Alexithymia

2010-01-15T01:44:00.001-05:00

"In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth." --Mahatma Gandhi

When Affirmative Action was White: A Book Review

2009-04-28T23:54:00.006-04:00

December 1, 1955 sparked the beginning of the yet another U.S. Civil War when Rosa Parks—a seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama—refused to comply with de jure segregation. However unlike the battle that occurred nearly a century earlier, the outcome of the Second Civil War remains uncertain. America met the demands of a tired and determined people by enacting a series of laws that seemed to lay the groundwork for repairing the grievances that slavery and Jim Crow inflicted upon African Americans. The Civil Rights legislation that emerged from the 1960s conflict appeared to grant America’s blacks equal standing under the law. While the legislation benefitted a small percentage of African Americans, subsequent years would reveal its inefficacy in manifesting America’s promise of equality.

Affirmative action is arguably the most contested byproduct of the Civil Rights era. Opponents of affirmative action call it “reverse discrimination,” “unconstitutional,” “a hand out,” among other things. And yet, after less than one hundred and fifty years since the abolition of slavery and a little over fifty years since the Civil Rights Movement challenged the very fabric of Americanism, critics of affirmative action fail to recognize that since America’s inception, affirmative action has only ever been white.

Ira Katznelson tells one version of this story in his book, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. He points to a moment in history when affirmative action was explicitly white in order to strengthen the case for non-white affirmative action today. Katznelson explicates how the New Deal policies which emerged during the 1930s and 1940s served as a form of white affirmative action by excluding and disadvantaging blacks in order to almost exclusively benefit whites. This book attempts to link “the history of affirmative action for blacks since the mid-1960s, with the prior record of affirmative action for whites.” He follows the historical trajectory of New Deal policies in order to tie contemporary solutions to specific historical harm. Katznelson proposes a model of affirmative action that he believes will prove more palatable to those who currently oppose the measure.

The central questions that Katznelson seeks to address ask, “What are the historical instances of white affirmative action?” Additionally, “should affirmative action exist as a remedy for past and present injustice?” He answers the latter with a definitive “yes,” and the former by arguing that the 1935 Social Security Act, discrimination within the military and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), the G.I. Bill, the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, and the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, among others, fashioned a white American middle class while negating the same upward economic and social mobility for America’s blacks. Said another way, Katznelson argues that black disadvantage found its roots in the generation preceding the end of Jim Crow. In her book, Schools Betrayed: the Roots of Failure in Inner City Education, Kathryn Neckerman accounts for the problems within public education by advancing a similar argument. She maintains that the challenges of urban education possess historical roots and attributes them to the extensive legacy of local decisions that have governed school policy and implementation.

The New Deal legislation was characterized by its exclusion of African Americans. While the Social Security Act offered meager benefits to the few blacks who qualified, it excluded most of them. Katznelson notes that “fully 65 percent fell outside the reach of the new program” which failed to apply to occupations such as agricultural labor and domestic servitude, leaving out the vast majority of black Americans. During this time, Southern members of Congress organized to exclude farmers and maids, “the most widespread black categories of employment,” from the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act. Katznelson notes that “without this fine-tuning, a majority of southern blacks might have had access to protections negotiated by unions that would have shaken the political economy of segregation.” The G.I. Bill of Rights, which represents the broadest set of social benefits offered by the U.S. government through a single program, enabled millions of white veterans to purchase homes, attend college, start businesses, and plan for retirement. This bill almost singlehandedly created a white American middle class and spurned burgeoning suburbs throughout the nation.

The history of New Deal policies reveal that local control remained the key to maintaining the status quo and perpetuating institutionalized racism. Although the legislation lacked explicitly racist provisions, Congress charged administrators on the local level with their enforcement. Within the educational arena, as Neckerman makes plain, similarly race neutral policies contributed to the ultimate demise of urban public education. Local control over education policies precluded federal oversight which opened the door to discriminatory implementations. In a similar vein, Katznelson notes that “guided by the model of decentralization that the South had achieved in earlier New Deal laws,” southern members of Congress drafted a law “that left responsibility for implementation mainly to states and localities, including, of course, those that practiced official racism without compromise.” In 1954, local control would again undermine the promise of equality in an ostensibly landmark ruling. Michael Klarman explicates in Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement that the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education failed to fundamentally alter the conditions within black America. Similar to the claim advanced by Klarman, Charles Ogletree argues in his 2004 book, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education, that the critical flaw within Brown lay in the Justices’ decision to cede responsibility for its implementation to the states, allowing them to pursue desegregation with “all deliberate speed.” Southern Democrats indefatigably fought against centralized control over New Deal policies. “By decentralizing authority” Katznelson writes, “and fragmenting decision making, national policies could be administered to suit white southern preferences.” Southern congressional power ensured the preservation of the south’s racial order by strategically maximizing the flow of federal money while preserving local control.

Katznelson’s book possesses numerous strengths, one of which lies in his painstaking attention to the discriminatory development of New Deal policies. He places these measures within a historical context, grounding the argument for non-white affirmative action in historical facts that illustrate instances of specific harm suffered by African Americans. The underlying assumption girding his argument draws upon the age-old maxim, “what you do for one, you must do for all,” suggesting that past white affirmative action justifies non-white affirmative measures today.

There are some who, like Clarence Thomas, presume that affirmative action lowers standards for blacks. In his dissent in Grutter v. Bollinger Thomas maintains that “a university may not maintain a high admission standard and grant exemptions to favored races,” when in actuality, affirmative action aims to give qualified women and people of color the same opportunities that whites have historically enjoyed despite mediocrity and under qualifications. Thomas naively subscribes to the belief that after four hundred years of racism and sexism, and after only a century and a half since the abolition of slavery, America has now become a meritocracy that is intent upon giving minorities and women equal opportunities. Like many right wing conservatives, Clarence Thomas believes that blacks ought to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, “even if they don’t have any boots.”* As President Lyndon B. Johnson observed in his 1965 address at Howard University:

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders as you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

And yet, after nearly forty years of affirmative action, black Americans are still far from equal. Despite the 1964 Civil Rights Act the prevalence of discrimination in home lending persists. Ostensibly, the Fair Housing Act passed by Congress equalized opportunities for African Americans to procure homes. In actuality, it achieved just the opposite by including discriminatory provisions that inhibited the law’s enforcement. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) introduced under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act undermined, rather than reinforced, endeavors to equalize employment opportunities for blacks. The commission instead served white interests by protecting the seniority rights of individuals who had attained positions due to past discrimination against blacks. This in turn insulated the vast majority of white workers from the widespread layoffs that would characterize the decade following the bill’s implementation. Since its founding, affirmative action has done relatively little to narrow the economic and educational gap between black and white Americans. Statistically, affirmative action has advantaged more white females than it has benefitted any other minority group. Despite over forty years of affirmative action and diversity efforts, white men still own sixty-four percent of the nation’s businesses and occupy the majority of the nation’s highest paying jobs even though they comprise only forty-one percent of the nation’s work force. White males are still:

70% of judges
70% of university professors
71% percent of air traffic controllers
73% percent of lawyers
75% percent of police detectives and supervisors
84% of construction supervisors
85% of boards of directors
89% of U.S. Senators
94% of fire company supervisors
95% of senior managers.

Neither affirmative action nor the legislation that emanated from the Civil Rights era has significantly altered the problems that have historically impeded black Americans. As Martin Luther King observed, “What good is it to be able to eat at a restaurant when you can’t afford a hamburger?” The United States has allowed black Americans entrance into the restaurant of Freedom, Equality, and Justice for All, however it has yet to offer them the necessary means with which to purchase a meal. Rather, the government contents itself upon throwing blacks scraps from the Master’s table—token programs and policies like Upward Bound and affirmative action that target not the roots of America’s institutionalized racial problems, but merely the symptoms of its social ills. To these, select individuals all too eagerly attach the label “progress!” while others scream “foul!”

The Limitations of Desegregation Part 1

2009-04-27T22:21:00.002-04:00

Brown v. Board of Education resonates deeply throughout American culture and occupies a prominent place within America’s Progressive Narrative. The 1954 case sought to dismantle state-sponsored segregation within public education, yet over fifty years after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling, America’s public schools remain more separate and unequal than ever before. Like America’s Narrative, the Court’s decision in Brown espoused democratic ideals that the Justices embraced only in rhetoric. Their ruling, though later nullified by the Court’s decision in Brown II, reflected future promises that they hoped America would eventually live up to.

While it remains unpopular to suggest that Brown was wrongly decided, the years after the decision have exposed it as little more than a feel-good measure aimed at satiating blacks. Rather than granting black Americans educational equality, the decision offered only the appearance of it. Many of Brown’s critics attribute contemporary challenges within public education to the years after the decision and to Brown II, which undermined its de facto implementation. And yet, the tragic flaw—which would forever preclude Brown’s realization—can be traced back to the ideology of the very people who strategized the case. The NAACP’s decision to dismantle Jim Crow inequality by attacking segregation rather than fighting for the equalization of black institutions would slam the doors of educational opportunity shut for many of America’s blacks.

The original strategy taken up by members of the NAACP in the fight against Jim Crow was equalization for the purpose of integration. Their main objective did not reflect what the majority of America’s blacks wanted for themselves or for their children at the time. In Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement, Michael Klarman observes that prior to Brown “most southern blacks were more interested in improving black education, reducing police brutality, and securing access to decent jobs, than in desegregating grade schools.” He explicates what he terms, “inverse hierarchies of preference” between blacks and whites; grade school segregation remained at the top of the white supremacist agenda while blacks had vested interests in voting and civil equality. Contrary to what blacks wanted however, the NAACP viewed desegregation as a cheaper, more feasible pursuit. Yet behind the NAACP’s ostensibly utilitarian view of desegregation lay the belief that desegregation was the surest marker of equal citizenship. This belief was characterized by discomfort with racial separatism and suggests that blacks’ proximity to whites would solve the challenges within the black community.

And yet, the social and political milieu of the 1940s and 50s made equalization a feasible goal. America’s battle against fascism during World War II made Jim Crow inequality difficult to justify alongside democratic ideals. President Franklin Roosevelt encouraged the U.S. to “refut[e] at home the very theories which we are fighting abroad.” In the mid-1940s, the Cold War placed America upon an international center stage which profoundly impacted the federal government’s behavior. Klarman notes that during this period, “not only had the national government become more committed to civil rights, but it had also developed a greater capacity to enforce that commitment.” This climate fostered the burgeoning liberalization of white racial opinion throughout the south. Across America, there was a growing consensus towards egalitarianism. The opportune moment had arrived for black Americans to launch a full-scale campaign for equalization.

The NAACP made early attempts to fight for equalization. Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), a case that challenged the absence of higher educational institutions for blacks, held that states are constitutionally obligated to provide “equal services to blacks within their boundaries.” The courts allotted time for state officials to establish equalized facilities for blacks rather than requiring white universities to admit black students who were denied admission. For many southern whites and state officials, the equalization of black and white facilities seemed more palatable than desegregation. This suggests that a national attack upon unequal institutions would have been more cordially received by members of the status quo.

Sophia's Tips for Predicting Weather

2009-04-23T00:37:00.002-04:00

1) Red sky in morning, sailors take warning; Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

2) If, by a campfire, you see the smoke hug the ground before it blows away, a storm is on its way; If the smoke flies straight up, you can expect warm weather ahead.

3) If the morning dew is on the grass, rain will never come to pass; When grass is dry at morning light, look for rain before the night.

