From Brokenness to Completion

I recently finished reading a book called A Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. Strobel earned his law degree from Yale University and spent a number of years as an award-winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune. As a young man and a staunch atheist, Strobel one day decided to investigate the claims of Christianity when his wife announced to him that she had become a believer in Jesus. In an attempt to disprove claims about Jesus (and to prove to his wife that all of the hype about Christ is a farce), Lee Strobel spent the next two years of his life weighing the claims for and against Jesus. In the process of building a case against Christ however, Strobel ended up becoming a follower of Jesus instead. Strobel recounts this journey, explaining that all of the evidence that he drew upon to disprove the claims of those who follow Jesus instead point to the fact that Jesus was who he said he was, in essence, the Son of God.

Reading about Lee Strobel’s journey to Christ caused me to reflect upon my own journey towards faith in Jesus. I came to Christ at a breaking point in my life. It was as if I teetered alongside the edge of a bottomless precipice ready to fall over at any moment. I was a straight A student, valedictorian of my class, starting point guard on the basketball team, a captain on the math team, a peer tutor in Spanish and math, part of my school’s National Honor Society, a member of the Spanish Honor Society, a Ron Brown Scholar, confident on the outside, a workaholic, and came from a loving home where my parents invested into me daily and made an effort to be involved in my life. From the looks of it, I had it together. People looked up to me and my friends often told me that I was a “model human being.” On the exterior, I was just that. Over the years I became good at erecting titanium steel walls intended to conceal my weaknesses and insecurities from others. These invisible walls shielded not only my pain, but prevented me from opening myself up to the possibility of being hurt by other people. While on the exterior I was the person who “had it together” on the inside I was torn up. I based my self worth off of my performance both academically and athletically. And so, I made sure to become the best at whatever I put my mind to; after all, my self worth was at stake each time I took an exam or stepped out onto the basketball court. I always remember being like this; I don’t recall a time in my life when things weren’t this way. It’s not as if my parents put pressure on me to perform up to a pre-imposed standard; if anything, my parents saw that I was unhappy, that my relationships with them and with my siblings were deteriorating, that I was unnaturally depressed, that I spit out venom intended to hurt. Contrary to appearances, my life was in shreds and no one realized this more fully than I did. I don’t know how much longer I could have continued to live like this. But then, one day, two years ago, I met a man named Jesus Christ. When I felt as if forces beyond my control would propel me over the edge of that precipice, I genuinely cried out to God for the first time in my life.

Faith is a funny thing. At times it seems contrary to what appears to be logical. But then again, my pain was not logical nor was the emptiness that threatened to consume me. When I surrendered my life to Christ I didn’t have a tingly sensation, hear a voice, or have a vision. However since that day I have seen Jesus slowly transforming my life in ways that dumbfound those who knew me as I used to be before entering into a relationship with Him. My relationship with Jesus isn’t something that I can really articulate into words; but I have experienced the transformative power that comes from being in Him and I have seen Him do impossible things in my life; things that never should have happened. Bobby once observed that:

"living as a follower of Jesus is to have help living. It's me understanding that I have many problems that have origins in a part of me that I can neither reach, nor fix. As I am, I am ruled by what I feel; what I feel, however, often distorts reality..."

Since following Jesus I have experienced peace that I never felt before; it’s the kind that comes from knowing that He knows the plans that He has for my life; it’s the kind that comes from knowing that I am unconditionally loved despite my insecurities, my shortcomings, and the times when I don’t perform well. The bedrock of my identity no longer lies with Amanda and how Amanda performs, rather my foundation is in Christ and that, I have come to discover, is the one thing in my life that never ever changes. That's not to say that following Jesus is easy, because it isn't.

"Choosing to walk with God is to choose to live a life full of life, but it is a fullness of life manifested in death (strange, strange concept). And not necessarily physical death (though it began as such with Jesus), but death to the natural human instincts that lend themselves to multi-level self-destruction. Does this mean that followers of Jesus live lives that completely suck? No, no. But our lives are guaranteed to be tried and tested. It's the only way we can become better people; someone bigger and better molding us and reshaping us and replacing the warped with what's real." -Bobby's Insights in "A Lesson Before Dying


I've spent some time thinking back to a question that used to baffle me. During Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, denied on three different occasions that he was even acquainted with Jesus. Peter, though a former follower of Christ, was afraid to be associated with the man upon the cross. As Christ hung on the cross, Peter, though nominally a follower of Jesus, still doubted that Jesus was in fact who he claimed to be. This same man who denied Christ however, is the same man who was crucified for Christ; this is the same man who, during his execution, insisted upon being crucified upside down because he didn’t feel worthy to be crucified in the same manner as Christ. I never understood what would transform such a coward into someone who willingly died a horrible, gruesome, violent and public death for the very man that he formerly denied in front of a few servants?

