Ta-Nehisi Coates's Blog, page 45
June 12, 2013
Syria, Intervention, and the Weight of History
There is some excellent push-back down in comments on Fareed Zakaria's take on Syrian history which deserves some highlight.First on Zakaria's read on the force of colonialism:
On the mashing together of the Middle East and revolutions in general:
More on the Alawites:
And then on America's role in the world:
One problem with falling in love at "Let's take a step back" is you may, or may not, be qualified to access the history. I most certainly am not. But I'm pleased that it's even coming up in the first place. And I'm even more pleased by these correctives dispensed from the Horde.
His analysis actually strikes me as pretty ahistorical, even given my fairly rudimentary understanding of Syrian history. It was decades after decolonization before the Syrian regime took on its sectarian (Alawite) character -- I think Salah Jadid was the first to take the Baath party in this direction. It's also a major stretch to compare this war, sparked by a popular uprising on the heels of the other Arab revolutions of 2011 with the Lebanese Civil War which was, in large part, sparked by the Middle East's serious refugee crisis. This sort of stuff is important to take note of. Sectarianism has become a problem in the Syrian civil war, but arguing that we shouldn't be involved because we'd be meddling in some sort of historically necessary process that's been brewing since the 1970's (or, to adopt his extreme position, since Sykes-Picot) is not helpful.
Even if we adopt Zakaria's advice and merely aim for some sort of 'political' intervention, we'll need to come to grips with more plausible causes for sectarianism to avoid creating fallout.
On the mashing together of the Middle East and revolutions in general:
I agree with everything Michael Y says. Tunisia and Libya are showing progress, and while Egypt is a mess, it's no Saudi Arabia or Iran (its courts are still fighting, and despite restrictions, so is its media). Political revolutions are very messy.Generally, what a society determines to be a balance of powers and rights has to be determined on some level from politics. This is not a -you-can't-make-an-omelette-without-breaking-eggs argument, but just an observation of history. The French and European revolutions took a long, long time to develop stable polities. I think a big mistake that we take from recent history is to compare revolutions to those in Eastern Europe in 1989.
The fact that a bankrupt, occupying empire chose to not support its puppet regimes, and that popular uprisings replaced those regimes with liberal democracies, is more of a fluke of history (helped in no small part by those countries bordering NATO/ EEC), then a normal example of political revolution.
More on the Alawites:
While I appreciate this perspective, I have a quibble: The French didn't set up an Alawite regime in Syria - the Alawites did that themselves. The French did incorporate many minorities into the armed forces of the new state of Syria (including both Alawites and Druze), but they had multiple motivations for this, including most notably giving minority groups the ability to defend and advocate for themselves in an independent multi-ethnic state.
Syria after independence went through several military coups and ended up with a Ba'athist regime (nominally secular and inspired by a Greek Orthodox Christian and a Sunni), which in turn was overthrown by Hafez Assad and other Alawite officers in the 60s. His central argument still stands, but its a little more complicated than he states.
And then on America's role in the world:
As others note, I think Zakaria provides some useful historical background, although I agree that he is a bit too fatalistic (that the civil war *will* last 10 years, that there *will* be mass killings, etc). I think that there are two considerations to be kept in mind, on both sides of the argument.
On the intervention side: Americans get caught in a kind of international schizophrenia: either we think that "those people" (whoever they may be) will just fight it out/have age old historical grievances. What can we do? (This was the pre-Srebenica position on Bosnia). The flip side is that then there is the idea that *only* Americans can solve s conflict. We end up getting tossed back and forth between isolationism and full-scale intervention.
If America walks away from Syria, other countries will not. There will be more Saudi-funded jihadis fighting Iranian-trained militias armed with Russian weapons. America can have a major role without putting boots on the ground. It's what we did in places like Afghanistan in the 1980's.
On the stepping back side: it's not America's place to solve the Syria's (or the world's) problems. Really, the US could only do so much if Syria's neighbors are not willing to take a greater role in solving the conflict. I'm not sure why this is distinctly a question for the US, instead of for Europe, or Turkey (it has the second largest army in NATO right on the border), or the Arab League. I do think humanitarian reasons are compelling. But they should be compelling for humanity, not for the US as such.
There are a lot of conflicts in the world that need stepped-up attention, including Syria. But the question is how can we get the world (or at least the non-super-but-still-great powers) to pay more attention to solving them?
I will also point to this Pew poll from March. Most Americans, most Europeans, and most inhabitants of Syria's neighbors (with the exception of Jordan) definitely do not want to see any intervention in the Syrian civil war, including arming the rebels. It would be interesting to see what Syrians thought. So whatever the merits of intervention, the pressure to "do something" is *not* coming from any popular political source, whether in the Middle East or in the US.
One problem with falling in love at "Let's take a step back" is you may, or may not, be qualified to access the history. I most certainly am not. But I'm pleased that it's even coming up in the first place. And I'm even more pleased by these correctives dispensed from the Horde.
Syria, Intervention And The Weight Of History
There is some excellent push-back down in comments on Fareed Zakaria's take on Syrian history which deserves some highlight.First on Zakaria's read on the force of colonialism:
On the mashing together of the Middle East and revolutions in general:
More on the Alawites:
And then on America's role in the world:
One problem with falling in love at "Let's take a step back" is you may, or may not, be qualified to access the history. I most certainly am not. But I'm pleased that it's even coming up in the first place. And I'm even more pleased by these correctives dispensed from the Horde.
His analysis actually strikes me as pretty ahistorical, even given my fairly rudimentary understanding of Syrian history. It was decades after decolonization before the Syrian regime took on its sectarian (Alawite) character -- I think Salah Jadid was the first to take the Baath party in this direction. It's also a major stretch to compare this war, sparked by a popular uprising on the heels of the other Arab revolutions of 2011 with the Lebanese Civil War which was, in large part, sparked by the Middle East's serious refugee crisis. This sort of stuff is important to take note of. Sectarianism has become a problem in the Syrian civil war, but arguing that we shouldn't be involved because we'd be meddling in some sort of historically necessary process that's been brewing since the 1970's (or, to adopt his extreme position, since Sykes-Picot) is not helpful.
Even if we adopt Zakaria's advice and merely aim for some sort of 'political' intervention, we'll need to come to grips with more plausible causes for sectarianism to avoid creating fallout.
On the mashing together of the Middle East and revolutions in general:
I agree with everything Michael Y says. Tunisia and Libya are showing progress, and while Egypt is a mess, it's no Saudi Arabia or Iran (its courts are still fighting, and despite restrictions, so is its media). Political revolutions are very messy.Generally, what a society determines to be a balance of powers and rights has to be determined on some level from politics. This is not a -you-can't-make-an-omelette-without-breaking-eggs argument, but just an observation of history. The French and European revolutions took a long, long time to develop stable polities. I think a big mistake that we take from recent history is to compare revolutions to those in Eastern Europe in 1989.
The fact that a bankrupt, occupying empire chose to not support its puppet regimes, and that popular uprisings replaced those regimes with liberal democracies, is more of a fluke of history (helped in no small part by those countries bordering NATO/ EEC), then a normal example of political revolution.
