I am always looking for ways to stimulate my writing mind. This morning I got a quote from https://www.inspiringquotes.com/. The quote is from James Baldwin. He was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. According to Wikipedia, “His essays, collected in Notes of a Native Son, explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in the Western society of the United States during the mid-twentieth century. The quote this morning was about love. “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” Baldwin is using the word love in its broadest sense. He was always looking for a solution to racial inequality. The quote had a bit of discussion. Baldwin was looking for a way to “release” white Americans from “private fears and longings.” As a black man, he was attempting to find a way of ending racism.
If you know that he was an activist and a black man, you might automatically discard his writings. You shouldn’t. There is a universal quality to the quote, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” Consider marriage. Love starts out because of something the other person has attracted you to them. However, you don’t know if the same is true of them. At first, you keep your mask in place. The other person is doing exactly the same thing. You keep your mask firmly in place while saying things such as, “I really really like you.” If the reply was something like, “I like you too,” you start unloosening the strings that hold your mask in place; otherwise, you keep the mask firmly in place.
It used to be easier because you wouldn’t commit to physical intimacy before birth control, the pill, unless you felt that four-letter word – love. People have discovered that physical intimacy feels good even with those you do not plan to marry. Think of “friends with benefits.” Further complicating things is that some people use the four-letter word without truly meaning it or understanding it. I have heard the use of the word “dance” applied to partners as one or both of them try to figure out if the word love is safe to use. There is a physical sign when the partner returns the word love. It is a sigh of relief.
Suppose it is that difficult as I suggest with a loving partner. In that case, I imagine how difficult that is with a person of another color. What signs do we look for? Even though we live together in this nation, we had different cultures. Here in northern Minnesota, there were other cultures as the land was settled. Along the Iron Range, it was a diverse mixture different from other regions in the state. Where I live presently, it’s a Scandinavian mix. It is a mixture of Swedish and Norwegians. The Swedes defined the Norwegians as a “Swede without a head,” and the Norwegians described the Swedes as a “Norwegian without a head.” This was true of the first settlers to this area or about the time of my great grandparents.
Over time the two groups removed their masks as Baldwin suggest you do with people of other races. I live between three reservations, Red Lake, White Earth, and Leech Lake. It is the Anishinaabe who most people still wear their masks around. If you’re Native American, you do not want to be called “an Apple.” That is red on the outside and white on the inside. I was surprised to find many people have never been on the reservations except to use a major road that happens to go through the reservation. Their masks are firmly in place.
As with finding a marriage partner, we remove our masks carefully not to be hurt; we need to do that with all of those around us. As I’ve mentioned before, my grandfather on my father’s side of the family was fluent Anishinaabe. He would take me to any reservation. He would switch between English and Anishinaabe depending on who he was talking to. I guess I never got a chance to put my mask on with Native Americans. They were people my grandfather obviously enjoyed being around, and I did too.
It’s not going to be easy to do what James Baldwin suggests. However, we must. We might get our feelings hurt as we did as teenagers looking for love. We persevered. We removed our masks. We found our spouses and much more. Isn’t it worth at least loosening our masks a little for ourselves and our country?
