And the tears flowed

What an evening! The tears flowed freely. I did not believe I would live to see this day! My heart and my spirit are full! As an African American woman, I wanted to stand on the roof and shout! I wanted to set off firecrackers! I wanted to shout! I wanted to give thanks, thanks to all those who fought, marched and even died so that this day would one day come. I am so proud, not only of our new president, but of my country. This is not just a victory for African Americans, but is a victory for our country as a whole. One hundred and forty-three years after U.S. slavery ended. One hundred forty-nine years since the death of John Brown. One hundred thirteen years since the death of Frederick Douglass. Sixty-eight years since the death of Marcus Garvey. Forty-five years since the death of W.E.B. Du Bois. Forty-three years since the assassination of Malcolm X. Forty years since the assassination of Dr. King. Three years since the death of Rosa Parks. I am thankful to all of them and to all the many others who lived and often sacrificed their lives for this day. We owe them all our thanks.

The images from around the country were moving. Jessie Jackson, who marched with Dr. King and was with him when he was assassinated openly shed tears. The students at Spellman who shouted with joy, hugged each other and cried. Mothers in Chicago who brought their children to Grant Park wanting them to witness and be a part of this day.

I hugged my son and told him that this means that anything he dreams is possible. My grandson can now point to someone who looks like him and say, "I want to be president like him." My forebears are looking down relishing this day. My Dad is looking down beaming.

I am bursting, beaming and bawling.

Hope prevails.

Blessings,
T

Standing at the Precipice

My country, the country of seven generations of my black and red ancestors stands at the edge of a precipice tonight. Tomorrow, November 4^th will be an historical date in the history of this country – regardless of who wins. The United States will either have its first African-American president or its first female vice-president. I am unabashedly an Obama supporter. While my support of him is not solely based on his race, I am mighty proud of him and this country. I honestly doubted that I would live to see the day when a black man would occupy the oval office as commander-in-chief. I doubted whether my sons would live to see such a day. I hoped my nine-year old grandson would live to see such a day.

As this day approaches, I think of my father who passed away at the age of 82 in March of this year. I think of his early support of Obama and though I know he's beaming down from above as this day approaches, I sorely wish he were here to cast his vote and celebrate the victory. I also think of my ancestors, both African and Native, whose blood enriches the soil of Virginia. I think of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the three civil-rights workers who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964 for attempting to register blacks in Mississippi. I think of Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, the four little girls murdered in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. Denise, Cynthia, Carole and Addie were my contemporaries. These little girls were killed in Sunday School at the 16^th Street Baptist Church. This election is for them, too. I think of Irene Morgan, who in 1946 refused to give up her seat on a Greyhound bus to a white person and was jailed. I think of Rosa Parks, whose courageous act in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama helped to begin the crumbling of the Jim Crow South. I think of W.E. B. DuBois and his Talented Tenth. Specifically his words, one in ten black men becoming leaders of their race in the world, through methods such as continuing their education, writing books, or becoming directly involved in social change. He believed they needed a classical liberal education to reach their true destiny as what would in the 20th century be called public intellectuals. I think of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth and, oh so many others, countless and often nameless. And, of course, I think of Dr. King, who knew we would get to the mountaintop though he would not get there with us.

My heart, my mind and my spirit is full. Words fail me at the pride I feel. Pride not only in this black man, Barack Obama, but also pride in my country, that finally, blessedly, hopefully, we are finally beginning to make progress on the racial stain that has blighted this nation since its birth. I give thanks to all those who fought and died for this day to be possible. We stand at the precipice.

Still I Rise!

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

Being A Bridge

I’ve had enough
I’m sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me
Right?

I explain my mother to my father
my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother
my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks
the Black church folks to the ex-hippies
the ex-hippies to the Black separatists
the Black separatists to the artists
the artists to my friends’ parents…

Then
I’ve got to explain myself
To everybody

I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I’m sick of it.

I’m sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
the isolation of your self-imposed limitations

Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners

Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches

Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your humanness

I’m sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I’m sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses

I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful


by Donna Kate Rushin

Make it believable – Blame it on a black man

The hot news today is the story of Ashley Todd. This 20-year old woman claimed on Wednesday to have been mugged by a black man at an ATM in Pittsburgh. The story made national headlines because Ms. Todd, who is white, gave a detailed description (6'4" black man, black shirt, jeans and black sneakers) of the man who mugged her and, after the mugger spied a McCain bumper sticker on her car, returned to hold her down and carved a B for Barack Obama on her cheek. The story was accompanied by photos of Ms. Todd with black eyes and a clearly visible B on her cheek. When I first heard the story and read the discussions about it, my skeptic alarm bell went off big time. First, being a Pittsburgh native, I wondered about what she described as "a bad part of Pittsburgh." Bloomfield is a mostly white, working class neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Nobody would describe Bloomfield as a "bad part" of the city. Secondly, I wondered why the B on Ms. Todd's cheek was written backwards. It is unnatural, and very awkward to write backwards. I wondered why a mugger who had just committed a crime would return to his victim, hold her down and take the time to not only carve a letter on her face, but to take the additional time required to carve the letter backwards. Pittsburgh police considered the story suspicious from its onset. Today, Ms. Todd's story was revealed to be a complete fabrication. There was no mugging. There was no sexual assault. She evidently carved the B onto her own cheek (obviously using a mirror). Most importantly, THERE WAS NO 6'4" BLACK MAN.

This is just the latest evidence of what seems to be an inbred reality in the hearts of many in the United States. If a white person really wants their story to be believed, blame it on a black man. We all know that evidence of this abounds in our culture, not only in recent history, but in the entire history of black people in this country. Perhaps the most infamous incident in recent history was the story of Susan Smith. Ms. Smith fabricated a story of being car-jacked by a black man who subsequently kidnapped her two children. Most black people who heard the story doubted it from jump. We know the drill. Sadly, we were correct in our skepticism and it was later revealed that there was no black man. Ms. Smith sent her car with her two small sons into a lake in a warped belief that without her children she would be able to resurrect a relationship with the son of the rich man in town. Then there was the story of Charles Stuart. Stuart was a white man in Boston. He claimed he and his nearly nine months pregnant wife were carjacked by, what else, a black man. This black man shot Stuart and his wife. Stuart survived. The baby was delivered successfully but died a week later. Mrs. Stuart died the first night. The city of Boston was outraged. Boston police went on the rampage, determined to find and arrest the black man who had committed such an horrendous crime. The black community was harassed non-stop. Black men of every age were accosted by the police. Police eventually arrested and coerced a confession from a young black man. Of course, the end of the story was there was no black man. Charles Stuart didn't want a child. He shot his wife and himself. He murdered his wife and caused the death of his son. Being the coward he surely was, Stuart committed suicide by jumping into Boston Harbor.

Going back a little further, there is the infamous story of Rosewood, Florida upon which the movie Rosewood was based. In 1923, a black man supposedly raped a white woman. The strong, prosperous and self-sufficient town of Rosewood was destroyed by avenging white men. "Official" reports claim that only something like eight people died. "Unofficial" reports report scores of black people were murdered. Of course, there was no black man. The story was invented by a promiscuous wife who feared her husband's reprisal. I suspect if there had been such a thing as a witness sketch of the suspected black man back in 1923, he would be an identical twin of the black man in the Stuart, Smith and Todd sketches.

As I discussed this latest hoax of the criminal black man with my younger son today, he reminded me of the incident that happened several years ago in San Antonio. The story broke on the evening news that a white woman had been kidnapped from the parking lot of an Albertson's. She was then taken to a wooded area (coincidentally not far from my home at the time), doused with gasoline and set afire. Someone noticed the fire and called police. With her dying breath, the woman described the black man who had committed this horrendous crime. She died a few hours later at the hospital. We all know the ending of the story, but I will relate it here anyway. The woman was about to be arrested for embezzlement from her employer. There was a videotape of her purchasing the gas can from WalMart. There was video of her filling the gas can at a Diamond Shramrock gas station. There was no abduction. THERE WAS NO BLACK MAN. The woman set herself on fire. Her dying words were a lie! I remembered at the time thinking that even as this woman lay dying, her last words were a lie about a black man.

As a black woman living in the United States, I ceased being surprised a long time ago by stories like Ms. Todd's, Mr. Stuart's or the woman in San Antonio. Despite all that black people have contributed to this country, in many corners of it black men are considered natural suspects, men who are not to be trusted, men whose greatest wish is to ravish a white woman, men who, when encountered on the street, should be feared. As a mother of two black sons and as a grandmother of a black nine-year old grandson, it saddens me to realize, to accept, that no matter what education they attain, no matter what success they may achieve, they will always remain the proverbial suspect by many. Mr. Stuart and the woman in San Antonio were middle-age people. Perhaps some might conclude that they had "old school," racist thinking. Ms. Smith and Ms. Todd, however, were women in their twenties. The message is clearly that this racist thinking and conniving is not limited to the older generation. There are two sides to this coin. First, there are those who continue to perpetrate the lie of the criminal black man. The other side of the coin is that, even in 2008, many people automatically believe the story about the black man who committed a crime to be the truth. What does this foretell for the future of my sons, my grandson and all the other black men in this country"? Government statistics show that most crime is intra-racial, that is the victim and the criminal are the same race. Nonetheless, stories about the black man who committed a crime must be disproved, rather than proved.