More on the Alawites:
While I appreciate this perspective, I have a quibble: The French didn't set up an Alawite regime in Syria - the Alawites did that themselves. The French did incorporate many minorities into the armed forces of the new state of Syria (including both Alawites and Druze), but they had multiple motivations for this, including most notably giving minority groups the ability to defend and advocate for themselves in an independent multi-ethnic state.
Syria after independence went through several military coups and ended up with a Ba'athist regime (nominally secular and inspired by a Greek Orthodox Christian and a Sunni), which in turn was overthrown by Hafez Assad and other Alawite officers in the 60s. His central argument still stands, but its a little more complicated than he states.
And then on America's role in the world:
As others note, I think Zakaria provides some useful historical background, although I agree that he is a bit too fatalistic (that the civil war *will* last 10 years, that there *will* be mass killings, etc). I think that there are two considerations to be kept in mind, on both sides of the argument.
On the intervention side: Americans get caught in a kind of international schizophrenia: either we think that "those people" (whoever they may be) will just fight it out/have age old historical grievances. What can we do? (This was the pre-Srebenica position on Bosnia). The flip side is that then there is the idea that *only* Americans can solve s conflict. We end up getting tossed back and forth between isolationism and full-scale intervention.
If America walks away from Syria, other countries will not. There will be more Saudi-funded jihadis fighting Iranian-trained militias armed with Russian weapons. America can have a major role without putting boots on the ground. It's what we did in places like Afghanistan in the 1980's.
On the stepping back side: it's not America's place to solve the Syria's (or the world's) problems. Really, the US could only do so much if Syria's neighbors are not willing to take a greater role in solving the conflict. I'm not sure why this is distinctly a question for the US, instead of for Europe, or Turkey (it has the second largest army in NATO right on the border), or the Arab League. I do think humanitarian reasons are compelling. But they should be compelling for humanity, not for the US as such.
There are a lot of conflicts in the world that need stepped-up attention, including Syria. But the question is how can we get the world (or at least the non-super-but-still-great powers) to pay more attention to solving them?
I will also point to this Pew poll from March. Most Americans, most Europeans, and most inhabitants of Syria's neighbors (with the exception of Jordan) definitely do not want to see any intervention in the Syrian civil war, including arming the rebels. It would be interesting to see what Syrians thought. So whatever the merits of intervention, the pressure to "do something" is *not* coming from any popular political source, whether in the Middle East or in the US.
One problem with falling in love at "Let's take a step back" is you may, or may not, be qualified to access the history. I most certainly am not. But I'm pleased that it's even coming up in the first place. And I'm even more pleased by these correctives dispensed from the Horde.
If I Were a Black Kid, Cont.
I've been meaning to link to this interview I did with The Days of Yore for awhile now. Without harping, it probably explains why I blanch at criticizing children for wanting to play sports or be rappers. Essentially I was that kid:
And not only was I that kid, but the roots of my present self are there:
As a child, there is a very narrow range of things from which you can derive enjoyment and build self-esteem. You can get self-esteem from romance, or from athletics or from school--but not much else. I basically failed at all of those things. The things I was good at it tended to be narrow. I was a good reader--but mostly outside of school. I was very good at memorizing Rakim lyrics. That was a good party trick, but it didn't have much broad value.
But my folks were pretty good about building in opportunities for me. I started playing the djembe when I was in tenth or eleventh grade. I loved the djembe. (Dundunba seen here was my favorite) And I loved it even though I sucked at it when I started. The djembe was the first thing I actually took on, and through practice, improved. After that I started shaving goat-skins in my parents basement and putting the heads on drums alone. I had never been good with my hands. But I discovered that with some practice, I could become better. This was a lesson--you didn't actually have to suck at things. An ethic of curiosity married to an ethic of work would be rewarded. My folks had said as much. But what I needed was a field where I could see that to be true.
I got this lesson at a time when I was really doing horribly at school. (I got kicked out of high school right about then.) My parents were about through with me. But here is what they did not do--they did not take my drum. The did not tell me that I would not have a career playing the djembe. In fact my mother actually bought me a second one. (They were not cheap. I think my second one cost around $350.)
I remember one day I wanted to go over to D.C. to drum with some friends. I was trying to get my Dad to give me money to catch the local commuter train over. I think he was annoyed because, as usual, I was screwing up in school. But he gave me the money and said, "I guess there are worst things that you could want to do on a Saturday night." And there really were.
Sometimes the lessons came in more indirect ways. My Dad used to watch football with me. He was from Philly and hated the Cowboys. Then in 1987, Doug Williams took the Redskins on a playoff run and my Dad was like Flavor Flav--"We got a black quarterback, so step back." I remember watching the Super Bowl with him and Williams getting hurt. Jay Schroeder came in. Williams kind of hated Schroeder. And my Dad--again this is the 80s--says, "Doug ain't going let the white boy have it." And Doug didn't. He came back in and bombed the Broncos out the stadium. Even now I can see Williams hitting Ricky Sanders with a bomb and my Pops jumping up yelling, "Go, Dougie go!!"
That was a moment for me. Like a deep moment. My parents came up so hard. My Moms is from the projects. She was raised by my grandmother who cleaned white people's floors and sent three black girls to college. My Dad grew up in abject poverty in Philly. He'd once come home and seen all his belongings sat out on the street. He'd lived on a truck for a week as a child. His father had abused him and his family. He used to cut school to hang out in the libraries in Philadelphia.
I just gave my son a copy of Slaughterhouse Five and watching him go through it, I keep thinking of how our relationship is built on my Dad's time in the library, or my Mom teaching me to read before I went to school. That is wealth. And I think how that social wealth is now compounding with my wife and my son. And then I think of people who didn't have any of that, who were born wan how that debt compounds.
We all aren't going to come into our own in the same way. Everybody isn't going to be ready for college. But one reason I even had the opportunity to reflect on that is because I had great deal of wisdom and social wealth around me. I grew up in West Baltimore. In my heart I wasn't much different than my friends. But I had advantages. I didn't just have a mother and a father, I had two parents who really knew some things, who were, in their own way, wealthy. Because of them I had the opportunity to fail and learn. What I want to say here is everybody won't be so lucky. But what I really want to say is buy my book. (What? Too much??)
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Tony Dorsett, the running back for the Dallas Cowboys. That's what I wanted to be.
Did you play a lot of football on your own or was that just sort of a....?
I did, but I didn't play too much on account of not being very good. You know, it was just something we did in the neighborhood, threw the football and ran around a lot, yeah, a lot of fun...
And not only was I that kid, but the roots of my present self are there:
And you listened to a ton of hip-hop.When I think about my early life I don't really see much difference between myself and other kids--except one thing. I had people around me who. whatever their disappointments in me, really encouraged my interests. My house was pretty tough place. You could get your ass kicked for disrespecting your mother, your teachers or any other adult. Yet there was always hippy-streak to my folks and they tended to be great believers in imagination. So, for instance, I wasn't allowed to have GI Joe's with white faces--this was the era of black Barbie, and black everything. But my Dad never really told me and my brother Malik to put away the Dungeons & Dragons and read some Du Bois. (He was more a Booker T guy, anyway.)
It was constant, it was the soundtrack of my childhood. It was just everywhere.
So then I wanted to be a rapper, that was next. But much like being a running back, I wasn't very good at it so that was a minor problem with that dream. I wasn't good at that but that led me to poetry and I did poetry for a while. I was a better rapper than I was a running back and I was a better poet than I was a rapper. I wasn't particularly good at any of those things yet.
