A Mixed Experience: Thoughts on Black Lives Matter
B
September 2020
I wrote this to myself almost 4 months ago then tabled it. I am aware that many of these themes are being elsewhere discussed and explored; this word flurry was an effort to flush my thoughts and I did not know then that I’d be showing this to you. Like many I was ablaze and trying to control it, writing sometimes helps with that. Maybe sharing will, too.
In the time since I’ve seen dang-near every red that I know. Firey fumey red, rosey colored glasses red. Righteous red, scorching gun barrel red, then tempered, simmered late night coals under marshmallows and light bullcrap banter red. Shock-snapped awake at 2am to ballistic lost-roar my motorcycle at redlined RPM’s through the mountains red, followed by cigarette cherry red and subsequent drunken sailor red. The future is so smite I gotta wear shades red, uninspi(red), grit my teeth until the gums bleed red-red, and soul sick, stranger in a strange land, coward-seeking soliloquies until red-rip-fizzled, Giles Corey smashed, bereft & utterly sputterly ti(red). What a pile. Classes finished and there I was under the granite quilt, padded by 10lbs of ice cream and rockin’ 20% more salt amidst locks of disheveled pepper.
As school came to a close, a friend’s daughter took her life. This had been preceded by the loss of two inner circle legends, then as of a few weeks ago the additional passing of someone near and dear. I’d say that’s where the downward swirl shifted, the sound changed and words trickled in both sad and appropriate, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Maybe there was a snap, or a grumble from beyond the trees signaling an end to hibernation, a “barbaric Yawp!” or a wind whistling through tumbleweeds clearing off the road & away from the jangled heel strike of m’boot spur headed for a showdown. Whatever it was, it grew me. Maybe the burn, the red, was necessary for growth, as is nature’s way. I want the world to change, for folks to be clear-eyed and empowe(red). I am changing. I hope you are, too.
#emerson #whitman #tothelightofyournightstand
L
I waited a week before I watched but of course I’d heard about it. I knew I couldn’t take it, a lot the plate, you know? Post-COVID work starting again, class assignments stacking up, heated themes mounting on social media- just had to step back. Then when I thought I was ready I searched it, saw it, stomach dropped as I got the references to the phrases, then shut down. Couldn’t focus at work, collapsed, retracted, stewed and saw red. In the time since I’ve had friends and family reaching out & checking in, people I didn’t anticipate hearing from just saying hello, sharing stories and being supportive. I asked them, “what do I do, what do we do?” They said to “say something, anything. Tell a story, tell yours, let it out. Start there and see what follows.” Fair advice. Take it or leave it, here it goes:
Her words come to me a lot, always have. The spirit and humor, crassness. I talk about her at work, have 2 of her favorite books on my shelf and her old wooden hammer next to the books. She was a cruel person, let’s get that right out, but she was my Grandma and she treated me right. She called me regularly when I was in college, talked to me about writing. She was working on a book up until she died, a pseudo-autobiography discussing her upbringing, shedding light on the untold story of her mother’s rape as a mulatto caretaker into whom a male employer had advantaged himself when 14 years old before being unceremoniously sent away. She knew I liked writing, too. I wanted to buy her a computer so she wouldn’t have to type on that old word processor. As the arthritis got bad we talked about me typing for her, she’d laugh and say “you ‘bout the only person I’d trust on that!”
#stories #truestory #blackstories #tellyourstory #writing #hillbillymantamer #georgefloyd #grandmashands #hertoo
A
She was light-skinned but she let you know she wasn’t passing, unless of course she had to. She told me back in the day she’d go apartment hunting without Dad or Uncle Doug so she’d get the rental, and how sometimes later they’d get the boot once she was seen for what she was, what they were. Those neighborhoods found reasons easily. A sudden need for renovation of her particular unit was easily the most popular, along with the coincidental unavailability of the other vacant units.
I didn’t get it, the point of her stories and lectures, not till later, but more again now. Why did I need to know 'who I was,’ ‘where I came from,’ what ‘my history’ was, or ‘why I was special,’ who my Black friends were, why I had a ‘responsibility to my people.’ Why’d she have that warm affectionate laugh when calling me her “secret weapon” with “the golden ticket?” It was the late 80’s and into the 00’s, was all that still necessary?
