I read on Facebook a reader’s response to my recent column: “John Fountain works for a white newspaper. Has he confronted his white bosses… Or the system that allows police officers to continue to murder black citizens?” This is my response.
I don’t get paid that much, my brother, trust me. Not a penny’s increase over these last seven years for the 600 words I get to write in my column each week. OK, I won’t say exactly how much I make. But do you really think any amount is enough to buy the tongue, or pen, of a conscious black man?
OPINION
Even when I was a salaried journalist, rest assured that neither my steady newspaper paycheck, nor my corporate credit card or the prestige of having reached the pinnacle of American journalism could ever keep me from writing or speaking truth to power — or speaking my piece to my editors, white or black.
You have no idea the battles I’ve fought inside American newsrooms while many of my black colleagues sat mum. Trust and believe that, bruh.
And believe this: I’m still a soul brother, a Chicago ghetto boy, West Side born and bred, hot-water cornbread and collard greens fed. A brother who still remembers the pain of poverty and the plight of my people — great-great grandson of a slave. Still got my hood card.
And I am still sold out since 1989, to using my pen to make some difference in this world. To afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. For the uplift of black folks, of humanity.
Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn what you, or my editors, think — when it comes to being true to writing what I believe.
I do write what I believe, what I see, what compels me. In fact, I have a general rule that if someone asks me to write about something, I won’t. This personal canon helps me safeguard against becoming someone’s PR agent and also helps protect the integrity of my pen.
I discovered long ago, that’s all you have in journalism: your integrity, your name.
Let me assure you, bruh, that no one could ever pay me enough to write to pander, or to be silent to injustice — racial or otherwise.
There ain’t enough gold in Fort Knox to make me sell out my beliefs and love for black folks — our collective image too often portrayed by the media through a jaded kaleidoscope of pathology and poverty rather than through the prism of promise and possibility.
I recognize the value of my voice and perspective in a world where in newsrooms and on editorial boards black men aren’t even at the table — our absence by design rather than natural selection.
As a writer, I fight my belief that so much of America doesn’t give a damn what we black men think. And yet, I write.
When I write about systemic racism, discrimination and oppression, some racist white folk write to me, calling me the N-word.
When I write about black accountability, personal responsibility and self-determination, some blacker-than-thou Negroes accuse me of being an Oreo, an instrument of the “white man,” a sellout.
Years ago in a newsroom that shall remain anonymous, two black colleagues confided: “The way to make it here is it to make them think you’re an Oreo.” Black on the outside, white on the inside. Huh?
A wise sage — my mother — advised instead: “John, if you make it sitting down when you have less to lose, what will compel you to stand up when you have more to lose? Stand.”
In the words of Antwone Fisher, “I’m still standing!” LOL… And writing.
So Google, me, my brother. Pull up a chair, make yourself a big pot of coffee, and read.
Then you tell me: Do you think I’ve sold out at any price, let alone for what I get paid?
Email: Author@Johnwfountain.com
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