But then I realized: it’s the very same thing that transformed a staunch atheist into a follower of Christ; and it’s the same thing that changed a broken, depressed, and miserable workaholic into the person that I am becoming today. There’s something about knowing Jesus that transforms peoples’ lives and that has transformed my life. There’s no “logic,” or “hard evidence” involved in what I have experienced since coming to know Him. Rather my unwavering faith in Jesus Christ is much like the air; I can’t see it with my natural eyes, but I can see evidence of it all around me. And it sustains me…

Dominique Green

I was watching a video on the Bill Moyers Journal that featured a man, Thomas Cahill, who spoke about the life and the death of a boy named Dominique Green. Dominique Green was born in 1974 to poor, abusive, alcoholic parents. His father was a drug addict and his mother was mentally ill. At a young age Dominique took his brother to a homeless shelter where they resided for some time in order to escape domestic abuse. When his mother threw Dominique and his brother out of their house at age 15, Dominique rented a storage shed where he and his brother lived and sold drugs to support themselves.

At 18, Dominique, along with three other men--two black men and one white man--allegedly robbed people at gun point which resulted in the death of Anthony Lastrapes. Though no evidence existed to suggest that Dominique pulled the trigger, the three men with Dominique testified against him at his trial at which point the state dropped the capital murder charges against them. The black men were sentenced to prison time while the white man was neither indicted or prosecuted.

I've come to realize that in America, it's not about values, rather it's about whose lives have value. And frankly, in America black lives just aren't worth as much as white lives. Perhaps that's why we can continue to give blacks life sentences and execute them for crimes they didn't commit and say "oops" afterwards; perhaps that's why a black baby born in our nation's capital is four times more likely to die than a baby born in an urban city in Asia; perhaps that's why our nation's infant mortality rate doubles that of Beijing (22% and 11% respectively); perhaps that's why California's three strikes law has given blacks life sentences for petty crimes and has failed to put away corporate gangsters who have been caught on numerous occasions dumping hundreds of metric tons of benzene into the air and water, stealing peoples' retirement funds, and exploiting Mexican workers so that they can continue to buy their cucumbers for 79 cents a pound; perhaps that's why our government says that crappy urban public schooling is a "state issue"; maybe that's why our schools remain more segregated and unequal now than they were during Jim Crow; perhaps that's why if you're black in America the system says "fuck you"; and maybe that explains why all of the people on death row are poor. China, which has a history of atrocious human rights abuses, neither executes minors nor the mentally insane; the United States does.

Dominique was executed at 7:59 in December of 2004. His final words were, "I have overcome a lot. I am not angry but I am disappointed that I was denied justice...Please keep the struggle going. I'm just sorry that I am not as strong as I thought I was going to be. But I guess it only hurts for a little while...Please keep my memory alive."

The Summer from Hell

I spent the summer of 2007 as a middle school teacher in Richmond, Virginia. I taught through a program called Learning Bridge that brought black children from Richmond inner city public schools out to the suburbs to participate in a summer school program hosted by one of the wealthiest, whitest, private schools in Virginia. During teacher orientation I walked into a conference room filled with white college students and teachers. I was surprised, to say the least, to discover that I would become one of only four black teachers in a program that catered specifically to inner city black youth and that was directed by four black educators.

The other black teachers and I hit it off immediately. Our "black teacher bond" became strengthened by an incident that happened in the cafeteria the very first day we arrived. We all went to the cafeteria to eat and Oliver, one of the black male teachers, was one of the first to sit down with his food. The other black teachers and I were still getting our food when we noticed that all of the other white teachers, instead of sitting at Oliver's table, sat at the table right next to his. The other white teachers did similarly, preferring to sit with one another than at the table where Oliver was clearly seated by himself. By the time I got my food, there was a very conspicuous "white table," and then there was Oliver.

So the other black teachers and I sat with Oliver. After that incident, we stuck together during lunches and orientation workshops. Shortly thereafter we had a staff meeting during which C. G., a black woman in her late forties and the program director, commented that "I can already see the black teachers cliquing together and segregating themselves. I have to discourage that." I immediately felt my blood pressure rising and my head became hot. "How the hell is this assimilated b---h going to say that we are the ones segregating ourselves?" I thought to myself as every expletive came to my mind. I was pissed. C. G. saw what she wanted to see. As the minorities in the program she wanted us to extend the olive branch to white teachers who clearly didn't want to accept it.

It was then that I realized that for the next 6 weeks I'd be working for, in the words of Carter Woodson, an assimilated and miseducated Negro. I wish I could say things got better after that and that in the end everything worked out okay; but that sort of stuff is only true in stories and movies. This was neither.

C. G. fawned over her white staff, laughing at everything they said and treating them with kit gloves. D. A., a returning black teacher, gave me a heads up to let me know that during practice teaching sessions the white teachers would find some way to criticize my lesson. He was right. For my practice lesson I taught a segment on pre-colonial Africa. The critiques that I received from the white teachers at my lesson's conclusion comprised the following: "Don't use big words like 'subjugation,' 'tropes,' or 'benighted' because the kids won't understand what those mean"; "You obviously know a lot about your topic but you go way too fast and are trying to cover too much material"; blah, blah, blah. To these comments I responded with, "Well one of the things that I will not do is assume that the kids are dumb and won't understand the words that I use. There is a very particular vocabulary within this discourse so it's important that the kids at least hear these words. If they don't know what they mean, then they will by the end of their time with me." I walked out of that meeting (and a lot of meetings that summer) pissed and fed up with white paternalism. It was obvious to me that these teachers saw their time in the program as charity work. They didn't have high standards for the students in the program; instead, they presupposed their stupidity.

I realized early on that the program needed more blacks in teaching positions. I think that Carter Woodson would agree. That summer I reread The Miseducation of the Negro, and my mind was opened like never before. Woodson attributed the failure of black uplift to the miseducation of the black race; blacks have been miseducated by not only whites who sought to perpetuate their subjugation, but by miseducated blacks themselves. Black uplift has largely rested upon the shoulders of those who have benefited from blacks' oppression and who subscribe to notions of black inferiority. Such is the case, on a somewhat lesser plane, with the white teachers at Learning Bridge.

C. G. has assimilated in order to cater to the wealthy whites for and with whom she works. She's Episcopalian and talks real proper whenever she's in a room full of white folks. Her voice get high and giddy in a manner that seems unnatural and incredibly fake. It's a spectacle of smiling, shuffling, and shuck-and-jiving before whites that's difficult to stomach let alone watch.

C. G. habitually talked down to the kids in the program and to the black teachers in a manner that she would never have dared to speak to one of her son's white lacrosse teammates. She brought in an all-white learning group that conducted a series of workshops with the kids that turned out to be highly problematic to say the least.

"You know how when you're in elementary school you can't wait to be a 6th grader," one of the women began. "And when you're in 8th grade you can't wait to be a freshman! Well guess what? When you go to high school it's not over! Because when you're a freshman you can't wait to be a senior! And after high school when you're working, you'll always have someone over you..." she continued.

"Okay, so where is college in this analogy?" I thought to myself. I confronted the woman afterwards about her her analogy. "Next time I think it would be good if you incorporated higher education into your story. The kids need to know that higher education is definitely an option for them." She stared at me wide-eyed. I continued, "It's especially important seeing as these kids come from environments in which college is not presented to them as a feasible goal." She became very apologetic and it became clear to me that her blunder was subliminal.

C. G. herself seemed very culturally insensitive and out of touch as well. Two of the black male teachers were forced to purchase khakis and polos because that was the required dress code. All these teachers owned were jeans, yet C. G. wanted them to dress like the other white teachers in the program.

Throughout the summer C. G. made one of the black teachers submit lesson plans due to the fact that "someone said that he was doing an inadequate job." I found this interesting in light of the fact that this individual is one of the best teachers in the program. Yet, none of the other teachers were required to do similarly. This is despite the fact that many of the other teachers would boast about how "I don't know what I'm teaching until 5 minutes before class!"

Towards the end of the program one of the white teachers took our combined science classes on a Nature Walk that the kids termed “the death walk.” She took them behind the tennis courts which was muddy and most disconcerting for everyone. When the issue was brought up in staff meeting I immediately thought to myself “thank God N.B. lead the walk and not one of the black teachers or me.” Afterwards this bothered me for I then asked myself, “why would I think that?” I knew exactly why. It was because the white teachers could do anything and it would be okay with C. G.; actually, it would be better than okay, it would be "creative." As a black teacher, I had to constantly walk on egg shells around C. G.

Parent’s night was such a farce. One second C. G. huffed and puffed about her staff “stuffing their faces” and the next moment she’s grinning from one ear to the next welcoming parents to the program. One of the parents approached me that night and asked, "Does that woman know who she is?" The fact that C. G. is a mile wide and an inch deep was obvious to more than just myself.

Visitor's Day was far worse than anything I encountered there that summer. Everything about the day seemed contrived. Most of the children were sent to the cafeteria to eat lunch while a few hand picked students were chosen to participate in what C. G. called "A Demonstration of Learning." I had 15 white donors piled into my classroom to watch me teach 4 students a geometry lesson for 20 minutes. It was uncomfortable because it wasn't real. I was uncomfortable, the kids were uncomfortable, and the whole thing seemed too much like a minstrel show. The entire thing screamed "yussuh massa'! We po black folk sho' do know how to learn!" After the demonstration the majority of the students were sent to the cafeteria while a few "non-rowdy" students were chosen to have lunch with the donors. The lunch was exquisite with salmon, pasta, salad, breads, drinks, and dessert. Meanwhile the "untamed" kids were shoved into memorial hall where they were supposed to watch a video. But lo and behold, C. G. never delivered the television. The kids ended up doing busy work until the lunch was over. The kids who attended the luncheon went on and on about how nice the lunch was. This caused many of the children to wonder why they weren't picked. I didn't know what to say to them. The kids who were selected to attend the lunch pick up their name tags during all school meeting earlier that morning. It broke my heart to see the rest of the kids scour the table in an effort to determine whether or not their names were listed among the chosen.

