The blacker the berry….

African human skin mask opposite (Photo credit: LaggedOnUser)

 

There is an old saying, the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. That saying came to mind when I viewed a picture of one of my Facebook friends. The woman, her mother and her daughter are lovely and dark brown. The color of your favorite chocolate. So I thought of complimenting her about this but since I don’t know her all that well I was not certain how she would respond.

 

My mother is also a wonderful dark-complexioned woman Skin color can be a touchy subject in our community. I noticed that one of the supervisors at work has tanned a little and it looks good on her. For every person who has grown to accept his or her skin color there are others who wish that their color and the features that came with it were very different.

 

I saw a Marlon Riggs documentary about skin color in the African-American community and found it very enlightening. This despite the fact I was not a very young man when I saw it. I had read about the black and white dolls experiment that uncovered a preference for white dolls among the children subjected to racist inferior education. This experiment was referenced in the famous Brown  decision leading to school desegregation.

 

The black atheist Facebook groups I belong to regularly feature discussions about whether black women who use weaves in their hair have low self-esteem. This is not to mention those who add red, yellow or other colors to their hair. By going against the way our parents made us, we are somehow becoming self-haters. Even First Lady Michele Obama is not immune from these accusations. When she spoke recently at an important public meeting, a lot of people took to twitter to comment about her bangs. In 2013, a woman is being judged not by the content of her character, but by the content of her hair.

 

How can we truly demonstrate to others how much we value or ancestry? Is it through buying exclusively from African-American stores? Is it through dating people of our skin color? Is it through wearing African clothing and referring to ourselves as Africans? Notice that I have not referred to athletes and entertainers whose wealth exempts them from many of the rules that govern the rest of black America. I am talking about the accountant at your agency. The teacher at your school. And the woman who bags your groceries. These women and men you may encounter for brief moments while silently judging them. Do you feel that they are black enough for you and on what basis do you decide this? How will we know what black is and what black aint, to reference Marlon Riggs once more.

 

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Middle child syndrome not so much

Apparently there is something called middle child syndrome and issues of birth order that were supposed to have affected me and my siblings. Oldest siblings are supposed to be bossy, which mine is; many US presidents and other famous people like actor Julia Roberts were middle children; the last born is indulged and spoiled.

However I thought that certain other factors such gender, the era and the city in which we were born played far more important roles in our lives. We were part of the baby boom generation in Buffalo which was deeply segregated. But here is where gender steps in because both of my sisters have lupus, an auto-immune deficiency in which their bodies began attacking them when they should have been in the prime of their lives. My older sister had married her high school sweetheart and had two children.She was very active in skiing and work until the lupus  forced her to apply for disability. Although the disease has not killed her, it is very expensive, requiring many different medications. Her success in her later years has come through guiding her sons into manhood and becoming a grandmother.

Gender was very important for me and my younger brother as we were the facing the draft and the Vietnam War. As the older of the two, I had an advantage in that I had a gift for writing and when I applied myself, I was a good student. I also was in an era when college was relatively inexpensive. So even though I had setbacks while struggling with mental illness I was able to survive the military, finish school and start a professional career. It was necessary to leave Buffalo when I did in 1980 as the city began a long and painful economic decline. Many of my friends also left.

My writing has helped me enter several different careers including my present one as a peer support specialist. I have seen a few generations of actual and pretend nephews. And I have satisfaction from seeing them struggle with many of the same things that I experienced.

My younger brother was not as fortunate. He had a learning disability that was undiagnosed. We discovered much too late that he could barely read or write, a gift of the school system that simply passed him along. His mental illness was too powerful to overcome combined with the effects of drug use. He was struggling at a time when I was also at risk. Ultimately I had to save myself. Our mother told him to go into the military which was the natural place for saving young black men or killing them. Just before his scheduled enlistment he drowned under mysterious circumstances.

My younger sister was the baby and has 3 children of her own. One of her children, a son, has lupus. She was thew only one of us to move south. While my older sister and I have always been able to count on Mom, our younger sister has always struggled with her. As a result she was cut off several year ago. She drives a school bus. It’s very likely that her mental illness is an underlying factor.

So, to me, life has not been any crystal staircase. We have all been affected by race, mental illness, segregation and the era in which we grew up. Our mother’s ability to provide for us was a strong protective factor. She passed along a strong work ethic. I’m glad that we were spaced a number of years apart but I honestly don’t think that being the second of four was that important.