I wonder even if Barack Obama is elected president if this will change. The specter of the criminal black man will remain – and be believable.

Blessings,
T

Life’s Changes and Challenges

There are two things I rarely blog about: politics and with the exception of my father's passing, my personal life. I don't blog about politics because passionate as I am about it, my passion is just that, MY passion and my opinions, and you know what they say about opinions. I don't blog about my personal life because I am an intensely private person and being a true Cancer, keep my innermost thoughts and feelings close to my chest (the crab is NEVER without its shell). Today, though, I found myself thinking on a really deep level about the changes and challenges of life and the reasons and meanings behind them and decided to blog about some of what I've been thinking today. There are so many trite, but true, sayings about life: It is what it is. Nobody ever said life was fair. Nobody's getting out of here alive. Life is short, make the best of it. We've all heard them all. The one that kept popping up in my head today was that people come into our lives for a reason or a season. Sometimes, it's difficult to decide the reason or the length of the season.

During the now two years since my last chick has flown the coop, I've been attempting to discover – and become – who I am to be for this next phase of the journey called life. It's hard to do the latter without successfully determining the former. I am so fiercely proud of my two sons. They are both intelligent and good human beings. If I leave this earth tomorrow, I will know that I've done something right – raising them to be the men they are today. The role of mother is many-faceted and now that my sons are grown, I've moved into a different type of mother role. I'll be honest and say that it's left a big hole in me; being a mother was such a large part of who I am. I am living alone for the first time in 28 years and I'll be honest and say I hate it. Yes, my days are my own. I don't have to cook if I don't want to and if I wish, I can say up all night watching movies or t.v. When I lock the door at night, I know I won't be awakened by my child coming in. But, this freedom isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm attempting to forge a new life – and a new career – for myself but it's not always been easy. I even found myself suggesting to my now 22-year old son that he's welcome to move in with me next month when his brother gets married and he gets his own apartment. He thanked me but told me he's always wanted to have his own place and is looking forward to it. C'est la vie, I guess.

Sometimes, though, I wonder about the people who have passed through my life. I wonder if I got the lesson, if I learned what I was supposed to learn from them or vice versa. I don't believe in coincidences. I truly believe things happen for a reason and that people come into our lives for a reason. There's another truism that if we don't learn the lesson, we are doomed to repeat it. As I sat in a park this afternoon, I pondered that one for a long time. Are the patterns I've experienced in my life because I've not learned the lessons that were there for me to learn? Will there always be lessons, challenges? I suspect the answer is yes to both questions. When we face a challenge, we have two and only two possible responses to the challenge. We can accept and be open to the lesson, or, we can resist an opportunity to grow.

Today I am cancelling mess!
Getting rid of confusion that's been hanging around like cobwebs on my ceiling.
I am releasing my soul from tiredness and antiquated, meaningless crap!
Stepping out of traps that have long been rusted.
I'm doing like some companies do when they reorganize, forgiving debts, writing off losses, and establishing good credit for myself.
There are simply some things that need to be written off.
Some people, too!

Reverend June Gaitlin
from Spirit Speaks to Sisters

Love,
T

Our History Still Saddens Me

Those who know me well know that I like to discuss and write about race and ethnicity. They also know that I have been pursuing genealogy for more than 25 years now. Though I came of age at a time when, at least in my high school, there were no black history classes, I grew up with a strong knowledge and pride of my black ancestry. As I've pursued my personal genealogy over these 25 years, I also developed a knowledge of and love for history. As I've read and discovered many of the atrocities African-Americans underwent during our history in this country, I have still not become inured to what occurred. I am often amazed, but more often saddened, at the mindset of many whites in the early history of this country. One such person was Dr. Walter Plecker. Dr. Plecker was the first Registrar of Vital Statistics for the state of Virginia. Dr. Plecker was a racist, a white supremacist and a proponent of eugenics. For the uninformed, eugenics is the now discredited theory that applying the principles of genetics to improve humankind. That is the "nice" definition. Its most rigorous proponents felt that interracial relationships diluted the superior race and, therefore, should be prohibited. Sir Francis Galton, in 1904, stated "Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally." Wikipedia defines eugenics as a "social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention." See http://www.ourfounder.com/jleroy/eugenics.htm for a primer on eugenics. All of this is, of course, code language for selective breeding and a method to promote irrational fear of miscegenation.