Before the visitors left the lunch, C. G. went on and on about the extent to which they invest into the children, yet at that very moment she had them chucked away in a cafeteria without providing them with so much as a tv.

On one particular occasion C. G. met with me to let me know that she had a problem with the way that I and the other black teachers dressed during Visitor's Day. I had worn khaki shorts, a nice v-necked top, and dressy sandals. The other black teachers also dressed according to the dress code so I didn't see the problem. "Do you think that J.C. was dressed appropriately?" I asked C. G.. "Yes, he was dressed fine," she replied. Now J. C. had shown up to work in khaki shorts, a t-shirt, sneakers, and tube socks that reached to his mid-calf. He looked as if he was going to work out, but apparently the way that I dressed was the problem. When I asked her to explain her double standards she replied, "It was a judgment call and it was my call."

I came to a head with C. G. during my "exit interviews.” Many of the meetings ran from between 10-15 minutes whereas mine lasted for an hour and fifteen minutes. During the meeting C. G. brought up the fact that she felt that I was the ring leader of a group of teachers (the black teachers) who promoted “disrespect and negativity.” She went on to bring up the incident during previous confrontations, “I felt that you were disrespectful and had predetermined in your minds the fact that we were guilty and wrong in our decision.” I was thinking to myself “this woman is fishing for something in order to have the last word.” Well I asked her how she procured this impression she said “you were always angry and worked up and based on the things that you said, you were very combative.” I told her that I found this all very puzzling seeing as none of the other administrators got this impression. She then went on to say that my behavior and body language was inappropriate, however she failed to specify what exactly about my demeanor was offensive or out of line. She then brought up the first confrontation in which I called her on the carpet with regards to the discrepancies with which she dealt with the white and black teachers. She said, “During that situation, you were combative and accusatory and I felt very disrespected.” When I inquired as to what exactly about my behavior gave me this impression she said “you were literally pointing your finger at me and the words that you used were combative.” Combative, combative, combative…blah, blah, blah. She kept using that word to describe my mannerisms. I told her that I naturally gesticulate when I speak and don’t discriminate when it comes to the manner of my address. She then said, “Well this is just my single, solitary opinion and you don’t have to me at all but that’s the way that I felt.” “I felt like you were disrespecting my position of authority and were accusing me.” At this point she began to cry. I looked at her and said that I felt that it was very important that she be called on the carpet for her behavior because it was wrong. I said that I didn’t feel that I was being disrespectful in the least and that I had the impression that she would want her staff to bring issues to her attention. I told her that I would in no way disrespect her, for I don't even call her by her first name unlike some of the other teachers who familiarly refer to her as “C----”.

She tried to justify the double standards that she has for black and white teachers by alleging that "black teachers have to be ten times better in the real world, and so they have to be ten times better here as well." She said that black teachers have to be ten times on point and can’t have low standards for the students. To this I replied, “Listen, we (black teachers) are not afraid of high standards. By all means, set the bar as high as you’d like because we’ll reach it, but it needs to be the same bar of excellence all across the board. You’re telling us not to have low standards for our kids, yet someone like L-- and N-- (white teachers) will look at me and tell me not to use words like “benighted” or “tropes” because they frankly don't think that the kids are smart enough to know what those mean. Mind you, this is the same teacher who spelled “cheap,” referring to an economical discount, c-h-e-e-p. So have high standards-but have them all across the board, for the black and white members of the staff.” To this Mrs. G simply stared at me like she wanted to reach across the desk and wring my neck. I looked at her and saw an insecure, pitiful, and defensive woman.

Afterwards, I found out from one of the white teachers that he went off during his meeting about how “fucked up” field trips were and about how the teachers are overworked and underpaid. He said that to all of this C. G. basically nodded, took notes and said “okay.” I found this very interesting and yet, not at all surprising when you dealing with miseducated Negroes. “Unbelievable” I thought to myself. This whole experience has sure enough been jacked up.

Misunderstood

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going." -John 3: 8

There are many things that I don't understand about God. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God is real. I have seen Him show up in my life in more ways than there is space here to enumerate. I do not base my faith in God upon what I can see. Rather for me God is much like air; though I cannot see Him, I see evidence of Him all around me. I do not pretend however, to understand everything about God or the ways in which He chooses to work. For some time I have been trying to make sense of God's love in light of all of the pain, suffering, violence, death, greed, and hate that characterize human existence.

