Being Reactionary Isn’t Exactly Solving the Problem

On September 20, 2006, a report aired on abc, which is still available at www.abcnews.go.com that detailed how people's resumes that contained "Black-sounding" names were promptly discarded –no matter how qualified the applicant. What was Black people's response? I distinctly remember picking up a Commercial Appeal, and reading a Black opinion columnist who suggested that Black people should stop naming their children such ghetto-sounding, ethnic names. That seemed to be the general, reactionary, solution to the problem among Black people in the Memphis area. When I started showing in my pregnancy, people would casually walk up to me and say, "Be sure to name your child something white so he can get a job when he grows up." And in anger, I would respond, "I'm fool enough to believe that his father and I did not make all of those sacrifices to become an electrical engineer and a Ph.D.-level, respectively, for my son to have to go begging white folk for a job in 25 years." People could not understand my anger, because they thought they were giving me helpful, though unsolicited, advice.

Here was my thought process on this. Every day, I see people from other countries with Arabic, Latino, East Indian, Samoan, and etc. names. Nobody asks those groups to change their names so that they may obtain better employment. Yet, due to discrimination and also America's long history of taunting African Americans with the "model minority," they can get better jobs and small business loans than the average African American who is out there really struggling to make upward, vertical economic advancement. It is assumed that someone with the last name Ly is simply smarter, and therefore, more deserving of college admission and scholarships than Jamal Anderson.

Now, I'm not writing this to start animosity between Asians and African Americans. The story of Jeremy Lin demonstrates that stereotypes and "fixed pie" mentality can be harmful to many groups. The current animosity between Africans and African Americans or Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans demonstrates the effective nature of divide and conquer discourse. What I am trying to say is that there is something wrong with our system. There is something terribly wrong in a place where a name gets a resume shredded before even reading it. And simply changing names won't fix those kinds of deep-seated biases and prejudices. If not a name, it would be something else.

About 100 years ago, it was skin color and hair texture. White employers, at the turn of the century, would rather hire olive-colored European immigrants who could not speak English than ex-slave African Americans. The solution: Madame C.J. Walker and her line of hair straighteners and skin bleaching creams. Go back and look at old issues of an Ebony precursor, Colored American Magazine, which is available online with a quick Google search. Read the advertisements. You will find that African Americans began straightening their hair and bleaching their skin for the same reasons why people say we should name our children "white-sounding names," for upward economic mobility. Did it work? Hell no. But it did create the first Black millionaire in America and begin a process of making straight hair in the African American communities the norm.

But, in the wake of a horrific tragedy, I have gained a sense of hope about African Americans. Trayvon Martin was shot down in February 2012. His shooter alleges that he looked threatening simply because he was a young, Black man who wore a hoodie. African Americans are outraged, and rightfully so. African Americans and Americans in general are screaming that a teenager shouldn't be dead simply because he wore something to keep the wind off his head. In years past, African Americans would have advised one another to simply stop wearing hoodies so that we appear less threatening. But this time, it is different. This time, African Americans realize that it is not us who need to change, but the system of racial profiling and discrimination that would allow someone like George Zimmerman to gun down a young, Black man without even being arrested. So, African Americans have come out in their hoodies, screaming for a change to the system, and demanding justice for the family of this young man. There is growth at last, but I'm very, very sorry that a young man had to die for us to reach this point.

Problems are Solved beneath the Surface

For the past two postings, I've talked about problems within respective African American communities in our churches and in our schools. However, I don't like to talk about a problem without offering a solution or even multiple solutions. One major solution to a myriad of problems in respective African American communities is to simply care about things that go beyond our surface vision.

As a minority group in a very wealthy country, I most certainly understand why African Americans would be attracted to seemingly unending material wealth of white Americans. I can most certainly understand how all of the legal and extralegal attempts to deny African Americans access to that material wealth would endow it with something like holy characteristics. I can understand how typically poor people, as a group, would think something like, "If I could just get out of this ghetto and go over to the suburbs in the nice homes where white people with all of their money live, I'll be somebody." I can understand how we would think something like, "I have a college education, a nice home in the suburbs, and two cars. I'm equal standing with white folk. That means I'm somebody now." I understand that.

