Here, I diverged. It wasn’t that Obama himself had smothered or suppressed radical thinking but rather that his presence, for society at large, had sucked much of the air out of the room when it came to the discussion of racial issues. That dynamic began to change in 2012 when Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman and after Zimmerman was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges just days before Belafonte spoke. That acquittal and the Black Lives Matter movement that it produced would change Obama and his presidency, including being the genesis for one of Obama’s enduring legacies: the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance.
But the point about the dampening of radical thought was woven throughout Belafonte’s talk, and it was the part I remembered most. “Where are the radical thinkers?” he demanded.
He explained that at that stage in his life, he spent most of his time “encouraging young people to be more rebellious, to be more angry, to be more aggressive in making those who are comfortable with our oppression uncomfortable.”
It was a warm July day, so after that session, I decided to walk back to The Times’s offices, and as I did, Belafonte’s question kept repeating in my head. The reality seized me that I had been playing much too small as a writer, covering and commenting on society and its systems rather than truly challenging them. I was at peril of being serenaded to sleep by professional vanities. I was squandering an opportunity and a responsibility.
Belafonte’s question lived with me henceforth and changed what I wrote and how I wrote it, and a few years ago, it spurred me to write my most recent book, “The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto.” It was the thesis of that book, reversing the Great Migration to consolidate Black power in a few Southern states, that prompted my own move to Atlanta.
I’ve written several columns that mentioned Belafonte, and he invariably called me afterward. I wrote an appreciation of the remarkable lives of him and his best friend, Sidney Poitier, around their 90th birthdays. (They were born a week apart.) A portion of my book that was excerpted in The Times included Belafonte’s inspiration. And I wrote a column last year on Poitier’s death.
Each time, Belafonte expressed his thanks. As I write this, I only hope that I was clear to him in response that I was the one who was thankful. That he had helped me clarify my thinking and my mission at a time when I was at risk of treating them as trifles.