While
I had some brief experiences in the middle class (a year here and
there), most of my life was spent impoverished in inner-city Black
America. We moved around an awful lot in my growing up years which
prompted the often heard question, “was your father in the military or
somethin’?” This moving was the consequence of my mother chasing,
following, or otherwise enduring my father’s whims, opportunities,
insanity or genius. It will take greater minds than mine to unravel the
mysteries of an on-again-off-again tumultuous love affair that spanned
25 years, ten cities, probably twice as many residences, and produced
six emotionally scarred, yet highly intelligent and compassionate
children.
I
mostly remember growing up with a lot of rats and roaches and broken
things, but this is not unusual in urban Black America. I spent a considerable
amount of time outside of the home, and while we didn’t have a lot
of structure, I do want to say that it’s important to be careful about
what we think we know about a family growing up in those circumstances—we want to be careful
about stereotyping folks. Because what I also mostly remember is that though most things
didn’t work, I lived in an intellectually rich environment. Along with the many bookshelves,
all stacked with mounds of books, there was always a discussion going
on. Growing up in the sixties and seventies was an exciting time
for social reflection and social change and while my parents were fairly
dysfunctional in the parenting department, they were still very smart
and well read; hence all the books, mostly sociological, psychological,
philosophical and historical fiction and non-fiction. Once I remember
chatting in a room with some friends and at one point one of them said,
“What is he reading? Is he reading?” It was my brother in the other
room. He was just talking, but the level of his vocabulary and the depth
of his conversation literally sounded as though he was reading a book.
My
father had a large personality and, reportedly, a genius IQ. He was
an intellectual, a jazz lover, and popular and respected in his circles.
He was also a disciplinarian, physically and emotionally abusive to
my mother, and abandoned us regularly to a life of poverty while he
lived quite comfortably. Yet we hung on his every word and story, craved
his attention and company, and grieved his loss when we found him buried
in a veteran’s cemetery a year after his passing and more than twenty
years since the last time he “disappeared.”
In
contrast and in the shadow of my father, my mother was very smart and
apparently resourceful, but by time I was coming of age she was mostly
a shell of a woman following years of rejection, undervaluing, sacrifice,
abuse, and likely chronic
depression. As a younger woman, she had
her education interrupted with the births of six children. By
age 65, however, she managed to complete her PhD (though she was never
really able to use it other than as a status symbol by henceforth being
referred to as Dr. Sally). I think what I regret the most is
that she was cheated out of the life and love and family that she deserved
and I think in retrospect that had a great impact on me, and I knew
I didn’t want that for other women. I could certainly see that
decisions she’d made over time would have been different had she had
the kind of environment and support needed to decide otherwise. So I
came to understand it as incumbent upon me and other women with some
level of critical consciousness to create a community and a world where
women can make choices to live free lives and consequently raise their
children instead of their children being put in a position to raise
themselves.
Say it Loud!
There was a high level of racial and
cultural consciousness in my home, neighborhoods and communities of the sixties and seventies.
I would describe my family as leftist; much more in line with a nationalist or Black
power agenda than a civil rights agenda. Certainly no one was opposed to civil
rights. Let’s just say if you were to juxtapose popular understandings of King to Malcolm,
I come from more of a “Malcolm” family, if that makes sense. The intersections of
race and class have been important in my formation because my commitment
to erasing racism and economic exploitation runs deep and is personal.
I’ve, in fact, never been able to disengage them from one another
and have experienced them in my life as one and the same. I am very
grateful to have grown up in the era I did, when racial
identity and value was so affirmed, because I don’t see that so much today; I see much more
confusion. I feel very bad for young people for that reason and it drives my racial justice
organizing.
Glimpses of Class
Coming
to understand class was an interesting journey for me having grown up
the way I did. I was born in Los Angeles and by time I started school
we lived in Pomona in a fairly stable working class neighborhood; then
moved to a fairly stable middle class neighborhood for a couple of years. We
were uprooted to S.E., DC (Anacostia) where we then spent years in high levels of
poverty. One thing I noticed by age eight was that in California I was perceived as an “average”
student, but in Anacostia I was all of a sudden “exceptional."