Resurrecting Napoleon

2009-04-20T22:58:00.005-04:00

The phrase, “the pen is mightier than the sword”—coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1839 play, “Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy”—holds true today; for as history has proven, even the greatest warriors die, while words live forever. Since this nation’s founding, white Americans have wielded the power of representation. Such control has allowed for the construction of a society in which whiteness is perennially affirmed— on television, in art, within curricula, and inside the classroom. Spurned by the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, blacks—and subsequently women and other minority groups— began to demand inclusion in an American Master Narrative from which they were heretofore excluded, yet within which they played an integral role. Out of this era emerged the Black is Beautiful Movement, the development of Black Studies within colleges and universities, and a greater emphasis on Afrocentric education, each of which developed in response to their initial exclusion.

In her book, The Language Police, Diane Ravitch argues that a system of quiet censorship governs American education whereby sensitivity guidelines and expurgation choke intellectual freedom (163). Her central question asks: how did the regulation of offensive language evolve into a system whereby textbooks were purged of all material that “might annoy or offend the most agitated imaginations” (18)? She charts the trajectory of bias regulation beginning in 1997 with former President Bill Clinton’s education initiatives, through 2003 in an attempt to illustrate that what began as bias and sensitivity review has developed into unwarranted censorship which now threatens personal freedom, educational quality, and intellectual agency. In her chapter entitled, “Forbidden Topics, Forbidden Words,” Ravitch provides numerous examples of passages which a Bias and Sensitivity Committee deemed inappropriate for elementary school children, in an attempt to show that: 1) personal biases inherently govern which words, topics, and phrases members of the committee deem to be “biased” 2) the inanity behind the exclusion of certain topics does not warrant their exclusion and 3) bowdlerization reduces the quality of language and literature which results in banal material that fails to foster high levels of intellectual engagement among children. She argues that such purging paints a portrait of the past that is historically inaccurate, subscribing to Napoleon Bonaparte’s belief that “history is a set of lies agreed upon.”

Ravitch avoids explicitly condemning Eurocentrism within history textbooks and instead argues that radical academics, extremists, activists, social reformists, and curriculum experts have asserted that “traditional accounts of American history were not only racist and sexist but Eurocentric as well” (135). She unsuccessfully tries to advance the notion of reverse exclusion as it pertains to European history, claiming that “in the American history depicted in today’s texts, the only civilization that seems to be not so very advanced is Europe’s” (154). She also maintains that extreme multiculturalists who advocated for revised curriculums “ignored the dangers of turning history into a tool for group therapy” (136). Her claims, particularly the latter, fail to acknowledge that prior to the 1960s and long afterward, the model of Americanism advanced in schools served as a form of group therapy for white students by instilling into them a false sense of achievement and credit for modernity. Claims for inclusion, however radical, stemmed from the initial exclusion of non-whites from America’s narrative. While inclusion (multiculturalism) and historical accuracy are not mutually exclusive, Ravitch erroneously constructs a dichotomy between the two, writing that “texts try so hard to be positive that they are misleading and inaccurate” (147). She treats nondemocratic societies with an intolerable measure of condescension, claiming that history texts treat other civilizations with adulation while failing to admit “that many nations today are undemocratic societies ruled by dictators and despots, where ordinary people have few rights and freedoms” (148). In light of Howard Fuller’s article “The Continuing Struggle for School Choice,” and Goodwin Liu’s article on school choice—in which they demonstrate the extent to which one’s freedom and choices are circumscribed by race, poverty, and systemic inequality— one has reason to question Ravitch’s naïve view of democracy. Her own biases become explicit when she fails to recognize the peculiarity of the institution of American slavery. She writes that:

Most texts blame Europeans for African slavery, as if this horror were unprecedented before the arrival of the Portuguese on the west coast of Africa…One of the better texts observes that “slavery existed in Africa and other parts of the world for centuries…” (153).

Additionally, she challenges the legitimacy of textbooks which include the cultural achievements of the Anasazi, yet fail to mention the debate over “whether the Anasazi practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism” (154). And yet, she extols Henry Graff’s, America: The Glorious Republic, as “well written and comprehensive," though Graff undoubtedly avoids mentioning that the pilgrims habitually powdered and ate their dead relatives for sustenance before Native Americans—who they would later annihilate—showed them how to plant and harvest crops.

From a Strictly Mathematical Viewpoint

2009-04-03T21:30:00.004-04:00

Today, Dad sent me the following email:

What Equals 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been in situations where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 101%? What equals 100% in life?

Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these Questions:

If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 1 9 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then:

H-A-R-D-W-O-R- K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

and

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But,

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

AND, look how far the love of God will take you

L- O- V- E-O-F-G-O-D

12+15+22+5+15+6+7+15+4 = 101%

Therefore, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that:
While Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the Love of God that will put you over the top!

I Lift Up Mine Eyes

2009-03-27T23:38:00.002-04:00

I look up to the mountains--
does my help come from there?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made the heavens and the earth

He will not let me stumble and fall;
the one who watches over me will not sleep
Indeed, he who watches over me never tires and never sleeps
The Lord Himself watches over me

The Lord stands beside me as my protective shade
The sun will not hurt me by day,
nor the moon by night
The Lord keeps me from all evil and preserves my life

The Lord keeps watch over me
as I come and go,
both now and forever
Amen

--Psalm 121

The Question

2009-03-27T11:05:00.002-04:00

"I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. The future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of this country. White people have to try to find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place. Because I'm not a nigger. I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it. And white people have to ask themselves why they need it. The future of our country depends on that." --James Baldwin

Acknowledging Privilege

2009-03-21T00:11:00.000-04:00

In response to the "Making Whiteness Visible" video that I posted on my facebook profile a couple of days ago, a former white classmate responded by sending me the following antagonistic message:

"So ______ sent me that youtube video that you had posted to your profile. the white becoming visible part 1...are you kidding me Amanda?
I can understand about being angry and enraged about the past...but you HAVE to be kidding me saying that EVERYONE is a racist STILL. It really bothers me and makes me angry, because last time I checked I can't get a scholarship for school because of the color of my skin.
I don't know if you've actually looked recently but there aren't white ONLY colleges or Hispanic ONLY colleges... Now isn't that an interesting twist in pointing fingers at Racists? I sure as heck think so. You want to talk about oppression, how about my family AMERICAN INDIANS the very first people that F'ed over in this country. But did you know the only way I can get help for college is if I can actually PROVE what tribe and family name I came from... Would you have to do that? Do you think that in order to get help from UNCF (United Negro College Fund) you'd have to PROVE that you came from a slave family? hmm... didn't think so. "Minorites", I use that loosly because white are becoming the minority, are given GREAT opportunities that I'll never even see. I just really wish that they'd see that, before pulling the race card. OH and before you even get the idea about calling ME a racist...remember what church I grew up in...I WAS THE MINORITY."

"ATL"

2009-03-19T00:34:00.000-04:00

I flew into Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport on Friday afternoon, June 13th. I rode M.A.R.T.A. from the airport to downtown Atlanta where I was scheduled to meet up with Jamie Sadler, a twenty-one year old Emory Law student who would host me throughout the weekend. I stood on the escalator that would carry me up to the main street with my oversized black suitcase, my purse, and my laptop bag.

"Hey, hey, hey, how you doin' purty lady?" The man taking the escalator down into the subway across from mine spoke with a heavy southern drawl that was exacerbated by enormous, gold-capped teeth that protruded from his mouth. He grinned and leaned across the escalator, staring at me through mischievous eyes.

"I'm well, thanks" I said, smiling as I pulled out my phone and texted Jamie to let her know that I had arrived. The darkness swallowed him as he disappeared down into the subway. Meanwhile, I emerged onto the street and into the sweltering Georgia sun.

**

I found a sunny spot on the sidewalk where I decided to wait for Jamie to arrive. Feeling my skin becoming clammy from the heat, I peeled my hoodie from my body and tied it around my waist. Wearing my favorite black-and-white striped tank-top, I rolled up my Old Navy boot-cut jeans and took a seat on top of my suitcase. I took my cell phone out of my bag and dialed Dad's cell.

"Hey Manda!" Dad answered energetically. "I'm here with your Mom, and we're heading to the office." Dad and Mom sounded cheery, as they often did when gallivanting with each other.

"Oh, okay" I replied. "I just wanted to call you guys to let you know that I arrived safely."

"Manda," Mom piped up from the background, "you have to read Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James." She continued, "There's no such thing as 'Greek philosophy.'" My mom, a bibliophile who had done enough reading to have earned herself a PhD three times over, possessed a love for history that rivaled even my own.

"Who's it by again mom?" I asked, pulling a receipt out of my pocket and turning it over to write the name down on the back. "George G.M. James," Mom repeated. "He talks about how the Greeks were originally educated in Egypt. After the invasion of Alexander the Great, Egypt's libraries were pillaged and Aristotle converted it into a research center."

"Are you serious?" I replied, my interest genuinely peaked.

"Yes!" Mom continued. "Many of the books that historians currently attribute to Aristotle came from Egypt's libraries."

"That makes sense," I replied, "because even experts can't seem to explain how Aristotle supposedly managed to author so many books and across so many disciplines throughout his lifetime."

A gray sedan pulled up to the curb in front of where I sat and a tall, thin, woman with a pallid complexion emerged. Her large, curly hair was dyed jet-black and she sported a mini skirt, platform thongs, and a black tank top.

"Yo," she began, "Amanda?" She stared at me skeptically through dark-rimmed sunglasses.

"Yep," I said, looking up at her from where I sat comfortably on the sidewalk.

"Hey, I'm Jamie." She stuck out her hand to complete the introduction.

"Hey mom, can I call you back?" I said into the phone.

"Oh, no problem" Mom replied. "I'll talk to you later. I love you!"

By now Jamie stood behind her car with the trunk open.

"Okay, I'll call soon" I said. "I love you guys too."

Georgia on my Mind

2009-03-17T21:08:00.000-04:00

September 9, 2008

I must confess that when I initially applied to volunteer with the Obama campaign here in Georgia, I could not have anticipated that it would lead me down the road which I am now traveling. Originally, I came to Georgia because I saw the enormity of the need here: there are close to one million unregistered voters in this state alone, over six hundred thousand of whom are black. Since working here in Macon, I've come to learn how the voter registration laws here have been crafted in a manner that deliberately makes it difficult for working people and for poor folks to vote. The Bibb County Board of Elections is the only place in Bibb County where people here can procure a free voter I.D. It's tucked away off of a remote road twenty minutes north of downtown, just out of the jurisdiction of the local bus routes, and is only open from 8:30am to 5:30pm Monday through Friday. No nights. No weekends. As you can probably imagine, people who work from 9am to 5pm, are in some cases taking public transportation, have children and so many other obligations have a difficult time making it there within operating hours to register. As such, many of them don't. For those that are lucky enough to reach the Board of Elections, the law requires them to show proof of birth, residence, utility bills, and a number of other documents that have successfully discouraged many people from going through the trouble. And yet, when one registers for either hunting or fishing licenses in the state of Georgia they are automatically registered to vote. You can see, probably all-too clearly, what we're up against.