People who don’t much look like anything still get noticed for something eventually- a manner of speech or body language, type of humor, a take on life, something. Others don’t know what you are but they’ve picked up on that something. With me it’s typically following a series of somethings I said that “sounded Black,” so they'll ask, “dude Jesse, sometimes you say things, I dunno, kinda.. Black?" Or maybe 10 times now it’s been, “maaan, you don’t but you do totally remind me of Will Smith. This is weird, but are you Black?” When I tell them they typically don’t believe me so I’ll show a photo and get a “whoaa, no way!” Afterwards I generally get treated better, albeit a bit more carefully at first. Caucasians often apologize if they think they might have said something offensive in past conversations. POC males relax a shade but not by much, that takes some time. POC women shed 50% of that guard almost immediately, especially Black women. Their shoulders drop, a smile creeps on, the language kicks a few notches below formal, and if I’m lucky I’ll get a head-toss clap-point with an “ahhhh! [clap!] I knew it! See you don’t be foolin’ me [stern point]” That’s my favorite, takes me to a warm place every time.
#stories
C
If I had a Black coworker or something in a story, Neil would say, “you get the nod?” The nod, man, that’s a good feeling. Clearly I don’t get that often. I remember it happening earlier on, but mainly starting in high school. My friend Tanisha used to get her ass stranded on the other side of town, chasing some dude or marooned at an afterparty. She’d call at like 1am every 2 months or so, whispering all quiet on some janky phone,
“Jesse. Come git me or I’m busted.”
Rolling my eyes I’d write down the address, toe out the door, push my Cadillac out the driveway, start it in the street, drive across town for that damn woman. I was 16 & barely knew her the first time, I guess she had my number from a school project? We’d certainly never kicked it. I rolled up and she snuck into the car, and I go “What you callin’ my house for at 1am, and where the hell am I!?”
“Aw thanks Jess [cheesy smile],” then she looks over with a “Buahahaha! No you don’t!” [banging on the dash] Buahahaha!! I’m weaaak! See THAT’s why I called YOU!” pointing to my head & screeching like a banshee. See I’d rolled out of bed so quick and half asleep I didn’t know I still had the rag on my head, keeping my hair flat for the morning.
It was the 90’s and most dudes who could at least tried to go half Cobain, mine just took a little more processing, product, and night + midday flattening than the next kid. I slept with a handkerchief on my head for 4 years, wore a backwards cap anytime I wasn’t in class, at the table or someplace proper, all for 7-10hrs of curly but organized mixed hair that could not be touched, nor withstand a gust of wind nor any amount of water or sweat or heat or humidity without frizzing skyward & blowfishing outward. Headaches developed after the first year, I’d keep Aleve next to the bed for that. It was the headaches and the fear I was receding my hairline from the constant pulled-back pressure to my forehead that caused me to fervently clip it myself that summer after 11th grade. It’s been short ever since, and look Ma, no mo’ headaches.
Me: “Man shut up, you called me why!?”
T: “BUAHAHAHA” [head-toss-clap!] “‘cuz you Black!”
#stories #wavecap
K
I remember it as starting the next day but who knows. We had maybe 20 Black kids at my high school? 30? I didn’t know them but they started to somehow know me. Maurice was our big football star, bad and buff, sleek and cool, and Black. He wasn’t a bully, but a high school untouchable, meaning you didn’t make eye contact and kept distance in the hallway if you were sophomore scum. He’s riled with his dudes this day, jokin’ and smackin’ when he kinda slows up near me, so I look. He hits me with the 1/2 inch chin nod and a clear “Sup Jesse.” His friends and him go on slammin’ down the breezeway and I hear one saying, “you know that dude?” Maurice hits back serious, “naw man, but he’s cool.” Then I’m out at the bus stop (car is broken down), and Sheree crowds me on the bench with a hug and “Jesseeee!” Her friends look confused and go quiet (me too, she’s a friend of Tanisha’s but I don’t know her). She cranes her neck back to them, “oh chill, he’s one of Us.”
