Children learn what they live.
The young man in the photo is my father when he was a teenager. He lived to be 91, but it wasn't easy being a Black man in America. It seemed that everything boiled down to race. No matter how hard he worked, tried to better himself, or provide for his family, racism was always looming.
Racism and bigotry is taught. Black children have to learn at an early age how to navigate a world where some people have enthusiastically embraced and enforced a philosophy that disrespects, debases, excludes, and even seeks to erase them.
Circumstances and personal experiences determine whether America's evils become a normalized, accepted, or celebrated way of a person's life.
It’s never fair to paint everyone with the same broad brush, but it’s hard to argue against the existence of a thing if it’s all you’ve ever seen, heard, and known ever since you were a child. No rhetoric or gaslighting can stand in the face of lived experiences.
It’s hard for children to understand why they’re mistreated, mistrusted, shunned, or hated by people they don’t even know—for reasons they can’t control. There are offenses, however, that children never forget.
Some things are seared into the soul.
Children learn, early in life, when, where, and with whom they are secure. Perhaps, as adults they don't talk about the abuses they suffered; perhaps they find strength in forgiveness, but they never forget.
I remember visiting my grandmother's house every summer. There are few times and places where I knew in my heart that I was safe and loved. Outside of the confines of her home, however, were dangers she felt compelled to share. She knew that not everyone would be as happy to see us as she always was.
There was a speech that preceded something as simple as walking to the store. The elders in my life probably hoped they wouldn't have to feed us the same warnings they'd ingested as children, but they knew that just as they endeavored to instill love, compassion, understanding and empathy, someone else was instilling hatred, insensitivity, confusion, and ignorance.
"Ya'll stay together. Watch out for the train. Go straight there, and come right back. When you get there, don’t sass nobody. Be polite. Just give the man my list. Mind your manners.”
My grandmother was one of the oldest people in the town. She was respected. My late grandfather, who I never met, worked for the local railroad company. He was respected, too. That was to our advantage. We were from “up to DC”, but our northeastern habitation meant nothing to people who weren’t keen on harming so-called uppity Negroes— even if they were children.
“Oh. You Miss Ethel’s grand, huh?”
It was important that we did, or said nothing to embarrass her--or forget our "place".
It’s sad when any intelligence or proficiency has to be quashed in order to boost the insecure, patronize the entitled, or appease the ignorant.
As adults, the choice to investigate or blindly accept, embrace, or reject what was learned, never goes away. You have to want to be either a law-abiding, empathetic, fair-minded citizen, or a hateful bigot.
Always in the back of our minds was the mandate to be a "credit to our race", but who said those who set the standards were right, or had a right to implement them?
Why were we always proving ourselves?
Why were we always subject to either collective victories or embarrassment?
Why were we always expected to be extraordinary?
Why was any semblance of intelligence seen as an anomaly?
Maybe the burden to be Black was the reason some Louisiana relatives fled to places like Detroit, Chicago, and California, and lived their lives passing for white. Maybe they were just tired.
Countless times I heard my father say, “A Black man’s life ain’t worth nothin’ in this country... sometimes I think we must be cursed.”
I knew he didn't mean it, and was just frustrated by one bad report on the news or another.
I remember how sorry I would feel for him and myself when he’d say it.
I used to think, “So we’re just doomed?
No matter what we do, we can’t win?
What are we working so hard for?
Why are we breaking our necks to show ourselves different, exceptional, and worthy?”
I hoped it wasn’t true that Black people were just existing in a world that despised our freedom. Were we always hoping for seats at tables and opportunities in forbidden places, yet destined for our collective destruction?
My father had lived three decades before I was born.
He must have known what he was talking about.
He trusted very few people.
His philosophies had been cemented.
He'd seen too much.
Hearing my father refer to someone as “friend”, particularly if they were white, was huge.
Maybe he was just venting about the value of Black lives, particularly if it followed some tragedy he thought should have remained in the pre- civil rights era, but that declaration didn’t just originate out of thin air.
My father had receipts.
He had horror stories.
He was always prepared to fight back--strategically.
As he told one racist co-worker, not long after he’d arrived at the Pentagon, on his first day assigned there, “Man, if I wasn’t armed like you are, I wouldn’t even work here.”
Dad died at 91 years of age.
Even he often marveled at his longevity.
Not another man in his family had lived as long.
It seems he spent his life defying odds, appreciating grace, acknowledging mercy, believing in angels, and trying to overcome his own experiences.
He knew of murders, violence, and wrongful convictions; overworked fathers, and overwhelmed mothers; the consequences of hopelessness, despair, illiteracy, and ignorance.
His life had been threatened.
He’d been beaten.
He’d been denied an opportunity to attain higher education.
His solution, as a young man, was to join the Navy and see the world. The first thing the Navy wanted him to do was serve his white superiors. It infuriated him.
He went to steward’s training school, but being a different kind of slave wasn’t his plan.
A fellow frustrated shipmate instructed him on how to deliberately let a tray of hot soup fall onto an officer’s head.
“Get that n*gger out of here!”, the officer screamed. Of course that meant my father was reassigned duties that allowed him to work independently, and learn and master what he thought he SHOULD know as a sailor.
He said he thought he’d seen and left racism in Louisiana, but the Navy had its covert share, too. Still, he said (usually on the first of every month) that enlisting and re- enlisting were the best decisions he’d ever made.
“You need to get out of your neighborhood. Travel. This is a big world. It’ll change how you see things and people.”
He spent his life rebelling against anything that reeked of impropriety or oppression.
He knew he was hated.
His weapon was wit and competence.
He learned how to like, and be proud of himself.
He didn’t need approval.
There would be no shuffling, grinning, or bowing. He did not bite his tongue.
He was a right fighter of the first order; a pusher of education; an advocate of being, doing, and looking one’s best.
He enjoyed confounding, schooling, and supervising, and had little patience for for stereotypical behavior.
To be in charge and do his job well was like revenge for the oppression and injustice he’d seen as a boy and young man.
He’d fancied himself an entrepreneur, and wanted to help his mother when his father had to work for long periods away from home.
He had a row boat as a teen, and would take people out on the bayou to fish.
A white man told him the way he maneuvered the oar was "moving the water too much, and scaring the fish". He told my father he would shoot him if he didn’t keep the water still.
His father and grandfather had worse stories.
He was determined to be different, but racism always tagged along.
Every ill could be attributed to “white folk”.
It didn’t take much to trigger him.
During a visit home while on leave, his mother had to keep him from beating up a young, white insurance salesman who’d come to pick up her premium. The man had walked into the house uninvited, and called for my grandmother (by her first name) like he’d always done. My father told him not to ever come into his mother’s house again without knocking first.
“Man, what if she had been undressed? And she’s older than you! She’s Mrs. Williams to you!”, he yelled as he held him against the wall.
He said his mother was pulling him away while apologizing profusely for his behavior.
That made him even angrier. He said he’d never raised his voice at his mother, but there she was excusing the salesman’s inconsideration.
“Why are you defending him? He just walked up in here like he owned the place! This is YOUR house! Don’t just let anybody walk up in here!”
He said he let the man go, but realized she would never see why he was so upset. In her mind, the insurance salesman had authority, importance, and rights. He was white. He was helping her, and was due respect even, as he saw no need to regard her and her home.
My father unashamedly rooted for Blackness. Whether it was a game show or a commercial, he was keen on cheating and unfairness. He would pick up the remote and change the channel any time a Colonial Penn Insurance commercial aired.
“Why Sam can’t just talk about it? He was doing fine! What they need the white man for?” (Sam was his name for any random Black man on television. Random women were referred to as “Sapphire”.)
I tried to explain how Alex Trebek was a familiar face, and his testimonial may sway consumers. He didn’t want to hear it.
He despised tropes and anything that made “us” look bad.
Racism aside, he didn’t shy away from calling out anything “we” did or said that set “us” back, or kept “us” from getting ahead.
Only intense Bible study and teaching cured and corrected hate he once felt was completely justified. Only Obama’s inauguration gave him real hope. Still he would lament, “I hope they don’t kill him”.
As a Black child in America, the concept of the existence of good and bad white people was taught as a survival lesson by people who experienced both— firsthand, and regularly in their Deep South homes and neighborhoods. They had to learn how to discern, study, and handle the two. In doing so, they avoided trouble. What they were NOT, was afraid. I never sensed fear, just clever, calculated wisdom, and keen awareness.
It was clear, though, that racism and bigotry colored their view of themselves and the world. There was not a day when racism didn’t have to be dealt with. In knowing how to play the game, they lost no respect or dignity. As a matter of fact, I think the environments in which they lived toughened them and made them more determined to be and do better. What they wished was that they didn’t have to continue to teach those lessons, or craft those speeches for another generation.
They weren't troublemakers. They instigated nothing; they went out of their way to be "acceptable", but they knew it didn’t matter. When people have been conditioned to hate you, the bar never stays put. You can never be good enough. The hatred toward Black people was unfounded, random, evil, and borne out of entitlement and ignorance. It's like a cancer.
If only our grandparents and parents could have kept their fears from us. They knew that nothing had changed. Part of loving us was warning us. Racism was alive and well, but it didn’t mean we had to be paralyzed by it. Ignorance and mis-education meant they had to visit the burden of racism onto their children, who, before they could even spell the word, had to learn how to maneuver it. We always had to wonder what we'd done to be so hated by strangers. Who were the screaming, violent people in all of the newsreels, and what had we done to make the so angry?
It must be too difficult and painful for racists to acknowledge how backward, wrong, ungodly, costly, and self-destructive their beliefs, thoughts, opinions and actions are. There is, unfortunately, a payoff to maintaining, and denying the existence of racism. Sadly, those who perpetuate it can’t see how cancerous and dangerous it is to their own souls, and the souls of the children they infect, mis-educate, lie to, and indoctrinate.
Letting it go would mean rejecting everything they’ve ever known; taking a sober look at their history; repenting and starting over.
It’s not too late, but there has to be a willingness to change. Maybe it’s just too deep.
In the meantime, Black people have options to either accept, ignore, stay vigilant, adjust, give up, pray, hope for change, or fight back.
So many people don't want to talk about history or History. It makes them feel bad. It makes them uncomfortable, but they don't see how they're repeating it.
Imagine how the people feel who lived, and are still living the consequences of bigotry, hatred, and racism.
It’s all so exhausting, but it is a tribute to the great strength, patience, and capacity to forgive, of people who, I am now convinced, were superheroes.
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