There was a great degree of failure in my life and I never really... You know, the way I came up, it quickly became clear to me that no person has the right to success. There's no guarantee to success at all; you may get it or you may not. You can like something and you can be bad at it and you can keep doing it or you can be not great at it and you can keep going or you can be mediocre at it and you can keep doing it. You keep doing it because you like it, just because you like it, for you, it's yours, it's private, you own it. Not to please other people, not to impress nobody.
I wasn't really good at school, I wasn't an athlete, I wasn't particularly good with girls, I didn't have any of that. I wasn't a social outcast; I had pretty good social skills and was well-liked among my crowd, so I didn't have the sort of nerd-geek experience. But I did have the experience of not being particularly good at anything measurable as a young child.
And I went through a long period, once I got to writing, of not being very successful but I kept doing it because I liked it.
As a child, there is a very narrow range of things from which you can derive enjoyment and build self-esteem. You can get self-esteem from romance, or from athletics or from school--but not much else. I basically failed at all of those things. The things I was good at it tended to be narrow. I was a good reader--but mostly outside of school. I was very good at memorizing Rakim lyrics. That was a good party trick, but it didn't have much broad value.
But my folks were pretty good about building in opportunities for me. I started playing the djembe when I was in tenth or eleventh grade. I loved the djembe. (Dundunba seen here was my favorite) And I loved it even though I sucked at it when I started. The djembe was the first thing I actually took on, and through practice, improved. After that I started shaving goat-skins in my parents basement and putting the heads on drums alone. I had never been good with my hands. But I discovered that with some practice, I could become better. This was a lesson--you didn't actually have to suck at things. An ethic of curiosity married to an ethic of work would be rewarded. My folks had said as much. But what I needed was a field where I could see that to be true.
I got this lesson at a time when I was really doing horribly at school. (I got kicked out of high school right about then.) My parents were about through with me. But here is what they did not do--they did not take my drum. The did not tell me that I would not have a career playing the djembe. In fact my mother actually bought me a second one. (They were not cheap. I think my second one cost around $350.)
I remember one day I wanted to go over to D.C. to drum with some friends. I was trying to get my Dad to give me money to catch the local commuter train over. I think he was annoyed because, as usual, I was screwing up in school. But he gave me the money and said, "I guess there are worst things that you could want to do on a Saturday night." And there really were.
Sometimes the lessons came in more indirect ways. My Dad used to watch football with me. He was from Philly and hated the Cowboys. Then in 1987, Doug Williams took the Redskins on a playoff run and my Dad was like Flavor Flav--"We got a black quarterback, so step back." I remember watching the Super Bowl with him and Williams getting hurt. Jay Schroeder came in. Williams kind of hated Schroeder. And my Dad--again this is the 80s--says, "Doug ain't going let the white boy have it." And Doug didn't. He came back in and bombed the Broncos out the stadium. Even now I can see Williams hitting Ricky Sanders with a bomb and my Pops jumping up yelling, "Go, Dougie go!!"
That was a moment for me. Like a deep moment. My parents came up so hard. My Moms is from the projects. She was raised by my grandmother who cleaned white people's floors and sent three black girls to college. My Dad grew up in abject poverty in Philly. He'd once come home and seen all his belongings sat out on the street. He'd lived on a truck for a week as a child. His father had abused him and his family. He used to cut school to hang out in the libraries in Philadelphia.
I just gave my son a copy of Slaughterhouse Five and watching him go through it, I keep thinking of how our relationship is built on my Dad's time in the library, or my Mom teaching me to read before I went to school. That is wealth. And I think how that social wealth is now compounding with my wife and my son. And then I think of people who didn't have any of that, who were born wan how that debt compounds.
We all aren't going to come into our own in the same way. Everybody isn't going to be ready for college. But one reason I even had the opportunity to reflect on that is because I had great deal of wisdom and social wealth around me. I grew up in West Baltimore. In my heart I wasn't much different than my friends. But I had advantages. I didn't just have a mother and a father, I had two parents who really knew some things, who were, in their own way, wealthy. Because of them I had the opportunity to fail and learn. What I want to say here is everybody won't be so lucky. But what I really want to say is buy my book. (What? Too much??)
If I Were A Black Kid Cont.
I've been meaning to link to this interview I did with The Days of Yore for awhile now. Without harping, it probably explains why I blanch at criticizing children for wanting to play sports or be rappers. Essentially I was that kid:
And not only was I that kid, but the roots of my present self are there:
As a child, there is a very narrow range of things from which you can derive enjoyment and build self-esteem. You can get self-esteem from romance, or from athletics or from school--but not much else. I basically failed at all of those things. The things I was good at it tended to be narrow. I was a good reader--but mostly outside of school. I was very good at memorizing Rakim lyrics. That was a good party trick, but it didn't have much broad value.
But my folks were pretty good about building in opportunities for me. I started playing the djembe when I was in tenth or eleventh grade. I loved the djembe. (Dundunba seen here was my favorite) And I loved it even though I sucked at it when I started. The djembe was the first thing I actually took on, and through practice, improved. After that I started shaving goat-skins in my parents basement and putting the heads on drums alone. I had never been good with my hands. But I discovered that with some practice, I could become better. This was a lesson--you didn't actually have to suck at things. An ethic of curiosity married to an ethic of work would be rewarded. My folks had said as much. But what I needed was a field where I could see that to be true.
I got this lesson at a time when I was really doing horribly at school. (I got kicked out of high school right about then.) My parents were about through with me. But here is what they did not do--they did not take my drum. The did not tell me that I would not have a career playing the djembe. In fact my mother actually bought me a second one. (They were not cheap. I think my second one cost around $350.)
I remember one day I wanted to go over to D.C. to drum with some friends. I was trying to get my Dad to give me money to catch the local commuter train over. I think he was annoyed because, as usual, I was screwing up in school. But he gave me the money and said, "I guess there are worst things that you could want to do on a Saturday night." And there really were.
Sometimes the lessons came in more indirect ways. My Dad used to watch football with me. He was from Philly and hated the Cowboys. Then in 1987, Doug Williams took the Redskins on a playoff run and my Dad was like Flavor Flav--"We got a black quarterback, so step back." I remember watching the Super Bowl with him and Williams getting hurt. Jay Schroeder came in. Williams kind of hated Schroeder. And my Dad--again this is the 80s--says, "Doug ain't going let the white boy have it." And Doug didn't. He came back in and bombed the Broncos out the stadium. Even now I can see Williams hitting Ricky Sanders with a bomb and my Pops jumping up yelling, "Go, Dougie go!!"
That was a moment for me. Like a deep moment. My parents came up so hard. My Moms is from the projects. She was raised by my grandmother who cleaned white people's floors and sent three black girls to college. My Dad grew up in abject poverty in Philly. He'd once come home and seen all his belongings sat out on the street. He'd lived on a truck for a week as a child. His father had abused him and his family. He used to cut school to hang out in the libraries in Philadelphia.
I just gave my son a copy of Slaughterhouse Five and watching him go through it, I keep thinking of how our relationship is built on my Dad's time in the library, or my Mom teaching me to read before I went to school. That is wealth. And I think how that social wealth is now compounding with my wife and my son. And then I think of people who didn't have any of that, who were born wan how that debt compounds.