The nod, the “I see you” acknowledgement. Pretty cool when you look like me. Doesn’t mean you’ve got a new best friend or anything, but it means they’ll keep an eye out. We do the same on motorcycles, a nod or a point when passing another on the road. Kinda like, ‘I see you out here, not sure who else does, it's different and rad and kinda dangerous, right? I respect you for being out here, too, what with the all the assholes and everything, nevertheless this is awesome. Blessings and good day.’
You’re out there against the elements on a motorcycle, constantly scanning for potholes, gravel, rebalancing from breezes, rain, oil slicks, dodging people who don’t see you or don’t care. The occasional road rager who swerves toward you on purpose to be a dick, because they have no dick, you deal with them, too. The motorcycle nod or point is a half-second gesture letting you know that they know, too. They don’t know you but they know there’s a commonality, an understanding of the difference between motorcycle riding and driving a car. Cultural positives, life-threatening negatives, with one of the glaring differences being that motorcycle riding is a hobby.
#stories #mixednation
L
Another time I’m at a party and when I step out to leave I see two peeps I don’’t know making out against the side of my Cadillac. I tap the hood as I walk up, letting them know [ahem] I’m heading out. The fella was like “oh hey, uh sorry about that- nice ride. You’re Jesse, yeah? Man, would you mind giving my lady a lift home? I’ve been drinking, she’s got to get up for work.” I’m like “sure,” and he hits me with the nod then looks at her and says, “see, told you.” Or Alex, the Mexican version of Maurice, when he joined the jazz group. I didn’t know him, another senior to my sophomore, but I was confident in my space. I see him in the warm-up room and with a smirk I’m like, “you lost or somethin’ man?” Without skipping a beat he caps “whatever, you’re here, aren’t you” with a wry nod.
Other POC minorities feel you when you’re mixed, I guess they know that you know that things are different, which is a free 1/2 pass no matter what flavor of different that may be. Frankie and Hector start sitting next to me in Geometry; Ayo offers me one of his signature toothpicks in Spanish; Christy (who only messes with non-White boys and is tired of Ayo’s toothpicks), asks for a ride home (when the car is working) and gives me her number. Then she’s at Josh’s a month later and tells me with a straight face that if I’m still a virgin at the end of summer, she’d make sure I wouldn’t start junior year that way.
I barely knew Neil then, we had some friends in common and had rubbed elbows at a friend’s house once or twice, then at random he became my best friend in 2hrs.. in the time between school ending at 2:35pm to the time his Mom screeched into the Subway parking lot up the street from his house in that Dodge Intrepid at 4:35pm, with her unforgettable arrow-tipped “where the F*CK have you been!?” we had connected on family, food, art, music, separated parents, and a mixed experience. Most of this was unspoken yet I could plainly feel that he was just like me- more of a bridge than a part of any world.
#stories #cadillac #mixednation #mixedexperience #sameplanetdifferentworlds #intrepid
I
Obviously POC friendships aren’t inherently better, and not all my best pals are mixed or POC, but the ones that were/are happened a lot faster or are still around today, or at the very least shaped my comfort zones. In Death Valley it was Travis- half Chinese/Hawaiian; then we moved to the Sierra Foothills and I met John Paul Gutierrez, my first quintessential true blood-brother best friend- half Mexican. They spoke Spanish at home unless guests were over, I always envied that. We moved to Sacramento and it was Madesh was at school- Indian; and at home my fictive kin sibs next door, Amanda and Paul Takemoto. Their father was born in America in a post-WWII internment camp when suspected communist Japanese Americans were being rounded up (though any Asian American fit the bill, really), his parents got nabbed. 3 of my 6 girlfriends have been mixed or Black, first kiss was Black, best friend is Black, even now my therapist is Black.
You hear me up there, Grandma!? Damn!
