Thursday, May 25, 2006
Abolish The "N" Word
A friend of mine I don't get to see as often as I'd like tipped me this week to a film clip presentation that can be seen at www.abolishthenword.com It's intense and may be upsetting to some folks for its graphic images and statements, but I highly recommend it. I had to chase the words a bit because, on my little computer screen, they kept falling above or below what I could see without moving to catch them, but after a couple of times, I had clearly gotten the message. Again, I'm warning: it's strong...
Thursday, May 11, 2006
"Suicide Is Painless...la LA la LA la LA la"
A few weeks ago I heard of a book about suicide bombers, such as the ones we've become so mesmerized by over the past couple of years in the Middle East. Apparently, Robert Pape (in "Dying to Win: the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism") suggests that suicide bombers pop up as a last ditch effort to get rid of forces that have occupied their land. It's an intriguing thought, when you consider that the U.S. military is supposedly "liberating" country after country over there rather than "occupying" them. Of course, if the military doesn't leave when they're done "liberating," then the people who have been "liberated" may, in fact, feel "occupied." Not much gratitude, I guess.
Anyway, as I thought about this idea since, it occurred to me that I've repeatedly come across statistics of late about young Black males killing themselves. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, for example, reported that between 1980 and 1996, the suicide rate for 15 to 19-year-0ld African-American males more than doubled. The Black Mental Health Alliance reported that the actual figure for that period represents a rise of 146%. And another source I saw, but can't relocate, claimed that if the age group was broadened to include Black males to twenty-four years of age, the rise in suicide rate becomes nearly 250%. The situation gets even more dire when you add the fact that some social scientists are now discussing the idea that many of the so-called homicides of one young Black male by another are probably masked suicides, where a desperate and struggling young man just puts himself in a position to be killed--so that he can die.
Obviously, this is a heart-breaking situation. But once I had both of these thoughts jockeying for position in my mind simultaneously, I began to imagine what the implications might be. What if young Black men are killing themselves, not because their land has been occupied, but because their minds have been taken hostage by racist forces that have set up camp and refused to leave and they don't see any way less radical to free themselves.
Reminded of the song "Suicide is Painless" (the "MASH" t.v. show theme song written by Mike Altman), I looked up the lyrics and found:
"The game of life is hard to play.
I'm gonna lose it anyway.
The losing card I'll someday lay,
so this is all I have to say:
suicide is painless,
it brings on many changes;
and I can take or leave it, if I please.
"The sword of time will pierce our skins.
It doesn't hurt when it begins,
but as it works its way on in,
the pain grows stronger...watch it grin..."
So what am I trying to say with all this morbid talk of death and desperation? Well, one thing is that I do believe in some kind of kharmic unfolding: that what goes around comes around for societies, as well as individuals. Everybody says they believe some version of this thought. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" says the Christian Bible. "Do not to others what you wouldn't want done to you" says the Jewish Torah. "Whatever you send into the lives of others comes back into your own" was my mother's version.
"Well, I'm not making anybody kill themselves," Mr. White Bread protests petulantly.
No, Mr. White Bread, but you're helping to maintain and benefitting from a system that makes young people want to. And believe me, it's the same thing.
A dead youth may not hold you responsible, but if you believe in God or a Source of any kind from which the above named principles may have emanated, then you better watch your back. Because every dead child is an indictment against us collectively and even individually, if we are not actively involved in changing the status quo.
We watch the suicide bombers in the Middle East as if our President and our military and our torturing interrogators and our tax dollars were not specifically perpetrating the horrors of occupation on innocent victims of our war machine. And we watch the suicide rate of young Black males rise as if it somehow had nothing to do with the fact that we won't provide them a decent education, and we won't hire them to do a decent job, and we incarcerate them at our earliest opportunity, and tell them as often and in as many ways as possible that it's all their fault. I just hope they don't start taking people with them when they go. But we may have it coming, if they do.
Anyway, as I thought about this idea since, it occurred to me that I've repeatedly come across statistics of late about young Black males killing themselves. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, for example, reported that between 1980 and 1996, the suicide rate for 15 to 19-year-0ld African-American males more than doubled. The Black Mental Health Alliance reported that the actual figure for that period represents a rise of 146%. And another source I saw, but can't relocate, claimed that if the age group was broadened to include Black males to twenty-four years of age, the rise in suicide rate becomes nearly 250%. The situation gets even more dire when you add the fact that some social scientists are now discussing the idea that many of the so-called homicides of one young Black male by another are probably masked suicides, where a desperate and struggling young man just puts himself in a position to be killed--so that he can die.
Obviously, this is a heart-breaking situation. But once I had both of these thoughts jockeying for position in my mind simultaneously, I began to imagine what the implications might be. What if young Black men are killing themselves, not because their land has been occupied, but because their minds have been taken hostage by racist forces that have set up camp and refused to leave and they don't see any way less radical to free themselves.
Reminded of the song "Suicide is Painless" (the "MASH" t.v. show theme song written by Mike Altman), I looked up the lyrics and found:
"The game of life is hard to play.
