The Measure of a Man

by Sidney Poitier

IT’S LATE AT NIGHT as I lie in bed in the blue glow of the television set. I have the clicker in my hand, the remote control, and I go from 1 to 97, scrolling through the channels. I find nothing that warrants my attention, nothing that amuses me, so I scroll up again, channel by channel, from bottom to top. But already I’ve given it the honor of going from 1 to 97, and already I’ve found nothing. This vast, sophisticated technology and…nothing. It’s given me not one smidgen of pleasure. It’s informed me of nothing beyond my own ignorance and my own frailties. But then I have the audacity to go up again! And what do I find? Nothing, of course. So at last, filled with loathing and self-disgust, I punch the damn TV off and throw the clicker across the room, muttering to myself, “What am I doing with my time?” It’s not as if I’m without other resources or material comforts, you follow? I’ve been very fortunate in life, and as I lie in my bed, I’m surrounded by beautiful things. Treasured books and art objects, photographs and mementos, lovely gardens on the balcony. After many years in this particular business in this particular town, I have a rich network of friends, some only a few steps away, dozens of others whom I could reach on the phone within seconds. So what am I doing with my time?

In Nassau, while learning about myself, I had become conscious of being pigeonholed by others, and I had determined then to always aim myself toward a slot of my choosing. There were too many images of what I could be. Where I could go. Too many images of wonderful, accomplished, interesting black people around and about for me to feel bad about my color. In Miami, this strange new society started coming at me with point-blank force to hammer home its long-established, nonnegotiable position on the color of skin, which declared me unworthy of human consideration, then ordered me to embrace the notion of my unworthiness. My reply was, “Who, me? Are you fucking crazy? Me? You’re talking to me?” I was saying, “Hey, not only am I not that which you would make me. Here’s what I in fact am. First of all, I’m the son of a really terrific guy, Reginald James Poitier. And Evelyn Poitier, my mom, who’s a terrific woman. I have no evil designs; I’m a well-intentioned, meaningful person. I’m young, and I’m not particularly headstrong—though I can get pretty pissed. I’m a good person, and nothing you say can undo that. You can harp on that color crap as much as you want, but because of the way I was raised, I don’t have a receptor that’s gonna take in any of that.”

Now, the school of hard knocks provided no classes in political science, but long before I arrived, Harlem residents knew full well that politics was a deck stacked against them—an invisible force of exclusion expertly woven into the fabric of everyday life. In the school of hard knocks, politics was a name for the way white folks arranged things to their own advantage.

Of all my father’s teachings, the most enduring was the one about the true measure of a man. That true measure was how well he provided for his children, and it stuck with me as if it were etched in my brain. I didn’t know where I was going next, but I knew that failure wasn’t an option.

duffers. I don’t mean to be like some old guy from the olden days who says, “I walked thirty miles to school every morning, so you kids should too.” That’s a statement born of envy and resentment. What I’m saying is something quite different. What I’m saying is that by having very little, I had it good. Children need a sense of pulling their own weight, of contributing to the family in some way, and some sense of the family’s interdependence. They take pride in knowing that they’re contributing. They learn responsibility and discipline through meaningful work. The values developed within a family that operates on those principles then extend to the society at large. By not being quite so indulged and “protected” from reality by overflowing abundance, children see the bonds that connect them to others.

Well, I’m no scientist, and certainly I don’t have Carl Sagan’s technical understanding of the universe and our position within it. I simply believe that there’s a very organic, immeasurable consciousness of which we’re a part. I believe that this consciousness is a force so powerful that I’m incapable of comprehending its power through the puny instrument of my human mind. And yet I believe that this consciousness is so unimaginably calibrated in its sensitivity that not one leaf falls in the deepest of forests on the darkest of nights unnoticed. Now, given the immensity of this immeasurable power that I’m talking about, and given its pervasiveness through the universe (extending from distant galaxies to the tip of my nose), I choose not to engage in what I consider to be the useless effort of giving it a name, and by naming it, suggesting that I in any way understand it, though I’m enriched by the language and imagery of both traditional Christianity and old island culture. Many of my fellow human beings do give it a name, and do purport to understand it in a more precise way than I would ever attempt. I just give it respect, and I think of it as living in me as well as everywhere else.

The reining in of expectations was the centerpiece of the outside world’s overall message, and it came through loud and clear. Limits had been defined, had been written into law and imposed on me long before I was even born. Therefore, I was forcefully advised to understand and accept that the burden would always be on me to see to it that my dreams were tailored to fit such width and breath as the limited expectations assigned me could comfortably entertain. While “expectations” meant “the sky’s the limit” for those favored, that interpretation should never be expected to apply in cases like mine. I listened intently until each point had been driven home. Then I said, “Fuck you.” in the nicest way I could.

Surely this must be the highest-stakes game of all. And maybe the oracles are trying to tell me that this is one I can’t win. That my survival instincts aren’t going to help me this time. That I won’t be able to charm this opponent into neutral, no matter how much drive and hard work and talent I apply. But there’s still a beating heart at the center of my being, and while there’s life…

That’s what it’s all about, you know? We’re all of us a little greedy. (Some of us are plenty greedy.) We’re all somewhat courageous, and we’re all considerably cowardly. We’re all imperfect, and life is simply a perpetual, unending struggle against those imperfections.