I have a pretty strict policy on not connecting with clients/patients on social media, whether during my 7 years as a massage therapist or my now 5th year as an acupuncturist. I’d periodically get requests and kindly decline with a short message as to why (it isn’t illegal or anything, I just prefer to keep a line between my professional and personal selves). In those 12 years I have allowed only 4 exceptions: 2 Black, 1 Mexican, and 1 Caucasian just a few days ago. All were obviously cool as crud as baseline criteria but if I’m putting an honest thought to it, having just come to this 12 year realization while typing this paragraph, I felt it was somehow necessary with the POC folks that we connected and stuck together, and that I experienced a more subliminal comfort with them. Whether this be mere coincidence, I do not know.
#stories #grandmashands #letsstaytogether #fictivekin #manyriverstocross #civilrights #peopleofcolor #poc
V
In college you had the choice, at least in California, to take transferable core classes from a typical American perspective or from an African American perspective or Latino, Mexican American, Chicano Perspective. These options were not regularly pressed but after double checking with my school counselor that it was legit, I went for it. I took US History from the African American perspective and African American Literature for my cores. Grandma loved that, picking my brain on Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Maya, and W.E.B. DuBois, breakin’ down the break down of Danny Glover’s Walter Younger vs. Danny Glover’s Albert Johnson, etc.
My sister, too, had her influences. Aiyana had decent grades but got into UC Santa Cruz by checking the box and was subsequently placed in an intentionally culturally diversified dormitory her first year (a cool thing). She majored in Theater Arts and performed in many plays of mixed themes that we’d drive out to see. It was her performance of Fences that was my first exposure to that story, we were quite proud. She’d lived abroad in Venezuela the year prior to starting college and came back tan and freckled as hell, independent, fluent in Spanish, ready to kick ass on and off stage. Her first long term boyfriend being a swell dude named Rigo, born in Mexico City (though his Spanish sucked). Since college every career-worthy gig was non-profit, family owned, or has intentionally served African Americans, minorities or women, putting that Spanish to good use in our wonderfully mixed United States.
Bless her heart, she was on the marketing team for the downtown Portland, OR theater prior to COVID. She’d been so pumped for that job.. alas, let go. Everyone was. There’ll be no theater for a while folks, no matter where you are.
#stories #affirmativeaction #paulbeatty #nathanmccall #alanlomax #makesmewannaholler #fences #africanamericanperspective #alexhaley #thesoulsofblackfolk #blackboy #itsgonrainonyohead #sistaremembayoname
E
She and I are 26% Black, which is more than the One Drop needed to be Black and segregated well into the 1900’s. This may seem ridiculous to mention in 2020 but know your history and what it means.
Let’s use the great state of Arkansas (AR) for a representative sample with their act 320 of 1911, which made “interracial cohabitation” a felony, as well as defining a “Negro” as a person having “any Negro blood whatsoever.” One may read old laws as irrelevant as they’ve been long since been repealed, right? Wrong. This law was never repealed. It did insidiously disappear, however, from the law books in 1975 with the passage of Act 280, which rewrote the laws for extramarital sex and no longer defined race in terms of ancestry. But was it ever ratified or officially acknowledged as antiquated then officially removed? Nope- it just conveniently disappeared from where it had been conveniently retained all those years.
Maybe they didn’t notice? Maybe no one knew better? Hmmm. University of AR School of Law was established in 1924, plenty of eyes on that sh*t over the years & looking right on past it. Just one of the many examples of legal priorities and don’t-give-a-darns pre, during, and post Civil Rights movement from folks who both make the laws as well as their careers in upholding them. Let’s just ignore LA to be polite, who didn’t release their grip on One Drop until 1983. That’s right, two years into this writer’s glorious little life.
#stories #onedrop #history #blackhistory #knowyourhistory #separatebutequal #rainbowcoalition #roots #bloodfraction #whiteprivilege #legaldiscrimination #theynoticed
S
26%. Such a friggin’ fraction, besides I’m as white as mayonnaise sandwiches so who cares, yeah? Whelp good old Thomas Jefferson cared, not that it mattered. Mr. Lawyer, founding father and 3rd president of the United States is said to have fathered SIX mixed-race children with Sally Hemmings, a slave who was 25% Black. All of those 1/8th children were born into slavery. Two died, two he risked his ass to free illegally, and the other two he freed posthumously in his will. But that fool died in 1826, you say? Jesse make your point?
