Moving Toward Peace

My mother lay curled up in the bed watching TV, or maybe like me—the TV is watching her. As the sounds of the church program drone on in the background, my mother looks to be deep in thought. I look at her fragile form cocooned in the center of the bed—the only place she wants to be—and my mind takes me back to one of my favorite stories that she used to tell.

Coming home from work on the second shift one night, she boarded the front of a standing-room only bus. Holding on to the pole with one hand and her purse secured in the fold of her other arm, she felt something move against her and turned to look. A man had his hand in her purse. Reminiscent of a scene taken right out of Langston Hughes "Thank You Ma'am" when Roger tried to snatch Luella Bates Washington Jones purse, the tables turned on my mother's would-be-thief. 

As the words, “You roguish motherfucker!” rolled off her tongue, my mother drew back and left-hand slapped him. “If you steal from me, you’ll steal from your momma.” SLAP! “It’s a hundred passengers on this bus. Why you single me out?” SLAP! “Cuz I’m small?” My mother said the people on the bus watched in stunned silence, but parted like the Red Sea as she slapped the man from the front of the bus to the back. The bus stopped. The driver opened the door, the guy exited, and my mother went on home.

Like Schroeder’s blanket, this story comforts me as I adjust to this period of change for her and me. The mother I remember is the one from the bus: strong-willed, resilient, and tenacious and with a tongue that cut like a fine blade. I’m trying to get used to this “little old lady” lying in the bed, and it’s a struggle for me. Like many children, I believed my mother to be Invincible and Immortal. But the reality is that she is neither.

A solid-size 12-14, I bought my mother some pants recently and I was shocked when the 6 was too big. I know she had lost weight, but there was no way to know how much because she wears pajamas all the time. Because my mother was still going to the farm to pick fresh fruits and vegetables into her early 70s, I was not prepared for that trip down the one-way street to old age in her late 70s. The signs have been visible: rails in the bathroom, the portable toilet, putting her meds in the weekly container every Sunday morning so she knows what to take and when, but I rally against her aging and I am losing.

My mother says she’s tired. She says she has lived her life. And my feelings vacillate with this notion of her believing that her life is done. Sometimes I’m angry, other times, I’m sad, but always I am thankful for her 80 plus years on the planet even though I want her to live to be 100.  The adult in me knows that her declining health is taking its toll; the child in me wants her to be the fighter that she used to be. But who am I to dictate how she lives her last days? My mother has always been one tough cookie, and maybe, just maybe she is tired of fighting. 

My mother has made her peace with God and her time on this earth. And I am working on making peace with my mother.

Violence in America

"I like everyone else am saddened and angry about the deaths in Colorado yesterday.... and yet i am equally saddened that at the death of 12 innocent people in Colorado the whole Nation responded, Eric Holder flys in,the President responds immediately, every news anchor and Network station stays on it 24/7 .....BUT THAT IS A TYPICAL WEEKEND IN CHICAGO and the Nation is silent.........WHY??????????" Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church

The loss of innocent lives to senseless violence is tragic and horrific. The violence in Colorado clearly shows that something is wrong in our society. And the violence in blighted urban communities also shows that America is plagued by violence. 

 Communities are broken and wounded by unrelenting violence in cities across America. A child outside playing while her mother sells candy doesn’t deserve to die anymore than a young man celebrating his 27^th birthday at a midnight movie showing. And yet, the violence in urban areas only captures headlines in local media where as the violence in Colorado captured not only the attention of the nation, but the world as well. Responses from President Obama, and Presidential opponent Mitt Romney were swift. Media coverage has been 24/7. Why?

Is violence in inner cities more acceptable because that’s what’s expected? Why are we numb to the daily toll that violence takes but continue to be shocked and outraged by the actions of one who methodically plans an attack that kills people? Have we been lulled into a sense of safety that has been shattered by this shooting? The Colorado shooting is a grim reminder that none of us are safe. We can run, but we can’t hide from the violence erupting in cities across America. We forget that that which implodes will eventually explode. 

