Thank god. Finally, 12 episodes of pointless lists. Finally, the shit is over. Well, actually not quite seeing how I still have this whole entry to finish. I gave you a lot of bullshit about sports, music, political figures, and other drivel. I'm using this one, the season two finale, to be more personal. It should read as a prelude into season three. Season three will only be four episodes but will be entirely personal and introspective, centred on the four people in my life who've shaped me the most in one way or another.
Either way, let's get on with this miserable show. I did some thinking about four of the most pivotal moments in my life that have made me the cantankerous asshole I am today. Some of it may have made me cold and distant, some of it idealistic and intellectual. Whatever the case, they've definitely changed me enough to the point where I can pinpoint it. Here we go.
4. Reading the Communist Manifesto for the first time. I discovered the Marx and Engels book somewhere in the seventh grade. I was living in Princeton and maybe heard my grandmother mention it or perhaps even a teacher. I can definitely remember going to the public library and checking it out. My initial thought was how can something so tiny be so immense to the world of political and economic thought? If you've never seen it, it's more like a pamphlet than an epic tome. Regardless, I read the book in maybe three days. In so few pages, it packs a lot of ideology. Obviously I didn't understand all of it, and I've read it maybe ten to twelve times since and still don't totally understand all of it. It's one of the most complex works I've ever read. One thing it did do though was make me Marxist. It's hard not to really be Marxist though, I feel. Most of us aren't rich, and most of us think that the richest people made their wealth on the backs of us workers. How come by the end of life, we've worked 20-40 years and have so little to show for it? How come by the end of life, the rich have so much and can just pass it off to their shit kids who've done nothing? I think we're all a bit inherently communistic. I think also though, because of dictators and totalitarians, we've painted communism a political evil, even though it's an economic theory. The opposite of Communist isn't Liberal or Conservative or Libertarian or anything, it's Capitalist. But in the USA, we only want our sports to be Marxist, never our economic policy. I knew as a young teen, my outlook on the world would always be shown through a red prism. (Sure, I spent about seven, eight years in hardline conservative wilderness, but I broke free and quickly reverted.) Finding your political voice takes a long time for many people. Oftentimes, we never even find our own, we just regurgitate our parents who regurgitate their parents. Or if we're black, Jewish, or some kind of minority, we just say fuck it, I'm Democrat. We take the easy way out. Tell me what you think I should believe, and dammit I will. I can't do that, and apparently 11, 12 year old me knew that even then. To this day, I believe in Marxist ideology, and probably would be considered revolutionary Marxist. I'm fine with that. Communism, people. It's not a dirty word.
3. Finding Christianity and then rejecting Christianity. I have a Christian grandmother. My mom grew up in church. My dad grew up in church. I was baptised. Then it kinda stopped. I went to church anytime I visited my grandmother. I always hated it. Two hours of mind-numbing chatter, but I liked going with her because it made her happy. But outside of that, no Christmas, Palm Sundays, Good Fridays, Easters, none of that. I knew God, I understood that Jesus died on a cross, I knew there was a heaven, I knew the Bible existed, and that sums up much of what I knew until high school.
When I left Princeton and moved to DC, my dad wanted me to avoid the pitfalls of public education in the District and enrolled me in a school near his job at the time. It was a Seventh-day Adventist school. I had never even heard of such a thing. I thought there were Baptists, Methodists, and then snake charmers who spoke in tongues. Seventh-day Adventist?! What?! So I go to this school as the king of heathens, foul-mouthed, ignorant to salvation (be it by faith or even by works), and couldn't understand why they went to church on Saturday. I was at this school for my sophomore through senior years, and it literally took until my senior year to find Christianity. It was a perfect storm of bullshit, none that I really need to get into, but they got me. I did all that accepting of the Christ in my heart, I studied the Bible daily, I watched Christian television, I warred with myself numerous times over some of my friends and some of the music I would listen to, I must have been a ball. Jesus was my dog. I fucked with Jesus. I even converted to Catholicism. Why Catholic though and not Seventh-day Adventist? I loved the veneration of Mary and the mysticism and ritual of the faith. (Notice, nothing about Jesus there.) I even acquired Catholic guilt and excelled at it. Every confession and reconciliation I've gone to began with bursting into tears and ending with rose coloured glasses and feeling great and new. I'll give it to you, Christians, the mind-altering effects are pretty great. Then, I woke up.
Logically, Christianity makes no fucking sense. It's riddled with bad writing, incoherence, plagiarism, misogyny, hatred, and impossibilities. And one thing I always thought was curious is Christians can't believe that people during the time of Jesus couldn't believe he was the Christ. Really? So what if I came up to you and said, "Hey, I'm king of Jews. I'm the son of God. Follow me. Throw all your shit away, roll witcha boy and bask in eternal life and all kinds of splendid shit." Who'd ever believe that? Exactly. Plus, coming from the African perspective, our people have too much faith in a religion that was beaten into them to keep them subdued and teach them not to examine nor question. That alone is detrimental to everything a person should be, especially us minorities. And ladies, try telling your man you're pregnant but you didn't have sex and see how far that gets you.
Look, if you're into that stuff, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, whatever, fine. Whatever works for you. But seriously, keep it to yourself. I'm not gonna come to you talking about all the positive benefits of Obatala, so kindly, keep your messianic stuff to thyself. A thinking person, an intellectual, a truly intelligent person cannot be deep into organised religion, especially of the Western variety. It's just too watery for their oily brain.
Oh and you won't believe how great you'll feel when you strip yourself of another's impositions. The guilt disappears, the hypocrisy evapourates, and you'll feel like a new person. Probably like what baptism is supposed to feel like.
