About Black History Month

This was an extra-long month for Black History. We got an extra day, Leap Day 2008. Of course, this would normally be part of a joke I heard many Blacks tell growing up and even while I was in college and grad school. That of course we Blacks were given the shortest month of the year to celebrate our history. That we only really care about the contributions of Americans of Black African descent for one month out of the year. That Blacks will spend the remainder of the year as poster children for crime, drugs and poverty.

The reality of Black History Month is much different than the perceptions of most people in this country, Blacks (or African Americans) included. It wasn't until I started graduate school that I realized that Black History Month (as such) had only been around since '76, the year I finished first grade. In the fifty years prior to that, it had been Negro History Week, celebrated during the third week of February. The concept for this celebration of Black heritage, contributions and culture had come from none other than the father of Black history in Carter G. Woodson, most famous for his treatise on Black identity, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933). 

Woodson originally picked February because in those days, it was a great month for America to celebrate two of its greatest all-time presidents in Lincoln and Washington. Lincoln was born on February 12, and Washington on February 22, and the US celebrated these birthdays separately back then. Woodson, ever the intellectual entrepreneur, figured that by having a "celebration of the Negro in America" sandwiched between the two presidential birthdays that it would enable other Blacks to see how important they were and are to this country. At the very least, it would end the exclusion of Blacks from the public and historical arena that was typical in those days.

But that was only one part of Woodson's plan. The other piece was to have Black teachers, professors and other high-profile African Americans work in concert to promote and teach on the importance of Blacks to the formation and success of the US during Negro History Week. Being that Woodson had made Washington, DC his home, it was the segregated Negro Divisions of DC Public Schools that became the original K-12 home of Negro History Week when it started in 1926. When Negro History Week turned fifty, folks like Alex Haley clamored for it to become a full month. 

Why am I talking about all of this now? It's amazing how much of a short-term memory so many of us have in this country. For all of are differences and diversity, we all have a sense of myopia and amnesia when it comes to our historical facts and contemporary grievances. It's simply a matter of setting the record straight, at least before midnight tonight.

Of course, Black History Month really isn't just one month anymore. With the MLK holiday in mid-January, Black History Month has become a six or seven-week-long series of events, lectures, documentaries and other venues for discussing the achievements of the past. And for the most part, this is a good thing. The only problem is, most of us don't attend, watch or pay attention anymore to Black History Month or its importance.

That's a shame, but it's certainly understandable. As I've said in previous blogs, the Civil Rights establishment of Black Baby Boomers and those born immediately before World War II have controlled most of the conversation around many things Black over the past four decades. They don't represent my generation, and they certainly don't speak to the generation that my youngest siblings were born into in the '80s. Even I've lost interest in the annual rite of February of the usual aging suspects appearing on TV, in lecture halls and at museums, at universities and schools discussing their version of Black history and their triumphs and sacrifices. God knows these things are important. Yet without a focus on the present or the future beyond all of the problems Blacks face or all of the alleged progress as a community, race or people, these events lose much of their meaning.

With Obama's month of victories against Clinton, however, maybe there's something to finally be hopeful about. At the very least, his sudden rise to the top of the Democratic ticket is historic. And while the Civil Rights establishment had wavered in their support of Obama in the past year, he's attracted a rainbow coalition that would make Jesse Jackson jealous. Even now there are a host of folks from the generation of my mother and my former teachers and supervisors who don't see him as Black in the same way they see themselves. 

That's all right in a way. Yes, Obama is different. Which is why he appeals to so many people who don't fit the Civil Rights "Black" stereotype, not to mention those who aren't Black at all. Although it is obvious that support for Black History Month has declined over the last few years, it is also obvious that we are in the midst of Black history in the making, for this month and for this years. If it doesn't give us a reason to celebrate, it should at least give many of us cautious optimism and hope.

Being Presidential

As many of you know, I generally do not trust authority figures. Why would I, given the amount of abuse -- physical and verbal -- I suffered at the hands of the authority figures that were in my life growing up? My stepfather, my father, my mother, my teachers, my high school guidance counselor. I went to college with the knowledge that only a couple of folks in authority were truly trustworthy. I don't like the police -- I've been stopped for "walking while Black"-- I think most judges hide behind their robes, and I believe that most professors are nerds making up time for all of the harassment they endured in junior high and high school.