But Senator Obama is right when he says that what is happening right now across America is not about him; every day I begin to realize this more and more. It isn't about Senator Obama, rather it's about Rosa Watkins, a woman who has raised a daughter and who is now raising a granddaughter, yet who comes to the office every day at 8:30pm, after having helped her grandbaby with her homework, to make phone calls; it's about Ms. Juanita, who ruins her freshly manicured, lime-green fingernails by spending four hours ripping off labels on old manila folders so that we can make up voter registration walk packets; it's about Mr. Ford who, when I come home from the office at 1am, I see sitting on the edge of his bed in his boxers and a t-shirt, writing the return addresses on voter registration forms from the day before so that we can mail them out the next morning; it's about Drew Benbow, Ashley Diaz, and Brooke Obie, Mercer University Law Students who, after exams and hours of studying, still find time to come out to the clubs with me until 2am or later to register voters as they wait in line; it's about Mrs. Arthena Caston, a working mom who, after working a ten hour shift at Geico, comes by the office to help us enter data; it's about Mrs. Beverly Ford who stays up until 2am printing off lists of housing projects that we still need to canvass; it's about Gwen Lipford who, though working a long day at Forsyth Prison, still comes to an organizational meeting in the basement of a church to turn in eleven voter registration forms that she was able to get filled out over the past week; it's about Ms. Montgomery, an elderly woman who walks a mile and a half from the bus depot to the campaign headquarters downtown twice a week in the sweltering heat to make I.D. calls; and it's about Tedra and Brett Hobson, two amazing individuals who saved up money so that they could work for the campaign for free. These are the unsung heroes who are the feet of this movement; these are the individuals who are the heart and soul of what has become much more than simply a campaign. It's a revolution. So many of us are tires of the same kind of politics; I'm tired of watching the same individuals overlooked, marginalized, underrepresented, and left without a voice.

I find that many people look back upon the Civil Rights era with nostalgia. They talk about what an awesome time it was to be alive, for black people had a cause that was worth living and dying for. And yet, it is easy to forget that not everyone was marching with Medgar Evars, who for a time was the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi; not everyone participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycotts or in the Freedom Rides or in the Greensboro sit-ins. There are people who tell me every day that what we are trying to do here is impossible. And yet, I've seen people inspired and lives transformed before my eyes, including my own.

Even as I type these words I'm sitting in my car, with my computer on my lap, in the parking lot of a church where in minutes, I will be talking to congregation about the importance of working towards the change that this state, that this country, and that we all so desperately need. This movement has taught many of us to hope as we have never dared to hope before, that America, and that each of us, can be better. This is the change that we are all working for; this is the change that I feel so blessed to be a part of.

I'll write more when I can.

Amanda

Inside My Back Pocket

2009-01-07T19:19:00.000-05:00

je ne sais quoi (zhə-nə-ˌsā-ˈkwä) n. a quality or attribute that is difficult to describe or express; an unspoken and intangible essence that makes a person attractive.

insouciance: (in-soo'-sients) n. lighthearted unconcern; nonchalance.

squirrel: v. to store away for future use; to save for later.

preprandial: adj. suitable for the time just before dinner (ex: a preprandial drink)

recondite: adj. difficult to comprehend or understand; hidden from sight; concealed (ex: a recondite subject)

raconteur: (ra-kahn-ter) n. a person who is clever at telling stories.

repartee: (re-pər-ˈtē) n. a quick, witty reply or conversation.

bumptious: adj. presumptuously, obtusely, and often noisily self-assertive; obtrusive

arcane: adj. secret

metanoia: n. a transformative change of heart; a spiritual conversion.

maladroit: adj. clumsy

niggling: adj. petty; bothersome or persistent especially in a petty or tiresome way

ilk: n. of the same kind

bric a brac: n. a miscellaneous collection of small articles commonly of ornamental or sentimental value; trinkets.

mendacity: n. the quality or state of being untruthful; a lie.

veneer: n. a superficial or deceptively attractive appearance, display, or effect.

fin: n. (slang) a five dollar bill.

extemporaneous: adj. makeshift; produced on the spur of the moment.

platitude: n. the quality or state of being dull or insipid.

rapport: n. marked by harmony, conformity, accord, or affinity.

esoteric: adj. designed for or understood by the specially initiated alone; private; confidential.

apoplectic: adj. greatly excited or angered.

schadenfreude: ('shaw-den-froi-duh) n. a mischievous, slightly tickling feeling of delight procured by observing another's discomfort.

changeableness: I didn't think this was a word, but as it turns out...it is! It's a noun meaning, "levity; apt to vary; alterable."

prolix: adj. so wordy as to be tiresome; long-winded; using more words than necessary.

apple pie: adj. perfect; in order.

malapropism: (MAL-uh-pro-pism) n. the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context.

trichotillomania: (tri-kuh-ti-luh-ˈmā-nē-uh) n. an abnormal desire to pull out one's hair.

glib: adj. Marked by ease and informality.

chalet: (sha-ˈlā) n. a cottage with overhanging leaves (such as the one in Miss Potter :) )

raraavis: (rer-ə-ˈā-vəs) n. an unusual or extraordinary person or thing; the quality, state, or fact of being rare.

puissance: (PYEW-eh-sense) n. strength; power.

gregarious: (greh-GAR-ious) adj. sociable.

lickspittle: n. one who flatters with the hope of gaining favors; a parasite; toady; a sycophant.

ersatz: (air'-sahtz) adj. being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation.

mordant:(mor'-dent) adj. penetrating; sarcastic

unpalatable: (un-pa'lat-able) adj. disagreeable; unpleasant.

impervious: (im-per'-vee-ous) adj. not capable of being affected or disturbed; impenetrable.

proclivity: (pro-KLIV-ity) n. an inclination or predisposition toward something; especially : a strong inherent inclination toward something objectionable.

inure:(in-yoor') tr. v. to accustom to accept something undesirable

obtuse:(ub-TOO-se) adj. dull; non-stimulating (as of a person or a conversation); lacking sharpness or quickness of sensibility or intellect: insensitive, stupid.

obsequious: (ub-SEE-kwee-ous) adj. subservient.

rigmarole: (ri’-gə-mə-rōl) n. confused or meaningless talk.

plucky: adj. spirited; brave.

sesquipedalian: (ses-kwə-pə-ˈdāl-yən) adj. using long words

glitterati: (gli-tuh-RAH-tee) n. pl. beautiful people; celebrities.

dumpy: adj. being short and thick in build; squat.

steatopygia: (stē-a-tə-ˈpi-j(ē-)ə) n. an excessive development of fat on the buttocks that occurs chiefly among women of some African peoples

emunctory: (i-mung-tuh-ree) n. related to nose blowing.

confabulate: (kon-FAB-yoo-late) adj. to chat

gratuitous: (gruh-TOO-i-tous) adj. given freely

pleonasm: (PLEE-uh-na-zem) the use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense; redundancy.

banausic: (buh-naw'-sic) adj. dully mechanical, purely functional or materialistic.

sobriquet: (ˈsō-bri-ˌkā) n. a nickname

polemical: adj. controversial

blasé: (blah-zay) adj. bored; apathetic to pleasure or excitement as a result of excessive indulgence or enjoyment

zephyr: (zeh-fer) n. a gentle breeze.

argent: n. silver in color (the argent moon)

lurid: (loor-id) adj. causing horror or revulsion; gruesome; shocking; ghastly.

punctilious: adj. careful

glitterati: (gli-tuh-RAH-tee) n. pl. beautiful people; celebrities.

coup d'etat: (KOO-de-tah) n. the sudden overthrow of a government by a usually small group of people in or previously in positions of authority.

fauz pas: (foh-pAH) n. a social blunder.

corpulent:(KOR-pyoo-lent) adj. having a large, bulky body; obese. .

quixotic: (quix-ah'-tik) adj. marked by rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action; capricious; unpredictable.

swagger: (intransitive verb) to conduct oneself in an arrogant or superciliously pompous manner

defenestrate: (di-FEN-istrate) v. to throw a person or a thing out of a window.

mealymouthed: adj. not plain or straightforward; devious. (Hilary Clinton is a mealymouthed politician)

lemming: (pronounced as-is) n. a rodent; a despicable person.

rheum: (room) n. tears

goober: n. a peanut.

rime: (rhyme) n. morning frost

prevaricate: (pre-var-i-kate) v. to lie; to tell a falsehood.

scuttlebutt: (skuh'-dull-but) n. a rumor; gossip.

chimera: (ki-mer-uh) n. an impossible or foolish fancy; an illusion or fabrication of the mind; it can also be a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology that has the head of a lion, a goat's body, and a snake's tail.

languid: (lang'-wid) adj. lacking force or quickness of movement; listless; sluggish as if from exhaustion; weak.

impalpable: (im-PAL-pa-ble) adj. incapable of being felt by touch; intangible

demure: (di-myur') adj. reserved; modest.

placate: (ˈplā-ˌkāt) v. to soothe or mollify especially by concessions; to appease; to pacify.

banausic: (bah-NO-sik) adj. merely mechanical; routine

doppleganger: (dä-pəl-ˌgaŋ-ər) n. a ghostly counterpart of a living person; a person who has the same name as another.

vicissitudes: (və-ˈsi-sə-ˌtüd) n. the quality or state of being changeable; mutability

logorrhea: (log-ah-REE-ah)n. excessive, incoherent talkativeness.

alexithymia :(ah-lek-sah-THI-mee-ah) n. the inability to describe emotions in a verbal manner.

viridescent: (vir-ə-ˈde-sənt) adj. slightly green; greenish.

acrimonious: (a-krə-ˈmō-nē-əs) adj. caustic, biting, or rancorous especially in feeling, language, or manner.

sardonic: (sär-ˈdä-nik) adj. disdainfully or skeptically humorous; derisively mocking; sarcastic.

implacable: (im-ˈpla-kə-bəl) adj. not capable of being appeased, significantly changed, or mitigated.

panacea: (pa-nə-ˈsē-ə) n. a remedy for all ills or difficulties; a cure-all.

haecceity: (hek-see'i-tee) n. the essence that makes something the kind of thing that it is and different from any other; a term used to express individuality or singleness; most literally, this-ness.

rhinotillexomaniac: (rino-til-ex'-o-maniac) n. someone who compulsively picks their nose.

superfluous: (soȯ-ˈpər-flü-əs) adj. exceeding what is sufficient or necessary; marked by wastefulness or extravagance; unnecessary.

cornucopia: (kor-ne-co'-pee-uh): n. an inexhaustible store; abundance.

'09 Resolutions

2009-01-03T16:52:00.000-05:00

1-Be more spontaneous
2-Take risks
3-Worry less. Trust God more.
4-Be more thoughtful
5-Learn to Latin dance (maybe take a class?)
6-Begin sketching again
7-Laugh more
8-Visit Sarah in Trinidad
9-Improve my vocabulary
10-Take myself less seriously
11-Go on an adventure
12-Watch the entire fourth season of House
13-Pay close attention to details
14-Become a better sibling/daughter/friend/person in general...
15-Stop biting my nails
16-Pick up a basketball more frequently
17-Be less self-critical
18-Continue spinning
19-Finish my memoir
20-Live

I wonder...

2008-12-27T00:31:00.000-05:00

Must life's terrain always possess hills and valleys? Why is it never flat?

Blessed Assurance

2008-12-20T20:46:00.000-05:00

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine
Oh what a fore-taste, of glory divine
Heir of salvation, purchase of God
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood

This is my story,
This is my song
Praising my Savior
All the day long

This is my story,
This is my song
Praising my Savior
All the day long...

It was a dreary, overcast Tuesday evening when I decided to make the fifty-nine mile trek south of Macon into Crisp County where I had planned an organizational meeting with local church goers. I cruised down I-75 South, humming along with India Arie and Alicia Keys, trying to stay awake for what was proving to be a rather uneventful drive. When I finally entered Cordele, I noticed that it was a decent sized country town, though quite unlike anything I was accustomed to back home. "Church's Chicken" shacks and "Fish Fil-A" houses occupied almost every other block.