We all aren't going to come into our own in the same way. Everybody isn't going to be ready for college. But one reason I even had the opportunity to reflect on that is because I had great deal of wisdom and social wealth around me. I grew up in West Baltimore. In my heart I wasn't much different than my friends. But I had advantages. I didn't just have a mother and a father, I had two parents who really knew some things, who were, in their own way, wealthy. Because of them I had the opportunity to fail and learn. What I want to say here is everybody won't be so lucky. But what I really want to say is buy my book. (What? Too much??)
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Tony Dorsett, the running back for the Dallas Cowboys. That's what I wanted to be.
Did you play a lot of football on your own or was that just sort of a....?
I did, but I didn't play too much on account of not being very good. You know, it was just something we did in the neighborhood, threw the football and ran around a lot, yeah, a lot of fun...
And not only was I that kid, but the roots of my present self are there:
And you listened to a ton of hip-hop.When I think about my early life I don't really see much difference between myself and other kids--except one thing. I had people around me who. whatever their disappointments in me, really encouraged my interests. My house was pretty tough place. You could get your ass kicked for disrespecting your mother, your teachers or any other adult. Yet there was always hippy-streak to my folks and they tended to be great believers in imagination. So, for instance, I wasn't allowed to have GI Joe's with white faces--this was the era of black Barbie, and black everything. But my Dad never really told me and my brother Malik to put away the Dungeons & Dragons and read some Du Bois. (He was more a Booker T guy, anyway.)
It was constant, it was the soundtrack of my childhood. It was just everywhere.
So then I wanted to be a rapper, that was next. But much like being a running back, I wasn't very good at it so that was a minor problem with that dream. I wasn't good at that but that led me to poetry and I did poetry for a while. I was a better rapper than I was a running back and I was a better poet than I was a rapper. I wasn't particularly good at any of those things yet.
There was a great degree of failure in my life and I never really... You know, the way I came up, it quickly became clear to me that no person has the right to success. There's no guarantee to success at all; you may get it or you may not. You can like something and you can be bad at it and you can keep doing it or you can be not great at it and you can keep going or you can be mediocre at it and you can keep doing it. You keep doing it because you like it, just because you like it, for you, it's yours, it's private, you own it. Not to please other people, not to impress nobody.
I wasn't really good at school, I wasn't an athlete, I wasn't particularly good with girls, I didn't have any of that. I wasn't a social outcast; I had pretty good social skills and was well-liked among my crowd, so I didn't have the sort of nerd-geek experience. But I did have the experience of not being particularly good at anything measurable as a young child.
And I went through a long period, once I got to writing, of not being very successful but I kept doing it because I liked it.
As a child, there is a very narrow range of things from which you can derive enjoyment and build self-esteem. You can get self-esteem from romance, or from athletics or from school--but not much else. I basically failed at all of those things. The things I was good at it tended to be narrow. I was a good reader--but mostly outside of school. I was very good at memorizing Rakim lyrics. That was a good party trick, but it didn't have much broad value.
But my folks were pretty good about building in opportunities for me. I started playing the djembe when I was in tenth or eleventh grade. I loved the djembe. (Dundunba seen here was my favorite) And I loved it even though I sucked at it when I started. The djembe was the first thing I actually took on, and through practice, improved. After that I started shaving goat-skins in my parents basement and putting the heads on drums alone. I had never been good with my hands. But I discovered that with some practice, I could become better. This was a lesson--you didn't actually have to suck at things. An ethic of curiosity married to an ethic of work would be rewarded. My folks had said as much. But what I needed was a field where I could see that to be true.
I got this lesson at a time when I was really doing horribly at school. (I got kicked out of high school right about then.) My parents were about through with me. But here is what they did not do--they did not take my drum. The did not tell me that I would not have a career playing the djembe. In fact my mother actually bought me a second one. (They were not cheap. I think my second one cost around $350.)
I remember one day I wanted to go over to D.C. to drum with some friends. I was trying to get my Dad to give me money to catch the local commuter train over. I think he was annoyed because, as usual, I was screwing up in school. But he gave me the money and said, "I guess there are worst things that you could want to do on a Saturday night." And there really were.
Sometimes the lessons came in more indirect ways. My Dad used to watch football with me. He was from Philly and hated the Cowboys. Then in 1987, Doug Williams took the Redskins on a playoff run and my Dad was like Flavor Flav--"We got a black quarterback, so step back." I remember watching the Super Bowl with him and Williams getting hurt. Jay Schroeder came in. Williams kind of hated Schroeder. And my Dad--again this is the 80s--says, "Doug ain't going let the white boy have it." And Doug didn't. He came back in and bombed the Broncos out the stadium. Even now I can see Williams hitting Ricky Sanders with a bomb and my Pops jumping up yelling, "Go, Dougie go!!"
That was a moment for me. Like a deep moment. My parents came up so hard. My Moms is from the projects. She was raised by my grandmother who cleaned white people's floors and sent three black girls to college. My Dad grew up in abject poverty in Philly. He'd once come home and seen all his belongings sat out on the street. He'd lived on a truck for a week as a child. His father had abused him and his family. He used to cut school to hang out in the libraries in Philadelphia.
I just gave my son a copy of Slaughterhouse Five and watching him go through it, I keep thinking of how our relationship is built on my Dad's time in the library, or my Mom teaching me to read before I went to school. That is wealth. And I think how that social wealth is now compounding with my wife and my son. And then I think of people who didn't have any of that, who were born wan how that debt compounds.
We all aren't going to come into our own in the same way. Everybody isn't going to be ready for college. But one reason I even had the opportunity to reflect on that is because I had great deal of wisdom and social wealth around me. I grew up in West Baltimore. In my heart I wasn't much different than my friends. But I had advantages. I didn't just have a mother and a father, I had two parents who really knew some things, who were, in their own way, wealthy. Because of them I had the opportunity to fail and learn. What I want to say here is everybody won't be so lucky. But what I really want to say is buy my book. (What? Too much??)
June 11, 2013
Fareed Zakaria on American Intervention in Syria
I was out of town last week reporting in Chicago. I wanted to post this piece, but it slipped away from me in the crush of events. At any rate, here is Fareed Zakaria over at Andrew's place arguing against American intervention in Syria.I really appreciate this piece because one of my pet peeves with journalism, when I was young, was its ahistorical nature. I think that's changed--oddly enough--in the era of blogs and the internet. Any explanation of Syria that begins with "You gotta step back when you talk about what we should do in Syria and understand what is happening..." is going to get my attention. Zakaria does not disappoint.
Fareed Zakaria: Stay Out Of Syria from The Dish on Vimeo.
Fareed Zakaria On American Intervention In Syria
I was out of town last week reporting in Chicago. I wanted to post this piece, but it slipped away from me in the crush of events. At any rate, here is Fareed Zakaria over at Andrew's place arguing against American intervention in Syria.
I really appreciate this piece because one of my pet peeves with journalism, when I was young, was its ahistorical nature. I think that's changed--oddly enough--in the era of blogs and the internet. Any explanation of Syria that begins with "You gotta step back when you talk about what we should do in Syria and understand what is happening..." is going to get my attention. Zakaria does not disappoint.
I really appreciate this piece because one of my pet peeves with journalism, when I was young, was its ahistorical nature. I think that's changed--oddly enough--in the era of blogs and the internet. Any explanation of Syria that begins with "You gotta step back when you talk about what we should do in Syria and understand what is happening..." is going to get my attention. Zakaria does not disappoint.
Fareed Zakaria: Stay Out Of Syria from The Dish on Vimeo.
Mad Men Has Become a Bad Comic Book
I've been thinking for some time about this piece Emily Nussbaum wrote on Mad Men where she articulates the basic problems with the sixth season and, perhaps now, the entire series:
As the island was to "Lost," Don Draper is to "Mad Men." He was a great premise, a mystery we were dying to understand. But, the more the puzzle has been filled in, the more he's begun to feel suspiciously like a symbol, a thesis title rather than a character: "Appearance Versus Reality"; "American Masculinity as Performance"; "The Links Between Prostitution, Marriage, and the Ad Game." I'd hoped that the death of Don's California-stoner muse, Anna, two seasons ago—in one of the series' standout episodes, "The Suitcase"—would work as an exorcism, but instead Weiner doubled down, adding fresh flashbacks, to the point that even JT LeRoy might think that he was laying it on a bit thick.To recap: Don's real name is Dick Whitman. His prostitute mother died in childbirth; his dad, her john, beat him. His fundamentalist stepmother called him a "whore's child." Then his father got kicked in the head by a horse, and the stepmother moved in with her sister, herself a prostitute, living in a brothel. The stepmother, heavily pregnant with Don's half brother, prostituted herself to her brother-in-law, as the teen-age Don knelt outside her door. He watched them, through the keyhole, have sex. C'mon, now. This is no longer the backstory of a serial adulterer; it's the backstory of a serial killer.
We haven't even got to the part where Whitman goes to fight in Korea, accidentally blows up his superior officer, Don Draper, steals his identity, forms a secret relationship with his widow (she's motherly, yet also somewhat prostitute-like, since he pays for her upkeep), becomes a greaser, and seduces a model who is also concerned primarily with appearances. Eventually, he gets into advertising, and when his half brother, Adam, finds him, Don rejects him, and Adam hangs himself. It's not that none of this makes sense, or could make sense; it's just too much, overdetermined. None of the other characters has this sort of reverse-engineered psychology, and for good reason: it's a lazy way to impose meaning.
Reading Emily detail Draper's back-story, I had the feeling that I'd seen this improbable twisting and turning before—in comic books. We grant comic books that license because they are arched over decades, forged by different writers and editors. Some writers emphasize one aspect of backstory more than others, and whole events are often retconned into oblivion. Either way I don't think backstory is so much the problem, as the belief that backstory has more explanatory power than it actually does.
We are being told that Don is having an affair with Sylvia. Presumably this affair has some relation to the perversions he experienced as a child. That's a good start but it is insufficient. Why—specifically—Sylvia? Who is she? What, precisely, is she offering that Don simply can't get enough of? How does that particular character interact with whatever is going on in Don Draper's head?
This is not a new challenge. What made Don Draper's two affairs so powerful in the first season was the sense that both Rachel and Midge were doing something for him. Rachel and Don connected on mutual feeling of being a pariah. Midge was window into a world of nonconformity that has always intrigued Don—the representation of a path that an identity thief, running from a dysfunctional family might, himself, have taken.
And each of these characters were actual people. Rachel had a father and a sister and expectations emanating from each of those. She had her own thoughts on Judaism and Israel, ad ultimately, on what constituted cowardice and what didn't. Midge inhabited the falling world of the Beatnicks. And you had some real sense of that world—you got to see her friends, you got to go to Jazz clubs with them, and finally, you got to see her in love with someone else.
What other world does Sylvia represent, beyond OPP? Who is she independent of Don? What are the grounds on which they relate? Why did she agree to begin their affair again? Why does she like Don? Is it because he is the most interesting man alive? Right now, all I am watching is the latest vagina Don Draper happened to trip over.
That is depressing. Mad Men's greatest strength was always the humanity it gave to women. You still see some of that in the interactions between Peggy and Joan. But this season has been mostly about making an argument, rather than telling a story. Whole arcs are initiated and then dropped. There are a flurry of characters, interesting in their own right, whose shine comes and goes. There's no focus beyond a kind of creeping amorality. (I think that's the argument.) Sally Draper's friend from the last episode wasn't so much a character as a demigod of chaos summoned up solely to fuck up Sally Draper even more.
For those of us who once cared about Don, the big reveal lacked any emotional power. Here is a dude so low that he would bang his friend's wife while his own wife was upstairs, and go off on a drug binge while his house was robbed and his kids were held hostage. There's no sympathy left. He's a dirt bag. And I am fine watching dirt bags. But tell me something new about this particular dirt bag. Show me something about him that I did not know or suspect—something beyond, "Hey you know that dirt bag, really is just a dirtbag." There needs to be something more.
Notes From the First Year: Some Thoughts on Teaching at MIT
A commenter asks:
I've never taught writing before, but I tend to believe that toughness is really important if you are going to be a successful writer. What you need to write is the ability to not get knocked out. You need to be able to take brutal critique and tolerate awful people. But more than that, you need the physical courage to look at a blank screen, and write. What you write will generally be pretty awful -- especially when you are young. And for the most part, this does not change as you age. The writing in your head may well be the sweetest music. But when you put it on to the page what you will get will likely only be some vague, mushy approximation.
The old adage is true -- writing is rewriting. But it takes a kind of courage to confront your own awfulness (and you will be awful) and realize that, if you sleep on it, you can come back and bang at the thing some more, and it will be less awful. And then you sleep again, and bang even more, and you have something middling. Then you sleep some more, and bang, and you get something that is actually coherent. Hopefully when you are done you have a piece that reasonably approximates the music in your head. And some day, having done that for years, perhaps you will get something that is even better than the music in your head. Becoming a better writer means becoming a re-writer. But that first phase is so awful that most people don't want any part.
I think because MIT is a pretty bruising place, my kids came prepared for most of this. I don't know if they expected it in a writing class, or not. But I generally think that arts and humanities classes should not be easy, that they should, in fact, reflect the great difficulty of the actual profession of "artist" or "critic." So I tried to give them that.
I didn't have to work hard to motivate people. What I found was that if I showed up, and I was excited, they fed off of that, and they got excited. I came to feel that teaching was performance. My job was to communicate my own energy and belief in the importance of the work. I had it pretty easy. I wrote my syllabus, and thus chose work that I loved. If the syllabus wasn't working, I could make a change as we went. (I found, for instance, that teaching kids how to write compelling sentences is a lost art.) More than that, I love writing. I go to bed thinking about it, and wake up thinking about it. Some communicating energy was never a problem.
This probably won't really help anyone else in the teaching world. I don't know how well I'd do with a pre-written curriculum which I had to follow to the letter. I don't know how well I'd do in a class where we were studying writing, but not trying to learn how to write. I don't know how well I'd do at a school where the kids cared less.
Still, I enjoyed this year tremendously. People think that teaching at a science and engineering school means you'll be faced with a group of awful writers. But I have read enough dense and vague lit criticism to know that writing clearly does not have a direct relationship with interest in the humanities. In some ways, I felt that the rigor of math had better prepared these kids for the rigor of writing. One of my students insisted that whereas in math, you could practice and get better, in writing you either "had it" or you didn't. I told her that writing was more like math then she suspected.
If this isn't too off topic, what do you find motivates most of your students at MIT? Do they really love the subject, or do they see it as a pathway to bigger things, or are they just doing it because that's what you do to succeed in life? I'm sure it's a combination of all of them, but I would be interested in how you saw the break down.The first thing I should say is that the kids at MIT are, I think, different than most. Even among students from the highly competitive schools they seem a little different. We live in a world that valorizes "intelligence," "talent," and "ideas." (The obsession in journalism with the counter-intuitive springs from this.) What I found at MIT was something a little different. They were plenty smart, but they weren't particularly enamored with that fact. And more than being smart, they were tough.
I've never taught writing before, but I tend to believe that toughness is really important if you are going to be a successful writer. What you need to write is the ability to not get knocked out. You need to be able to take brutal critique and tolerate awful people. But more than that, you need the physical courage to look at a blank screen, and write. What you write will generally be pretty awful -- especially when you are young. And for the most part, this does not change as you age. The writing in your head may well be the sweetest music. But when you put it on to the page what you will get will likely only be some vague, mushy approximation.
The old adage is true -- writing is rewriting. But it takes a kind of courage to confront your own awfulness (and you will be awful) and realize that, if you sleep on it, you can come back and bang at the thing some more, and it will be less awful. And then you sleep again, and bang even more, and you have something middling. Then you sleep some more, and bang, and you get something that is actually coherent. Hopefully when you are done you have a piece that reasonably approximates the music in your head. And some day, having done that for years, perhaps you will get something that is even better than the music in your head. Becoming a better writer means becoming a re-writer. But that first phase is so awful that most people don't want any part.
I think because MIT is a pretty bruising place, my kids came prepared for most of this. I don't know if they expected it in a writing class, or not. But I generally think that arts and humanities classes should not be easy, that they should, in fact, reflect the great difficulty of the actual profession of "artist" or "critic." So I tried to give them that.
I didn't have to work hard to motivate people. What I found was that if I showed up, and I was excited, they fed off of that, and they got excited. I came to feel that teaching was performance. My job was to communicate my own energy and belief in the importance of the work. I had it pretty easy. I wrote my syllabus, and thus chose work that I loved. If the syllabus wasn't working, I could make a change as we went. (I found, for instance, that teaching kids how to write compelling sentences is a lost art.) More than that, I love writing. I go to bed thinking about it, and wake up thinking about it. Some communicating energy was never a problem.
This probably won't really help anyone else in the teaching world. I don't know how well I'd do with a pre-written curriculum which I had to follow to the letter. I don't know how well I'd do in a class where we were studying writing, but not trying to learn how to write. I don't know how well I'd do at a school where the kids cared less.
Still, I enjoyed this year tremendously. People think that teaching at a science and engineering school means you'll be faced with a group of awful writers. But I have read enough dense and vague lit criticism to know that writing clearly does not have a direct relationship with interest in the humanities. In some ways, I felt that the rigor of math had better prepared these kids for the rigor of writing. One of my students insisted that whereas in math, you could practice and get better, in writing you either "had it" or you didn't. I told her that writing was more like math then she suspected.
What Makes Fiction Good? It's Mostly the Voice
Delacorte I finished Slaughterhouse-Five last week. It is probably the the funniest book I've ever read. Here's a sample. Billy Pilgrim, Lazzaro, and Edgar Derby are prisoners in a German war camp. Lazzaro is plotting revenge against an English POW who broke his arm. In the course of explaining this he tells a story about killing a dog with clock springs and a steak:
"Anybody ever asks you what the sweetest thing in life is--" said Lazzaro, "it's revenge."When Dresden was destroyed later on, incidentally, Lazzaro did not exult. He didn't have anything against the Germans, he said. Also, he said he liked to take his enemies one at a time. He was proud of never having hurt an innocent bystander."Nobody ever got it from Lazzaro," he said, "who didn't have it coming."
Poor old Edgar Derby, the high school teacher, got into the conversation now. He asked Lazzaro if he planned to feed the Blue Fairy Godmother clock springs and steak.
"Shit," said Lazzaro.
"He's a pretty big man," said Derby, who, of course, was a pretty big man himself.
"Size don't mean a thing."
"You're going to shoot him?"
"I'm gonna have him shot," said Lazzaro. "He'll get home after the war. He'll be a big hero. The dames'll be climbing all over him. He'll settle down. A couple of years'll go by. And then one day there'll be a knock on his door. He'll answer the door, and there'll be a stranger out there. The stranger'll ask him if he's so-and-so. When he says he is, the stranger'll say, 'Paul Lazzaro sent me.' And he'll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger'll let him think a couple of seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life's gonna be like without a pecker. Then he'll shoot him once in the guts and walk away." So it goes.
Lazzaro said that he could have anybody in the world killed for a thousand dollars plus traveling expenses. He had a list in his head, he said.
Derby asked him who all was on the list, and Lazzaro said, "Just make fucking sure you don't get on it. Just don't cross me, that's all." There was a silence, and then he added, "And don't cross my friends."
"You have friends'?" Derby wanted to know.
"In the war?" said Lazzaro. "Yeah—I had a friend in the war. He's dead." So it goes.
"That's too bad."
Lazzaro's eyes were twinkling again. "Yeah. He was my buddy on the boxcar. His name was Roland Weary. He died in my arms." Now he pointed to Billy with his one mobile hand. "He died on account of this silly cocksucker here. So I promised him I'd have this silly cocksucker shot after the war."
Lazzaro erased with his hand anything Billy Pilgrim might be about to say. "Just forget about it, kid," he said. "Enjoy life while you can. Nothing's gonna happen for maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. But lemme give you a piece of advice: Whenever the doorbell rings, have somebody else answer the door."
This is a pretty entertaining section, and the entire book is a string of bizarre and absurdist incidents. It has none of the complicated, nuanced characters I claim to enjoy in narrative. But I did enjoy this narrative. I think it is because, in fiction, if you like the person telling you the story—which is to say the voice, not the author—you generally will let them tell you a story.
Pride And Prejudice, for me, is all about voice. I don't find Mr. Darcy gripping at all, except when the Austen's narrator is describing him. It is as though she is letting me on a secret. Ditto for Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence. The voice belongs to society insider, one who believes in all of its trappings but also loves to gossip about its hypocrisies. It is as if the voice is saying to you—"If you don't have anything good to say, come sit by me." Same with Moby Dick and the vagabond intellectual Ishmael. Same with The Great Gatsby and its everyman, Nick Carraway.
I've actually been struggling with this while studying E.L. Doctorow's work. Doctorow is my favorite author. The Waterworks, Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, World's Fair, I love them all. (The Waterworks is especially underrated.) But I love the voices telling me the stories in each case. I'm now trying to get through The Book of Daniel, considered one of Doctorow's best novels. But I can't get with the voice and I'm not sure why.
At any rate, this is of major importance to me because I'm teaching a class next semester called "Voice And Meaning." It's all about how writers choose voices and why they matter. Like any class I teach, this is ultimately about making things. Theory is only important in so much as it helps.
June 7, 2013
If I Were a Black Kid ...