If God is in fact all knowing, then He knew before he created mankind that we would sin; He knew before laying the foundations of the earth that evil would perpetuate human suffering; He knows before a child enters this world whether or not that child will either accept or reject Him. So then what's the point? If God is simultaneously all knowing and all loving, then how do I make sense of life's brutal realities? How do I make sense of my life and the purpose for which I walk this earth?

One of my friends once said to me that free will is a farce. "The Bible says that Jesus is the only way to eternal life," he said. "That's much like God inserting a child into a den of lions then hanging a rope above the cage saying, 'Take the rope! This shows how much I love you!'" I thought about what he said for a long time after we had this discussion. If God is in fact omniscient, then He knew before He created the earth that it would become sinful. At the same time, the only way to escape the eternal death that accompanies sin is through Christ. So how does God in fact give us a choice? How is this evidence of God's love for us? From my friend's point of view God says, 'love me or go to hell.' For a long time I wrestled with these questions and continued to ask myself, "So then what's the point?"

Tonight I had some time to think and not surprisingly, these questions made their way back to the forefront of my consciousness. I started thinking about what I believe and more importantly, why I believe what I believe: I believe that God has a plan for mankind and that every person is here for a purpose. Why? Well when I look throughout the Old and the New Testaments I see the extent to which God has embarked on a series of restoration projects to restore mankind back to Himself. After man sinned, God could have scrapped the earth, and us for that matter, but He didn't. Instead, He tried to find ways to restore the fellowship that we once shared with Him. Initially, people had to sacrifice animals, follow thousands of laws, provide burnt offerings, wash themselves over and over, and eat certain foods in order to become good enough for God. But God recognized that we would always fall short of being good enough for Him. So instead of giving up on us, God paid the ultimate blood sacrifice for our sin through the death of His son Christ. When God said that "the penalty for sin is death," He wasn't joking. But to atone for my sins, God died in my place.

While sin placed mankind upon a path leading towards death, God offers us an alternative to this fate if we accept the grace brought through Christ's death. It became clear to me that each of us do in fact have a choice. We can choose not to choose, in which case we remain upon the human trajectory that leads to death, or we can choose Jesus, in which case we remain sinful, however our sins become atoned for through the grace that God offers us through Christ.

But I still had a hard time reconciling God's omniscience with His incredible love for me. Then I got to thinking: "What if God puts limitations on Himself because of the unfathomable depths of His love for us?" I thought about the ways in which God has placed various limitations upon Himself: God chooses to work through people to whom He gives the choice to either love Him or not to love Him; through Jesus, God risked rejection and left Himself susceptible to sin and to the temptations of man; God chooses not to remember our sins once we confess them. This last realization stuck with me for a while. In my mind, if God can choose not to remember, then He can certainly choose not to know some things. God says that "I, even I, am the one who wipes out your sins for My own sake. I will not remember your sins" (Isaiah 43:25, Hebrews 8:12, 10:17). So technically, if God is in fact omniscient, then He should remember all of my sins even though He forgives them; but He doesn't. Whereas forgetting is unintentional, choosing not to remember is an act of the will. It is an act that is motivated entirely by love. In my mind, if God, because of His love for us, chooses not to remember our sins, then perhaps He also limits Himself by choosing not to know; perhaps he places restrictions upon His own omniscience.

While I believe that God knows the beginning and the ultimate end of His plan for humanity I believe that for the time in between, God chooses to limit His own omniscience. Contrary to what I formerly thought, I don't believe that God has it set in stone who will love Him and who will not; I'm not certain that He knows nor am I sure that He wants to know. In many ways, I believe that God waits to see how I will choose to live my life even as I am living it. He waits to see if I want His input and doesn't give it unless I ask for it. It's difficult for me to understand what I have done to merit this kind of unconditional love and it makes me love Him even more.

I've found that so many people, including myself, have a hard time letting themselves be loved. I'm not sure I 'll ever understand why God loves me so deeply, but He does. He neither forces His love upon us nor demands anything in return. Rather He offers His love freely and it is one that we can either embrace or reject. Sometimes I feel as if I should have to do something to warrant God's adoration because it's difficult to comprehend why God would love me despite my shortcomings and despite my sin. God's love is the kind that says, 'Come to me as you are.' He loves us enough to give us the choice to reject Him. For those of us who do, He loves us nonetheless.

Jurassic Park

Catherine came into the kitchen clutching the 400+ page Jurassic Park novel by Michael Crichton in her tiny fists. Her hair was in a curly mess on top of her head and sleep was still written all over her face. “What are you doing Manda?” she asked as she took a seat at the kitchen table. “Morning Pooks!” I said as I stooped down to give her a kiss. Her cheeks were flushed and still warm. “I’m making a cheesecake for mom’s birthday,” I said as I began to crush graham crackers for the crust. “Oh,” Catherine replied. “Do you want something to eat?” I asked. “Um, I’m okay,” she said. “Manda, do you want me to read to you while you cook?” “Sure,” I replied as I handed her the spoon to the cheesecake batter. She began to lick the spoon as she turned to what seemed like the center of the book. “You’re not going to start at the beginning?” I asked. Catherine looked up at me and grinned, cheesecake batter plastered to the sides of her mouth. “I’m just going to read you the interesting parts” she said as her eyes became wide and mischievous.