Zipping back to the 1900’s, Jim Crow laws reached their greatest influence during the decades from 1910 to 1930. TN adopted a One Drop statute in 1910, and LA soon followed. Then TX and AR in 1911, MI in 1917, NC in 1923, VA in 1924, AL and GA in 1927. During this same period, FL, IN, KN, MD, MI, NA, ND, and UT retained their previous and varied "Blood Fraction" statutes but amended these fractions to 1/16 (6%) and 1/32 (3%) to be more closely equivalent to the other Drops.
The “point” is subsequent generational restriction of advancement. You invest? Let money grow off them dividends? You need access to a bank account to do that. “Free” Blacks, measured by the Drop, were legally then illegally denied those. Want to buy a house, a property, build a home on a plot of land? You need a loan for that. Blacks measured by the Drop were legally then illegally denied those, too. Is there generational income that paid for your education, did your Great Grandpa go to school? A person needs to be able to read for that. My Great Grandma Julia was born in the mid-1910’s and had what was considered a “good career” raising White folks’ kids for a living. She couldn’t read or write, could only sign her name and barely that. She had no education, couldn’t go, had to work because her parents weren’t educated either, nor the parents before them. Without access to or trust in White banks, and with limited options for career growth, money was scraped the hard way, went uninvested, and was never enough to save or pass down in the first place.
M
The Point 👉🏽 Great Grandma Julia was the woman largely responsible for raising Dad and Uncle Doug for months at a time over the course of many years in NY, NC, SC and Washington, DC. This means they weren’t read to at night or helped with their homework, or watched over while she was out working multiple jobs to make ends meet.
(This is where the neighborhood steps in, where “we won’t forget the struggle/streets” comes from. The concept is lost on some as a low brow Black phrase, but it refers to the village mentality required to make it. Everyone was out workin’ they asses off for the basics & couldn’t be home with their own kids. So the neighbors, the street, the block, the hood, did half the damn raising. Perhaps this illuminates why gentrification is so damaging. Moving into an area and moving people out breaks up the family.. a family that was formed by not being paid the wage that’s now allowing you to buy a house in their neighborhood that they themselves can’t afford but have been renting for who knows how long.)
One of Great Grandma Julia’s trademark phrases was “if I ain’t got but a crusta’ bread, I’m gon’ give you half.” Sometimes that crust was a quarter for Dad and Uncle Doug to get cokes and candy while she’s off to work on a Greensboro, NC day. One such day was during that 1960 summer..
Anybody? Anyone? 🤚?
Yes, the Greensboro sit-ins were taking place and Julia was full of “aw shits” and “hell naw’s” over her boys playing out of sight or going anywhere near it. But she’d leave it to God as she went to doin’ laundry, scrubbin’ White kids’ backs, makin’ their beds & feeding ‘em sandwiches while Blacks sat in Whites-Only sections across town, making the whole state a tense place to be, while her two Black boys were out looking for a place to spend their uninvested quarter on cokes and candy.
#stories #housenegro #hellnaw #greensborofour #woolworthsitin #civilrights #historylesson #segregation
A
THE POINT: Generational trauma & the cost of freedom.
▪️That’s my Great Grandma Julia, I knew her. She lived with us for 4 years when I was in high school. Everyone on my block knew her; she’d developed dementia and frequently tried to run away with a packed suitcase, but she was family and our neighbors (village) stepped up to help. Even with her cognition at half-mast she knew a few things, like the verses to all known Southern biblical hymns, oh and also, never to trust White people.
▪️That’s my Grandma Baynard, I knew her. She was the only interactive Grandparent I had, talked to me about all topics, including Black history, music, and writing while stuffing my freckles full of soul food and sweet tea. She was the product of her mother’s teen rape by a wealthy White (and married with children) untouchable, grew up without a bio-Dad nor any knowledge of who her mother was until she herself was a teen. Light-skinned but culturally Black she was judged by everyone; desired by men, hated by women, likely confused about guidance and role models. No wonder she had been so cruel.