About ten years ago, I stumbled across what I thought was an index of the marriage license of my paternal great-grandparents. I mailed the required fee to Virginia to obtain a copy of the actual license, knowing it would not only contain the dates of their marriage, but also the names of their respective parents. After an anxious two-week wait, I received the copy. As I eagerly perused the license, I realized that, rather than it being the marriage license of my forebears, it was the license of white couple with very similar names. Disappointed, I filed the license away. Several years later, I was able to obtain via inter-library loan, the actual microfilm of the marriage license. On the microfilm, I once again saw the marriage license of this same couple, but the race white was struck through and "Col." was handwritten on the license. After some research, I learned about the infamous Dr. Plecker. It seems that shortly after he was appointed Registrar, Dr. Plecker decided there were no true "Indians" left in Virginia, but rather "negroes masquerading as Indians." He then sent a directive to all of the vital records offices in Virginia warning of these negroes and directing the staff in those offices to comb vital records and "correct" the records. His memo even included a list of the negro families who were doing this. See http://www.melungeon.org/node/91 for an actual copy of Plecker's 1943 letter. In 1924, Plecker had this to say at a joint session of the Public Health Administration and Vital Statistics Section of the American Public Health Association in a speech that was published in 1925 in The American Journal of Public Health:
"When two races live together there is but one possible outcome, and that is *the amalgamation of the races. The result of this will be the elimination of the higher type, the one on which progress depends. In the mixture the lower race loses its native good qualities which may be utilized and developed in the presence of a dominant race."

"The mongrels are superior in mental power to the lower race. They are more cunning and more capable, but they lack the creative power of the higher race, and cannot sustain a lasting civilization that will rank with the best of the world."

Both my paternal and maternal great-grandmothers were Native Americans. After Plecker's racist initiative, many Native Virginians fled Virginia rather than be classified as "colored" or negro. Following Plecker's death in 1947, his successor continued Plecker's legacy. At about the same time Virginia's Racial Purity Act was passed, another act, "The Sterilization Act was passed. From 1927 to 1979, about 8,300 Virginians were sterilized involuntarily in Virginia.

From the grave, Plecker continues to harm the Native population of Virginia. In order to be a federally recognized tribe and receive certain federal benefits, a tribe must prove its continuous existence since 1900. Because of Plecker's actions and his declaration that there were no Indians left in Virginia, many Virginian tribes are fighting to this day to prove their continuous existence.

Further reading:

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2004/09/the_black_white.php
http://www.virginiavignettes.org/?p=45
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1157/is_1999_April-Sept/ai_70872606/pg_5

Am I One or Two

More than a year ago, I picked up The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It is a very enlightening book, not a book to be read once and put up on the shelf, but rather a book to be read, thought about and picked up again and again. It is more an ongoing course than a book. It took me a while to fully grasp the concepts illustrated in the book. One of the early parts of the book asks the question, Am I One or Two. The author, at a particularly depressive stage in his life, made this statement to himself, I can't live with myself any longer. With this statement, he realized that there are two of him: the one he couldn't live with any longer and the one who realized he couldn't live with the other any longer. This leads to the question, are we controlling our brains or is our brain controlling us. The two are NOT the same. After reading this, I realized that I have control of my brain, and therefore, my thought processes. I can control the outcome of my day, my life. It reminded me of those who say that people cannot hurt us; we can only allow people to hurt us. For a long time, I had trouble with that. I would argue that people very often do hurt us and we end up hurt not because we allow people to hurt us, but because we are hurt by the actions of others. Then, after much reflection, I understood. People and events can certainly aim to disappoint or hurt us, but it's up to us to allow the hurt or disappointment to occur. Our mind tells us: That hurts. That's disappointing. If we follow through on the "orders" from our mind, we experience that hurt, that disappointment. Think about it. Have there been times when you've resolved that a certain situation or person is not going to hurt or disappoint you – and they haven't? If so, you've taken control. We are not our mind.

We all hear "voices" in our head. Yet, we don't go rushing off to a psychiatrist nor send for the men in the white coats. These voices speculate, judge, compare, complains, like or dislike. These voices belong to our conditioned mind, often or usually based on past experiences or even cultural mindsets. Listen to that voice for a minute. Don't judge it or censor it, just listen to it. Then realize that there is the voice and you are listening to it. Two separate things, beings. Once you realize this, you can end involuntary and compulsive thinking. Tolle says that by doing this, you can direct the focus of your attention into the Now. This thinking is the essence of meditation. Instead of focusing on the past, you're focusing on the here and now.

I wrote in an earlier post about the concept of stillness, just letting our minds be still and enjoying the peace of the moment. Try it. You'll notice sounds and sights you've never noticed before. You won't notice the car horn blasting for your neighbor nor the airliner flying overhead, but instead will hear the chirping of the birds, the whispering of the trees, the brilliant azure sky. With this stillness comes a certain unshakable peace, a certain bliss.

 

Love,

T