2. Marriage. I had quite a few relatives who thought once I had a wife, a kid, a family life, I'd mellow out, be less cold, less bitter, more endearing. PROVED YOU MOTHERFUCKERS WRONG AS HELL! Oh yeah! Okay, sure, most people wouldn't celebrate that, but I embrace my asshole nature. Part of my charm is my facade of bitterness. Have I mellowed out at all? Nah, not really, but when you have a wife and a kid, other people's shit just piss you off less. Or maybe I just tell my wife how pissed off the world makes me. Either way, I'm not mellow or mild-mannered. I'm the kind of parent who attacks things logically with the kid but also gives her space to foster her own independence. I'm the kind of husband who nags about putting things in the dishwasher correctly, but also would do just about anything for her. Sure, I'm still trying to get a little farther out of that only-child-so-naturally-I'm-inherently-selfish shell, so that that's one thing marriage is slowly teaching me. Making decisions that affect other people? Yep, I have to do a lot of that now. You can't do things at a whim any more. Just everything changes. I remember when we got married, we both said nothing's different. That's bullshit. Everything's different. No one can just give up, throw in the towel, say this shit is for the birds and bounce. You have to have discussions about schooling or discipline. Your life becomes incredibly routine and you're always trying to just throw in a touch of paprika or any spice that would perk the senses. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. I love it. But it's definitely life-altering. Oh, and your single friends? They all become inside jokes with their, "Why can't I just find a mate?" or "I love my bf/gf" and then once it's over, "I'm independent! I don't need anyone in my life!", and then two months later it's gone full circle back to "Why can't I just find a mate?" So I guess marriage changed me by making me at least somewhat normal. I live my life and create my worldview to be so polar, to be such an extremity, my married life is one of the few normal things I have. It's so normal that I even sound like a television sitcom husband with the, "Ugh, why did we get married?" or complaining to my male friends, "Ugh, the damn wife, I tell ya..." but really, that's a lot of what I love about it. I get to be just a guy for a change. No crusade to fight, no stance to take, just a guy, who's married, who publicly dislikes his wife but publicly loves the shit out of her. Ah, and the kid too, I guess. Those bastards. Hate em. (See, I just did it again!)
1. Going to FAMU. Without a doubt, bar none, FAMU changed me. I mean, it gave me the friends I have now, my ideology, it's why I'm still in Florida, it's got its tentacles on a lot of things.
Prior to college, I've always been an outsider. Sure, I had friends, and often they were some of the more popular or most popular people in school. How I managed that? No clue. I was skinny, lanky, and a geek. I knew too much about history, too much about geography, I loved to read, and was a hockey fiend. Although doing simple math, my racial makeup is overwhelmingly black, I was never quite black enough for my black friends a lot of the time, and yet I was way too black for my white friends. This is the case especially in New Jersey. I had the notion of being black through the self-destructive black prism; Southpole, Timberland boots, and First Down jackets made you black. Smoking Black-and-Mild made you black. Knowing where Nepal was and what their flag looked like? That shit definitely wasn't black. Being able to name every state capital and knowing the only unicameral state legislature in the USA was as far from being black as Engelbert Humperdink.
Add all of this to the unspoken notion of dark skin isn't a good thing. I spent many a summer as any child would before video games took over the earth. I played outside. It became normal to come in the house though and hear, "Damn boy, you're black!" Now, no, that's not saying hey, don't get dark out there, but it's also saying, hey don't get dark out there. It got to the point where eventually, I wore my blackness like Hester Prynne wore her A. See, that analogy there, that was totally not what I thought was black. But seriously, I eventually got to the point, and I'm still there, of where I need the sun to go down or I need sleeves or I'll plot my outings based on shade to avoid the melanin bursting capabilities of the sun.
As far as black history went, I only knew the names textbooks always tell you. I was so bad, I didn't want to be black. I would wonder why my race had to define me. Why do I have to be African-American too? I'm not from Africa, I was born in Pittsburgh. How the hell do you think I got into NASCAR and hockey to begin with? Racial and cultural hatred is the worst feeling you can impose upon yourself mentally. You will always feel greatly inferior. I had absolutely no sense of appreciation for what it means to be black. I even thought if you were French or Brasilian, you weren't black, you were just dark. A lot of our people still think that though, so. I even had the dream of being the black conservative who could ascend any ladder politically. So when you want to know how I spent seven years in the Republican Party, there it is. I wanted to be a token nigger. I was going to marry a white girl too. A black man of some position couldn't have a sista. Plus, I'm light, if I married white and had kids, my kids would be even lighter! Self-hatred dude. Shit's real.
FAMU, and by extension but much greater importance, my circle of friends, helped me decolonise. People like to quote Redemption Song, "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds." Robert was right, but he got it from Marcus, and Marcus was definitely right.
I had no intentions on going to an HBCU, but due to some intervening and other things, I wound up at FAMU, and had applied to other HBCUs including Fayetteville State, NCCU, and Winston-Salem. If there's anyone who believes that black colleges have no purpose today, I'm living proof otherwise.
Today, I'm proud to say I'm black, that I'm African, I'm a child of the diaspora, that I know where I come from and what my people have done and continue to do. This is not to say I'm uber-Afrocentric or reject all things non-African. It's not that at all, in fact, a lot of it makes me more accepting. Mix together being pan-African and revolutionary Marxist, you suddenly get a person who wants to tackle western ideology for the benefit of all oppressed peoples. Look at the Panthers. Their ten point programme also included Latinos regardless of race and nationality as well as Asians.
So thanks FAMU. And thanks to the good people I've met through being a Rattler. I learned a lot in the classroom, but I learned even more outside of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment