This week I am off from my usual job of saving the folks in the ghetto, one therapy session at time. Sweetness, my nihilistic nearly 16 year old daughter, is taking a week long writing class at a university about 45 minutes from our house. Last year, I drove back and forth each day, nearing getting speeding tickets while trying to fit her daily 9am to 3pm sessions into my 10 hour work day. This year I’d thought I’d be smart and bring along my laptop, beading supplies and a few unread magazines so I could get some of my personal work done while basking in the campus glow.
Yet, I really gotta get rid of this idealism. I carry like combat vet’s backpack weighing me down as I walk down Woodward Avenue.
Today, arrived then got settled in a corner cushy chair with a swivel desk and accompanying side counter-enough room to spread out. While trying to find some free WiFi, a “baging’-saggin’” Black student and his geekish, overweight White companion took residence on a set of couches close enough to me such that I had no choice be to relinquish my private thoughts. At first, I found the idea of experiencing the dialogue between today’s college student a wonderful opportunity to anticipate what my daughter had to look forward to in the upcoming years. One point of pride during my parenting years has been my ability to anticipate and then communicate cultural changes to my daughter instead of relying exclusively on “what happened when I was your age”. However, in this instance, ignorance would have been bliss for as the Black student opened his already buzzing laptop and dropped it on the lap of his eager dupe, I began to hear legions of pseudo-history that would put most urban legends to shame. This list included the “fact” that Washington wasn’t the first U.S. president (the first president was a Black man) through the “fact” that it was the CIA who really killed Malcolm X. This was communicated through some conspiracy website the Black student was “turning on” the White kid to and the White kid was too stupid to realize he was being insulted in the process. The White kid sat there reading it all, nodding his head throughout as the Black kid justified liberal guilt the White kid thought he should already have.
Yet, isn’t that what college is for? Isn’t this the place for young minds to get excitedly atoned to radical new (???) ideas then for aged, learned professors to teach them not so much that these ideas are wrong but how to objectively analyze them. At some point, either the overly eager student will raise these ideas during some class discussion and be forced to verify the facts or justify their conclusions based on those facts. Either way, the student subsequently becomes the enlightened, educated citizen his parents are paying upwards of $10,000 a year for. So, why was I discouraged and disgusted by what I saw instead of chasten and encouraged at the opportunity higher education had on young minds? I was aggravated because I knew what was going to happen next and what it represented.
After about 30 minutes of what turned out to be polite acquiescing, the White geek guy finally pointed out that the originally reason they were meeting was to study for tomorrow’s biology test. It appears both of them had trouble with this class and needed to do well this go around. Soon tattered, wirebound notebooks complete with handwritten notes and a rather oversized textbook took the place of sibilate laptop. But by the time this was done, they only had 20 minutes left as the White student had to go to another class. Did the Black student continue to study biology after his friend left? Of course not, for there were more conspiracies yet to explore!
I suppose I should not begrudge a young person choosing something more exciting that recalling the names of all the bones in the human body. I certainly recall readily avoiding studying while in college albeit I think my alternate pursuits had more to do with anatomy than biology. Nevertheless, the incident was more reminiscent of a metaphor than reflective of a flaw in either student’s character. The White kid was acting like most of his fully adult liberal counterparts. They believe taking verbal beatings for the historical wrongs of their ancestors will somehow negate what happened and absolve them for any slights in the future. They are like the former Israeli soldier and a former Hamas militant testifying for Middle East peace at the U.N. What can one do when the past is so unchangeable and guilt so ageless?
I’m not worried about the White kid though. Thoughts of the MCAT exam and medical schools will drown his guilt and white privilege will crowd out memories of Black plight through each 11 o’clock news reminder of ghetto shootings he sees from his widescreen TV. He has his mind in the right place-getting to the finish line, which in this case is graduating and getting that good job. You see dear readers, while the Black kids feels he found something liberating, the White kid is getting liberated. I don’t want to argue if all those conspiracies are fact or not-frankly, I don’t care. I don’t care because I know what holding on to them has done to ambition of Black folk-absolutely nothing. It is a dead-end when it stands unconnected to the aim of the game which, in America at least, is to get rich. What good is it to “know the enemy” if doing so doesn’t lead you anywhere or away from anything? I hear these same conspiracies from the mouths of the ex-cons I work with. They are readily used as excuses for why “a Black man can’t make it in America”. To know your enemy’s plan against you and fail to apply that knowledge as a tactical advantage against him is the height of folly.
The constant repeat of these various conspiracies instills a sense of hopelessness and serves only to instill fear in the minds of Black children. Most of what that Black kid said I heard from my parents and others when I was a kid – the Internet is just a louder gossipmonger than the old men in the barbershop and the ladies at the beauty parlor. The number and voracious tone multiplied the further I pursued my education-“Watch it or you’ll become one of them (white people)!” was the less than subtle message. Haven’t we already proven racism existed and still exists yet?
Moreover, have activities such as proving that the Tea Party’s ranks are full of racists looking for a legitimate hanger to put their dirty laundry on really done anything to move the forward the lives of the Black ex-cons or that Black college student, Mr. Jealous (head of the NAACP)? Has driving out the Tea Party Express added one job, educated one ghetto child, or supported the recovery of one drug addicted Black mother? Mr. Williams (of Tea Party Express) did one thing righteous in his diatribe of idiocy – his ridiculousness exposed the the continued irrelevancy of an organization which could be doing a whole lot more for a whole lot more people if it only would shift its focus to the needs of people of color living in the 21st Century instead of looking backwards on glories already secured in the history books. “People of Color” is vaster than in the days of the NAACP’s inception, when White folk were just learning that Indians were Native Americans and that there were more than one type of Latino/a. The hues across the colors due to increased miscegenation have brought new issues that didn’t exist when there were so few obvious and acknowledging biracial persons. Their presence stumps even the best ideologies in the White Supremacy and the African-Centered movements (do they finally have something in common?). Does the presence of multi-ethnic persons mean we really are in a “post racial society” or have we added another group whose xenophobic ideas will soon be added to our cultural lexicon?
Giant conspiracies do not inform but overwhelm, stopping one from moving forward. If one must, indulge Mr. Black student, but be sure you’re ready for that biology test!
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