Imagine: for Black Folks Only, For Real

Imagine reading, "LaVander Peeler cares too much what white folks think about him." That's the first line of Kiese Laymon's novel, Long Division.  Because I find the lack of black private talk space extremely frustrating and debilitating, ...  that line resonated with me. Somebody's always listening.  Feels like someone's always watching to try to discern what we're cooking up.  Or the high-focused gaze is on us to find some way to dissect us, which invariably becomes a way to demean us.  We're always wrong.  We're always watched.  That's just a bit of the terror exacted by American racism.  Real and imagined paranoia. One academic calls it culturally driven inductive reasoning.  I call it the result of a life of being subjected to unjust decisions made by folks you don't know and often can't see.

Imagine this conversation is private.  Black folks only.  Everyone else is asked to kindly close the page.

Now, in Long Division, protagonist, City/Citoyen (French for citizen), finds himself battling this shadow character who represents everything opposed to who City says he wants to be: the kind of black teenager free enough to say what he believes is true--and not give a shit about white folks' perceptions.  Did I mention City's obsession with homosexuality? City's begging to be free from a head full of American bullshit.

Laymon fills his pages with daunting black negotiations.  And the book hit me hard because I know this kid.  A post-Civil Rights Movement, post-integration black child trying to do more than just survive.  A child from the South.  One who knows the history of his people in America and knows his own family's struggle and wants to win.  His enemy is LaVander Peeler, another black child.  This novel speaks with the emotional depths of the blues, hip hop, and the unchained voices of the women and men in City's community.  Unmitigated.  Unadulterated.  Unfiltered.  Honest.  Unblanketed by the heavy filter of whiteness.  What a relief.

Imagine today:  I dropped my car off at the repair shop and hopped on my bike, trudging up and down Oakland hills (probably throwing my back out, again) into the Dimond District.  Locked my ride tight on the street and bopped over to this Asian-owned family market, Farmer Joe's.  It's a neighborhood whole foods style joint that replaced a mid-income commercial chain and made a go of it in the district, in 2006.  Everyone with eyes could see the gentrification treads waylaying The Dimond (diamond).  Farmer Joe's has succeeded.

I walked through the store, on the phone, chopping it up with my dear friend Lance about a friend who is all in his business.

"Can't believe it. If she's really concerned, why not come to me?"  He's hurt.

"I think she came to you through me.  I said I would talk to you about it.  Sounds like you two need to chat.  Let me go.  I need to find some real orange juice." I stared down the tight aisle of bin after bin of loose nuts: cashews, almonds, pistachios and without missing a beat of conversational continuity, a brother walked right into my face.  I stepped back a bit, unsure.

"Do you think it's a good idea to start a support group for black men to practice talking to each other?"  I was not expecting this conversation today.  This brother, everything about him brown, no flash.  Ordinary, short fade, receding hairline.  Lingering pockmarks and the far away, unfocused gaze of one too busy thinking about so much he can do nothing about.

I know that gaze.  The up-all-night, what can I do about my people's suffering face; I am defeated today, tired. In neutral and my mind won't stop trying to shift into a solution.  I will come back soon; but today, I am overwhelmed by history--mine and ours.  I feel the weight of his eyes in my back.  I'm intrigued and he's flowing.

"I'm a longshoreman and I don't know why my brothers beat each other up so bad.  With words.  This cat at work told me today that I'm a 'white man's nigger'.  What the hell?  He doesn't even know me.  Because I have bi-racial kids?  I'm from the South, man.  I'm conscious.  Why do we hurt each other so badly?  No other race of people talks to each other like that.  It brought tears to my eyes."

"Have you ever heard Latino boys talk to each other?"  I marked the similarities long ago.

"Not like we do, I know."  He doesn't believe me.

"I don't know about that, but my dad and his friends talk about each other real bad.  Break each other down.  Don't be chubby ... I thought it was a man thing. But I know it starts early.  Black boys get the worst of it.  People are just mean.  I have daughters;  I thank God I didn't raise boys.  I would have been scared to death--constantly."

"It's not a man thing.  And it doesn't have to be that way."  He continues.  "I'm so tired.  My cousin's son was buried today, here in Oakland.  They tried to come out here to get away from mess in Louisiana and his son gets shot in the head.  Dead.  I lost my brother ... dead.  Shot by the police in Monroe."

"Lost mine too.  (I held back on the 'I lost two brothers')."  I'm kicking the specks in the beige floor tiles, scanning for relief.  Both of us can feel our own powerlessness and defeat.

"Please take my number." He commands me.  "Let's talk."

"Ok."

A character in my book cautions the narrator, "between them devilish crackers and these fidgety niggers, things don't never get too close to right around here, TA-ta." It's unadulterated, honest.  My grandmother's in-the-house voice.  Unconcerned with what white folks think.  More concerned with what black folks think and how we can do more than just survive.  By the end of her life, Grandma started explaining that she didn't know nothing about "feelings and things; we [they] had to survive."  Grandma lived long enough and with enough quiet luxury to begin to think about how her children might do more than just survive.  She began to hope we might get to take care of our insides.

Mere survival leads us into behavior with defense at its core.  Fight.  Defend.  Protect.  It makes sense; but how do we get to Love?  And more Love.  The kind of love that makes murder and murderous language impossible--or at least more rare.

Love emerges when we let down our defenses.  It's bold.  It's brave.  It's revolutionary.

How can we push past the notion that we have to war against each other?  How can we act (on a daily, conversational level with ourselves and with others) in a way that emphasizes love and more love for ourselves and our people.  How can we begin to heal from history?  We have to start with Love.  Love without judgement.  Accepting all of us despite age, education, religious affiliation, sorority, fraternity, region, past mistakes, sexual orientation, mental health status (or even better, perceived mental health status), and general background.  Forsaking judgement.  Love and tolerance for all black people.  Love in word and actions:  saying I love you, supporting black business and creativity, showing patience when exhausted, speaking in softer tones, refusing to criticize, trusting when we feel like doubting.

As a people, we have been beaten down--for the last thirty years--the last seven particularly (Obama's election made a whole lot crystal clear).  The bucked eyes and screaming women.  The hatred.  The murders.  The hatred.  The heavy, heavy weight of the murders.  The screams.  The cracked streets.  The mothers.  The droning processions.

Where we had forgotten the lessons of history, most of us now have no doubt where we stand in America.  That accepted, what're our choices?

Do we give up?  Or do we adjust to do more than simply survive?  We must adjust.  We must stay with Love because Love coupled with the awareness that each of us is everything we ever want black people to be is our post-survivalist answer.  That's what I saw in the beige tile as I scanned the floor.  That's what I heard as the brother, Gerald was his name, said, "I want to start a support group for how more black men can practice talking more kindly to each other."  Love.

Today's my brother, Kofi's birthday.  I remember my older brother, Toure', just before he was killed, telephoned our little brother, Kofi, to apologize to him for fussing at him for not going to the grocery store.  Toure' explained to me and Mama, "I admitted to Kofi, 'How can I say I love black people when I don't even speak to my dear brother with respect?'" Toure' lived a sincere love for black people.  I want to be like him.  I want to survive and win without constantly checking for my shadow.   I want to be willing to apologize for the shadow in me--and then do something better.