Tuesday
I have long supported the Black Lives Movement, but it has now gotten personal, given that I have four grandchildren with brown skin. Toby reported to me that he has been taking Esmé, Etta, Eden and Ocean (8, 6, 4 and almost 2) around his subdivision for their own mini-rally, chanting, “Black Lives Matter” and carrying balloons that read the same. He notes the importance of white parents preparing kids for a world that continues to judge people by the color of their skin.
The pressure on children of color to aspire to whiteness is not as intense as it was when Toni Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye (1970), where a little girl dreams of having blue eyes like Shirley Temple. Toby and Candice have many books with racially and ethnically diverse characters designed to counter stereotypes, and I can see it making an impact. The girls enjoy it when I read them books like Crystal Swain Bates’s Big Hair, Don’t Care an Spike Lee’s Please, Baby, Please. They are being raised well.
A strong sense of self cannot entirely counter the incessant pressures of social prejudice, however. Virtually every adult person of color I know recounts unending negative encounters with police, store clerks and others, and every responsible parent has “the talk” with their children at some point. The importance of the BLM movement and of dismantling symbols of the Confederacy is to break us out of this poisonous environment.
One could do worse that teach the poetry of Langston Hughes, which often works as a gentle but firm reminder that there are human beings beneath the stereotypes. In “Theme for English B” the speaker welcomes the opportunity to introduce this more complex self to a teacher, even though he’s pretty sure the teacher will not be expecting what he has to reveal. A love for Bessie (Smith) and bop maybe but Bach?
The student is not like others at Columbia University, but once dialogue is opened, we have the chance to learn we are all bound up together in the same human drama. It’s up to those who of us who are older and white and “somewhat more free” to listen and learn about black lives.
Theme for English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you— Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I’m the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page: It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you. hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) Me—who? Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write? Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white— yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That’s American. Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that’s true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me— although you’re older—and white— and somewhat more free. This is my page for English B.