But despite all of that, I'm generally hopeful during election years. Hopeful that someone who isn't a wimp would stand up to all of the corrupted, self-interested fat cats of national prominence and tell them all to take a flying leap while actually being elected into office. Hopeful that an underdog will pull off the presidential upset. Hopeful that someone will say that they care about the American ideals of freedom, justice, equality and "a tide that raises all boats" and actually mean it. For maybe only the second time in my lifetime, we may actually have that person in Barack Obama.

The first time in my lifetime actually happened just before I was born, although he died when I was three years old. Lyndon Johnson's the only president we've had in the last four decades who represented all of my aforementioned ideals, and yet he was a flawed individual in practicing them. Between the crippled-before-it-started War on Poverty and Vietnam, his secret tapings of meetings throughout his White House term and his simplistic understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and its late '60s evolution, to say that LBJ was a complicated and occasionally contradictory man would be an understatement. But I do think that he believed more in America's ideals than most of our presidents put together. He managed to get more done -- good and bad -- in five years than most of the presidents that followed him put together.

It was "Run Jesse Run" time when I had my first chance to vote in a presidential election, Election '88. Yeah, he had success in South Carolina, but the highlight of his campaign came that April, when he won Michigan. Yeah, I voted for Jesse Jackson when the primaries hit New York, knowing full well that he's lose. Most Americans, regardless of their level of education, weren't ready for a Black president then, and definitely weren't going to vote for Jesse Jackson. His "Hymie Town" comments from '84 hurt him in New York. But his lack of political experience -- something many voters receive with glee these days -- combined with an agenda that went beyond race and class cost him. Of course, Jackson was and is as deeply a flawed person as an icon can be.

So too was and is Bill Clinton, the only "underdog" that I ever voted for who actually won an election. I distinctly remember that in the fall of '91, after he declared himself a candidate, how all of the pundits thought this podunk governor from Arkansas a fool for running against a president with an approval rating that at one point was over ninety percent. Of course, Clinton proved them wrong. Yet despite all of his rhetoric about "a town called Hope," I didn't buy into Clinton practicing the ideals he preached so much about. Between "don't ask don't tell," "mend it don't end it," Lani Guinier "not meeting his center" -- whatever the heck that meant -- pawning universal health care off on his wife, Monica Lewinsky, NAFTA, WTO and inconsistent policies on China, Cuba and Rwanda, Clinton represented LBJ far less and Reagan far more than most politicos are willing to admit. He just didn't seem particularly mean while doing it. So every time I hear that dumb Maya Angelou quote about Clinton being the first Black president, I'm reminded about how successful Clinton was at fooling many of us about his dreams and ideals versus his willingness to see them through.

Here we are, ten years removed from Monicagate and one month from the fortieth anniversary of LBJ declining to run again for president -- the "I will not seek, nor will I accept" speech at the end of March of '68. I still believe in American ideals and that the role of the American president is to ensure that this nation lives up to them to the best of their abilities. Through the authority of the executive branch, through collaboration with other nations and brokering deals on both sides of the congressional aisles, even at the risk of not winning a re-election. Taking half-measures like Carter or no chances at all like Ford or Clinton in his second time aren't what this weakened democracy needs right now.

So, even though I'm not particularly moved by anyone's rhetoric these days, I've decided to hope for the best, which in this case is Obama. Reading Dreams from My Father a year ago was helpful. I'd originally seen this book in '95 when it was first published as a remaindered item (on sale for a fraction of market price because the book was selling so poorly) and thought, "not another book about the biracial Black child struggling with his or her identity." But I finally did read it and realized that this is the first book I'd ever read by someone who was running for president and written long before they actually ran. Meaning that if I wanted to see some sense of honesty, that I'd see it in this book. And even though the writing in the first two sections varied from non-compelling to occasionally interesting, the last third of the book was as dramatic and emotionally honest as I've seen in any nonfiction book. I figured if someone could be this intimate with their feelings about their upbringing and ancestry, then they at least deserved a chance to run for president.

I must admit, though, that I'm concerned for his safety, not to mention the fact that many Americans are only colorblind because they are blinded by color. Obama's made a point of distancing himself from racialized politics, both a shrewd and uplifting move on his and his campaign's part. At the same time, I also wonder if this is a nationalized version of what occurred with Black mayors in the '70s and '80s, when many were elected to clean up decades' worth of messes left by their White predecessors. With all that, assuming that Obama makes it through, my greatest hope is that he and his administration will put themselves on the line to make American ideals more real for all of us. That ultimately is what being presidential is all about.

Love, Actually

Last week I finally saw the movie Love Actually, this weird and quirky British indy film covering about ten different vignettes of love, lust, romance and all that comes with it. I liked it so much that I watched it straight through a second time, watched the deleted scenes and then went back to scenes that I needed to make more sense of, all in two-days.

I was already in a semi-romantic mood, thinking of V-Day (or VD Day as I used to call it in the 80s) and trying to do something with my wife and son. So I made dinner that day (of course, I almost always make dinner), one that I hoped would be at least a notch better than fried chicken, roasted chicken, spaghetti, pork chops, or any of about a dozen meals I make over and over again. I made NY strip steak, slow broiled at 235 degrees and coated with spices and a butter and oil combination. With the steak, I made four-cheese mashed potatoes and steamed green beans. I went to a local bakery called Cake Love for Raspberry-Chocolate and other cupcakes and Double Chocolate V-Day cookies for dessert. I even broke out the Beringer's White Zinfandel and mixed it with our family spritzer of 85 percent Seagram's Ginger Ale. I even made Noah a steak, one much smaller than ours.

It's amazing how something as small as a sit-down dinner at the dining room table can make a family more relaxed. Noah ate most of his steak, amazing considering how finicky he is about almost everything. It was easily the best steak I've made since before Noah was born -- at least four and a half years ago. The dinner was great, we were all in a good mood. The only snag was that Noah ate all of the icing off of the raspberry-chocolate cupcake that I had set aside for my wife. What can anyone do with a four-year-old when it comes to sweets? Still, even with Noah at the table, it's the most romance I've experienced in a couple of years.

The fact that I have a romantic side at all is as amazing to me as it might be to anyone that knew me between seventh grade and my junior year at the University of Pittsburgh. It's always been there -- in some of the music I listened to, even in some of my writing -- but the harsh realities of my life made it hard to express for a while. Plus, as a late Black Pittsburgh journalist said on numerous occasions, "romance without finance is a nuis-ant-ce". I would've been hard pressed to do anything more romantic than take someone to a movie or Mickey D's prior to '90.

I think that one of the lingering effects of my unrequited "love" for my first crush was the inability to express myself in terms of romance for fear of failure, hurt, embarrassment, humiliation, not to mention the loss of emotional control that comes with being in love, or at least, head over heels over someone. My second crush-turned obsession, of course, made all of these emotions possible anyway. So many years later, I realize yet again that it's sometimes the simple act of giving and trying that makes romance possible and actualizes our love for a spouse or a loved one.

On the flip side of things, I have to say some more about the loss of love I experienced with baseball, as illuminated by Congress, Clemens, and others last week. There were many incidents that led to me becoming an ex-baseball fan between '87 and the early '90s, some of which I discussed in a blog post in December. But more than anything else, the constant obsession with the purity of the game and its vainglorious records and neo-con columnist George Will's insistence on the game complexity and genius pushed me away from the sport. As far as I'm concerned, there never was anything pure about baseball except for the fact that for 47 years, it was a professional sport that only allowed Whites to play, manage and own.

So when I read, watch and hear journalists and columnists belly-aching about how tainted major league baseball is as a result of the steroids/HGH era, it really grinds my beans. The sport's hallowed records are now tainted? Yeah, right! I know some folks have said this before, but it needs to be said again. Given the fact that folks like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard and "Cool Papa" Bell were never allowed to play -- or at least not allowed to play in major league baseball until '47 -- the purity of any records up until then are pretty questionable.

Babe Ruth only faced pitchers like Paige during exhibition barn storming events in the '30s. If Josh Gibson had been allowed to play out his career with the New York Giants, would he have more home runs than Ruth? Let me put it like this. Since the good folks running major league baseball and the Hall of Fame saw fit to allow the home run, pitching and other records to stand and have allowed folks like Ty Cobb into Cooperstown, why should we care about Clemens, Bonds or anyone else? Until major league baseball confronts this tainted past and officially acknowledges the fact that it's tainted, it matters not what they nor the sports writers do in the present or near future.

So I guess I'm saying that while I'm a hopeful romantic in general, my romance for a game whose time has long passed will remain in estrangement.

When to Fight

Given the amount of time I've spent talking about domestic violence and abuse over the past seven months, it would be safe to assume that I don't condone violence on general principle. I don't believe in pre-emptive strikes against people or nations unless they pose a true and eminent threat. I believe that folks should take the high road and exhaust all reasonable means of resolving conflict before turning words into fists and negotiations into guns and missiles.

