Sidney Poitier and I (and no, I never met him)

 There are elements of this blog that may tend to portray me in a less-than-flattering light, but that’s OK (I think). I’ve decided that, nevertheless, it’s a story worth telling.

Years ago when I was a teenager — OK, many years ago — my family and I were visiting my father’s relatives in rural west Tennessee. Somehow, Sidney Poitier came up as a topic of conversation. 

“He’s not a (n-word)” one male relative (not my father) opined.

“Why, he’s as black as ...” said the other (also not my father).

“But he’s not a (n-word),” responded the first. 

Translation: The only thing worse than a black man is an uppity black man, one who speaks English better than we do.

Now, did I challenge this blatant racism and use of a vile epithet, coming from members of my own extended family? No. I was a teenager taught to respect my elders, was a guest on their turf, and held genuine affection for both men. That said, their bigotry, and my tolerance of it, was as wrong then as now.

My late mother, California-born (not that there’s no bigotry in California) was perhaps the only person who could challenge her in-laws on their racist views without being pilloried for it. I don’t remember for sure, but I’m assuming she wasn’t present on the front porch when the above exchange took place.

I was reminded of that exchange, of course, by Poitier’s recent death. And here’s yet another thing that may not reflect on me kindly.

Because of Poitier’s erudition, his beautiful command of the language, I’d sort of assumed that he’d grown up either in a mixed-race environment or in a well-off Black enclave somewhere in the U.S. 

I was surprised to learn that instead he’d been the son of Bahamian tomato farmers and had to scratch and claw his way to becoming the great and celebrated actor he became. His beautiful speech, I came to learn, was a skill acquired over time through hard work. 

The many obituary/appreciation stories that have been written since Poitier’s death have noted his efforts, often with his longtime friend Harry Belafonte, to combat racism. With no room for argument, he and his work paved the way for African-American actors who followed.

Yet, that didn’t stop some in America’s Black community from portraying him as, well, not Black enough.

“... The issue boiled down to why I wasn't more angry and confrontational,” Poitier wrote in his autobiography, The Measure of a Man. “New voices were speaking for African-Americans, and in new ways. Stokely Carmichael, H Rap Brown, the Black Panthers. According to a certain taste that was coming into ascendancy at the time, I was an 'Uncle Tom', even a 'house Negro', for playing roles that were non-threatening to white audiences, for playing the 'noble Negro' who fulfills white liberal fantasies.”

In writing this paragraph, I must first acknowledge that I have not been Black for so much as a nanosecond. Yet, the opinions expressed by Poitier’s African-American critics struck me as reverse racism and almost as bigoted in their own way as those expressed by my Tennessee relatives (and unchallenged by me) more than five decades ago. 

Fortunately, the high praise that followed his death at age 94 has put Poitier’s life and career in the perspective that it deserves. 

To those now-deceased relatives of mine — and to me, still alive if not kicking — I would say, this was a man who transcended race. 

And yet, who in his blackness was a man who advanced a cause.