When the blood of innocent people is spilled in a crowded movie theater or on the street on a hot summer night, those in mourning want to know that the rest of the world cares no matter what the zip code of the victim is. We’re all in this together. We need to recognize that.

My heart goes out the families of victims of violence regardless of their zip code.

Where’s the Love?

Misogyny - hatred of women

Where's the Love for girls and women of color? That's the question running through my mind as I think about Heaven Sutton, the 7year-old killed in the cross fire of gang violence. I watched the news to see how much coverage the story would get, but sadly her funeral was a blip on the evening news tied in with the deaths of three others in the President’s hometown that continues to be plagued by violence. Wow! That was all there was to the story.

Unlike Trayvon Martin, there is no galvanized support for this child’s death just as there was none for 6 year-old Aliyah Shell, the 6 year-old Hispanic girl who was killed a few months ago. Heaven and Aliyah both live in Chicago, and yet the Trayvon Martin tragedy which happened in Florida got significant more coverage. Why? Because we wanted to fan the growing racial flame? Because we expect violent deaths in certain communities and not in gated ones or is this symptomatic of something larger?

The premature death of any child or young person as a result of violence is tragic. But the world would have us believe the loss is greater if it’s a white girl or woman or a black male – sexism and racism at its best. So, a person of the wrong gender and color is just as invisible in death has she had been in life.

Time will pass, and we will remember the names of Trayvon Martin, Darion Albert and Emmett Till. We will also remember Joan Benet and Caylee Anthony. But how many of us will honor the memory of Heaven, Aliyah just by remembering their names?

Growing up, I heard the story of the four little girls killed when racists bombed the 16^th Street Baptist church on a Sunday morning. I also remember hearing the names of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney – a group of interracial civil rights workers who were found dead in 1964. Their names were always strung together – Schnwerner, Goodman and Chaney, but they were named.

 It wasn’t until I saw Spike Lee’s documentary, Four Little Girls that I learned the girls’ names – Addie McNair, Carol Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair. They are not a unit; they are four individuals from four different families with four different stories. But we lump them together as one. Why don’t their names roll off our tongues? Are they not worthy of remembering?

We’ll acknowledge that racism exists now. We’ll even so far as to say that we’re post-racial. We’ll also acknowledge sexism and admit that women are not treated as equals in society. But we run from misogyny because it’s such an ugly term – hatred of women. 

 As a woman it’s painful to believe that the world I live in does not love me because of my gender. But based on all that I read; that I see; that I experience, I know it to be true. But while I am saddened by this knowledge, I am not deterred by it. Acknowledgement is the first step on the path to evolution. We have work to do and we can begin by knowing and remembering the names of Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair. Let’s also remember Heaven Sutton, Aliyah Shell and countless others names we have forgotten. They deserve at least that much from us.

Who else should we remember? Leave their names in the comment section. Thank you for remembering.

Is there a Peter Pan in Your Life?

Disclaimer: if you are not an enabling woman these comments are not directed at you. If you are not a man child, or a man child in the making, these comments are not directed at you. Those are my life observations and I am entitled to write about what I see and you are entitled to disagree.

If you want to date a man, then you have to raise a boy to be a man. Too often as women we allow the males in our lives to stay in a perpetual state of childhood, and then we wonder where all the good men are. Some of us need to look no further than the image in the mirror.

 I ran across this story recently and I had to shake my head as I read about the three men who fathered 78 children with 46 different women. How did that happen? What knocked me upside the head was the 46 women? How do you not know that you’re dealing with a man with other WOMEN and a boat load of kids? It reinforced for me a thought pattern that I’ve been running away from, but can’t escape: a lot of what’s wrong with men is women. Some of us are ruining men from the cradle to the grave.

As mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, wives, baby mamas and whatever other roles we find ourselves in, it’s time for us take responsibility and stop coddling the boys and men in our lives; it’s time to cut the cord. How can we complain when we’re co-contributors to the madness that is men?

