A friend of mine invited me to this barbecue in a small French town about an hour and a half outside of Lille.

I was surprised, but not totally surprised, to discover that this French version of a barbecue included appetizers, several courses and copious amounts of wine. The dinner was hosted by a loud Frenchmen, and was in celebration of his ten-year anniversary with his girlfriend. A long table shaded by a pavilion seated all of the thirty-something guests comfortably for the hours it took for the meal to be served and consumed.

It would have been the perfect night, a quintessentially French night, had I not felt nearly overcome with a desire to deck my host.

I'm not Bob Marley
The Frenchmen standing in front of me wants me to sign his Bob Marley CD even though, other than admiring the iconic emblem of Jamaican reggae and rastafarianism, I have absolutely nothing to do with Bob. It's a case of mistaken identity.

This slightly built Frenchmen, dressed in clothes too thin for the cool nature of this summer night in the town of Cambrai, has mistaken me for an image, something different from but just as real as a human being. It's the dreads maybe, or the dark, slightly reddish brown of my skin.

I know what I'm supposed to do.

West Philadelphia trains you not to take a lot of shit, not just because if you do, you'll become the perpetual victim of every exploiter prowling the streets, but because — if you do, you'll become a weak link in a community that needs you to be strong. The more shit you take the more everyone else has to. Never let anybody call you the n-word you are taught, even if it be through subtle implication.

It's for this very reason that black girls get on the bus in every American city doing whatever they please, popping gum, singing, talking loud and cursing like the girl in the exorcist, it's for this very reason that African-American males threaten death to anonymous passersby silly enough to bump their shoulder, step on their new white sneakers or eye their personage too long.

And it's for this very reason that, on my third night in France, when the blonde-haired Frenchmen who wanted me to sign his CD left the table and returned wearing one of those tired, fake dreadlocks wigs, I found myself clenching my fist for a right hook.

What's French for the N-word?

The N-word is intolerable, even when it looks like a ratty dread-lock wig on a drunk Frenchmen. The whole table, lubricated by wine, burst into laughter at the site of my host in his get-up.

The voices of my training spoke loud and clear: "You gonna let that white man make fun of you like that?" I could feel the vein that I inherited from my mother's side of the family throbbing just above my right temple.

I was at a crossroads. Hitting someone, unless you do it regularly, turns out to be very awkward, as awkward as making love without foreplay. I've done it a few times and, like the aforementioned awkward sex, it has the sole advantage of being over quickly.

The event, once the trauma of it stops jolting you awake at night, always makes a good story, but doing it, feeling the softness of the other guys cheek against your hard knuckles, invariably makes you feel like an ass. Remembering what it was like to hit someone made me stop to listen to the other, less extreme voice sounding inside my head, the voice that, growing up, was instrumental in keeping me out of prison and inside the blurry lines of middle-class behavior.

As I was contemplating the foot placement for a proper right hook, the voice brought up James Baldwin and Richard Wright, reminding me of how France had been a sanctuary and an asset to them. It recalled all the jazz greats who lived and made their living in places like Paris, and it brought up the beautiful Nina Simone, who seemed to love the hospitality of the French almost as much as she hated the racism of white-Mississippians.

"Maybe," the voice said, "it all means something completely different in France, maybe there's no French translation for the N-word."

I still don't know if what the voice was saying was true. But that night, I chose to believe it.

Rendell Dolen Smith

Updated 2009