“Ed’s left arm was barely attached to his body,” Catherine began. “The deep gash that extended from his collar bone to his navel exposed his bloody entrails. To Dr. Carter’s surprise Ed sat up. He stared at her blankly before vomiting up blood.” Out of my peripheral vision I could see Catherine glance up at me to gauge my reaction. “Before going unconscious, Ed mumbled one word…‘raptor!’” she said dramatically. “Doesn’t that give you chills Manda!” Catherine exclaimed excitedly. “That’s freaky Pooks,” I said. “Do you know that velociraptors are the most lethal predators?” she said. “Their claws are over half a foot long and they can travel over ten feet in less than a second!” “Wow,” I replied. “And do you know that it’s worse to get eaten by a raptor than a T-Rex?” she continued. “Why is that?” I replied. “‘Cause a T-Rex just rips you apart and you’re dead in a second. With a raptor though, you’re alive for a while before you die.” Catherine was still grinning as she continued to clutch the spoon. “Manda?” she said. “Yes Catherine?” I replied. “Um…can I have the bowl too?”

Janet

I met Janet only weeks after moving into our house. It was the evening that she stopped by to give my parents a copy of the Chicago Republican as a “welcome to the neighborhood” token. Janet’s house, located on the corner of Washington and Arbor, provides her with an advantageous perch from which she observes all of the happenings of the neighborhood. If something happens on our block, Janet is sure to know about it. If Janet knows about it, then so do all of the neighbors.

Janet is a gangly woman in her late fifties with auburn hair that falls into a bob just above her jaw line. She’s sarcastic and stingy with a perennially knitted brow and wears an ever-present scowl. Oh, and did I mention…Janet also happens to be bipolar.

I remember the day that Janet asked my brother, Drew, to transport a truckload of five gallon water jugs from her truck to her basement. Afterwards to express her appreciation, she gave my brother a box of saltine crackers that had expired two weeks earlier.

On a different occasion, Janet asked my younger sisters to dog-sit for four days while she was away on vacation. When she got back, she gave my sisters two dollars…total.

But Janet’s stinginess is merely the tip of a very, very large iceberg.

It was after 11pm on a Friday evening. My family and I were in the middle of watching a movie when the doorbell rang. My dad went to the door and lo and behold, Janet stood there in her flannel nightgown and flip-flops. “I just want you to know that Tom is away for the weekend.” “Okay,” my dad replied. “I’m going to be sleeping with the car alarm under my pillow,” she continued. “So if you hear the car alarm go off at any point, it means that I’m in danger.” “Do you know when—” my dad could scarcely get the words out of his mouth before Janet replied, “I have to go,” and turned and walked down the porch steps.

Bamboozled

I’ve lived next door to Bert for going on five years now. Bert is a short, middle aged carpenter who wears circular spectacles and can almost always be found working in his backyard. I remember when Bert’s wife nearly called the police on my brother. He had stopped by to return the stepladder that my dad borrowed from Bert earlier that week. “What do you want?!” his wife said in a panicked voice from behind the closed door. “Uh…I’m just returning your ladder,” my brother replied. There was a pause before the front door opened slightly. “Oooooh!” she said emerging from behind the door with a toothy grin plastered on her face. “You’re Reggie’s son! You know, I just looked out and didn’t recognize you.” By this point she was laughing and slapping her neck with her right hand. “Bert’s not here and one can never be too cautious nowadays!” “Of course,” my brother retorted. What she really meant to say was, “Ooooh! I looked out and saw a black man and thought that you wanted to rob me!”

This morning my dad woke up at 7:30 am and found an email from Bert sitting in his inbox. In the email, Bert chatted on and on about his new dog, his summer vacation plans, work, and the lovely weather that we’ve been having. After all of the fluff, Bert got straight to the point. “By the way,” he wrote, “if it’s not any trouble, I am planning on building a fence that’s going to extend over a portion of your yard.” This “portion” to which Bert referred would have reduced the width of our backyard by nearly five feet. My dad responded to let Bert know that he plans on building a garage with trees along the driveway leading up to it, and so we’ll need to keep all of our land space. As 7:55am approached, Dad drafted the remainder of the email before bustling out the door to take Rachel and Jessi to school.

Dad pulled back into the driveway at minutes to 8 o’clock and noticed Bert digging holes in our yard for his fence posts. Dad ran into the house and up the stairs to get the yard measurements before confronting Bert. From the window I saw Dad talking to Bert who stared at my dad stoically over his round spectacles. Bert’s hands rested upon his portly hips as his feet pointed in opposite directions as if his right and left toes had had a disagreement and wanted nothing to do with one another.