I crossed over a set of train tracks that seemed to usher both me and my mini, hunter-green, 1997 Volkswagen Golf (which I've nicknamed "Ruby") into another time and place. Dilapidated houses, dirty streets, and littered sidewalks filled up the frame before me. Dusk was fast approaching and I noticed a group of men sitting outside of a convenience store, staring intently at a checkers board where two of their comrades were engaged in what appeared to be an intense match. The town, the people, the atmosphere reminded me of a scene from a 1950's flick.

Travoris met me at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church where Nika, one of our volunteers, waited for us outside. The enormous white church towered ominously above the surrounding houses, as if reigning down judgment upon the neighborhood. Though we had both spent most of the past four days on the phones building for this meeting, neither Travoris nor I knew how many people would show up. "Lord, please let people come," I quietly prayed to myself.

Travoris and I entered the sanctuary where we noticed that everything from the carpet, the pew cushions, and the pulpit, to the hymnals and the offering plates were laden with red velvet. "To reh-mind folks uh da blood uh Je-sus!" Deacon Durham said, grinning broadly. He was a short, portly man in his late fifties and had a shiny bald head. He wore gold bifocals that matched the coating on four of his front teeth. After about thirty minutes, five people sat in the pews before us and we decided to commence with the meeting. Deacon Durham stood at the alter and said, "I'd like to thank these heah young folk fo' comin to be wit us heah to-day!" He gestured towards Travoris and me and continued. "They work wit de O-ba-ma campaign and gon' tell us what we got ta do." I made a move to stand up, but noticing that Deacon Durham was far from finished, reclaimed my seat.

"Take out yo' hymnals and turn to page two-seventy-five'" he instructed, wiping the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief. Travoris and I stared at one another puzzled. Was the meeting going to take place after the service? Neither of us knew for certain.

"BLE-SSED A-SSUUUUUURANCE!" Deacon Durham belted out flatly. His voice resonated throughout the sanctuary.

"Je-sus is miiiiine," I started sining along. "Oh what a foooooore-taste, of glory di-viiiiine." I closed my eyes and sang, allowing the words of the song to caress me like a gentle wave, rocking me back and forth in the pew.

This is my story, This is my song...

I could feel my eyes beginning to fill up with tears as I thought about God's faithfulness. As often as my experiences here in Georgia threatened to plunge me into the depths of a despair that I heretofore never knew, I remembered God's promise to never leave me, nor forsake me...even though nearly everyone else had.

Praising my Savior, all the say long...

Deacon Durham closed his hymnal and took a seat, signaling to Travoris and me that it was time to begin. I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my dark-blue hoodie and turned around to face a room now filled with about twenty-five people. "BAY-beh!" Travoris said, staring at me affably through his rectangular black glasses, "let's do this!"

Ramón and the Swimming Pool

2008-12-19T17:40:00.000-05:00

Two months after we purchased a white fifteen passenger van, Ramón bought one too. I can't say that I ever really liked Ramón. He struck me as an aloof, unpleasant sort of person and as a child, I found great amusement from observing the way his skinny legs stuck out from underneath his large belly in a manner that very much reminded me of an olive on a toothpick. Stray patches of salt-and-pepper hair formed a semi-circle around a shiny bald spot in the center of Ramón's head. He worked at the local laundromat and scarcely said one word to anyone unless it was to ask them to borrow something. No on on Bishop Street knew very much about Ramón and he preferred it that way.

Ramón had two daughters. Yaseña and Dezerae would wait for the bus every morning even though Gary Elementary School stood no more than two blocks from where they lived. They were both around my age and had tight, rosy skin. They wore their hair in a long, straight plait that reached down their backs and past their dimpled knees.

"Me fadder won' lemme cut my hkair," Yaseña would habitually boast through the grating of the rickety fence that separated our backyards.

"He da only one who can cut my hkair when it get too long." Finding much more amusement in terrorizing our senile shitzu than in listening to Yaseña, I ignored her. "He keep it in a box for when I get married" she grinned.

"How...interesting" I replied, half glancing in her direction. I never became friends with Yaseña and Dezarae for they all-too often viewed themselves far above any company they kept. They preferred to sit on the front steps of their house loudly sucking paletas all day, causing the juice to run down the sticks and onto their clothes and hands.

Ramón's wife rarely left their house, but from time to time I would see her in their backyard hanging clothes on the line. Everyone on the street simply referred to her as "Ramón's wife" and she looked like a larger version of her two persnickety daughters. Her calves resembled newly baked loaves of bread and were so large, they kissed even when she stood with her feet shoulder-width apart. When she wasn't screaming at her children in Spanish, she usually grunted to everyone else.

One afternoon, Ramón began to build a new fence. He worked on it day and night for about a week. Standing seven feet high, Ramón decided to paint the fence neon-orange. Ramón began to make all sorts of changes to his house. He landscaped the front lawn and repaved his driveway. The next thing we knew, Ramón would come home from the laundromat with his fifteen passenger van filled with wood which quickly disappeared into his backyard. Ramón could be heard hammering, sawing, and shuffling around his backyard during all hours of the day or night.

"Them Mex-ee-cans sure know how to use a g--d d---n hammer" Mr. Minter would say to anyone who cared to listen. As a kid, Mr. Minter scared me for he looked exactly like Popeye from the cartoons. He was a staunch racist and could cuss more than anyone I knew. To this day, I am convinced that the only words in his vocabulary were racial slurs and expletives. Scott, Mr. Minter's best friend and neighbor of forty years, lived across the street. He was tall and thin and looked very much like the Spirit of Famine. I don't think his wife ever cooked for him. Mr. Minter liked to sit on his porch and smoke. Oftentimes I'd hear him ranting and raving to Scott about how "All of g--d d---n Mex-ee-co is movin' into West Ch-ee-ca-go!" Usually Scott stood there and listened, offering his two cents now and again.

None of the neighbors on the block could figure out what Ramón built so secretively in his backyard. "Lawd!" Mrs. Edith would say to Sarah, Andrew, and me whenever we went over to her house to mow her lawn. "I hope he know what he doin!"

A couple of weeks later, Ramón threw a party. One could hear bachata and merengue blasting from all the way down the block, almost as if Ramón wanted to let all of Bishop Steet know that they were not invited. My curiosity having gotten the better of me, I climbed one of the apple trees behind my house so that I could look over Ramón's fence, which more closely resembled a construction sign, and into his yard. To my great surprise, I observed that a massive swimming pool stood where Ramón's backyard had once been. A group of people stood huddled together on a tiny deck that spanned the four feet from the back door of Ramón's house to the edge of the swimming pool.

Not long afterwards, Ramón hung a large, obnoxious sign above his driveway that said, "La Casa de la Famila Hernandez." A couple of days later, a big, yellow "for lease" sign appeared in
Ramón's front yard. Ramón and his family had disappeared overnight. None of the neighbors knew exactly what became of them or why they left in the first place. It was rumored that Ramón's wife had been deported.

"They don' finally gone back to Mex-ee-co" Mr. Minter would tell people who asked. After a while, people stopped asking.

About Plaque

2008-12-18T18:41:00.000-05:00

Catherine walked into my room where I sat at my desk intently writing out analytical proofs. Her curly hair was stuffed beneath a multicolored hat that Rachel knitted last Christmas. The hat, along with her black turtleneck, framed her face in a manner that highlighted the roundness and rosiness of her cheeks. She carried her science book under one arm and gripped a packet of gum in her other hand.

"Hey Manda" she said. Catherine walked up to where I sat and rested her chin on my right shoulder.

"Hey Pooks!" I said, wrapping my arm around her waist and pulling her into my lap. I grabbed her snuggly and placed a long kiss upon a soft spot between her cheekbone and her ear. Catherine's cheeks were still warm. I saw Catherine wince as I released her with a loud, "Mwah!"

"You hate it when I do that, huh?" I said, smiling as she grinned. "No, I don't mind" she said. "If I had a little sister with cheeks like mine, I'd probably kiss them too." Her empathy amused me. She hopped off of my lap and pointed to her science book, which by now had found a comfortable spot upon the floor beside my desk.

"Um, I'm learning about plaque" she said. Her dark eyes grew wide as she stared at me expectantly. I loved Catherine's eyes. They resembled deep, black pools of ink that appeared as if they had been dropped into her eyes by a wet, black, paintbrush.

"Ooo," I replied. "So you can tell me how to take care of my teeth?" I had given Catherine the cue to begin telling me all that she knew on the subject.

"Well," she began, reaching far down into her diaphragm for breath. "Plaque doesn't just start forming when you eat candy or sugar. You really should brush your teeth after every meal."

"Really?" I asked, genuinely interested.

"Uh huh." She replied. "Even though you brush your teeth hard for two mintes or something, that doesn't mean that you got all of the bacteria out of your mouth. Some of it gets trapped between your teeth."

I winced. "That sounds gross" I said.

"That's why you should floss" she continued. "But there's a certain way that you have to floss or else you could cut your gums and food will get in there and infect them."

Provided with a gross visual, I could feel my nose starting to itch. Ever since I can remember, my nose would begin to itch whenever I encountered something gross or even remotely creepy.

Catherine continued, amused by my discomfort. "Your teeth could start to fall out. If your gums bleed easily when you brush your teeth or floss, if they get puffy, if your teeth start to hurt, or if you have bad breath, you probably have gum disease."

"So how do my teeth look?" I asked, throwing my head back and opening my mouth wide for her to inspect. She pulled my head back farther so that she could get a better look and made her assessment. "Um, you don't have any cavities" she said. "And you're chewing gum, so your breath smells like spearmint." I chuckled, causing myself to nearly choke on my gum.

"But you should floss after every meal" she advised, "or else you'll get plaque and it'll start to eat away at your teeth until they fall out." She sauntered out of the room and down the hallway. I heard her walk into my parent's room where Sophia sat on their bed reading.

"Hey Sophia," I heard Catherine say. "You wanna know about plaque?"

Pieces of a Fragmented Identity

2008-12-17T01:35:00.000-05:00

They say that my great-great-great grandfather was born in a gaw* somewhere in India's northern coastal plains. The exact location of his birth has long been forgotten. Some people say that he came from Delhi. Others speculate that he came from Calcutta or Madras. No one really knows for sure. His name was Samuel. Samuel Seuneurayan.** Born to Fazaal and Maharani Seuneurayan around the year 1860, my great-great-great grandfather was the youngest of their four children. His granddaughter, my great aunt, Auntie Bettie, turned eighty five this past April. She is currently the oldest surviving relative on my mother's side of the family and spends her days as a cleaning woman in Grenville, Grenada. Some of the details of Samuel's life story have been preserved in her memory; it is through her that a few remnants of my great-great-great grandfather's experience lives on.

People says that the Seuneurayans descended from Seikhs who occupied the upper tiers of India's kajat. Samuel's father and brothers were agricultural farmers who made their living by harvesting ground nuts, peas, and rice. As a child running around in little more than a doti, Samuel often found himself having to run carts of pumpkin to the local towns where they were sold during the planting season. His two eldest brothers, Moolian and Bharath, owned farms of their own in Kharagpur while his eldest sister, Vashti, married a subsistence farmer from Bhatpara at the tender age of fifteen.

Samuel entered the local village school at twelve years old, shortly after his mother's death. Stationed along the town periphery, the village school sat about two hundred yards from where the sand met the foaming waters of the Laccadive Sea. The village children feared the schoolmaster, a middle aged Brahman, who commanded lessons with a whip that added to the austerity of his appearance. As was the case with all the other children, Samuel's fear of licks drove him to write his lessons out daily in the sand. At such times, his schoolmaster would hover over his shoulder wielding a switch that seemed all-too eager to acquaint itself with his backside.