And so, like most immigrants to the country, Black people have been sold on the American Dream –lock, stock, and barrel. Ever since the earliest slave narrative accounts, we have been trying to gain the material wealth that our free slave labor helped to create. We've struggled. We've strived. We've marched. We've protested. We've demonstrated. We've moved. We've spend. We've killed, and we've died. We've applied a pound of topical ointment to a gaping wound when just a gram of caution would have prevented that in the first place. In short, like most Americans, we've become surface dwelling creatures. We hope for material things and quick, visible improvements while failing to study and strategize for longer, often unseen, real change for the better.

Even African American faith, which is supposed to be the strongest in the world, is fastly becoming based on what we can see. For example, every day I see little girls wearing clothes that are much too mature, carefully manicured nails, shoes with little hills on them, bangles, and hairstyles complete with weave. These little tweenies easily best me, and I'm in my early 30s. Yet, I hear parents continue to tell little girls that they cannot wear red because red is the spirit of Jezebel. So, it's okay for them to wear those revealing clothes, sometimes as early as elementary school, and show the world their half-naked asses as long as those skimpy clothes are not red…..Our girls are walking around looking like little video vixens, but they're not wearing red! And I don't even want to talk about the people who tell me to dress up for church so that I can show how the Lord has blessed me. Oh! My! God! I told this one lady that I spend less money on clothes so that I can give more of my money to charity. That's how I show how the Lord "done blessed me." That's also what God commanded Moses to do. God said He would bless Moses so that he could be a blessing to others: not to go out and buy an Armani suit.

Many efforts to establish much-needed ministries in churches never get off the ground. As adults, we become embroiled in battles over who's going to get what credit for any positive improvements a ministry may produce. In many African American communities, there are churches on every corner. Yet, the churches cannot work together for the good of the community because pastors scramble over the spotlight and possible new additions to their congregations. There is no ministry without some sort of personal motivation for surface credit and added dollars to the collection plate.

Even in our schools, we dwell at the surface. First, we need to learn about the licensing systems of the schools in our communities. Most poor school districts, whether they are urban or rural, license teachers in a way that saves the district money. This is not the best thing for our students. And then, when our schools fail, we want to see improvements. Next, as parents, we rely on standardized test scores to tell us how well our teachers are teaching like most Americans. We look at the child's report cards, and according to what it says, figure everything is okay. We never visit the schools to check out the quality of instruction or even the conditions of the school grounds. We only show up when our children are in trouble, and even then, in some places, it's hard to get parents to take time off their jobs to come check things out. Many schools offer open houses, and maybe one or two parents may show at the last minute.

African Americans can do better than this. We used to do better than this. My mother has told me many stories about how the older people who populated the world of her childhood could not even read, but if the children stumbled over a word when reading aloud, the older people would "lick" them with a switch. Even if the teachers abused their powers, these illiterate and semi-literate people still went "over to the school to see 'bout they children."

I've heard over and over again about how the churches would get together and have competitions, church outings, and youth activities. One of the funniest stories I ever heard was about an usher board competition, and how the ministers swelled with pride as their usher boards showed their discipline and skill. I've heard how some of the deacons would get together and talk to a wayward husband about his lack of compassion for his wife and family. I was told that it was always up to that young man to straighten up, but if he didn't it wasn't because he didn't know how.

Am I saying that everything in the past was a utopia or some kind of paradise? No. What I am saying is that our lives today are comparably less morally and spiritually rewarding, but more materially comfortable than yesteryear because somewhere along the way, we ceased to look beyond the surface of material gain and care.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lack of Teacher Respectability in African American Communities

One of the successes of the Civil Rights Movement was its ability to convince the world that racism affected African Americans on even the most intimate levels. It gave the world a view into the real consequences of white supremacist patriarchal discourse on an entire people within a supposed free and democratic nation.

One of the failures of the Civil Rights Movement was that it was very outwardly-focused. During this time of seismic political and cultural change, African Americans should have looked within our culture and made a critical assessment of it. Some things should have been kept, while the things that impede our social, moral, cultural, and economic growth should have been discarded. This is why I love the book, So Long a Letter by Miriama Ba. This letter-form novel takes a view of Senegalese culture, and does that very hard assessment.

With that said, nothing displays this lack of critical self-assessment outside of the church like the current sorry state of education within African American communities. Teaching used to be one of the most respected professions an African American could aspire towards; it was one step below the calling to preach, and was almost seen as divinely inspired. Now, it is a joke. It's something you do if you want a guaranteed paycheck and a two-month vacation. Parents cuss teachers out, sometimes physically attack them, and all-around just don't give a damn about what's going on in the schools (Keep in mind I'm being very general here. I know that I sound like I'm stereotyping Black parents, but for explanation's sake, please hear me out).

And for once, I am not blaming Baby Boomers for this. Oh, no! That honor belongs to the generation before them. From California to Detroit to my hometown of Centreville, Mississippi to New Orleans, I have heard the horror stories. For instance, a Baby Boomer recently told me about a particular high school here in the Memphis area. If a young lady tried out for the dancing doll team, no matter how skilled or talented she may have been, if her skin color was too dark, then the coaches wouldn't pick her. Another Memphis alumnus told me of how the officials at her school mistreated a young lady who could sing. She could have been one of the most talented singers this country has ever seen; yet, she never led a song in her school choir because the teachers there and the choir director said she was too dark to represent the school.

Many people in our area heard of the terror unleashed on the county by one teacher, I'll call her Mrs. Pompous. When the Baby Boomers attended school, it was school policy that pregnant girls could not attend school (no such policy existed for the boys who got the girls pregnant. He could continue his education while the child's mother faced shame and expulsion). I was told that Mrs. Pompous reveled in putting pregnant girls out of school. Even if it were graduation day, and a girl were not showing, if Mrs. Pompous found out, she'd pull a girl out of the line, embarrassing the girl and her whole family in front of the entire community.

Mrs. Pompous's reign of terror didn't stop there. The Baby Boomer generation was one of the last generations to actually secure decent jobs with their high school diplomas. Many employers used the comments made by students' teachers to verify things such as good deportment. If Mrs. Pompous did not like a student or a student's parents, she'd simply write something unflattering on the student's record, ensuring that that student would never get a decent job in that area; thus, many Baby Boomers had to move away to bigger cities to secure employment.

 

Even though the Baby Boomers had many, many excellent teachers who were called into the profession and truly cared about their students, teachers like Mrs. Pompous simply seemed drunk on power. I asked one Alabama man, who is now deceased, why Black teachers had so much power and why they were allowed to truly terrorize the population in some communities. He sadly responded, "Most of our parents couldn't read and write, and almost all our school boards was white. So, what the teacher say went 'cause our parents just ain't want to argue with them, and what did the white folk at the school board care?" So, when the Baby Boomers began to have children, of course the memories of teachers like Mrs. Pompous lingered, and parents looked for any signs of abuse of their children. In fact, one woman from North Mississippi heatedly remarked to me, "If them teachers even thought about treating my children like we was treated, I'd be all over that ass like a hornet's nest. I'm glad they didn't touch my baby or talk down to them. I was always ready to whip some teacher ass!"

This woman's response is a classic and human example of what happens when rampant abuse, even within our own communities, goes unchecked. The failure of the Civil Rights Movement concerning education was that our parents and grandparents (and bless them for their efforts), pushed mightily for integration in education without moving toward improving education in our own communities. We didn't check that abuse or try to improve literacy in our own communities. And even after the enforcement of school desegregation, many Black school districts remained majority-Black school districts with the same teachers in place like Mrs. Pompous. Is it any wonder, then, that parents took matters in their own hands?

