope of self-determination?
Go ahead. Assign blame. But how about accepting some responsibility for where we go from here?
America’s first sin — slavery — is surely upon us. It is an insidious curse that seeks to disembowel black folks from our souls. Our one true hope is the same hope as the slave: An eternal God by whose spirit — and by our work and faithful fervent fight — we shall overcome this present evil and create a brighter future for generations.
You accuse me of doing nothing, only spewing empty “rhetoric.” If I tell you all I do, you’ll say I’m bragging. This much I’ll say: At nearly 60, I’ve mentored young men my entire adult life, from church to schools to community while raising my own five children.
I’ve created mentoring programs, including one at a local school, where I’ve enlisted men from across Chicago to help me read weekly to more than 500 schoolchildren over the last four years.
I’ve given scholarships, inconspicuously placed my honorariums in the hands of single black mothers and college students. Taken little black boys to the barber, fed neighborhood children at my family’s table, adopted as my God-grandsons the infant sons of a single teen mom.
I’ve spoken pro bono at more schools, churches and youth organizations than I can count. Given away books. Counseled. Marched. Prayed. Cried. Encouraged… Recently, in the hopes of making his heart smile again, I gave a little black boy whose mother died suddenly months earlier a brand new bike. …Seeing him smile brought tears to my eyes.
I’ve been faithful to “our” story and plight over a 30-year journalism career, even when it cost me dearly. Even now, as some of my own call me a “coon.”
Damn, y’all... Really?
I’ve learned not to care so much about what someone says someone else said about me. Tell me what you said to defend me. Apparently nothing.
Sister writes back: “I first would like to clarify I did not call you a coon. I wrote that I was afraid you might’ve became a coon, just based off the title of your column…”
Dear sister, I can appreciate that. But I don’t write headlines. …Whether you called me a coon or simply “wondered” whether I had become one kinda feels the same.
But then again, you don’t know me from Adam.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com.