"Mark it out! Again! Mark it on the sand!" his instructor would shout whenever he found Samuel's lessons less than satisfactory. "Ra-tap!" went the whip against the tender limbs and backs of children who scurried away to escape the sting of the lash. Samuel's father desired for his youngest son, a life that would lead him away from the back-breaking labor of the fields. Little did he know that this was the very place for which Samuel was destined.

As the story goes, Samuel was kidnapped in 1880 while playing football along the shores of an unknown coastal village. He and his friends caught the attention of white arkatees who demanded that they help load cargo onto ships for export. The whites' demands were not aberrations, for foreign shipping companies oftentimes forced India's natives to comply with various pre-imposed labor demands. The boys complied with the whites, who were despised by India's natives for exploiting her land, her labor, and her people.

"All e young fellar 'bout twenty a dem come hyar to make money. Dem fellar fool me. Bring me dis country e say e ha plenty money, e fool me" -East Indian indentured worker in Trinidad

The men from the beach fettered Samuel, placing him in the bowels of a ship that harbored hundreds of other East Indians bound for what would become a lifetime of gruelling labor. Most of the people aboard the ship were men who had contracted themselves as indentured laborers. Like Samuel, those who were kidnapped were chained together in coffles beneath the ship's hold. Laaka, the young man to who Samuel was chained, was dragged out of his father's house by white arkatees. Neither he nor Samuel would ever see India again.

Upon arriving in Trinidad, Samuel was sold to Mr. Saxon, a British colonist who owned a large and prosperous sugar plantation outside of San Fernando. After three years of service, Samuel had fully assimilated into the plantation's kurme. His workday began with the sound of the bell horn that echoed across the vast plantation just before dawn. The overseers, who were people of African and European descent, herded Samuel and the other slaves and indentured laborers to the cane fields where they planted, weeded, tended, and harvested cane until midday. Samuel's master stratified his workers in the same way that many planters created divisions between their former African slaves. Versus exploiting color hierarchies, Mr. Saxon took full advantage of kajat in order to negate solidarity among his workers. Samuel often witnessed cruelties towards Brahmans and simultaneously loathed the occasional extra portions he would receive for being Seikh.

"All a dem livin' but Brahman. E ha village one side da chamar. If I want oak must oak. If a Brahman if a animan comin', must oak" -East Indian indentured worker in Trinidad

In India, Brahmans were members of a high ranking priestly caste whose position prevented them from participating in strenuous forms of manual labor. This kajat restriction exacerbated the difficulties that many Brahman's faced on Mr. Saxon's plantation. He would often assign Brahmans the most demeaning tasks and took painstaking measures to degrade them. The were treated as chamar, or members of an untouchable caste.

"One a de barrick have six room. I could hear if you farting dem could hear just like livin' in de bush dat is all" -East Indian indentured worker in Trinidad

Samuel was housed in what used to be the former barracks for African slaves and shared a single room that was barely large enough for three people, with seven other indentured workers. Mr. Saxon gave his field hands weekly food rations which generally consisted of alloo, roti, kukunee, makai, and sohari. Maida was a luxury of which only the plantation elite partook.

Throughout the time of their indenture, contracted workers could neither change employers nor could they refuse to perform any task to which they were assigned. They were denied the right to protest their pay, which for many consisted of sara bara ana per day. Under the law, indentured workers possessed no rights that either employers or the colonial government were obliged to acknowledge. Many of the workers who contracted themselves quickly became disillusioned by life on the tappu and while most yearned to return to India, their labor contracts prohibited repatriation until the expiration of their indenture.

"We di want to go back India but which part e go. Go back which ship an who go gi we de ship?" -East Inidan indentured worker in Trinidad

British colonial law demanded that laborers completed five years of industrial service after which they were made to fulfill an additional five years of labor in order to receive a free return pass back to India. The law was crafted so as to guarantee that no one would ever return home.

As the story goes, one afternoon while working in Mr. Saxon's cane fields, Samuel caught the attention of a white missionary who happened to be visiting Mr. Saxon's plantation. Struck by Samuel's tall stature, dark-skin, and straight, jet-black hair, the missionary, a man known throughout San Fernando as Reverend MacDonald, approached Samuel and through discussion, learned that he could both read and write his language. Intrigued by Samuel's mental acumen, the Reverend purchased him in order to train him alongside another Indian, Frederick Budhladall, as a Presbyterian catechist at the Susamachar Presbyterian Church in San Fernando. Samuel spent a little over a decade in Trinidad before migrating to Grenada where he founded the island's first Presbyterian church. He became the first non-white missionary to the island and died there at the age of fifty. Almost eighty years after Samuel first set foot in Trinidad, my mom was born in San Fernando. Hers however, is quite another story...

*gaw: Hindi, meaning "village"
** Pronounced soo'-nah-rhine
Brahman: a member of India's priestly caste.
kajat: Hindi, meaning "caste"
doti: Hindi, meaning "loin cloth." This was the traditional dress for East Indian men and young chidren.
arkatee: Hindi, meaning "recruiters." These men were often sent into India's interior to procure young men to work as indentured servants throughout the British Caribbean.
aloo: Hindi, meaning "potato"
roti: A type of East Indian flat bread
kukunee: Hindi, meaning "fruit"
makai: Hindi, meaning "corn"
sohari: Hindi, meaning "fry bake"
maida: Hindi, meaning"sweet meat"
sara bara anna: Hindi, meaning "twenty-five cents"
tappu: Hindi, meaning "island"

The Road Less Traveled

2008-12-11T11:43:00.000-05:00

This morning I sat at my kitchen table holding a hot cup of freshly brewed tea, with my bible open to Galatians chapter four where I had left off yesterday's devotions. The scripture through which I read came from Paul who preached about the freedom from death and from the Law that Christ freely gives to all who believe in Him. Paul's message to the church at Galatia was simple: "let love make you serve one another, for the whole Law is summed up in one commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself" (Galatians 5:13-14). Paul emphasized living the gospel, for when Jesus taught that faith without works is dead, He meant it (James 2:20).

Mom came into the kitchen and ran her fingers over my mass of hair. I rarely tied my hair back for I preferred to let it roam freely in all of its craziness. "You have a lot of hair my dear" she said, chuckling to herself as she reached for the carnation milk in the refrigerator behind me and began to pour herself a cup of tea. Dad walked in from outside where he had just finished shoveling the driveway. "Morning Manda!" he said, placing a frozen kiss on my forehead which sent a chill through my body. I took a sip of tea, relishing the comforting warmth that began at my lips and made its way down my throat. Dad mischievously walked over to mom who stood at the counter fixing her cup of tea, and placed his arms around her waist. "Good morning my love," Dad said as he placed his cold cheek against her neck. "Reggie, you're freezing!" my mom hollered as she playfully shooed him away, but not before giving him a cup of tea and a kiss.

"Pat, did I tell you about the couple that was turned away from the church?" Dad began. Mom shook her head and I paused my reading to listen. "Last night Mr. and Mrs. Caston told me about a friend of theirs who went to the church leadership for help because she and her husband faced foreclosure on their home." Dad continued, "Do you know what they said to her? They told her that they only help people with their spiritual needs."

"Whaaaaat?!" Mom said incredulously. I remained speechless for a moment, neither of us wanting to believe what we were hearing. "I wonder how they'd react if all of their members decided to pray instead of tithe because 'they only believed in helping with spiritual needs'" I replied. "Reggie, no" my mom said, still mortified. "Yeah, Pat. That's what they said" Dad replied shaking his head. "That's not the gospel" Mom protested.

I thought about what I had read, only moments before, concerning the early church.

"Suppose there are brothers or sisters who need clothes and don't have enough to eat. What good is there in your saying to them 'God bless you! Keep warm and eat well!' --if you don't give them the necessities of life? So it is with faith: if it is alone and includes no actions, then it is dead" (James 2: 15-17).

I thought about the church of Acts and how believers shared all that they possessed.

"The group of believers was one in mind and heart. No one said that any of his belongings was his own, but they all shared with one another everything they had. There was no one in the group who was in need. Those who owned fields or houses would sell them, bring the money received from the sale, and turn it over to the apostles; and the money was distributed to each one according to his need" (Acts 4: 32-35).

I have heard pastors, churches, and people who profess Christianity justify their greed and egocentrism in light of this scripture by calling it Communism. When I look at the state of today's Church, I am displeased by it for I have a hard time seeing Christ's image in it. I see celebrities, megachurches, Christian seminars, multi-million dollar ministries, church cruise lines, and I sometimes wonder where the gospel has gone? At what point did the love for wealth, for fame, and for things trample both our humanity and our compassion for others, especially those in need?

I am frustrated and grieved when I think about how difficult it remains for the world to see Christ amidst the mire of legalism, rhetoric, and avarice that characterize too many churches and the attitudes of too many Christians. The world remains antagonistic towards what they perceive to be the gospel of Christ and loathe us in the process. Christ never intended His message to remain confined within the four walls of the church or to become just another facet of one of the largest money-making institutions this world has ever seen. We are the Church. I often wonder what has happened to living the gospel, to putting feet to our words and action behind our faith?

The road which Christ calls us to traverse is certainly a difficult one; it is one that is oftentimes marked by suffering and the daily crucifixion of "self." And yet, God promises to remain faithful, even when we're not. I know Him to be a God of his word which, amidst my frustrations, anxieties, and the prospect of simply not knowing, gives me the strength to pick up my cross and follow Him.

"Girl"

2008-11-26T14:25:00.000-05:00

Blue crayons are prettier than brown ones; take care not to play with dolls that are darker than you are; long sleeved shirts are not only for wintertime; princesses look like sleeping beauty; don't use colors that remind people of filth; when playing dress-up with your friends, put white towels over your head and imagine that you're beautiful; don't wear colors that make your skin look darker than it already is; what makes you think brown is beautiful, eh?; starve yourself so that your thighs won't touch when you walk; in school, talk in such a way that you won't sound like the nigger that you are; don't wear your hair naturally; when you grow up, you must marry a white man so that your kids will be beautiful; stay away from boys who have hair like pot-foot; but I don't like brown crayons anyway; this is how to relax your hair; this is how to improve your complexion; this is how to kill new growth when your relaxer starts to grow out so as to prevent yourself from looking like the nigger that I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how to grease your hair to make it look shiny; this is how to make friends; when you are in school, make sure that you don't associate with riff-raff--those niggers aren't going nowhere; this is how you use skin bleaching cream; this is how you talk proper; this is how you make friends with white kids; this is how not to look at the black kids who think that you'll talk to them just because you're black too; this is how you smile to a white boy that you like; this is how not to smile at a black boy that likes you; this is how you entertain white people; this is how you act around other black people; this is how you behave in the presence of important white people, and this way they won't think that you are the nigger that I have warned you against becoming; be sure to hot-comb your hair every day; don't move in with niggers--you're not one o' dem, ya know!; don't imagine yourself on the covers of the magazines that you see while standing in line to buy groceries; don't entertain nigger friends because others might mistaken you for one; this is how to make casserole instead of roti; this is how to wear pink lipstick instead of brown; but I don't like brown anyway; this is how to use skin bleaching cream on a child [like your mother] that comes out too dark; this is how to love a white man, and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work then feel bad about giving up; but what if he doesn't want me?; you mean to say that after all, you are really going to be the kind of woman that a white man won't want?

