Why the Historian Behind the "I Have a Black Friend" Essay Wants to Reach People Beyond His Classroom

It’s tough to create the perfect lunch-break read. Ideally, the article takes less than 30 minutes to read, and you don’t have to be an academic to understand it. Maybe it’s thought-provoking enough that you can’t concentrate on eating. Then you send it to a friend.

It’s even harder to craft a just-right lunch-break read that explains when the phrase “I have a black friend” began as a way for people accused of racism to excuse themselves. The phrase dates back to the days of American slavery, according to the essay “A Brief History of the ‘Black Friend,’”by Tyler D. Parry, associate professor of African-American studies at California State University at Fullerton. The essay appears in Black Perspectives, the blog of the African American Intellectual Society

Writing an illuminating short read that explains racism, history, and culture isn’t easy, Parry said. It takes work to explain hundreds of years of history in a few hundred words. But that work benefits the world outside a college classroom, and it should be rewarded in the tenure process, Parry said.

The Chronicle spoke with Parry about the essay and how professors can practice more public scholarship. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me why you wrote this essay. 

I’m pretty much a monthly contributor to Black Perspectives.I teach a class here at the university called “Race and Relationships,” which explores the interactions between different racial and ethnic groups, whether it be dating, friendship, or political relationships. I didn't find much on the internet as far as historical examples of this phenomenon. I kept seeing different news stories about white people who were getting in trouble for doing or saying or showing something racist. The first impulse they had was, “Well, I have black friends. I didn’t mean it that way.”

I wrote a piece about the Plantation Myth in Confederate memories, which is basically about former plantation slave-owners, men or women who lovingly recollect their times during slavery and the interactions they had with their enslaved people. And I started to wonder if they ever use the term “friend.” I went back to some of the sources, and in one that's referenced to a George Fitzhugh, he states that the enslaved people are their friends. I was kind of floored. The idea that they used the term “friend” while participating in an overtly racist system was the historical example that I needed to drive the point home. ...