just being christian

“And because I had been a hustler, I knew better than all whites knew, and better than nearly all of the black ‘leaders’ knew, that actually the most dangerous black man in America was the ghetto hustler. Why do I say this? The hustler, out there in the ghetto jungles, has less respect for the white power structure than any other Negro in North America. The ghetto hustler is internally restrained by nothing. He has no religion, no concept of morality, no civic responsibility, no fear–nothing. To survive, he is out there constantly preying upon others, probing for any human weakness like a ferret. The ghetto hustler is forever frustrated, restless, and anxious for some ‘action’. Whatever he undertakes, he commits himself to it fully, absolutely. What makes the ghetto hustler yet more dangerous is his ‘glamour’ image to the school-dropout youth in the ghetto.These ghetto teen-agers see the hell caught by their parents struggling to get somewhere, or see that they have given up struggling in the prejudiced, intolerant white man’s world. The ghetto teen-agers make up their own minds they would rather be like the hustlers whom they see dressed ‘sharp’ and flashing money and displaying no respect for anybody or anything. So the ghetto youth become attracted to the hustler worlds of dope, thievery, prostitution, and general crime and immorality.”

–From The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As told to Alex Haley

I could expound on that passage all day, but I’ll hold back.  I’d rather you spend the time rereading it five times.

And when your done, remind yourself that these words were published over 45 years ago. That’s almost half of a century.

Now, start asking serious questions about why they’ve been able to remain true to this day.

Renew and Restore

Last week I had a post on MLK day that sparked some interesting conversation.  It was born out of passion and observation, but probably lacked a bit of nuance.  But one commenter nailed it.

..kids aren’t going to choose to spend a holiday doing anything other than playing unless they have adults around who will model something different for them. one way to solve this would be to have them in school, as per your suggestion. another would be for the parents to foster this kind of environment in the home. as a culture we need to be more observant of and give more credence to our collective stories, like the civil rights movement.

Thinking back on my life, I was fortunate to have all of the things she mentioned.  Both my white parent and my black parent kept me grounded in the history of my family, and in what it meant for me to be a person of color.  As I explored everything that entailed, my dad especially encouraged me to really think through and encounter history on a deep level.

When I was in 8th grade, I really wanted a Malcolm X shirt. I went to a school that was predominately white, and it was social capital to embrace my blackness. The shirt was more of a fashion statement made out of my own unkowingness more than anything else, and my dad told me that I couldn’t get the shirt unless I read a book about the life of Malcolm X. Not just watch a movie, but read a book. A fat one.

So I did. And we talked about it. And I learned a lot. And then I got the shirt and wore the heck out of it.

In high school, I would go on to enter a Rites of Passage program. It would place me in conversation with like-minded peers and adults as we explored what it meant to be black in America. It was there that I really started to dig into African and African-American history. It was there that I really started reading and memorizing works by black poets. It was powerful stuff, and one of my chief regrets about my teenage years was that I didn’t stick with the program through college.

Not to say I didn’t reap the benefits of Rites of Passage in college.  I did. By the time I got to college, I was reading black authors and had a good foundation to build on regarding the historical, social and philosophical realities of race. I was fortunate, because my college offered no Afro-centric classes. In fact, it was possible to go through four years of college having read no more than two books written by an author who wasn’t white.  I think I read one such book as required by a professor.

I rehash all of that having now come back onto campus and experienced the highs and lows of working with students of color. Both experiences were wrapped up in the experience of organizing a convocation to celebrate MLK Day earlier this month.

When I first passed around the outline for the convo, I got some push back. The students didn’t want to sing “We Shall Overcome”, because it sounded like a slave song.  And they wanted to know why we weren’t including Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech”, even though we were including three of his other works.

I took deep breaths. I tried not to pound my head on my desk repeatedly. And I mourned the fact that there are large numbers of black students entering college with little to no connection with their own history.

Now I don’t share that to throw them under the bus.  I share all of that because (a) people need to know that we are failing our kids and (b) the end of the story redeems the beginning.

As we worked with the students to organize and execute the convocation, they put in a lot of work and put together an event that made me incredibly proud of them.  Seriously, I almost cried as they were up on stage speaking and stepping and singing.  It was incredible.  They took the guidance we offered and ran with it.  They soaked up the lessons we were teaching along the way and proved hungry to both learn about and express a reality that they have felt but perhaps not explored in-depth.

Students have a high ceiling.  They can produce videos like the one at the top of the page that a student from the Portland-area put together earlier this month.  But we need to do a better job of investing in them and setting the vision. We need to do a better job of helping them better understand the varying contexts of injustice that this country has struggled with throughout history and continues to struggle with.

Pointing back to my post from last week…

• How do we better ground kids in the reality of the Civil Rights movement?
• What might a Rites of Passage program look like on a college campus?

Post to come soon…Why American Christians Need to be More Aware of Narratives of Suffering and Injustice in our History and Midst…

It is troubling to think the state of reading comprehension in this country has become this wretched, that we have tweeted, PlayStationed and Fox Newsed so much of our intellectual capacity away that not only can our children not divine the nuances of a masterpiece, but that we will now protect them from having to even try.

–Leonard Pitts from “Don’t censor Mark Twain’s N word”

When I was in school, I read Huck Finn.  I was usually the only kid of color in my class.  Same when I read Of Mice and Men.

It was a strange experience.  But then again, it should be.  To see that word, right there on the page.  Spoken by white characters.  Having to talk about that with white students.  It sounded alien, even though I had heard a derivative of the word thousands of times in rap music and amongst my black friends.

I guess I was fortunate.  Fortunate to have teachers who were able to steer the conversation well.  Fortunate that none of my classmates said anything terribly insensitive, offensive or out of line. Fortunate that my dad took the time to talk me through those books and make sure my classroom experience wasn’t negative, even if it wasn’t always comfortable.

Not that reading Finn or Men fundamentally changed my life.  But they were part of a progression for me as I would go on to read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and Black Boy. When I read three of James Baldwin’s works and studied his life for my Junior Thesis, it was with a depth of perspective that these other books had given me, n-word and all.

I understand why educators are censoring Twain. Students can’t handle the conversation and teachers can’t moderate the conversation. And how can we expect them to?  We rarely ever model constructive conversation in our society, especially when it comes to matter of race.  I’ve been on both sides of that equation. Sometimes a victim of speech that falls somewhere along the continuum of “insensitive” to “hurtful”. Other times I’ve been the perpetrator of hurtful speech as I’ve overreacted and labeled people unfairly.

So since we can’t talk about this in a healthy way, we either silence an important voice from this country’s literary history, or we change that voice. Those seem to be the two most realistic choices, but they aren’t the best choices.

All of which raises two questions:

1. What is the best way for us as a society to deal with Twain?

2. What do we need to do in order to get our society to a place where we can deal with Twain in a healthy and helpful way?

Renew and Restore