I'm gonna lose it anyway.
The losing card I'll someday lay,
so this is all I have to say:
suicide is painless,
it brings on many changes;
and I can take or leave it, if I please.
"The sword of time will pierce our skins.
It doesn't hurt when it begins,
but as it works its way on in,
the pain grows stronger...watch it grin..."
So what am I trying to say with all this morbid talk of death and desperation? Well, one thing is that I do believe in some kind of kharmic unfolding: that what goes around comes around for societies, as well as individuals. Everybody says they believe some version of this thought. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" says the Christian Bible. "Do not to others what you wouldn't want done to you" says the Jewish Torah. "Whatever you send into the lives of others comes back into your own" was my mother's version.
"Well, I'm not making anybody kill themselves," Mr. White Bread protests petulantly.
No, Mr. White Bread, but you're helping to maintain and benefitting from a system that makes young people want to. And believe me, it's the same thing.
A dead youth may not hold you responsible, but if you believe in God or a Source of any kind from which the above named principles may have emanated, then you better watch your back. Because every dead child is an indictment against us collectively and even individually, if we are not actively involved in changing the status quo.
We watch the suicide bombers in the Middle East as if our President and our military and our torturing interrogators and our tax dollars were not specifically perpetrating the horrors of occupation on innocent victims of our war machine. And we watch the suicide rate of young Black males rise as if it somehow had nothing to do with the fact that we won't provide them a decent education, and we won't hire them to do a decent job, and we incarcerate them at our earliest opportunity, and tell them as often and in as many ways as possible that it's all their fault. I just hope they don't start taking people with them when they go. But we may have it coming, if they do.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Who's Gonna Liberate America?
They had come to turn in their final exam essay papers and they stayed to talk with each other and with me, sitting sideways or on top of the desks as if to make sure that a viewer would immediately recognize that they were only temporarily perched and not required to be there. It doesn't always happen, but it often does and I have learned to expect the possibility. It's fun to see who'll stay this time and where the conversation will go. I'm just a willing participant, along for the ride in these cases. It seems to be their way of disconnecting from a context in which they have felt safe and to which they apparently feel beholden. I am, inevitably, humbled by this process and never leave before they do, no matter what. I feel as if I must make sure that they are ready to let go or know that they don't have to, whichever it is for them. Last night, the topic was the juvenile justice system.
It probably happened because I'm teaching a course on Adolescence and Delinquency in the fall, a course for which a number of them have already registered. Or maybe it was because several of them either do now or have worked with "at risk" kids in one way or another, while a couple of others had been in the system themselves. The process of this closing discussion is always, somehow, magical to me. And must be for them. Why else would markedly "busy" young people choose to "hang out" with a teacher for nearly two hours when they don't have to? Why else would they actually apologize to the group when they get up to leave the space?
Anyway, one of them, an African-American man in his twenties who'll graduate this summer, came in during the conversation and stayed, putting in his two cents from time to time, but clearly waiting, marking time until the others left. It didn't surprise me when he walked me across the campus as I headed for my car and it took almost no encouragment for him to begin talking about what was really on his mind.
He's been in my classes before. And he'll finish his degree without question in just a couple of months. But it's not really school that captures his best attention these days. He's a bright and highly capable young professional in his field and he longs to be given his head, to be allowed to run with the other bright young professionals. Besides taking senior-level college courses, K. transports youth in the foster care system for a paycheck, manages a sizable student-run business on campus, and is finishing a professional internship, as well. He had left the student-run business at one point, yearning to expand his wings and explore his mettle elsewhere, but they begged him to return and he did, not a little discouraged by the way things have been going anyway.
It seems that he applied for a position he really wanted in his field, a position he felt strongly he was ready to do and wanted to prove himself doing. But not only did he not get the position, but when he met the man who did, a man he actually had to teach a few things, he was seriously disappointed. How could they have chosen this man over him, he wondered? This less competent, less prepared, less motivated man--how could he have gotten the brass ring while K. was stuck with continuing his preparation?
Then, in New York, K. met the head man of the organization in which he was interested. The man recognized his name immediately, he said, volunteering that K.'s resume was on the head man's desk even as they spoke, but there was no subsequent contact after that. And K. was left in the dark again, discouraged.
When he went in to work his internship, he was not only loaded for bear in terms of the useful capabilities he had already developed, but he quickly committed to working twice the hours of the other interns, only to find himself being sent out for coffee or lunch and otherwise being told to "slow down--it'll come." And now the internship is over and they "can't afford to hire him." And he feels as if he's back at Square One. All dressed up and no where to go.
It's not that he doesn't understand that he has to pay his dues. He's paid so many dues, in fact, that academic advisors are now telling him not to put everything on his resume that he has actually already done because it's liable to keep him out of the "entry-level" positions to which he's probably going to be relegated for a while, maybe a long while. Still, he's a thoroughbred in the prime of his youth. He's feeling his oats and he's ready to run.