From
there we moved to a well established middle class neighborhood in S.E.
Raleigh (read Black Raleigh), Biltmore Hills. We were renting, my father
was back in the picture and had apparently found a really good deal
that under other circumstances we could not afford. These folks were
different. Mind you they were nice to us and we got along just fine,
but they were different. The kids all seemed to be in Jack and Jill—something
I had never heard of before—and in my new school I was back to being
“average” again.
I
was initially placed in one of three fifth grade classrooms, the one
most of the kids frommy immediate neighborhood were in, and that was
clearly the “top” class (pardon the pun). After maybe a month or
so I was moved to the “lowest” class (pardon me again) because I
didn’t know the material. This was the class mostly populated by kids
who lived in the nearby apartment complex over by the Seven-11. I don’t
think I lasted in there more than a week because someone must have noticed
my brain cells were dying off. Anyway, an interesting thing happened
in this time period. On my way home from school one day I ran into some
friends from my previous class (Mrs. Avery’s class—who did not play—we
still had corporal punishment back then) and their arms were full of
books; lots of homework. And just for a moment I remember thinking,
“ha, ha, ha, you’ve got all this homework and I don’t”
as though I was lucky. Then, in the very next moment like a flash, I
understood that I was not lucky at all and that these friends of mine
with their arms full of books did not feel burdened. They were in fact
looking down on or felt sorry for me.
After
years of this yo-yoing between schools of greater and lesser resources,
I came to know, not just from reading books, but through lived experience,
that we’re all really smart, but our ability to express our brilliance
is most often shaped by the expectations people with power have of us
and the educational opportunity they are willing to afford us. This
is most often determined by the class of the school and neighborhood.
I have always resented that and here I still find myself resenting it
but feeling empowered to do something about it; hence the likely genesis
of my drive for educational equity and excellence in our public schools.
To
punctuate my awakening to class realities, fast forward from Raleigh
to central city Milwaukee public schools to my arrival at Fisk University.
Watch those assumptions again…I got there with scholarships,
federal grants, workstudy, and part time work in high school. Anyway, within a few days
of being there I had another “light bulb” experience. These folks were different.
Mind you they were nice and we got along just fine, but they were different. I just
couldn’t put my finger on it—then boom, I knew what it was! These were them! I get it! These
were the kids from Biltmore Hills all grown up and off to college. I still couldn’t
name it at age 17 but I knew it had something to do with a sense of your place in the world,
a sense of entitlement that young people like me didn’t have. Certainly what I was witnessing
was privilege, but I’m not going to say unearned privilege in that I’m sure
their parents worked hard to get them there—still an interesting class revelation for me.
Recognizing Sexism, Embracing
Feminism
One
of the interesting things about growing up in inner city Black America
is that we ended up with such a nationalist consciousness and that nationalism
is so intertwined with Black male patriarchy that it is
difficult to develop a feminist consciousness, even though they say the Black community is
so full of strong Black women. Many strong Black women are still uncritical of their
understanding of patriarchy and how it works so many of us are still very male identified
and one of the results of that, certainly in the time I was growing up, was that Black
women purposely and consciously rejected feminism because we thought we understood
it to be a White woman’s thing. It was…you know…this silly-assed White
women bra-burnin’ stuff. We were indoctrinated to think that talk of sexism was just a
diversion—a White woman’s thing; plus they were “sleeping with the enemy.” So we
went through great pains not to identify ourselves as feminist because to be a feminist was
to be White-identified, and if you were Black-identified, you couldn’t be a feminist,
they seemed to be contradictions.
 Yet,
as I reflect on my own attitudes and behaviors growing up, I was clearly
a feminist from way back. Even in silly ways—I can remember in high
school refusing to take classes like typing because I knew I was being
directed towards them because I was female, so refused to learn those things.
I found out just how silly it was when I went to college and couldn’t type my term papers.
But I refused on principle and I guess I’m still glad I did. But you learn and grow and
hopefully don’t get stuck on your way to a more global consciousness, integrating, not
discarding all the stages before.
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