 We cook, clean and care for them when they can do it for themselves. We fill in the gaps again and again when they come up short—begging teachers for make-up work, cursing people out when they get in trouble, making up excuses for their shortcomings, co-signing for car loans, letting them live off us, giving them everything we can without asking for anything in return. And when this spoiled man child becomes an adult (in the legal sense), he still expects someone to cater, to him. And if he works his charms on the ladies just as he did on the women who raised him, he can pick up where he left off without missing a beat. Is there a man-child still holding your hand?

•  He needs you to co-sign for a car loan, but only if he can get the car he wants.
•  Her ran out of money because_______ (fill in the blank) and he needs you to help him out.
•  Women keep getting pregnant by him, and it’s their fault. 
•  He changes job frequently, if he has one at all.
•  As long as someone else can help, they should help him.
•  He thinks he’s the man of the house but doesn't contribute to the household. 

 Some of us rationalize that it’s hard out here for a man; it is. And it’s hard out here for a woman as well. We are natural nurturers, but we have to know when nurturing becomes smothering and we’re stunting male growth.

We have to let them grow up, even if it means watching them fall and get back up again. If we want good men, we have to raise good boys.

National Sexual Assault Awareness and PreventionMonth

Even today, I am haunted by an incident that happened during my first year as a teacher. We were having a basketball game and I was the holding room for the students who were not attending the game; we were going to watch a movie. One of the girls came into the room with a glazed-over look on her face, but she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I asked her if she’d write it down, and she nodded.

Through a series of notes I learned that she had ditched school the previous day to have sex with her boyfriend, another student at our school. It was to be her first sexual experience, and it was to occur at his friend’s house near the school so that she could get back to by dismissal and go home without anyone--other than the friends that were in on it--to be none the wiser. They had it all planned out, but when she got to the house there were three boys instead of two, and she changed her mind and wanted leave.

The boyfriend raped her while the other two watched. After it was over, she wandered around in the neighborhood until it was time to go back to school. She went home, but did not tell anyone about what happened until she told me.

I explained to her that the incident would have to be reported and though she cried, not once did she recant or change her story. The police were called, the boys were taken into custody, but the charges were dropped. The grandmother said that whatever happened, her granddaughter wanted to happen. She was transferred to another school. Over the years I have always wondered what happened to her, if she ever found herself in a compromising situation, and felt as though she had no right to say no.

I know what that’s like. Although I wasn’t raped, I was coerced into a sexual liaison that I did not want to happen. About a month or so following the death of my father I had gone out with this guy for the second time even though he vexed my spirit. I should have known something was wrong when we stopped by his mother’s house and he said his brother and some friends were in the basement watching pornography, and asked if I wanted to watch. I said no.

We were looking at photos on the piano and there was a picture of his father and he started talking about his father and I burst out crying. He led me to a back bedroom and pulled me into an embrace. What I mistook for consolation quickly turned into seduction. Next thing I knew, he was kissing me and touching me. I told him to stop. He did, but had a hissy fit about how I was leading him on and I was grown woman . . . yada, yada, yada. At that point I just wanted to go home, and I thought if I had sex with him, I could just go home.

These stories came tumbling back to me as I sat in a meeting I was attending about sexual trafficking and listened to women sharing their stories of being raped and sexually assaulted by family members, friends and strangers. These women were like so many other girls, women and even men whose coming-of-age narratives including navigating the terrains of sexual assault by known and unknown assailants.

It has been a week of revelations as I read about recording artist Rahsaan Patterson and icon Vanessa Williams admit to being sexually abused. The stories are endless, and the abused does not have a face. The face of sexual assault can belong to any of us. And what’s most unfortunate is that those that are abused-as children or adults-are silenced into shame because issues of sexual abuse are shrouded in secrecy.