▪️That’s my Dad, dude raised me. He went to 18 schools by the time he finished high school, a result of his Mom regularly leaving and coming back as she joined the military, found work, lost work, went to college (GI bill), frequently plucking/re-planting into better and better neighborhoods for her boys to grow up in while riding the kinks of her own traumas. Who you think those rolled down to?
▪️ This is me, Mr. Mayonnaise, unaffected by White judgment and available to its privilege by sight but not blind enough to want it, nor seasoned enough to benefit from it, nor dumb enough to render it as valuable. One could say we are the first, my sister and I, to be “free.” Being the first I guess we’re not entirely sure how it’s supposed to work. Black history has a lot of confusion regarding place, acceptance and belonging. Perhaps in that way Black history is the Black present for both the brown and the not-so-brown. Restricted are the former, guilted are the latter, as our freedom is essentially an exchange for skin color, and we know it.
#stories #desco
T
It’s different being a minority. All minority groups have stories and most of them are hardcore. Women, Latin American, Asian American, Lord knows Native American, Caucasian mixes are definitely included. It just so happens that this particular group of minorities, spanning from abducted African -> Slave -> Negro -> Colored -> African American -> Black American, has been physically, legally, economically, socially, and generationally beaten, abused, marginalized and consistently undervalued with media, propaganda, and ethnic brainwashing to boot. People come and go in the game of progress, and progress is constantly being made, but dammit someone always seems to have to DIE for it. Terribly, publicly, painfully. We are pissed.
The NAACP lists THOUSANDS of documented lynchings between 1882 and 1968. Sprinkles of these parts of “history” are taught in school, holidays given, quotes shared on social media to the point where you aaalmost think it’s impossible for public murders lacking immediate accountability to occur in 2020, yet BOOM. BOOM(s). And boom boom boom.. It’s not history when the things Black people know and are trying to forgive and move on from are still Right Here. Who and what matters in the world of justice is NEVER gone from a Black person’s mind. If this is new to you, welcome to the party. PS we been outta beer for a stretch. Y’all mind throwing in? PPS stay longer than a few songs this time.
If lowly Old 26% and Passing Jess can whip this out of his ass on a Tuesday, just imagine what real Black people have to say. Every single Black adult has a story. Think on that. I could go on and on: Mom shunned from her family for being with Dad and vice versa; pals thrown onto cop car hoods for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; Dad sued his employer, USAA, for racial discrimination in 1991 and won. Know what that takes? 5 years, for starters. Possibly his marriage. It was found he’d been passed over for 127 qualified promotions; I have the highest level of education in my entire family tree and root system. Contributions from generational income that made that possible? $0.00.
#radioraheem #stories
T
I like to write (or not shut up, as it were) but my girlfriend has a superlative gift for words and language, a remarkable style. What polaroids are to candids, Cherry Stoute is to the art of writing- oddly perfect every time. Yet while I was commended and supported for my words in high school & college, hers were being flagged by teachers and coaches for plagiarism. Not because her work bore similarity to others mind you, but because they’d been too bloody good for what was expected of her. She easily disproved the allegations by submitting samples of her poetry and short stories, she’d been writing for years and had hundreds at the ready. Nevertheless as my professors pushed me to write or teach or share my abilities, her guidance figures suggested she pursue a career that would make “better use” of her abilities.
Abilities.
To this day she holds the #1 Dominica 🇩🇲 record in 60m sprint and #2 for Javelin throw. She’d been recruited and was on full USA scholarship because since the age of 13 she’d been blastin’ 20-year olds in Track & Field events throughout the West Indies. At the time of her investigation for plagiarism she was training 7 days a week as a prime Olympic candidate. She’d been a teacher back home, her words used as lyrics by recording artists, she can hold her own in several languages & will quote classic novels while dunking on you.
She’d expressed her life-interest in literature, that sports agility had been largely incidental due to the physical demand of island upbringing, yet her coach and college counselor ushered her into Hospitality Management for her major, you know, to make better use of her abilities. It’s still hard for her to mention, taking that advice. “I was young and new to the USA, I assumed they knew what was best for me.” Add to that the standard list of being followed in stores, asked to empty her purse, preemptively told “we don’t take EBT” when checking out, face-planted by cops when simply out walking during the time of a protest she wasn’t even a part of, and you have yourself another unseen and common story of being Black in America.