At this stage my ability to communicate, my writing, my interest in people and my good health are the most important factors. But I would be interested in hearing from others about how they feel birth order affected them.

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Collecting on my inheritance

NAMI claims that mental illnesses are biological brain diseases. Just recently my mother said that my sister had inherited her mental illness from mom. Mom had also passed along lupus to her two daughters. Which leads me to speculate what I inherited and from whom. But there is the statement promulgated by the women’s movement that biology is not destiny.

1. I inherited my dark complexion.

2. I inherited my height.

3. I inherited my drinking although I did not become an alcoholic.

4. I probably inherited some of my intelligence.

5. I inherited my eyesight (all of us wear glasses.)

6. I inherited my looks.

The question is, what did I do with them and how did they become me?

1. I probably inherited my hair from my father.

2. He might have been a drinker, according to mom.

Oops, I slipped back into the inheritance mode.

I believe that the time that I grew up and the things I saw my mother do going out to work often in hospital settings had a profound influence. I was not fated to be hospitalized but to be a helper for others.

My intelligence seems to be related to problem solving. When I was at my worst I could not sit down and think how I got into a problem and how I would be able to escape. The solutions that developed surprised me. I certainly had no idea about being a peer support specialist. The only mental health workers I knew about were social workers years ago.

My general health probably came from my mother, since I have lived far longer than my father.

But what did I do with those years? I don’t know where my writing originated. As a child, I wrote poetry, using pen and paper. Later I graduated to typewriters. But who would have thought I would be sharing my ideas over something called the Internet?

The scientists are hard at work trying to find the genes linked to various diseases, including mental illness. But I would not want to change even if I found out about the strange factors affecting my personality. I am better talking with people in the community than I was behind a library desk.

I am assured that every day will be different and the people I assist will respond in new ways. My co-workers will display new quirks. I will look at people’s strengths differently.  The next 30 years  and the last many years are all on me. Let’s see how good a poker player I can be. It’s not all in the genes.

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Our family cookies

It is hard to imagine waking up and knowing that my mother and older sister were gone. Deceased. I would rather think about the things they do that I appreciate. This comes after I talked with them yesterday, Mother’s Day. They are planning to bake me some cookies. In all the places I have lived they have always sent me some cookies. When I was in the military, when I was in New York after I was released, when I was living in my home, when I had retreated to a vets center and just a few months ago for Christmas there are their cookies.

For me I most enjoy oatmeal raisin. This set of cookies will be different because Grace, my great niece, will be at her grandmother’s side saying “I can do it.” I picture them in my mind’s eye aided by the photos I have of them in my office. Though relationships and even marriage had faltered and crashed, family has remained.

In a way it’s a little childish, getting cookies for the summer. Here I am well into my 90s and these women and this young girl want to fuss over me. How ridiculous! Apart from the cookie story my mother told me that one of her sisters had wanted to raise me for her own. Horrors. She lived in Cleveland. I might have grown up cheering for Jim Brown and some other sports figures from that dreadful city. Goodness knows what kind of cook she might have been, too. She should have just gone to the Sears store when she had a chance.

Well, things turned out for the best. And we will see what happens will these 3 generation cookies.

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My family came from a Sears Catalog

I grew up in the era when everything came from Sears. But sometimes even big box retailers can carry things a little too far. I had a rude awakening when our family moved into a previously white neighborhood that was not far from a Sears. I had two younger siblings a brother and a sister and we were adventurous types. Keep in mind that this was Buffalo, an industrial town in New York State that was beginning its decline when we were growing up.

One thing you could count on was the arrival of the Sears catalog which was filled with all kinds of wonders. Another thing that happened was that the catalog would disappear from sight minutes after arriving. After all, it was a place where models would be displaying all sorts of things including underwear. Our mother was rather prudish so we were not supposed to see things like that.

It was a very curious household because I never saw my father or any other fathers. It was just my mother doing her nursing and working as hard as she could. She did remarkably well. We never lacked for any of the necessities and we even helped out my cousins her sister’s children. Keep in mind there was a lot of social unrest, with the war against Vietnam, Dr. King, school integration and the struggle against religion in schools. I did my part by choosing not to attend religious education while I was in the 3rd grade. The simple fact was that no one had asked me what I believed.