We’re afraid to admit that we not only do we know the prey, but the predator as well. So, we choose to either act as though it didn’t happen or else we blame the victim. When another student wrote a letter to me saying that her uncle was creeping into her bed and forcing her to have sex with him, her grandmother told me that she knew her son didn’t do that.

April is National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month and we can collectively work to end the horrific practice of sexual assault and abuse in our communities. If you, or someone you know is being abused, please call this toll free number: 1-800-565-HOPE. If you want to help, please volunteer to organizations working to combat sexual abuse. Here are two: RAINN and GEMS Something else you can do is go to iTunes and download Patterson’s, “Don’t Touch Me” a song in which the proceeds will go to sexual assault and abuse survivors.

Sexual assault and molestation will never stop unless we stop looking at as a taboo topic. It’s time to talk. And it’s a call to action.

Race in America Part 2 – Jada Williams

I was in second grade when the Black Power Movement was in full swing and the sounds of James Brown I’m Black and I’m Proud pierced the air. Like any other impressionable child, I began imitating what I saw around me. At school I traded drawing women with long locks cascading down their backs for women with big gigantic afros and huge hoop earrings. I drew men with big afros and facial hair, and all of my people wore the requisite platform shoes. Then one day my white teacher told me I couldn’t draw people with afros anymore. Even though my seven-year old self could not comprehend the why of it all, I knew it wasn’t right.

The next day my older sister accompanied me to school to talk to my teacher. My teacher explained to my sister that my afros were disproportionate to the bodies. I watched as my teacher folded one of my pictures in half to demonstrated that my gargantuan-sized natural was the same size as the entire body. She told my sister that if I drew people with smaller afros I could continue to draw them. The funny thing is I never remember her telling me that my Rapunzel-like figures were out of balance.

The incident has resurfaced as of late because of Jada Williams. Jada, an eighth grader in Rochester, New York wrote an essay for a contest sponsored by the Frederick Douglass society based on the text, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in which Jada compared education at her predominantly African-American and Latino High School to that of modern day slavery. She said the white teachers at her school were no better than Frederick Douglass’ slave master. She described how students are given texts that they cannot read and how the classrooms are often out of control, and when the bell rings and students move to the next class, the cycle starts all over again.

What happened next was unbelievable. A teacher copied the essay and distributed it around the school, and the normally well-behaved A-B student suddenly became a “troublemaker” and her grades started slipping. Things got so bad, that Jada’s parents transferred her to another school because of the harassment. The school has since apologized to Jada and her parents, but the damage is already done.

As a writing teacher, I would love to have a student like Jada in my class. She is both an analytical and critical thinker as demonstrated by her ability to apply what she learned from the text to her current situation. And instead of taking the content of the essay for the teachable moment that it was, the teachers at her school further instilled in Jada’s mind that the white teachers at her school don’t care about students of color. What a missed opportunity for intellectual discourse on the problems of urban education!

Jada’s frustration with her education is understandable. But it’s so much bigger than the complexion of the teachers at her school. Those of us that teach are members of the status quo and we want our students to follow in our footsteps especially if we teach in blighted communities. We don’t understand why they don’t “want better for themselves” and in too many instances, we want to fix them more then we want to teach them.

The paternalistic nature of urban education gets in the way of the work that we need to do. Instead of looking at the pluses that our students bring to school and merging what they have with what they need, too often we teach from a deficit model. And the more removed we are from the population we serve, the harder it is for many of us to find that middle ground. Sometimes it’s color, sometimes it’s class, sometimes it’s culture or some combination of the three.

It’s impossible to live in a racist, classist, sexist society and not have that follow us in to the classroom. Neither educators nor students are exempt. We come to school every day loaded down with societal baggage and to think that our internal biases and prejudices are checked at the door when the bell rings is nonsense. But in the classroom we can create a community if we willing to heal what ails us.

My second grade teacher was an older woman teaching on the cusp of serious social change in this country. I cannot imagine what was going through her mind anymore than I can imagine what Jada’s teachers were thinking when they read her essay. What I do know is that teachers have the second hardest job in the world; parents have the first. And in neither role do we always get it right, but we can learn from our mistakes.