"The Line" by Sarah Bass

2008-11-19T22:55:00.000-05:00

My sister Sarah is a writer and a fabulous one at that. She's in the process of writing a series of stories about my Dad's life as a child growing up in the backwoods of Mebane, North Carolina during the 1960's. I thought I'd share one with you...

"Reggie looked forward to 10:05am with great anticipation. Morning snack time was fifteen minutes before recess, an hour and fifty-five minutes before lunch, and five hours and twenty-five minutes before the end of the school day. Each of these moments gave Reggie reason for excitement. Lunch was his second favorite time of day. There was always the element of surprise with the opening of his lunch box at noon. What would be in there today? he wondered. Peanut butter and jelly? Fried bologna and cheese with mayonnaise? A honey bun or a cupcake? Apple juice or a dime to buy chocolate milk? During Mrs. Byrd’s morning lessons, Reggie would stare out the window and ponder these things. Although his mother’s low-paying job at the dry cleaners limited the possible combinations, Reggie liked to pretend to be surprised. When 10:05am rolled around, however, he dismissed such matters for the much awaited morning highlight: the distribution of milk and cookies.

Reggie patiently stood in line in front of the classroom with the other kids in his first grade class. He saw the black milk crate on Mrs. Byrd’s desk filled with blue, half pint cartons with pictures of cows on them. He could tell by the beads of sweat on the outside that the milk was cold. Reggie loved ice cold milk. He also liked to watch Mrs. Byrd hand out the oatmeal cookies in the slow, deliberate way she had, wrapping each one in a napkin the way they do for customers in the bakery. Mrs. Byrd made it an event.

Reggie watched as Joyce Woods stepped to the front of the line and accepted the delicious offering Mrs. Byrd extended to her. Joyce Woods was the only other colored kid in his class. She was coffee complected with eyes like ink and hair twisted into two braids. Reggie studied Joyce Woods every day with acute fascination, in part because he felt unspoken kinship with her as the only other beneficiary of Brown v. Board in the first grade, and in part because whenever she sat down, he could see under her dress.

Reggie knew he was colored, but wasn’t quite sure what that meant exactly. All he knew was that colored wasn’t white, and what wasn’t white, wasn’t wanted. Unlike Joyce Woods, whose African ancestry was obvious to the world in the concentration of her color, Reggie was light-eyed and light skinned, a testimony to the postbellum admixture of poor whites and the Saponi thread of the eastern Sioux with freedmen. He was of no single pure line, but rather the product of mixed folk taking up with mixed folk until all racial specifics were diluted to various shades of yellow.

The colored folks in the community kept secrets concerning the past to themselves. Folks just didn’t talk. “Boy, that’s none a yo’ business,” they said. There was a lot of shame surrounding the silence; it was commonly known that high-colored folk, particularly the “blue veins,” would pass for white whenever they could. Although people in the community knew, they never brought it up. A few folk were ashamed to be called Indian after all the white man had done to kill the Indian spirit of the Old World. Most others wanted no association with the likes of Negroes and actively sought, in marriage, to bleach the very histories that would condemned them. On the one hand, Reggie was told, “Boy, you’s got Injun and Massa in yo veins, you ain’t no Negro. You’s high society.” On the other hand, folks said, “Well, boy, you’s got Negro blood in you, so you’s jus’ that, a Negro. Don’t no amount a nothin’ else gone make no diff’rence..”

The people to whom it seemed to matter most were those whose features overtly betrayed them, offering no opportunity for choice; in the mind of a seven year old, however, it was a conundrum.

Reggie glanced again at the front of the line. He watched in disgust as Elizabeth Watkins assaulted Mrs. Byrd for her snack.

Elizabeth Watkins was a fat white girl who breathed loudly and had tight skin that shared the same flushed hue as the pink dress she wore daily. She was the nastiest person he had ever laid eyes on in his entire life. She sat in front of Reggie in class and sweat profusely. Initially, Reggie didn’t have anything against her other than the fact that she smelled so bad, he had to breath through his mouth. Last Thursday, however, when Reggie wasn’t looking, Elizabeth Watkins stole his cookie. One moment it was there on his desk, right next to his milk. The next moment, it was gone. Reggie was angrier then than he had ever been before, because it was the first time he had ever been robbed by a white person. Colored country boys never had much to begin with, and to have that little bit taken away, and by a mountain hick on top of it, was a personal offense. Reggie had to spend that snack time empty-handed while the other white kids in class ate their cookies, and all he got from Elizabeth Watkins was a heinously gapped, crumb-smeared grin. After that moment, Elizabeth Watkins was nothing more to him than a thieving, treacherous, redneck pig.

With the exception of Mrs. Byrd’s class, Reggie didn’t like Richard Anthony Elementary School. He didn’t care for school in general because it was a waste of good days. He would have much preferred to be running through the woods playing cowboys and Indians with Carl and Andre, starting fires with leaves and matches and shooting birds out of their nests with his bb gun. Richard Anthony was a worse school than usual, though, because it was mostly white - not northern white, as he had been accustomed to in New York, but Southern White, a whole different breed of man. Alamance County had undergone visible changes since his father’s recent return to North Carolina from military assignment at Fort Totten, then in Vietnam. 1966 had brought increased efforts to formally rid the South of the remnants of Jim Crow since the upset of the spring of 1954; it was an opportunity for the United States to expunge its record of all evidence of complicity in the division of “the Land of the Free” through the eighty-nine year sanctioning of de jure segregation.

Reggie was still a new kid, new to the strange thing called “integration” that made black kids get on buses with poor whites kids who took every opportunity to “remind them of their place,” and new to this place where his mother and father had their roots, a temperamental land west of the Blue Ridge Mountains comprised of country vastness and community smallness. It was different from the home he had known at Fort Totten, and it was also the same. Reggie had been born into a country at war on two fronts; in the East with the Vietcong against anti-communist forces in North Vietnam, and within itself, across a color line.

When Reggie reached the front of the line, he accepted his milk and cookie and returned to his seat, keeping a wary eye on the roaming sausages that were Elizabeth’s fingers. Moments later, Mrs. Byrd dismissed the class to recess. Reggie made his way to the playground and sat on a bench, content to mind his business and count the minutes to lunch. The sun suddenly disappeared as something cast a shadow over Reggie’s seat. He looked up at the white cloud that had settled over him.

“Hey nigger.”

Reggie found himself staring at the hard faces of Dick Reed and Dennis Sykes.

Dick and Dennis - “Double D,” as they were called - were rednecks who took pleasure in proving their quality by beating up on the weak. Dick was the ringleader, a first grader who had been held back twice; Dennis was his crony. The boys were homegrown, hateful and hardheaded, without an ounce of knowledge or sense about things in the world except what they heard at home. And what they hear at home was mostly about niggers.

“You’s that new nigger ain’t you,” Dick said. “You’s a funny lookin’ nigger as I ain’t never seed one as yeller as you, but my daddy said its happened because big black niggers gone and done the unspeak’ble with white ladies that didn’t know no better.”

Dennis, taking his cue from Dick, nodded.

“I don’t want no trouble,” Reggie said.

“He don’t want no trouble!” Dick exclaimed, revealing an eroded grin. Dennis laughed. “Aw, but you is trouble, lil’ nigger,” Dick said, instantly growing serious. “You’s at a white school where’s no niggers allowed. So you’s gotta do what I says or Dennis and I is gonna beat yo’ yeller hide into the ground.”

Reggie didn’t say anything. Dick jabbed him in the shoulder with his index finger. “You listenin’ to me, nigger? If you don’t do what I says we gonna beat you up.”

“Yeah,” Dennis chimed.

“You can’t beat me up,” Reggie answered, “because if you do I can’t bring you a present on Monday.”

Dick paused. “What kinda present?” he asked.

“A Tonka Toy,” Reggie lied. “A Mighty Yellow Dump Truck, as a matter of fact.”

“This nigger’s lying, Dennis,” said Dick suspiciously, wanting to hear more about the dump truck.

“He ain’t got no such thing.”

“Yeah I do,” Reggie said with exaggerated confidence. “It’s a brand new one I got for my birthday. Remote control for easy steering and everything.”

Dick thought for a moment. “Well then, you just mighta saved yo’ hide,” he replied. “You got till Monday to bring me that toy or else you’s dead.” Dick didn’t mind waiting a few more days before pounding his newest victim. As he saw things, it was the opportunity to get something for nothing and still beat somebody up. Either way, circumstances were on his side. He gave Reggie one last hard jab in the shoulder before walking away. “Monday!” he yelled.

* * *

Reggie was at an impasse. He had told Dick and Dennis that he would bring them something he knew he didn’t have. His family didn’t have money for things like Tonka Toys. When Monday came and Dick and Dennis saw that he didn’t have it, they would surely beat him senseless.

Reggie had only ever been in one fight in his entire life. It had happened in New York, with one of the other military kids on the army base. An older kid had walked up to Reggie and punched him. Reggie had tried to run home, but his father, who had been standing at the window observing what had happened, stopped him. “Boy,” he bellowed, “How dare you disgrace yourself like that. You musta forgot what your last name is. You don’t let yourself get slapped around and just take it. You fight or your fall, and if you fall, you sho’ as hell better be fightin’ on your way down. Now get back out there and defend yourself.”

More fearful of his father than anyone else, Reggie went back outside, found the kid and punched him back. He and the boy had it out, fighting until they were tired. To this day Reggie wasn’t sure who won. He fought hard and had been lucky. But he couldn’t count on beginner’s luck this time...

* * *

Monday morning came all too quickly. Reggie found the cloudlessness of the sky and the cheerfulness of the sunshine offensive. He went to the bathroom and found a thermometer. He ran it under the hot faucet for five minutes, then took some water and sprinkled it on his face. He went to his mother and told her he wasn’t feeling well and should stay home from school. He handed her the thermometer as proof.

“Boy,” she said, feeling his forehead, “if your temperature really was a hundred and forty three degrees you would not only be dead, you’d be well done and ready to serve for Christmas Dinner. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with you. You goin’ to school.”

* * *

Sure enough, just as Reggie had predicted, Dick and Dennis found him as soon as he got off the bus.

“Where’s my toy, nigger,” Dick said.

“I don’t have it,” Reggie said, squinting.

“What do you mean you don’t have it?” Dick barked.

“I don’t have a Mighty Yellow Dump Truck.”

Dick looked violated. “You’s gonna regret that,” he hissed. “At play period, you’s dead, nigger.”

“Dead.” Dennis echoed.

* * *

Reggie spent all morning making his soul right with God. For the first time, he didn’t care about milk or cookies or Elizabeth Watkins’s sausage fingers. Those things no longer mattered, as he was about to die. Reggie wondered if this was how Jesus felt before he was crucified...naked.

At recess, Dick spotted him from across the yard, and with Dennis trailing, he made a beeline for where Reggie was standing. Reggie prayed the only prayer he remembered from Sunday school. Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. He wished he had paid more attention, but it didn’t matter now. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Reggie asked the Lord to forgive him for stealing his mother’s cigarettes and for blowing up that garden snake with gasoline. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. As Dick approached, Reggie closed his eyes and prepared for the impact. Amen.

As soon as Dick was within arm’s reach, Reggie reared back and let it fly. BAM! He landed a perfect right hook, socking Dick square in the nose.

Dick didn’t know what hit him. The impact caused him to reel backwards into Dennis, his nose gushing blood like a faucet. He fell to the ground, stunned. He looked down. Seeing his hands slippery and red, he screamed. Dennis ran for cover.

Dick began to cry hysterically. Reggie stared at him quietly, flexing his fingers.

Mrs. Byrd ran to the site of the commotion. She tried to make out what Dick was saying amidst his blubbering. He told her that Reggie had punched him for no reason.

