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the way we misteach history. So at roughly
Things got so bad at one point that I began to keep track with hash marks on a page the number of days in a row that he had been drunk: twenty-one on the day I stopped counting. Though I longed for a closer relationship with my dad, I also breathed more easily whenever he was in a play out of town. By then I had learned that quiet loneliness is always preferable to amplified togetherness when the cacophony to which you’re being exposed reverberates with the blaring notes of marital discord.
grade year, 1979, I was playing for what was undoubtedly the most feared team of eleven-year-olds in the city. Comprised of twelve guys, nine of them black, we had the advantage of racist stereotypes working in our favor. Most of the teams we would play were made up of private school white boys who had barely even seen a black person, let alone played ball against one. Psychologically we had won before we even stepped on the court in most cases. The only times we lost were because the white boys’ coaches were smart enough to encourage their players to foul and force us to the line. Sadly, most
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BY MIDDLE SCHOOL, my closeness to my black friends had translated into a remarkable ability to code-switch, meaning an ability to shift between so-called “standard” English, and what some call “Black English,” and to do it naturally, fluidly, and without pretense. Although my parents never minded this, even when I would forget to switch back, thereby remaining in black cadence and dialect around the house, there were others who found it mightily disturbing. Teachers were none too happy with the way they would hear me speaking in the halls to my friends. It was one thing for an actual black
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had heard Parliament’s “Theme From the Black Hole,” or something, anything, by Kurtis Blow. I had actually
In other words, even as my mother had stood up against the obvious bigot, she had dropped the ball, just like everyone else, when it came to confronting institutional racism. My closeness with black people hadn’t protected them from that system, and hadn’t allowed me to see what was happening, let alone resolve to fix it, at least not yet.
other friends, Zach Vietze and Rob Laird (the latter of whom went to a different school),
how to make friends, how to interact with people whose interests were different, and how to basically be white again. At first I probably blamed Bobby and other black
The institution had accomplished what we alone never would have. It had forced us into our racial slots, whether we liked it or not. And Bobby, like the other black kids, knew where his slot was, far before I would realize mine.
hard to put into words the degree of entitlement that comes from knowing even at the age of five that your parents have your back, and that if some authority figure gets out of line, your mom and dad will support you. But that is what I was told, before I was told anything else about this thing called school. My parents were letting me know that injustice happens, and that they wouldn’t stand for it. And that I shouldn’t either.
serious issues as abstractions increases the risk that the person who has been so primed will reduce everything to a brutal cost-benefit analysis, which rarely prioritizes the needs and interests of society’s less powerful. Rather, it becomes easier at that point to support policies that benefit the haves at the expense of the have-nots, because others whom the ex-debaters never met and never had to take seriously will be the ones to feel the damage.
Stephen Biko, in police custody in 1977, which then led me to seek out Biko’s collected essays, I Write What I Like, which remains among the most influential books in my own political and antiracist development.
And with that, I left the principal’s office, knowing in ways I hadn’t before what I wanted to do with my life. My road was becoming clear. But as so often happens, there would be a detour.
