On Writing What Scares You

Being Brave as a Writer

Photo by Sammie Chaffin on Unsplash

Let’s face it: Most writers in 2023 hold back from saying what they really think. Some don’t; some absolutely push full steam ahead. But I think it’s more or less axiomatic that, especially since 2016, and especially especially since 2020, it’s become some form of “taboo” to let the capital-T Truth rip.

What do I mean by this?

Well, here’s an easy example, and I’ve written fairly often about this already but here it goes again.

It’s spring, summer 2020. Asian hate attacks are dumbly, sadly on the rise. We’re being told by the liberal media—New York Times, WaPo, Vox, MSNBC, CNN, etc—that this is due to a Trump-inspired rise in “white supremacy.”

Look: it sounds good. Trump, bad. Racism, bad. White people, evil (we’d been told). So, sure, why not: 1 + 1 = 2. Right?

Wrong. I lived in Manhattan, New York City, where the bulk of these anti-Asian attacks occurred, especially in the early months of the pandemic. I saw several with my own two then-37-year-old, perfectly good eyes.

It was always Black men doing the attacking.

I know. It’s an uncomfortable truth. You don’t want reality to work that way but, damn it, it just does, at least in this case. I remember living in East Harlem and watching a 6’2 Black man with a wifebeater, gold chain, and muscles bigger than my head, walk right up to and scream at a tiny 4’10 Asian woman walking her baby in a carriage down 5^th Avenue at 130^th. What did the man scream?

Go back to China, bitch!

Yep. You heard me right. I am not pulling this out of my ass. Watch the YouTube videos of anti-Asian attacks. Almost all exclusively Black men. There was a new recent one on the NYC subway…and the attackers were Black women.

Progressives try to then swerve the narrative either into determinism-land (they’re Black and so couldn’t help themselves because they exist as non-whites in a racist white capitalist society), or else they take this tack: Due to Trump’s racist rise, the attackers have “internalized” white supremacy. (A fancy way of saying: Don’t blame them, they’re victims.)

My bigger point with all of this above is not to pick on Black people—there is no “Black people” anyway, just as there’s no “white people” but only broad populations and individuals within them—but rather to demonstrate that when bullshit arises, whether from the Left or the Right (plenty on the Right: Just watch the absurdist dark comedy that is Fox “News”), from media or from Substack or from fiction or nonfiction, Black, White, Brown or Asian, etc: It’s absolutely, 100% got to be called out.

January 6^th was anti-American, illiberal horse-shit; I have ZERO problem saying that.

Trump’s a malignant narcissist asshole.

The obsession with White Identity Politics and “anti-Wokeism” on the far-Right is ridiculous and deserves nothing but mockery.

I am perfectly content with the above statements.

But you’ve also got to call out the extremism on the other side. It takes two to tango. The Right’s extremism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Acting like a toddler and decrying the other side—“them”—and saying, But…but…THEY started it gets us absolutely NOWHERE.

Nicole Hannah Jones and the 1619 Project is revisionist history, contextual erasure and conspiracy theory.

Ibram X Kendi and Robin DeAngelo are liars making a buck on dumb people’s fantasies and almost sexual white self-hatred.

If you’re not going to have courage—guts—then what’s the point of being a writer? Perhaps you don’t see yourself or identity as “a writer.” Fine. Fair enough. Still, though: Don’t you feel that you owe it to people who read your work to be honest? In my opinion—and as a centrist free-thinker and liberal contrarian I value everybody’s ability to have an opinion in our wonderful, complex, deeply flawed yet inspiring Democracy—if you tell the truth but stay quiet on social culture war issues…you’re not up to snuff.

I’m not suggesting that writers need to be activists, in the way Orwell felt all writers were inherently political whether consciously or not and that in his time in the first half of the 20^th century it was impossible to be a writer and not also a strong, rabid anti-Totalitarian; rather what I mean is that you should call bullshit when and where you see it. This doesn’t have to exclusively be political, but often it is. Sometimes it’s very much social, cultural, psychological, etc.

Which brings me back to my original intent and point here: Writing honestly.

Look, it’s tough. Most writers are soft-skinned; sensitive. I am. Often when I am about to post something—full essay or note—I feel ashamed, guilty, terrified, deeply worried. My hands sometimes literally shake. (Seriously.) Why? I know that deep down I am, besides being wildly flawed, definitely a good person. I didn’t always believe that. It wasn’t until I got sober in 2010 that I could honestly face myself in the mirror, internally as well as externally, symbolically as well as literally. Doing the 12 steps helped. Therapy helped. Meditation. Self-love came, slowly, over time.