Here's a question from yesterday's comments:
I was 16. I'd been arrested for assaulting a teacher and suspended on suspicion of assaulting another teacher. In my last year there, I got into a really huge fight in which I took a steel trash can to the head and then promptly failed four out of seven classes that year. I actually failed English. (You can read all about my lovely adventures with the Baltimore City Public Schools here.) So, you see, it is highly unlikely that I would ever be invited back to Poly to address the students. My older brother Malik, who also went to Poly and has gone on to work for Dreamworks, would be a much better candidate.
But, weirdly enough, I often do get asked to speak to predominantly black schools. Last year, I had the honor of going back to the site of my old middle school and spending a day with the kids. My mother teaches in Baltimore County and I've gone out and talked to her kids. I've even talked to the kids at Poly's longtime rival -- City College. I'm pretty sure the teachers bring me in because they believe my checkered background might mean I have something to say to them.
What I generally try to do is avoid messages about "hard work" and "homework," not because I think those things are unimportant, but because I think they put the cart before the horse. The two words I try to use with them are "excitement" and "entrepreneurial." I try to get them to think of education not as something that pleases their teachers, but as a ticket out into a world so grand and stunning that it defies their imagination. My belief is that, if I can get them to understand the "why?" of education, then the effort and hard work and long study hours will come after. I don't know how true that is in practice, but given that I am asked to speak from my own experience, that is the lesson I have drawn.
This will come as somewhat depressing news, but one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Poly was to get away from the violence that dogged virtually every other Baltimore city high school. That didn't exactly work out as I planned it. But my point is that my childhood -- and my education -- was largely guided by the need to negotiate violence. When teachers talked to us about why we needed to succeed, they talked about not ending up dead, or not ending up in jail.
Much like President Obama's own rhetoric, this line of conversation is understandable, and it has its uses. A lot of us were killing and being killed. A lot of us really were going to jail. My parents generally talked the same way, and in their case, I have to say it was largely successful. In a few days, I am going to see my younger brother sworn as a lawyer in the state of Maryland. My father has seven kids. All of them hail from in and around West Baltimore. All of them, except me, graduated from college. Perhaps that makes the point. But I know how close I came to the edge. And I think a part of that was that not getting shot and not going to jail simply wasn't enough to make want to succeed in school. No one ever told me about Paris. No one I knew had ever been.
What I have come to believe is that children are more than what their circumstance put upon them. So my goal is to get kids to own their education. I don't think I can hector them into doing this. I don't think I can shame them into doing it. I do think that might be able to affect some sort of internal motivation. So I try to get them to see that every subject they study has the potential to open up a universe. I really mean this.
I went to the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2008, and I still was, very much, a product of my 'hood. I could not believe what I was seeing. There was a guy next to me who had been old friends with Peter Jennings. He was retired. He had tales about taking Peter Jennings' boat out sailing. He talked about how he'd spent the day up at the Continental Divide with his dog. He loved his life. His only trouble was that he couldn't convince his wife to retire.
Negro, I didn't even know what the Continental Divide was. And I remember thinking, "People actually live like this. Like, we're doing this now?" And then I remember thinking, "I want to live like that." By which I meant, I wanted to see things. If this was one world far from mine, there must be other worlds. And I really wanted to see them.
I recall sitting in my seventh-grade French class repeating over and over "Il fait froid. Il fait chaud." Why was I learning French? Who did I know that spoke French? Where is France? Do they even really talk like this? Well, yeah, they kinda do. I figured that out at 37. And now I find myself clutching flashcards, repeating "Il fait froid. Il fait chaud." This summer, I am going to live with my family in Paris for eight weeks and study the language. I had no idea that education could make that possible. If I had been more serious about education, the opportunity would have come a lot sooner.
So when I talk to young black kids, I try to talk about the "why?" as much as the "what?" And, for the record, I do the same thing at MIT. I start my class explaining that learning to write is their moral duty. I told them they had access to more information that 99 percent of all humans who have ever lived. It is a moral duty to learn how to communicate that information, clearly and compellingly. I think everyone should own their education.
I don't know if any of that works. But I am convinced that my problem was not mere laziness nor a lack of work ethic. Work ethics don't magically appear. Mine is most evidenced when I understand why I am working and when I find that "Why" compelling. I never really had that as a student. "Try harder" has to have some actual meaning beyond sloganeering.
At this point I am fairly well self-educated, though I have many weaknesses which I likely would not have had, if I'd really gotten a proper and challenging education. (St. Augustine, stats, grammar, genetics etc.) I'm not ashamed of this. It's just a fact. But I also know that if I'd understood, as a youth, what education can give you, that a degree was not simply a matter of being "Twice As Good" but a key to bearing witness to "Twice As Much," I might have made better choices.
Addendum: One other thing I try to do is avoid talking about education in the negative. So I rarely talk to kids about what they "shouldn't be doing" or what they "can't do. I prefer to talk about what they can and should do. This is not mere phraseology. If you are a twelve-year old black kid who dreams of being the next Kendrick Lamar or Lebron James, I don't really see a problem. If you are are 12-year old black kid who only dreams of being that, I do see a problem. My argument to you is not that you should stop dreaming of rapping or playing ball, my argument is that you should dream about much more. That is part of the magic of being 12.
One problem with being from highly segregated communities (as most black kids are) is that you tend to have less exposure to the world. I had more exposure then virtually any of my friends, and that still wasn't much. When you don't have much exposure to the world the options you see for yourself tend to be limited--you can't really dream about that which you don't know exists. I would argue that the exposure granted by education is a potent antidote to the kind of provincialism that you must necessarily see in segregated communities. So my argument to black twelve year-old boy isn't that he should stop dreaming of being a rapper or a ball player, but that he should understand that that isn't the end of their possibilities. And one way to see more of what it is possible is education.
I would not urge you simply to get off the PlayStation. I would urge you to understand who made the game. I would not urge you to take down your King James poster. I would urge you to think about the business that makes him possible. Perhaps you'd like to be part of that business some day. I would urge you think about what Kendrick is doing in his lyrics, to think about music. Do you know how to read music? Have you learned an instrument? Would that interest you? How about poetry? Have you ever read any? Would you consider trying to write some of your own?
I think we all get frustrated with the state of our community. I think it is easy to turn that frustration into a kind of catharsis by denigrating the dreams of children. I believe in taking the dreams of children seriously, and then challenging them to take their own dreams seriously. Again--ownership.
Again, I can only draw from my personal biography. I am doubtful that I could have been shamed into making better choices. Some people probably can be. There's was plenty of shaming around me as a child. But I did not take education seriously until I saw something in it for me, aside from what everyone else thought.
Here is a thought experiment -- I do not pose this as an argument, or a "gotcha" proposition. I seriously want to hear this speech: TNC, if you are invited to your high school, Baltimore Polytechnic (thanks Wikipedia! P.S.: that you are not listed as a notable Alumnus is BS) and asked to speak to the students, what would you say? You're not allowed to give an impersonal, professorial talk about your academic interests. Let's assume the people who have invited you really want to know what you think they should do as individuals, and what they should do as a community, in order to achieve the kind of success in life that you have earned.Well, first, I would say that you should be careful with Wikipedia. I did, in fact, attend Baltimore Polytechnic Institute ("Poly" for short). But the reason I am not listed as a notable alumnus is probably that I didn't graduate from there. Oh, and here is something else -- I was asked to leave. Twice. The first time, my parents argued for me to be readmitted. The second time they just threw up their hands and said -- "Fool, you are on your own."