But not in this country, and not just in Iraq or Vietnam, nor in Cuba or the Philippines (Spanish-American War, 1898 and its aftermath, 1898-1902). Our everyday activities in this country when it comes to conflict vary from the litigious to the malicious. Conflicts that were settled by guns prior to the '60s usually involved racists, police and organized crime -- sometimes a combination of all three -- have involved kids as young as nine or ten for at least a generation.

As far as my growing-up years in the '80s, despite or maybe because of the violence I saw and felt at home, I did find myself in fights. Most of my fights involved facing down muggers and potential muggers in Mount Vernon. Three involved girls, and two of those were with my first crush. I wouldn't call the fights with girls fights though -- two of them stopped because I realized that I was punching breast instead of chest, and the other one occurred in the middle of my first crush infatuation.

There were other fights that involved my identity as a Hebrew-Israelite (and as an intelligent human being) and whether I would survive in my uninviting, multicultural and cut-throat academic environment. One involved a gang-like attack two months in the gifted track, at the beginning of November '81, when a group of Italian boys grabbed me after school and jumped me. It was ten-on-one, and with other classmates watching in laughter, I simply had to take it.

Ironically, it wasn't a particularly humiliating moment, unlike the fight I had with my best friend from elementary school at the end at sixth grade. Upon my becoming a Hebrew-Israelite -- symbolized by my white kufi -- he stopped talking to me. Given that his father was a preacher man and he was his father's son, it didn't entirely surprise me that he didn't accept this change. What did surprise me was that he refused to even talk about it, only saying, "you made your decision," as if at eleven years old, I had a choice in religions. He won that fight, and even though we'd both end up in the gifted track program for the next three years, we only spoke once after that. Now that was humiliating.

But one fight from those tweener years that defined how I would respond was with my first crush's eventual high school/college boyfriend. He symbolized early '80s preteen White cool for any number of folks in our nerdy group. He was well traveled, spoke other languages, took Karate and played tennis, wore Osh-Kosh and sported a Sting-like (of The Police back then) hair cut from time to time. I was too naive back then to be jealous, but folks like him forced me to realize how poor my family really was. Between the cool factor, my other humiliations and the slights I faced because of my kufi and my not-so-smart mouth, and my academic struggles the first half of seventh grade, I was in need of an emotional pick-me-up.

The week before the mid-February winter break, our seventh-grade English teacher was home with the flu. Our substitute’s idea of managing a classroom was reading a newspaper while the class engaged in verbal and physical combat. It seemed that no one was safe from strife that week, including me. Mr. Cool decided that it was his turn to give me a hard time. A ten-second scuffle took place on Tuesday over the usual tweener issues of communism versus capitalism, or to use more sophisticated language, neo-Marxism versus Keynesian economics. He also didn’t like that I had corrected him the month before about Australia’s official language, which he said was "Australian."

When I walked into the boys’ locker room for gym class that Thursday afternoon, I was greeted with two punches to my chin and face. He walked away and went through the double door to his locker, arrogant enough to think I wouldn’t respond. He muttered "stupid" as he walked away. I think it was the combination of being caught by surprise and being called "stupid" by Mr. OshKosh that got the better of me. Or maybe it was five months of enduring public humiliation combined with the sense that things at 616 were spinning out of control. Whatever it was, I finally snapped. I stared blankly at the red lockers, green doors, and depleted beige-colored walls for a couple of seconds, and then my mind exploded in violent colors. I threw my entire being into the boy as he had started to undress at his locker, knocking him to the floor. I choked and punched him until I had bloodied his mouth and made his nose turn red. He attempted to fight back to no avail, as I kept my weight on his legs while I head-locked him with my left arm and wailed away with my right hand. Just as I began to run out of energy, the gym teacher came in to break us up. He yelled at us and asked "Do you want to be suspended?"

I went into the break with an emotional boost, one that I hoped would lead to better things for me at school. I don't condone fighting in general, but there are moments when fighting is necessary. Twenty-six February's ago, that fight wasn't just one to correct some of the humiliation I'd suffered over the previous year. It was a fight for my identity, as a boy becoming a man, a seventh-grader who needed to believe that he was as smart as any student in his gifted program, and as a human being capable of defending himself. That fight reminded me that I was still capable of feeling emotions and responding to those feelings in remarkably proactive ways.

