On Sept. 10, I cracked a smile for the first time all day as I coasted down the service road away from my Austin home. “Okay,” I thought, “I’ve gotten rid of all my toxic coping mechanisms. So now what?” I don’t remember what it was in particular that had made me reach my breaking point. Perhaps it was some post about white supremacist violence or the stress of making sure my mother and I had enough money for the month’s expenses, but I gripped the steering wheel and felt as though I would never know what it is like to feel safe in this world.

I had been expecting a day like this to come, as I had been emotionally stable for at least a week. It was about time that I was sad again. A week later, when it was time for me to be happy, I sat down with my partner and spent a couple of hours maligning the movie Big Hero 6. 

If you don’t remember, Big Hero 6 is that Disney film from a few years back where an inflatable healthcare robot named Baymax becomes a superhero. It was my first time watching it since seeing it in theatres. The animators and designers did a wonderful job; it’s a great film by many metrics, and I didn’t like it at all. As I ranted to my partner about this perfectly charming children’s movie, I made a list in my mind of all the magazines I might be able to sell a story about it to. “How can I get paid for my thoughts on this 6-year-old film with middling cultural significance?” I wondered. As a personal essay writer, every mundanity of my life has the potential to end up in a story for public consumption. I pushed my hand into my thick hair and sighed. I figured the most guaranteed paycheck was to explain how superhero movies are connected to American racism and imperialism. 

“Damn,” I thought. “I don’t want to do that.”

When the uprisings against police brutality started back in May, Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility were sold out everywhere. Both books somewhat bill themselves as explainers for white people who want to better themselves. It’s important work, and there is historical precedent for the value of those kinds of books. But I recall having mixed feelings seeing my white peers talk so much about Racism 101. The conversations dealt with the same clumsy “progressive” thoughts about race I had had at 16. I remember thinking: “All in all, what was the point of that nigga Obama?”

Around that time, Kiese Laymon, a writer who is unabashed with his love for Black people, appeared on The Stacks Podcast hosted by Traci Thomas. Thomas asked Laymon how he felt about his books selling out alongside explainers like Kendi’s. “No disrespect to the people who do the how-to’s,” he said. “But shit, I’m a fucking artist, bruh.”

“My art would be shit if my responsibility was to educate white people who didn’t listen to James Baldwin,” he said. “Because you know what? None of us writing these books are going to be able to write them shits better than James Baldwin.”

I listened to that line for the first time as I packed up my stuff to move back into my mother’s home. I shot my fist into the air and did a celebratory hop onto my bed. It felt like I was hearing a conversation meant for me. 

My friend Ukairo, a Black filmmaker out at the University of Southern California, called me the other day. I laid on the floor next to my twin bed, as we laughed at all the unfunny things about life right now. Our tangents had tangents as we smiled about the stress from police killings, our panic attacks, and the perception of our respective art. I recall loving that I didn’t have to explain my thoughts more than I wanted to, his shared experience filling in the gaps. 

Not long ago, I published my first big story. It was a piece disavowing my ties to white liberalism and the social elite of Austin. I like to think that I didn’t write that story to appeal to white liberals. I certainly didn’t write it for the political elite I was disavowing. But I always try to be aware of when I might be catering to whiteness by explaining the basics of Black humanity.

In a country that doesn’t inherently value Black humanity, there’s money to be made justifying and explaining Black existence to a white audience. My white liberalism piece felt like something I needed to do for myself. But since then, I can’t say the realities of my life haven’t tempted me to earn some quick cash writing Racism 101 stories aimed at white folks.

Over the past few years, I’ve tagged in many different reasons for doing the work I do. My favorite messages I got in response to my liberalism piece were from other young Black people who had found themselves in similar situations. I hesitate to name them as the reason for my writing. It sounds more selfless than I feel. But for now, I am left wondering: can I make a living and reach all the Black kids who don’t know what it is like to feel safe in this world?