“Did you punch Dick?” Mrs. Byrd asked Reggie.

“Yep,” Reggie answered, "With all my might."

“Say you’re sorry, Reggie,” Mrs. Byrd ordered. “What you did was wrong.”

“But I’m not sorry,” Reggie replied, “And I ain’t sayin’ it. Let him come near me again. I’m am'dextrous.”

Mrs. Byrd frowned at Reggie. She took a piece of white chalk, walked over to the blacktop, and drew a big circle. She told Reggie to stand in the middle of it for the rest of playtime. She told him that she would be contacting his mother and father immediately.

Reggie went and stood in the circle. He didn’t mind. After all, Mrs. Byrd wasn’t the only person who could draw the line."

Simple Pleasures

2008-11-09T20:15:00.000-05:00

Unusual words
The smell of new books
Splashes of red
Getting massages without having to ask for them
Milk with ice cubes in it
Chocolate chip cookies
Deep dish pizza
Good conversations
Cups of tea (I kinda have this thing for chai)
Shuffling my feet when I walk
The sound of snow crunching under boots
Bumping bees off of flowers
Peanut m&ms
Rainy days
Catherine's cheeks
Warm showers
Waking up to the sound of mom frying bake in the kitchen, knowing that a pot of tea is brewing
Dad's hugs
Sophia's kisses
Hot water bottles

My Dinosaur Report by Catherine Bass (9 yrs old)

2008-10-16T09:07:00.000-04:00

"Hey Amanda I am writing a report but I am going to either write half of the report or all. It is a dinosaur report,well here it is. My topic is about the Utahraptor and how it operates in it's habitats. Oh and Amanda it is a carnavor. anyway Utahraptor terrorizes the plant eaters of Western North America during, the early cretaceous, long before Tyrannosaurus-rex even existed. Utahraptor was [20 feet tall] [6m] long. Uthahraptor was less than half the size of a T-rex. It's fingers and toe's grew sharp claws. Each hind foot also boasted an extra large claw with a tip that never touched the ground and stayed razor sharp. these meat hooks were over [12 inches] [30cm] long. Utahraptor is the largest Dromeosaur. It had four toed feet, it could walk on all fours and on the second toe was a huge claw shiny and black.In a fully grown adult this claw could grow up to 1ft 3in [38cm] long. It's fingers were pointed with smaller claws. an agile predetor Utahraptor probably used a combination on speed and brute forse to overcome it's victom. It inflicted deep cuts by lashing out with it's feet using it's sharp claws to rip into the soft and unprotected part of the victoms body like the belly, while holding on to it with it's fast grasping hands and sharp, serrated, flesh cutting, jagged teeth.Dromeosaurs, Utahraptor, Pyraptor, Velociraptor, Bamiraptor, Micraptor, and Deinonychus are intelligent animals, able to comunacate and work with one another,when hunting they work in packs, following their plant eater victoms perhaps they could seperate an animal from the herd even if it is young, or old and weak. romoved from the others the pack of killing machines closed in for the kill.But when the hunters kill their prey they fight over the body ontill on gets injered or killed, and that is how the Dromeosaurs hunt and kill their PREY."

Mental Meanderings Part II

2008-09-12T21:28:00.000-04:00

I must confess that when I initially applied to volunteer with the Obama campaign here in Georgia, I could never have anticipated that it would lead me down the road upon which I am now traveling. Originally I came to Georgia because I saw the enormity of the need here: there are close to one million unregistered voters in this state alone, over six hundred thousand of whom are black.

Since working here in Macon, I have come to learn how the voter registration laws here have been crafted in a manner that deliberately makes it hard for both working people and for poor people to vote. The Bibb County Borard of Elections is the only place in Bibb County where folks here can go to procure a free voter ID. It's tucked away off of a remote road located twenty minutes north of downwotn and is only open from 8:30am-5:30pm Monday through Friday. No nights. No weekends. As one can probably imagine, people who work from 9-5, are in some cases taking public transportation, have children and so many other obligations, have a difficult time making it there to register. As such, many of them don't. Not to mention, once they get to the Board of Elections they are required to show proof of birth, residence, utility bills, and one hundred other documents that have successfully prevented many people from going through the trouble. And yet, when one registers for either a hunting or for a fishing license here in the state of Georgia, they are automatically registered to vote. You can probably see, all-too clearly, what we're up against.

There are however, many of us here who are so inspired by this amazing opportunity for change that we have determined not to allow de jure racism prevent us from registering as many people as possible. Senator Obama is right when he says to America that what is happening now across the nation is not about him; every day I begin to realize that more and more. It isn't about Senator Obama, rather it's about Rosa Watkins, a woman who has raised a daughter and who is now raising a granddaughter, yet who comes into the office at 8:30pm after having helped her grandchild with her homework in order to make phone calls; it's about Ms. Juanita who ruins here freshly painted lime-green fingernails by spending four hours ripping off labels on old manila folders so that we can make up voter registration walk packets; it's about Mr. Ford who, when I come home from work at 1am, I see sitting on the edge of his bed in his boxers and a wife-beater, writing the return addresses on the registration forms from the day before so that we can mail them out the next morning; it's about Drew Benbow, Ashley Diaz, Brooke Obie, and Khary Talley, Mercer University Law Students who, after exams and hours of studying, come out to the clubs with me until the wee hours of the morning to register people to vote as they stand in line to get inside; it's about Ms. Arthena Caston, a working mom who, after having worked a ten hour shift at Geico, comes by the office to help us enter data; it's about Ms. Beverly Ford, the woman with whom I live, who I hear bustling around the house until 2am printing off lists of housing projects that we still need to canvass and who is scared to allow herself to believe that change can happen in a state like Georgia; it's about Gwen Lipford who, though working a hard day at the prison, still comes to an organizational meeting in the basement of a church to turn in eleven registration forms that she was able to get during the past week; and it's about Ms. Montgomery, a ninety-four year old woman who walks a mile and a half from the bus depot to the campaign headquarters downtown twice a week in the sweltering Georgia sun to make ID calls. These are the individuals who are the feet of the movement; these are the people who are the heart and soul of what has become much more than simply a campaign. It's a revolution. So many of us are tired of the same kind of politics; so many of us across the nation are tired of the same people being overlooked, and marginalized, and left without a voice.

Many people look back upon the Civil Rights Movement with nostalgia. They talk about what an awesome time it was to be alive; and yet, not everyone marched with Medgar Evers, who for a time was the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi; not everyone participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycotts or in the Freedom Rides or in the Greensboro sit-ins. There are people who tell me every day that what we're trying to do here in Georgia is impossible. And yet, I have seen people inspired and lives transformed before my eyes, including my own.

Even as I type these words I am sitting in my car with my computer on my lap, in the parking lot of a church where in minutes, I am about to talk to the congregation about the importance of being part of the change that this state, that this country, and that we all so desperately need. This movement has taught so many of us to hope as we have never dared to hope before, that this country can be better. Though Georgia is currently the toughest battle-ground state for Senator Obama to win come November, I know that we can do it. This is the change that we are all working so hard for; this is the change that I feel so blessed to be a part of.

-Amanda

A Letter to Dorian

2008-09-05T08:49:00.000-04:00

Dorian,

That article was fantastic. It's encouraging to hear that people outside of the U.S. are also inspired by this movement and are rallying around Senator Obama. Today was a crazy day, and when I say "crazy," I mean it in the best possible sense of the term... I had an organizational meeting tonight in Forsyth, GA which is a small city located about 35 minutes north of Macon. Forsyth is located in Monroe county which is one of the most conservative counties in the state. Its gone red for decades and some say that it's impossible for Obama to win the county come November. I'm organizing the entire region and as impossible as it seems for a historically republican county to go blue come November, I know that we can do it if we work hard enough.

Tonight was exciting especially coming off of yesterday which was a really tough day. Yesterday I planned for an organizational meeting and confirmed 12 people to attend, however only 2 people showed up. But then I figure: it's better to have two motivated individuals versus a room full of folks who'll end up doing nothing once the tingling feelings of excitement dissipate as they walk out of my life to face a society that is doing everything within its power to resist the change that is going to come.

This evening I drove 45 minutes north to rural Forsyth, GA where I was having an organizational meeting in the basement of a church. I spent the past week building for this meeting and wasn't sure whether or not people would actually come; I left a lot of messages but was only expecting about 8-12 confirmed individuals. Dorian, I kid you not: 10 minutes after I started talking people began pouring into the room. As I talked to folks about the fierce urgency of the moment in which we are all living, they just kept walking through the door. I spoke with honesty and conviction about why I'm here and I challenged them to remember what they have at stake in the outcome of this election. So many of us have so much at stake...it's almost too overwhelming to think about.

So often I hear people talking about the Civil Rights era with nostalgia; they talk about what a dynamic time it was to be alive. But then I remind them that not everyone was marching with Medgar Evers in Mississippi, or participating in the Montgomery bus boycotts, or organizing the Greensboro Sit Ins. I've come to realize that both then and now there are really three kinds of people; there are cynics who don't believe that change is possible; there are those who support change, yet who are content to sit on the sidelines (kinda like those people who say to me, "I'm voting for Obama but that's about it"); and then there are those individuals who are the feet of the movement. The last type of individual is so rare; and yet I have faith that they are still out there.

Tonight was awesome because there we were, 47 people in the basement of a church, planning voter registration events, phone banks, and deciding which housing projects we're gonna walk through and which grocery stores we're going to stand outside of with clipboards and registration forms. Most of the people there tonight were older people--middle aged or retired. I'll never forget the desperation in some of the womens' eyes who came up to me and said, "baby we got to do this." One man said to me that he never thought that he would see in his lifetime what happened in Forsyth tonight; he never thought that people in Forsyth, GA could come together to fight for something so much greater than any single one of us.

This moment has taught so many of us to hope as we have never dared to hope before. It's an awesome time to be alive! While a part of me misses you guys and Amherst, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world right now. Hahaha, it's funny to hear myself say that...Macon, GA of all places! Who would have thought?? But I take comfort in the fact that this is where God wants me and I am seeing people inspired, and communities transformed before my eyes. I feel so blessed to be part of this movement. So, so blessed :)

Amanda

P.S. I've attached some pics :)

Mrs. Montgomery

2008-08-12T15:04:00.000-04:00

I had seen her at the downtown office a couple of times before I had the chance to speak to her. Her name was Mrs. Montgomery and she lived in Macon for over sixty years. Her petite, emaciated, eighty-six-year-old frame and slow ramble did not prevent her from making the more than two-mile commute to our downtown office to help register voters a couple times a week.

Mrs. Montgomery would take the bus from her home in East Macon--a poor, all-black area that rests beside a landfill--to Terminal Station, where the words "Colored Waiting Room" painfully line the aged face of the building. What for me was a twenty-five minute walk from the station to the office, for Mrs. Montgomery became an arduous ninety-minute journey. Three times a week however, she would make this commute, oftentimes arriving at the office sweat-soaked from having been kissed by the oppressive Georgia sun.