Education in America for students of color needs an overhaul. Jada’s essay gave a pulse to the problem of urban education. But instead of praising her we, persecuted her. And we wonder what’s wrong with our youth?

Race in America Part 1 - Trayvon Martin

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." Reverend Jesse Jackson speaking at an Operation Push meeting in the 90s.

Following the Trayvon Martin story, I don’t know how I feel. My emotions are all over the place: I’m angry, I’m frustrated, and I am saddened by the travesty. Trayvon Martin should be alive. From all accounts, George Zimmerman’s zealous actions snuffed out the life of an innocent young man.

Like others, I am disturbed by the implications of this story. I fear for the Trayvon Martins in my life who are victimized for no other reason than Breathing While Black (BWB). Racism is real. Racial profiling is real. I know because I have experienced it. Everybody's incensed and outraged but who among us has not pointed a metaphorical finger at a Trayvon figure? Who hasn't come in contact with a Black male figure and felt our hearts quicken only to exhale sighs of relief when they pass us by just as Jesse Jackson said in the previous statement? Many of us, if not most of us, suffer from Scary Black Male Syndrome, a malady that is fed to us daily without question until tragedy strikes.

Like it or not, in a society that has cultivated the image of the Scary Black Male, hoodies and other styles of dress feed the myth. In my work, I know that my students are just wearing what’s trending, but a hooded figure is a more menacing one and its presence on boys of color in our society just stokes the stereotypical flame burning within too many of us. While I understand gravity of the situation before us, what I don’t understand is why the premature violent death of any child or young person is not a cause for us to be alarmed? What measures are taking to prevent tragedy rather than react in the aftermath?

In urban cities every day, our children’s blood spills into the streets. A couple of weekends ago in Chicago there were 58 shootings, 10 of them fatal. Among them was Aliyah Shell, a six-year old girl whose body was riddled with bullets in what appears to be a gang-related retaliation at someone in her family. She was six; she wasn’t gangbanging! On March 3, Bo Morrison, a 20 year-old African-American male was also killed in Slinger, Wisconsin. He, too was unharmed, but was shot to death because a man felt threatened. Bo had been at a party and was drinking, and the police were called because of the loud, rowdy behavior of the party participants and Bo tried to run and hide to avoid getting a citation. He hid on the man’s back porch, and when the man saw Bo, he shot him. According to the news accounts, Bo seemed to be a decent person who made a stupid mistake that cost him his life.

Trayvon Martin’s story is everywhere as it should be. But where are the online petitions, the marches and the vigils for the Aliyahs and Bos. Who do we take to the streets for, change our profile pictures and our status to reflect a sense of solidarity? How does the tragic death of one who will never have another birthday or see a graduation supersede that of another? I’m just asking.

Another thing that bothers me about this case, is focus on how to come out of a racist encounter alive. I have read the online letters to unborn sons, advice to black boys about how to avoid being the next Trayvon Martin, but nothing I’ve read gives them advice on how to stay alive in a situation with a trigger man who looks just like him, and is filled with so much self-hatred-- a bi-product of racism that killed Trayvon and allows his killer to be free--that the shooter devalues anyone who looks like him? We’re teaching them how to navigate through the racial jungle, but what about the intra-racial jungle awaiting them?

When George Zimmerman is charged, and the symbolic hoodies come off, then what? Will we go back to life before Trayvon just like we did with Troy Davis? We were outraged when Darion Albert, the Fenger High School student was beaten to death, but how much has changed? Is there a safer passage going to and from schools today? Do we know? Do we care? Darion’s death was thrust into the spotlight when the video of his beating went viral. But he would have been another casualty of urban violence had not the world been watching Chicago in its Olympic bid.

Is this a galvanizing movement for much needed social change in this country or is this just another trending topic for the day? Where do we go from here?