Why a Certain Age Demographic is Leaving the Black Church

Let me make this clear: I love God. I was raised in the church. My mother's side of the family were staunch Baptists, and my father's side were staunch Christian Methodist Episcopalians. I was raised working in the church; I was in the youth department, and on the cleaning and kitchen committees. There's nothing wrong with scrubbing toilets in the name of Jesus. And I often tell people that I wouldn't be the vivacious person that I am if it were not for my youth directors. They were young, beautiful women who loved ALL children. All children were important, and every child participated in special programs equally. They, along with that entire community, rallied around the youth department and took pride in us.

Now, as a 30-something-year-old, I'm asking, what in the Hell happened? As a young adult, I have tried to work with various churches to help the youth. Lord knows they need it. But, having grown up for most of my life hearing that people in my age group are just a lost generation and how we have no respect for anybody, including God Himself, the churches were where I experienced the most disrespect from my elders and witnessed some of the most petty, childish behavior in my life. Talk about disrespect? I've been to many churches and seen people way older than me text messaging, whispering and elbowing one another, openly scowling at other members, and playing games on the cell phone while the minister was up talking. And when things did try to get done, efforts usually devolved into who was going to get credit. So, I've decided never to try to accomplish any kingdom building inside what is supposed to be God's house again. From now on, I'm taking my efforts to various community centers. It's sad to say, but God's house is no longer the place where young people should go in order to give or receive help.

There are many people in my age demographic, the 18-40 group, who are turning their backs on God's house. First of all, though this is flawed, we think church is optional anyway. Most of us can read, and we see church on television. Why wake up on Sunday morning and go to the fashion show? Second, in many cities, churches have become social aid and pleasure clubs. This is why a city like Memphis has more churches than gas stations; everybody's splintering off into social aid and pleasure clubs, and it seems that every pastor wants some kind of glory. It's so amazing that even churchfolk can't see Satan's first and most effective strategy is to divide and conquer. If a neighborhood has twenty churches, why can't five of them get together and work for the good of the community?

And here's my big third. Many people my age still have parents who fought hard for civil rights and respectable treatment. They remember a time when no matter how old a Black man and woman was, they were addressed as "boy" or called by their first names. The church was really the only place where Black men and women could receive the respect their age and wisdom commanded. My parents' generation fought to end that, and I am proud to say that I am a benefactor of that struggle. But, how could our parents have known about the petty office politics, codified racism and sexism, and silly Baby-Boomers who refuse to retire but stay on the job and pick on younger people? I understand the fear of becoming irrelevant, but come on AARP members.. All week long, we watch a bunch of our peers and older people at our respective jobs act as if they are 13. They keep petty mess going from Monday through Friday, calling endless useless meetings about useless things, and loading down our in-boxes, mailboxes, and office cubicles with stupid memos about things as small as popping gum or wearing the wrong kind of shirt to an off-site job. Then there's the sh*t-sniffing, Uncle Tom brown-noser who can't wait to steal our ideas and stab us in the back.

By the time we get to church on Sunday, we've had it. And when we run into that same kind of behavior in the churches, we turn right around and walk out of the door. We put up with reprobates at our respective jobs because we have to. But we'll be doggone if we spend what is supposed to be God's day in God's house with reprobates who say they love the Lord and continue to scream shout and dance like they love the Lord but who act un-Godly while not even attempting to do God's work. If we spend Monday through Friday with reprobates, we damn sure deserve a couple days away from them to regroup, and that means walking off from the reprobates in the church as well just to keep our sanity.

Now, we're grateful that our parents fought and broke that glass ceiling for us to enter into corporate America. We're grateful that our parents wanted to have good homes in good neighborhoods so that our children will have a fighting chance. I'm grateful. But I'm also saddened that the competitiveness and dog-eat-doggedness of corporate America, and the one-up-manship of the suburbs have entered and ruined God's house.