The large majority are good kids: driven, hungering for success and a sense of self, and desperately looking up to you for encouragement and advice, to somehow move them, even if they are too cool to show it. It's a pretty good school, but you are exceptional, and deep down, they want to be valued like you are valued. They want to be exceptional too. Sprinkled in the audience are also a bunch of fools who are making terrible choices and wrecking their own lives and hurting their community. But for this one hour, regardless of whether they have chosen to actively build up or tear down their lives and their community, they are ALL listening. You've got the mic. What would you say?
I was 16. I'd been arrested for assaulting a teacher and suspended on suspicion of assaulting another teacher. In my last year there, I got into a really huge fight in which I took a steel trash can to the head and then promptly failed four out of seven classes that year. I actually failed English. (You can read all about my lovely adventures with the Baltimore City Public Schools here.) So, you see, it is highly unlikely that I would ever be invited back to Poly to address the students. My older brother Malik, who also went to Poly and has gone on to work for Dreamworks, would be a much better candidate.
But, weirdly enough, I often do get asked to speak to predominantly black schools. Last year, I had the honor of going back to the site of my old middle school and spending a day with the kids. My mother teaches in Baltimore County and I've gone out and talked to her kids. I've even talked to the kids at Poly's longtime rival -- City College. I'm pretty sure the teachers bring me in because they believe my checkered background might mean I have something to say to them.
What I generally try to do is avoid messages about "hard work" and "homework," not because I think those things are unimportant, but because I think they put the cart before the horse. The two words I try to use with them are "excitement" and "entrepreneurial." I try to get them to think of education not as something that pleases their teachers, but as a ticket out into a world so grand and stunning that it defies their imagination. My belief is that, if I can get them to understand the "why?" of education, then the effort and hard work and long study hours will come after. I don't know how true that is in practice, but given that I am asked to speak from my own experience, that is the lesson I have drawn.
This will come as somewhat depressing news, but one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Poly was to get away from the violence that dogged virtually every other Baltimore city high school. That didn't exactly work out as I planned it. But my point is that my childhood -- and my education -- was largely guided by the need to negotiate violence. When teachers talked to us about why we needed to succeed, they talked about not ending up dead, or not ending up in jail.
Much like President Obama's own rhetoric, this line of conversation is understandable, and it has its uses. A lot of us were killing and being killed. A lot of us really were going to jail. My parents generally talked the same way, and in their case, I have to say it was largely successful. In a few days, I am going to see my younger brother sworn as a lawyer in the state of Maryland. My father has seven kids. All of them hail from in and around West Baltimore. All of them, except me, graduated from college. Perhaps that makes the point. But I know how close I came to the edge. And I think a part of that was that not getting shot and not going to jail simply wasn't enough to make want to succeed in school. No one ever told me about Paris. No one I knew had ever been.
What I have come to believe is that children are more than what their circumstance put upon them. So my goal is to get kids to own their education. I don't think I can hector them into doing this. I don't think I can shame them into doing it. I do think that might be able to affect some sort of internal motivation. So I try to get them to see that every subject they study has the potential to open up a universe. I really mean this.
I went to the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2008, and I still was, very much, a product of my 'hood. I could not believe what I was seeing. There was a guy next to me who had been old friends with Peter Jennings. He was retired. He had tales about taking Peter Jennings' boat out sailing. He talked about how he'd spent the day up at the Continental Divide with his dog. He loved his life. His only trouble was that he couldn't convince his wife to retire.
Negro, I didn't even know what the Continental Divide was. And I remember thinking, "People actually live like this. Like, we're doing this now?" And then I remember thinking, "I want to live like that." By which I meant, I wanted to see things. If this was one world far from mine, there must be other worlds. And I really wanted to see them.
I recall sitting in my seventh-grade French class repeating over and over "Il fait froid. Il fait chaud." Why was I learning French? Who did I know that spoke French? Where is France? Do they even really talk like this? Well, yeah, they kinda do. I figured that out at 37. And now I find myself clutching flashcards, repeating "Il fait froid. Il fait chaud." This summer, I am going to live with my family in Paris for eight weeks and study the language. I had no idea that education could make that possible. If I had been more serious about education, the opportunity would have come a lot sooner.
So when I talk to young black kids, I try to talk about the "why?" as much as the "what?" And, for the record, I do the same thing at MIT. I start my class explaining that learning to write is their moral duty. I told them they had access to more information that 99 percent of all humans who have ever lived. It is a moral duty to learn how to communicate that information, clearly and compellingly. I think everyone should own their education.
I don't know if any of that works. But I am convinced that my problem was not mere laziness nor a lack of work ethic. Work ethics don't magically appear. Mine is most evidenced when I understand why I am working and when I find that "Why" compelling. I never really had that as a student. "Try harder" has to have some actual meaning beyond sloganeering.
At this point I am fairly well self-educated, though I have many weaknesses which I likely would not have had, if I'd really gotten a proper and challenging education. (St. Augustine, stats, grammar, genetics etc.) I'm not ashamed of this. It's just a fact. But I also know that if I'd understood, as a youth, what education can give you, that a degree was not simply a matter of being "Twice As Good" but a key to bearing witness to "Twice As Much," I might have made better choices.
Addendum: One other thing I try to do is avoid talking about education in the negative. So I rarely talk to kids about what they "shouldn't be doing" or what they "can't do. I prefer to talk about what they can and should do. This is not mere phraseology. If you are a twelve-year old black kid who dreams of being the next Kendrick Lamar or Lebron James, I don't really see a problem. If you are are 12-year old black kid who only dreams of being that, I do see a problem. My argument to you is not that you should stop dreaming of rapping or playing ball, my argument is that you should dream about much more. That is part of the magic of being 12.
One problem with being from highly segregated communities (as most black kids are) is that you tend to have less exposure to the world. I had more exposure then virtually any of my friends, and that still wasn't much. When you don't have much exposure to the world the options you see for yourself tend to be limited--you can't really dream about that which you don't know exists. I would argue that the exposure granted by education is a potent antidote to the kind of provincialism that you must necessarily see in segregated communities. So my argument to black twelve year-old boy isn't that he should stop dreaming of being a rapper or a ball player, but that he should understand that that isn't the end of their possibilities. And one way to see more of what it is possible is education.
I would not urge you simply to get off the PlayStation. I would urge you to understand who made the game. I would not urge you to take down your King James poster. I would urge you to think about the business that makes him possible. Perhaps you'd like to be part of that business some day. I would urge you think about what Kendrick is doing in his lyrics, to think about music. Do you know how to read music? Have you learned an instrument? Would that interest you? How about poetry? Have you ever read any? Would you consider trying to write some of your own?
I think we all get frustrated with the state of our community. I think it is easy to turn that frustration into a kind of catharsis by denigrating the dreams of children. I believe in taking the dreams of children seriously, and then challenging them to take their own dreams seriously. Again--ownership.
Again, I can only draw from my personal biography. I am doubtful that I could have been shamed into making better choices. Some people probably can be. There's was plenty of shaming around me as a child. But I did not take education seriously until I saw something in it for me, aside from what everyone else thought.
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