As Dad turned to walk back into the house, Bert pulled out a measuring tape and began to measure the distance from our fence to where his backyard began. Dad entered the house a bit flustered. “He sent me that email at 7:30 and was out there diggin’ by 7:45!” Dad replied. “When he asked me for part of our backyard I thought of Chaka zulu,” he continued. Chaka zulu was one of history’s greatest African kings. When whites asked for a portion of his land, Chaka zulu went against his wife’s admonitions and allowed them to remain in his territory. The rest is history…

What's My Samaria?

I've heard the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman told a thousand times. Throughout all those times however, it never spoke to me the way that it did when I listened to G. D. talk about it. G. D. was in his mid-forties and couldn't have stood taller than 5'6". So Samaria was commonly referred to as "The city of Dogs," for it was inhabited by social pariahs: prostitutes, tax collectors, thieves, alcoholics, and the like. Jews who traveled south from Judea to Galilee would oftentimes travel for days out of their way to avoid passing through Samaria. Jesus however, when traveling south to Galilee, passed straight through Samaria in order to encounter a broken woman by a well.

If Jesus walked and talked today, I am convinced that the radicalism that characterized his life on earth would shock many people: he condemned institutional religion, kicked it with thieves, prostitutes, lepers, and adulterers, called the religious leaders "vipers" and "hypocrites," drove money changers out of the temple with a whip, and died for those who crucified him.

Listening to G. D. talk about how the grace and the mercy that characterized Jesus' life caused me to ask myself, "So Amanda, what's your Samaria?"

What are those places that I avoid because not avoiding them would be too much of a leap outside of my comfort zone? Who are those people that I dodge whenever I see them or pretend that I'm asleep whenever they stop by? Who are those people to whom I reply jovially, "I'll try to make it!" when they invite me out to something knowing full well that I have no intention of stopping by?

It has taken me some time to realize that following Christ demands that I conform to a standard greater than myself. It means loving those who are hard to love; it means serving those who are difficult to serve; following Jesus means that I crucify myself daily for the sake of others.

Bobby

Ever since I can remember my big sister, whom I now like to call Bobby, has been my role model and the one of the greatest influences upon my life. As the oldest of seven children, Sarah always provided me with a sense of security. This reassurance is one that only a big sister can provide, I think. It is the kind that stems from knowing that whichever waters life demands that I charter, Sarah has chartered them first. Sarah’s passion for life, her love of books, her pursuit of excellence, her desire to affect change, and her love for people rubbed off on me at a pretty early age. In 2002, Sarah graduated valedictorian of her high school class, and four years later I did too. In the spring of 2006 Sarah graduated magnacumlaude from Amherst College and that same fall I enrolled as a freshman at Amherst. Many people still ask me what it’s like to be trapped in my sister’s shadow, to walk in footsteps that are not my own. To these inquiries I seldom answer a word. Rather than stifling my individuality, Sarah has given me the courage to explore various dimensions of myself. For me and for my siblings, Sarah has shown us that we too can soar above our circumstances to heights that others deemed impossible.

"Never again!"

“Never again!” was the world’s response to Nazi Germany’s slaughter of over four million European Jews during Hitler’s Holocaust. “Never again will genocide plague the global community while we have the resources to intervene!” declared America and other of the world’s industrialized nations during this bloody chapter in history.

In 1996 these same countries turned their heads to the instigated bloodshed that took place between Rwanda’s Hutus and Tutsis which resulted in the deaths of nearly one million men, women, and children. The global community turned a deaf ear to the cries and to the pleas of those who could offer them nothing in return for deliverance. While Tutsi women and children were raped and butchered by Hutu men equipped with foreign guns and machetes, the world was immobilized by a single question: is this truly genocide? “Not on our watch!” the U. S. maintained afterwards, despite our government’s inactivity and indecisiveness due to Rwanda’s dearth of materials that would make U.S. intervention worthwhile.

The year is now 2008 and history is one again repeating itself. And once again, the world is standing by and watching (and in some instances assisting) the genocide that is currently taking place in the Sudan. Over half a million black Darfurian men, women, and children have been systematically annihilated by Arab janjaweed who seek to ethnically cleanse the region of its black inhabitants. I’ve come to realize that in today’s global society it’s not about values, rather it’s about whose lives have value. The world will continue to face war and violence as long as there is money to be made and power to be procured; history has proved this to be true; history is proving this to be true. The world said “Never again will there be genocide,” after the Holocaust, yet Rwanda happened and Darfur is currently happening. The United States said “Never again!” to injustice after Vietnam and yet we now find ourselves fighting an unjust war that finds its roots in insatiable greed. “Never again!” we like to say. Never again will there be peace.