I said all the things he needed to hear. And he said he felt "better," might play some ball. But what we didn't talk about--either one of us--was his worst fear (and mine): the effect his skin might be having on his situation. Maybe it's not connected to all the dead-ends and the "slow downs" and the "leave-it-off-the-resumes," but what if it is? After all, I'm the one who told him that African-American men are four times more likely to be unemployed than European-American men--at every educational level. What's he supposed do with that knowledge as he walks to the plate for his time at bat?
Then he started telling me about how he used to play basketball as a middle school boy, wanting to be a pro ball player until he faced the fact that his height was going to preclude that. He didn't try to put the story in context for me, but I already know the context. He was, in essence, asking me what a young, gifted, and Black man is supposed to do about his access to the work place when he's just too short or too slow or otherwise unsuited for the only positions those with the power to define will allow someone who looks like him to fill. And I have no answer for him. And he just has to sit at the starting line, with all that power under the hood, burning the rubber off his tires against the pavement without being given the signal that he can put his motor in gear.
A couple of months ago, in a discussion about the way the United States military is mobilized, supposedly "bringing democracy" to countries all over the world, K. once verbalized a crucial rhetorical question: "Who's gonna liberate America?" And the fact is, K., I don't know.
It probably happened because I'm teaching a course on Adolescence and Delinquency in the fall, a course for which a number of them have already registered. Or maybe it was because several of them either do now or have worked with "at risk" kids in one way or another, while a couple of others had been in the system themselves. The process of this closing discussion is always, somehow, magical to me. And must be for them. Why else would markedly "busy" young people choose to "hang out" with a teacher for nearly two hours when they don't have to? Why else would they actually apologize to the group when they get up to leave the space?
Anyway, one of them, an African-American man in his twenties who'll graduate this summer, came in during the conversation and stayed, putting in his two cents from time to time, but clearly waiting, marking time until the others left. It didn't surprise me when he walked me across the campus as I headed for my car and it took almost no encouragment for him to begin talking about what was really on his mind.
He's been in my classes before. And he'll finish his degree without question in just a couple of months. But it's not really school that captures his best attention these days. He's a bright and highly capable young professional in his field and he longs to be given his head, to be allowed to run with the other bright young professionals. Besides taking senior-level college courses, K. transports youth in the foster care system for a paycheck, manages a sizable student-run business on campus, and is finishing a professional internship, as well. He had left the student-run business at one point, yearning to expand his wings and explore his mettle elsewhere, but they begged him to return and he did, not a little discouraged by the way things have been going anyway.
It seems that he applied for a position he really wanted in his field, a position he felt strongly he was ready to do and wanted to prove himself doing. But not only did he not get the position, but when he met the man who did, a man he actually had to teach a few things, he was seriously disappointed. How could they have chosen this man over him, he wondered? This less competent, less prepared, less motivated man--how could he have gotten the brass ring while K. was stuck with continuing his preparation?
Then, in New York, K. met the head man of the organization in which he was interested. The man recognized his name immediately, he said, volunteering that K.'s resume was on the head man's desk even as they spoke, but there was no subsequent contact after that. And K. was left in the dark again, discouraged.
When he went in to work his internship, he was not only loaded for bear in terms of the useful capabilities he had already developed, but he quickly committed to working twice the hours of the other interns, only to find himself being sent out for coffee or lunch and otherwise being told to "slow down--it'll come." And now the internship is over and they "can't afford to hire him." And he feels as if he's back at Square One. All dressed up and no where to go.
It's not that he doesn't understand that he has to pay his dues. He's paid so many dues, in fact, that academic advisors are now telling him not to put everything on his resume that he has actually already done because it's liable to keep him out of the "entry-level" positions to which he's probably going to be relegated for a while, maybe a long while. Still, he's a thoroughbred in the prime of his youth. He's feeling his oats and he's ready to run.
I said all the things he needed to hear. And he said he felt "better," might play some ball. But what we didn't talk about--either one of us--was his worst fear (and mine): the effect his skin might be having on his situation. Maybe it's not connected to all the dead-ends and the "slow downs" and the "leave-it-off-the-resumes," but what if it is? After all, I'm the one who told him that African-American men are four times more likely to be unemployed than European-American men--at every educational level. What's he supposed do with that knowledge as he walks to the plate for his time at bat?
Then he started telling me about how he used to play basketball as a middle school boy, wanting to be a pro ball player until he faced the fact that his height was going to preclude that. He didn't try to put the story in context for me, but I already know the context. He was, in essence, asking me what a young, gifted, and Black man is supposed to do about his access to the work place when he's just too short or too slow or otherwise unsuited for the only positions those with the power to define will allow someone who looks like him to fill. And I have no answer for him. And he just has to sit at the starting line, with all that power under the hood, burning the rubber off his tires against the pavement without being given the signal that he can put his motor in gear.
A couple of months ago, in a discussion about the way the United States military is mobilized, supposedly "bringing democracy" to countries all over the world, K. once verbalized a crucial rhetorical question: "Who's gonna liberate America?" And the fact is, K., I don't know.
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