Happy Birthday

I apologize to those of you who look for my blog posting every Monday. I've been busy with travel, interviews, and with ending my employment at the nonprofit I discussed in a blog at the end of October. Hopefully I'll have more time to discuss all things related to Boy At The Window and other things from my life and times.

Today's my wife's birthday. She's forty-one, or, as she would say, "nine years away from fifty." I've been with her consistently as friend, boyfriend, fiancee and husband for more than twelve years, and have known her since she was twenty-three. We've earned four degrees, raised one kid to within a few months of kindergarten, been to the emergency room seven times, traveled from Seattle to Orlando and many places in between, and otherwise watched each other grow into this tweener age. We're both too old to be young and too young to be old, and don't look our age at all. In my wife's case, she could easily knock thirteen or fourteen years off and most people wouldn't question it.

There's no doubt, though, that we are getting older. I've spent most of my life wanting to be around folks with a sense of experience and wisdom, which usually led me to befriend or date or "pick up" women older than me or often become friends with guys as much as a generation older. Now that I'm within two years of forty, I realize that I'm old enough to have little in common with folks past their early fifties. I still play basketball and can still guard guys in their twenties. I still have energy to teach my son how to run and catch a football and workout on the same day. My views of the Baby Boom generation and the Civil Rights era are a hybrid of '60s liberalism, '80s realism and '90s multiculturalism. I haven't bought a brand-new CD since the middle of '06, the longest drought I've had since I started buying music (which was in '85, by the way). Even when I've been on the verge of eviction (in '91, and '93) and been unemployed (in '97), I've found money to buy music.

I haven't gone so far as my wife to start counting the days and week and months until the next decade. You're as young as you feel and think about yourself, or something like that. I know that I feel younger now at thirty-eight than I did at thirty-one or thirty-two, in part because I'm less inclined to serve as family advisor now than I was before the family intervention in '02. But I also know that without a jump rope, treadmill, weights and a basketball, I'd weigh at least 250 instead of a steady 228 or 230. My knees would likely have required surgery from the years of wear and tear due to basketball and years of walking all over Mount Vernon and super-hilly Pittsburgh were it not for consistently working out over the past decade or so. I've resolved to be in good enough shape to continue to play sports with my son, at least until he's in high school. In short, I have to stay in shape until I'm fifty. No need to start counting down yet.

But I do know when and why I began to look to other, older folks for friendship and for relationships. By older, of course, I'm talking for the most part at least by two or three years -- but in many cases, five, ten, even twenty years in age. It was in response to the fallout from my second crush and from my episode with my dorm mates in the middle of my freshman year. I made a concerted and deliberate effort to invite older folks into my life because I realized that everyone my age as a college student knew less about the scars of life than I did. At least I thought so at the time. All I knew was that I was eighteen years old and that most of my classmates in middle and high school and college dorm mates had no clue as to the real me. Heck, I wasn't entirely sure who the real me was back then. So if it meant having my ego stroked by a twenty-four-year-old woman or hanging out with guys who were twenty-seven and twenty-eight in order to learn more about myself, my likes and dislikes, then I did it. Most of the time, though, I'm sure my questions about school and dating and graduate school and life stroked their egos as well.

My marriage to my wife is in part a result of these first attempts at becoming a whole and more mature person. That's not to say that I married her because she's almost three years older. I married her because I love her, and the fact that she's older says something about our relative lots in life and about our mutually shared goals for our lives. Still, I've learned that regardless of age or maturity, that we all are prone to moments of petulance and goofball kinds of behavior, especially if our lives have always involved serious crises and circumstances. And we're both guilty of performing at children at moments in which acting our age would have been more appropriate.

If there's anything I could give my wife besides a new car or a new house, it would be a new sense of herself as a youthful person. Even with our relationship and our shared duties as parents, eight years of marriage and a whiny four-and-a-half-year-old can take its toll. If she saw herself as two years away from her thirties or as young as she looks on the outside, I'd guess that she would have more energy for herself and for our son. That said, she's also not moving around like she's in her seventies. My wish is that she finds herself feeling younger as she gets older.

On another note, I'm happy to say that my Giants won on Sunday, another sign that games (and life) are won on the field of play (or battle) and not on paper. Like a birthday celebration, watching your favorite football team win the Super Ball does provide a youthful spring in your step. It certainly has in mine.