UPDATES

Day 3 and I'm still alive. I have my five year old nephew along with Kid 1 and Kid 2 for one whole week. He's leaving on Sunday. It can't come soon enough. Not 'cos I don't love the little fellow. But be'cos I got some serious work to do.

So many things to blog about but just not enough time. So I'll try to shed some light on what has been most pervasive in my mind in the last twenty four hours.

First, I got a call from a friend on Sunday that nearly sent me to my comfy chair in my room (a $15 find at the local thrift store that I just cherish) with a cup of tea. I wanted to pull my knees to my chest, sip my tea, wrap my falsa blanket around me and nestle into the warmth of her voice. She feels like a sister but she isn't. We talked like we've known each other for years and we haven't. Our conversation flowed so easily, it was surreal. It amazes me how very spiritual this journey truly is and I think that if we could just grasp the very fact that we are spirit first and flesh second, we could solve the majority of our societal ills. I am also amazed at how "familiar" a person can feel, as if you've traveled with them in some other life. As if the Creator/God knows that you two *NEED* each other right now and He just shuffles around some pieces around on the Great Chess Board we call Life so that the two of you have no choice but to run smack dab into one another. I know I have traveled with this woman before .... somewhere .... she feels so very familiar to me. We think the same way. She is "community minded" and believes that we can and must "do for the people." She is Old School with a twist of New School. She listens. I hear. She listens. I speak. I envision traveling to Africa and Cuba and Brazil with her to teach the young people poetry and writing and art. I envision Sister-Friend jump-offs to Harlem for a weekend of poetry readings, museum hopping and shopping for yarns in funky shades that neither one of us have money for but saying anyhow "Hey, let's go half on a few skeins...."

But I'm afraid.

Friends come and go, they say. When a man comes onto the scene, women's friendships are layed upon the altar for sacrifice. I've been there so many times I can't count. I give 150% in friendships. I care more than I should. I give and make myself available beyond reason. And somehow, I'm always the sacrificial lamb. Loving is hard. Whether it's loving a woman (in my case, as a friend) or loving a man (as a friend or lover) ..... it costs. So I'm afraid. And I ask myself .... how long will she stay? How far open can I fling my heart?

On another note:
I'm too pissed, yet not surprised by Clarence Thomas' statement about the Affirmative Action issue. He says (and I paraphrase here) that we Blacks don't need Affirmative Action. That we are smart enough to get into colleges and achieve and be productive members of society without any handouts. And of course, American media being what it is, there were several college students on Tom Brokaw last night echoing Thomas' words. One even said he wants to be known as the Smart Kid, not the Smart Black Kid.

Well.

Let me just throw in the first paragraph of Langston Hughe's essay: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain to serve as backdrop for what I'm about to say:

One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, "I want to be a poet--not a Negro poet," meaning, I believe, "I want to write like a white poet"; meaning, subconsciously, "I would like to be a white poet"; meaning behind that, "I would like to be white." And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America -- this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible. --- Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

I am saddened for those people who feel like there is something wrong with being the Smart Black Kid. I am no more interested in being part of a "melting pot" than a cow is interested in a glass of Coke. Why? Because i'm not interested in melting, assimilating. I'm interested in being me. I'm interested in holding myself up against the sunlight and enjoying all the colors that pass through my Self prism. I'm interested in knowing my history and walking boldly with it in my hands. I am Negroid but I also have German and Indian ancestry. Which one of us blacks don't? I want to know and embrace it all and I have no interest in allowing any part of it to melt away. As Gloria Naylor once answered when someone asked her about being called a Black Woman writer: "I am a Black female writer and I have no qualms whatsoever with people saying that I'm a Black female writer. What I take umbrage with is the fact that some might try to use that identity, that which is me, as a way to ghettoize my material and my output. I am female and I am Black and American. No buts are in that identity. Now you go off and do the work to somehow broaden yourself so you understand what America is really about because it's about me."

And I say this, as it pertains to Affirmative Action: I am saddened by anyone who thinks, mistakenly, that We Have Arrived and it's all good now. We don't need any "handouts." We don't need any "help." Not enough space here to get into the truth about who Affirmative Action *really* helped. But suffice it to say that it was not us.

And guess what: WE HAVE NOT ARRIVED.

Your Lexxus, BMW, Porsche, Escalade, Tahoe, Suburban, Mercedes, Denali, Yukon, four bedroom with two car garage is only a drop in the Grand Scheme Bucket, my friend. Your supervisor, manager, HNIC position is a drop in the Grand Scheme Bucket. Your album that just went platinum because you've been shaking your ass with all you got, selling your soul to the man on the eighty-eighth floor ..... is a drop in the Grand Scheme Bucket. Your two book deal and ten city tour is a DROP IN THE BUCKET.
Because somewhere there is someone with the same shade of skin as yours receiving a letter in the mail that they "just didn't seem to qualify for that Director position." Somewhere there is someone who has worked their ass off trying to get that MBA while at the same time rushing their kids off to school, staying up till the sky fades from black to blue again, trying to write that essay before it's time to get to work and the kids off to school ... who has graduated with a 3.98 average and is $35,000 in debt for that degree and just still "doesn't seem to qualify." Somewhere, someone is getting passed over for a position because they don't have the right waddle in their walk and someone else is getting the job because they've got something dangling between their legs that the other candidates don't.

You get my drift?

So until we have fair and equal representation in the areas of government; until we are able to crack open the doors of Hollywood such that films of African Americans are not just bufoonery and Magic Negro films but quality images that depict us as the humans that we are (did you know that we cry too? that we don't just laugh about everything and fry up chicken when we're hurting?); until we have fair and equal education standards with consistent curriculums regardless of which school district you fall into (ask the kids in Red Hook, Brooklyn if they're studying the same math that the kids in Chappaqua, New York are); until we have fair on the job hiring, firing and promotion standards; until we have real estate agents that don't try to shuffle Mr. Black Stockbroker and Mrs. Black Doctor to Neighborhood B instead of Neighborhood A because the homes are so much more "beautiful" (only to find that Neighborhood B is the black side of town full of liquour stores, Chinese Take-Outs and Bill Pay Centers) ..... only when we exist in the idyllic America that brother Clarence apparently lives in, then and only then will we NOT need Affirmative Action.

And when that happens let me know. I'll be the first to shake brother Clarence's hand.

Be well. Be Love(d).

--A.