Mental Meanderings Part I

I sat in an airport in Newark, staring out the window as I waited to board the plane that would soon carry me back to Chicago after over five months of being away from home. I still chewed the same watermelon flavored piece of gum that I had popped into my mouth three hours earlier just before leaving Hartford. I noticed an Amherst student with whom I had taken a class the previous year sitting at my terminal. For a brief moment we made eye contact before he quickly looked away as if afraid that I might acknowledge his presence or god forbid, that I might dare to speak to him. By now, the gum had grown stale which caused my jaws to hurt as I continued to chew absentmindedly. I sat upon the terminal floor drowning in my thoughts, completely unaware of the crowds of men and women who passed me by.

At many points throughout the year I remember longing for this moment. Now that I stood at the threshold of what promised to be a fantastic summer, I found myself ambivalent and somewhat reluctant to leave. I thought about how quickly the past nine months of my life went by and I wondered how quickly the months would continue to come and go. I recalled my dad saying to me, “Manda, there are many people who are alive, but only a few people actually live.” My dad’s words resounded in my head as I continued to watch planes take off and land banausically…

A Dream Deferred

At 7:50am the bell rang as twenty-five or more seventh graders poured through the door of Mr. Pennix’s classroom. For fifteen minutes I had been wandering about the classroom observing the American history posters upon the walls around me. In vain, I scanned the posters upon which the faces of white American heroes were proudly displayed for faces of color. As the time drew near for classes to begin, I noticed the presence of inquisitive brown eyes peering through the window of Mr. Pennix’s locked door. Before I knew it, a mob of middle schoolers had swarmed like flies around the classroom door, waiting impatiently for Mr. Pennix’s indication that it was time to come in. Whether their eagerness to enter the classroom stemmed from a fascination with my presence or from sheer excitement at the prospect of learning about mixed numbers and improper fractions, I shall never know.

Calvin Pennix, a 25 year old black man, teaches both mathematics and history at View Park Middle School in South Central, Los Angeles. During the time that I observed Mr. Pennix’s eighth grade U.S. history course, I was simultaneously amazed and disturbed by what I noticed. Mr. Pennix stood at the front of his classroom and proceeded to read off a list of questions that quizzed students on their knowledge of individuals like Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin to mention a few. Staring at the backs of more than twenty braided, waved, twisted, permed, weaved, kinky heads of hair I began to reflect upon my own experience in the educational system. I attributed the subjectivity of my middle school and high school curricula to the fact that I attended a predominantly white school. As such, the Euro-centrism that characterized the curricula at schools where the students and staff looked like me surprised me to say the least.

After class Mr. Pennix commented that, “The state of California gives us a list of things that our students need to know by the end of the school year, and I have to find the material to teach it. The history that we’re required to teach is definitely biased. We start at The Scientific Revolution and end at The Civil War which is the only place where black people show up. I try to parallel everything that we do to black history because there’s absolutely nothing about the contributions of blacks. The worksheet that I handed out at the end of class that talked about blacks in the Revolutionary War was mine. It wasn’t part of the curriculum. If the head of the department were to come into my class and see me handing out that worksheet, I could get into a lot of trouble. But I don’t care.” When I asked Mr. Pennix why he feels obligated to incorporate blacks into his curriculum, he answered, “I try to incorporate black history where I can because I think it’s important to open my students’ eyes even if it’s in some small way.”

In 2006 I spent the month of January teaching history and mathematics at the all-black Frederick Douglass Middle School in South Central, Los Angeles. My brother, Drew, taught about blacks in science, the various gene inhibitions of viral proteins, and HIV while I discussed the contributions of blacks as Africans and African Americans. Throughout our presentations, the students stared in awe as Drew took them on a step-by-step journey through the cell and as I introduced them to individuals like W. E. B. Du Bois, who was the father of sociology; Granville T. Woods, who was the black Thomas Edison; Medgar Evars, who for a season, was the civil rights movement in Mississippi; and Langston Hughes, who challenged America with a question yet unanswered, “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?”

Evidence of newfound pride was made plain upon the kids’ faces as they discovered that Dr. Daniel Hale Williams was the first person to perform an open heart surgery; Charles Drew saved millions of lives through the invention of the blood bank; Lewis Howard Latimer, not Thomas Edison, invented the carbon filament in light bulbs, and that yes, American history belongs to them too.

For centuries, blacks have accepted a position of marginalization as majority white society parades biased and misconstrued models of Americanism. Assumptions about white entitlement are affirmed by the society in which we live; a society that functions on a distorted image of democracy yet is sustained by inequality. Curricula tend to glaze over, exclude, or completely mute the systemic oppression intermingled with the ideology of American liberty, hence a race of children continue to struggle in classrooms without a history to tell them that America belongs to them as well. Reality proves that today’s black children are left without an image of blackness of which they can be proud; without knowing who they are, they have no means of conceptualizing what they can become.

Later that day one of the boys approached me grinning and said, “Miss Bass, without black people, we’d still be in the dark!” His laughter as he picked up his backpack and ran down the stairs from the second story classroom is a sound that will forever resound in my ears.