On this particular afternoon, my heart nearly broke when I opened the office door and saw Mrs. Montgomery standing before me, perspiring and yet unflinching, wearing spectacles and a denim hat. She clutched her purse to her chest as she entered the air-conditioned building and took a seat beside me. "Can I get you something to drink?" I offered. "I'll take a Coca-Cola," she replied. I went to the kitchen and reached as far back into the mini-fridge as I could. The can was so cold that it stuck to my palm. "Mrs. Montgomery," I began, "I know that you'd like to go out and register voters, but would you mind if I kept you here today to make phone calls? It's over ninety-five degrees outside." I watched with satisfaction as she sipped her coke. "Naw, I don' mind baby," she replied. "You jus' tell me what I gots to do and I'll do it." I placed a stack of phone numbers on the desk in front of her. "Now all you have to do is ask these individuals two questions," I explained, "'do you support Senator Obama?' and 'would you like to volunteer?' On the sheet next to the person's name 'NH' means 'not home,' 'BZ' means 'busy,' 'RF' means 'refused,' and 'CB' means 'call back.'" "I done this befo' baby so you ain't got to worry 'bout nuthin" she said, looking up at me from underneath her hat.

A little while later I peeked into Mrs. Montgomery's room and noticed her slowly penciling a note to herself into the margins beside someone's name. "How's everything going ma'am?" I asked as I entered the room. "Fine hunny," she replied. "I'm jus' keepin my own record sheet das all. Heah on dis page you don' gave me, dis 'not home' box don't make no sense tuh me." "What do you mean?" I asked, somewhat puzzled. "Wayull I put down 'AM' for 'answering machine' instead. Jus' because people don't pick up they phones don't mean that they ain't home." Hearing her response warmed my heart, making me laugh inside. Mrs. Montgomery is a woman I won't forget. She put all of the individuals who would say to me, "I'm votin' for Obama but that's about it," to shame.

Encountering Mrs. Montgomery became a source of considerable consternation. Her dedication reminded me of the apathy of my own generation. She caused me to think seriously about what has happened to make so many of us calloused towards the pain and the suffering of others. I often worry about what will happen as the generation of Mamie Till Mobleys, Coretta Scott Kings, Rosa Parks, and Mrs. Montgomerys is no longer around. Frederick Douglass said of racism and injustice, "It has been called a great many names and it will call itself by yet another name; and you and I and all of us will wait and see what new form this monster will assume and in what new skin this old snake will come forth." I sometimes wonder...who will continue to fight in a struggle that has certainly become more nuanced, but that remains a struggle nonetheless?

Be the Change

2008-07-07T17:20:00.000-04:00

His name was Donald Walker. I remember Donald’s hands because they were large and calloused from what I assumed to be many years of hard work. “Sir, can I register you to vote?” I walked up to where he was sitting at the Terminal Station bus depot where “Colored Waiting Room” is still engraved into the left face of the building. He was waiting for the bus that would carry him across town and out of my life forever. “I’m over fifty years old and I’ve never voted,” he caustically replied. “That’s a shame,” I said. “You don’t think that our society needs to change?” I inquired. He looked up at me and from under his baseball cap I could see the lines that a lifetime of disappointment, frustration, and hardship had etched into his wrinkled countenance. “My vote don’t matta. They gwine do what they gwine do nohow.” He paused and then asked, “You ain’t from around heah is you?” “No sir,” I replied. “I’m from West Chicago.” “What you doin down heah in Macon den?” he inquired. “Well sir, I’m here volunteering with the Obama campaign to register people to vote. In my short nineteen years of being alive I’ve realized that a lot of people are hungry for change but not as many are willing to work for the change that they want to see.” His silence told me that he was listening. I continued, “When I found out that there are over half a million unregistered blacks here in the state of Georgia, I knew that I had to do something to help fix that.” “So they paid fo you to get heah den,” he asked. “No sir, I’m a volunteer. They didn’t pay for me to get here and they’re not paying me to be here talking to you and the other folks out here.” He stared at me wide eyed and unflinching. “I’m here because I want to have faith in our political system,” I continued. “I believe that we have a great thing in Senator Obama. And I have faith that he’s going to fight for people like you and me and the people sitting at this bus stop. It angers me that nine out of ten of the black men that I speak to down here have spent time in prison; I’m mad that in America, black kids always attend the worst schools; I’m mad when I see how so many black people are mentally broken by circumstances that provide them with no way out and that prevent them from realizing the importance of the ballot; I want a president who will be a voice for those who are all-too often marginalized, underrepresented, and forgotten because they are poor or because they are black. That’s why I’m here.” “But you gots to be gettin’ somethin’ out of it,” he said. “Oh, I am getting something out of it sir,” I said to him smiling. “Every day that I’m here I get something out of it. And all I have to do is look at this “Colored Waiting Room” sign still stands right above us to remember that I come from a legacy of people who went to the polls knowing that they’d probably be lynched or that their families would become the victims of white violence. But they went anyway.” His cataract eyes became glazed over. At first I mistook his tears for the sweat brought about by the sweltering Georgia sun. He wiped his eyes profusely then said, “Your mouth is white.” “Sir?” I replied. “Your mouth is white” he repeated. “You been doin so much talkin’ today...you done had somethin’ to drink?” His question surprised me. “No sir” I said. “How long you been out heah?” he asked. “About four hours” I replied. “You been out heah fo’ hours and ain’t had nothin’ to drink” he said almost rhetorically. “Lemme buy you somethin’ to drink” he offered. “You don’t have to do that sir” I replied. “I’d just like you to register to vote.” The tears kept coming. “Naw, I gotta buy you somethin to drink” he insisted. He stood up and began to walk towards the station’s lobby. “Whachu want to drink?” he asked. “May I have a coke?” I asked. “Yes you may.” Donald turned his back and began to walk away. He came back a little while later and I realized only after the fizzy liquid touched my lips how thirsty I was. Coke never tasted so good to me before. “A change is gonna come Mr. Walker,” I said before walking away. “But it’s going to take all of us to make it happen.”

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” Since being here in Macon, Georgia I have been stretched in so many different ways and have done what I would have never before thought myself capable of doing. With each day that I live to see and with every conversation that I have with people on the street, at the bus terminal, the barber shop, or the fish house, I am reminded of why I am in school. This experience has changed my life and has shown me a side of America that I have heretofore only read about. It feels incredible to be part of a movement that is so much greater than myself; I am living history. While there are some days when I want only to crawl under a rock and pretend that somehow the many problems that continue to afflict so many of America’s blacks and poor citizens, as a result of slavery’s bastard children, Racism and Jim Crow, will simply disappear with time, this experience motivates me to work even harder towards the social, political, and psychological uplift of our race.

Memoirs Part I

2008-07-04T15:44:00.002-04:00

Working on the Obama campaign here in Macon, GA has taken me on an emotional roller coaster to say the least. We are currently placing all of our efforts into voter registration and volunteer recruitment due to the alarmingly high percentage of individuals, specifically African Americans, who are not registered to vote. There are over half a million unregistered blacks in Georgia alone and we're working hard to get as many of them registered as possible. There is something very haunting about being here in the south; before coming here I was not aware of the extent to which voter registration laws here in Georgia, specifically where I am working in Bibb County, make it difficult for blacks and for poor people to vote.

In 2002, a republican legislature mandated that individuals submit copies of their IDs with their voter registration forms. The process whereby one procures an ID is cumbersome and the Georgia Election Code enumerates a number of prerequisites that remain intentionally convoluted and ambiguous. The legislature justified this law's enactment by alleging that they would fund a city bus that would drive around to local communities where people could procure IDs with little to no hassle. As one can probably imagine, since 2002 no one has seen this bus. And yet, here in GA when one applies for a hunting license they are automatically registered to vote. In fact, one must opt out of voting when they apply for a hunting, fishing, or trapping license; it remains obvious to me which demographic this caters to.

Prior to arriving here in Georgia I failed to understand why election year after election year this state remains red; now I get it. Since 2000, the laws and the procedures surrounding voter registration have successfully suppressed both the black and the poor vote. This entire process resembles all-too closely the poll taxes and the literacy tests that historically denied blacks a place in the democratic process and that were meant to discourage many of us from realizing the importance of the ballot.

But there are many of us here, as there were back then, who are resolved not to let de jure racism prevent us from registering as many voters as we can. Many people I have encountered here have been so supportive and have donated portable copying machines which we now carry with us everywhere we do voter registration. We intend to look into Polaroid cameras, portable printers, and really anything that will allow us to reach as many people as we need to reach in order to make a difference here.

1000 Grains of Rice

2008-06-07T22:03:00.001-04:00

It was early afternoon when Catherine sauntered into the kitchen where I sat at the table with my book and a cup of tea. She was wearing one of dad's over-sized t-shirts and her hair was pulled back into a curly pony tail. Her bright green earrings hung just above her rosy cheeks and contrasted nicely against her chocolate complexion. "Hey Pooks," I said as I placed my arm around her waist and drew her to me, placing a kiss upon her still-warm cheek. "Manda, do you know what 'snickersnee' means?" she asked as she turned to face me. "I have no clue," I replied. "It means, 'a sword resembling a knife'" she said as she paused to gauge my reaction. "That's cool Catherine!" I said as a grin broke out across her face. She ran out of the kitchen and I returned to my book. A little while later Sophia pranced into the kitchen. She wore shorts and a t-shirt and her hair was pulled back into a neatly assembled high-pony tail. She used my neck for leverage as she swung herself around to face me, but not before giving me a big kiss on the lips. "Hi Manda," she said amiably. "Hey Moothie," I said. "What are you up to?" "Well" she began, "do you know how to spell fut-ark?" she asked as she sounded out the words. "Um, I've never heard of that word before" I said. "Have you tried looking in the dictionary?" Sophia stared at me before saying, "I can't look it up if I don't know how to spell it." "Duh," I said only then realizing the idiocy of my statement. "Ask mom," was my default response.
This continued for some time--Catherine and Sophia would intermittently come into the kitchen to ask me how to spell words such as, "puckish" meaning: mischievous; "lyophilize" meaning: to freeze or to dry; "meshuga" meaning: crazy etc. etc. etc. They kept this up for well over an hour. "What are Sophia and Catherine doing?" I asked my mom as I entered the dining room and plopped down in a chair next to where mom was folding clothes. "They're taking an online spelling bee" she said. "Why?" I asked. "Well there's a website sponsored by a world hunger organization that pledges to donate 20 grains of rice to a food bank for starving individuals for every word that participants in the spelling bee spell correctly." "How long have they been on the computer spelling words?" I asked. My mom looked at me and grinned, "Well over an hour and a half" she said. "When they found out that they could feed people by spelling words correctly, they decided to spell words until they could donate 1000 grains of rice a day." "Why 1000 grains of rice?" I asked. "Well," my mom began, "they figured that they could feed about 2 kids per day. I also told them that this would be a good amount because prior to that they were trying to feed the whole world." I laughed to myself as I thought about my little sisters sitting in front of the computer screen for hours in an effort to help feed hungry people around the world. A little while later Sophia and Catherine emerged from Andrew's room where they were using the computer at his desk. "How did we do?" mom asked. "We got 1020 grains of rice today" Sophia said as she and Catherine took seats around the dining room table. "How many people does that feed again mom?" Catherine inquired as she placed her chin in her tiny palm. "Um, about two or three kids" mom replied. "Moothie," Catherine said looking at Sophia. "Let's do it again tomorrow!"

From Brokenness to Completion

2008-05-29T22:49:00.001-04:00

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

2008-05-21T20:11:00.001-04:00

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

2008-05-21T15:56:00.000-04:00

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

2008-05-20T22:29:00.000-04:00

"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

2008-05-20T14:41:00.000-04:00

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

2008-05-20T01:24:00.000-04:00

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

2008-05-19T23:54:00.000-04:00

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?

2008-05-19T15:45:00.000-04:00

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

2008-05-19T01:35:00.000-04:00

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!"

2008-05-19T01:15:00.000-04:00

“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

2008-05-18T22:47:00.000-04:00

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

2008-05-18T22:02:00.001-04:00

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.