#abovetherim #belowthebelt #institutionalinequality
E
In the nowaday USA almost all of us have an oppressive/immigration story that tells how our families came to be. This isn’t taking from your story, this movement. Just please understand that while your Grand/Great-Grandparents may have struggled with the English language or jobs, or were pushed into neighborhoods for gerrymandering or worse, or were passed over and not recognized for their American contributions.. they were not additionally strung from trees by the thousands, dragged by cars, intentionally kept ignorant for free labor and the breeding & selling of their offspring, then reluctantly set “free” to a limited rights world to be employed for more rounds of rape/devaluation, then re-strung up (locked up) for perceived slights to any of it. They’re also not still being disproportionately killed to this very day when compared to other ethnic populations.
Most pertinently: WHAT TO DO NOW? After much introspection I have whittled this down to 3 phrases and a foolproof quiz:
Phrases to Choose From
️
Applied Bravery
(meaning this matters, I will risk self: actively assists)
Applied Bystander
(meaning this matters but I’m busy & tired: barely helps)
Applied Cowardice
(meaning this matters but I will not risk self: does nothing)
QUIZ
Use brutal honesty to answer each of the following questions with a phrase from above:
In the fight for Civil Rights, how did my parents respond?
In the fight for Civil Rights, how have I responded?
In the fight for Civil Rights, how will I respond going forward? (write your answer to this on the line below)
_______________________________________________________
Now pick an issue that you find to be of absolute importance in your life. Pick from the phrase list to answer:
How do I want the people of the world to approach this issue?
Use your own words to explain what it means if the world doesn’t respond with the first phrase?
ACTIVITY
Take your written answer from question #3, go to a mirror, look yourself in the face and say aloud:
“I promise to use _________________ [insert phrase] as my approach to Civil Rights, because this matters, and the Black community needs more _________________ [same phrase] in their corner right now.”
Now you know, if you were wondering, how much this matters to you.
#blmquiz #realitycheck #maninthemirror #rootdown #andifyadontknownowyaknow
R
One of the phrases the Old Man said to me as a child was, “I don’t call you son because you shine, I call you son because you mine.” Depending on his mood he may flip the two verses for an altered meaning.
Looking the way I do I have many times over the years called on Dad to answer my questions. Mom, too. I am so thankful to have them. One such recent topic was the terminology of Mixed vs. Black and what the hell am I? “Why is it controversial,” I asked to Dad, “to say I’m Mixed instead of Black, when Black is not my color and Mixed more appropriately suits both my appearance and ethnicity? My skin IS white after all and I’m mostly German?” He texted the following message:
“Let me keep this simple and real for you. When you’re with the general company of Black folks, you, my son, are African American. When you are with mostly White folks you are mixed. Most African Americans are mixed really, but when we are together, united, we are Black. Get it?”
I did. He later called to clarify:
“Son, you know our history, language, music, food, literature, joys and sorrows, call and response. You have our humor, cadence, power and soul. That’s our culture and it is yours. You do not, nor will you ever, have the Black Experience- that is true. I am sorry if you do not feel fully part of us at times, but you do have an advantage. Because you are how you are you will see what we can never see. You have influence. People will listen to you when they aren’t hearing us, when they’re too busy seeing us. You’re, uh, kind of our secret weapon.” My Dad, dude can break it down. He wraps it up:
“You know, I don’t call you son because you mine, I call you son because you shine.” [I smile into the phone] “And also, you got them clog-ass dancing legs from Germany.” [ahhhhh! - clap!]
🙅🏾♀️🕺🏼
Mookie was mixed up when learning to Do The Right Thing. Maybe we all are and maybe that’s ok, but it is not ok to stop trying.
And by trying I mean talking.
And by talking I mean doing.
And by doing I mean The Right Thing.
You hearin’ me, Grandma!? Damn!
#stories #blacklivesmatter #dotherightthing #forvalerie