Fast forward to my 30th birthday. My younger brother had drowned. I had finished graduate school and my older and younger sisters had both given birth. My mother brought out an old Sears catalog from the 1950s and confessed much to her shame that she had always wanted to have children but was not too keen on the black men of that era. She had seen ads in the Sears Catalog for children and decided to order us, one at a time. That was why we had never seen our father. Sears stopped offering children around 1962 and she showed us the pages on the catalog where our prototypes were displayed. Ironically, I was not all that disturbed about the story of my birth, I just wished she had wanted a taller and bigger model. She said she was simply being practical: big boys are too expensive to raise.

There were interesting things about the selection of my siblings and me. I have a lot of brains, a reasonably good body and zero emotional intimacy. My older sister gravitated toward home and hearth and hoped that through hard work she would achieve upper class status. She had a nice figure and is good at connecting with people. My younger brother was the tallest, over 6 feet and strong. My younger sister also had children, one of whom has graduated from college. She struggles with life.

One thing we have in common is the work we needed to do on our emotions. My emotional struggle led to my career as a peer support specialist. And a non paying notoriety as a local oddball. We often find ourselves counting our blessings and thinking how lucky are to have  our mother in our lives. It also helps that she had a good set of Sears Craftsman tools to assemble us. Overall, it has been a wonderful life.

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Wellness days to come

1. Smiling looking at 401 k statement.
2. A day with friends and family where where no one talks of diagnosis, symptoms or illness.
3. A day spent blissfully full of romantic embraces.
4. Sitting at a table with a successful graduate of our program.
5. Reading about the next generation of peer specialists long after I have retired.
6. Seeing my great niece Grace at a graduation (you pick the one).
7. Getting a check up 10 years from now and finding no trace of diabetes.
8. Going out to hear music and finding the singer looks strangely familiar. She’s another graduate of our program.
9. Knowing as my final days approached that I had no regrets about the decisions I had made.
10. Doing something that I promised myself I would do by the time I reached 30 that I have yet to achieve.

Bully!

It Gets Better Project: 2011 NYC Pride (Photo credit: Jason Pier in DC)

J. Reuben Clark Law School (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

bullying (Photo credit: annavanna)

I just wrote about and shared the video that Brigham Young University students did for the series It Gets Better. And I realized that an important part of the struggle young people face is bullying and I’m here to say you can overcome bullies because I did. I was bullied in my old mostly African-American neighborhood and in the white community where my family moved. I was a small, skinny dark boy with glasses and acne and I was definitely a target. I didn’t sound or act like anyone else.

Some guys boasted about girls, smoked and wore the right clothes. I preferred going to the library, finding a book and reading. I identified with the character in the book Loneliness of a long distance runner.

So what did I do to survive and how can my experience help anyone else?

1. I had an involved mother. She recognized that I was having trouble with the kids in my neighborhood and even took  them to court to force them to leave me alone. Eventually she moved us to protect me from them.
2. I had a younger brother to whom I was a role model. I helped him fight his battles and that meant I had to stay strong.
3. I recognized that I had talent. Despite the discouraging comments of teachers and other students I discovered that I was smart, a good writer and athletic. Later on I became a listener.  Listening became especially important when it came time t develop a career.
4. I learned as Gordon Parks said that I had a choice of weapons. I could stand my ground and fight, run away get help from the American Civil Liberties Union or seek out people whose ideas were similar to mine.
5. I was not always available. We had just one house phone when I was growing up and I didn’t give out my number to a lot of kids.  It’s hard to imagine the days before facebook, twitter and cell phones which keep us connected to friends and may make us vulnerable to enemies. Today I ask people who seem vulnerable why they gave out their phone numbers to so many who mean to harm them.
6. We had fights where we made our points but we didn’t go out to kill one another. The one time that I was pounding a kid’s head into  the ground surprised and frightened me.
7. I developed allies. I have written a few times about the importance of my first white friend in school. When you are lonely and small you are more likely to be cornered and beat up. So even if you are “a nerd,” someone who likes to study, read books, write poetry and go for walks, there’s  probably someone else in your school who likes doing those same things. It’s a matter of picking up on the subtle things they may say or do. In my case, I discovered that my friend’s sense of humor resulted from memorizing several Bill Cosby albums.
8. Start dating. I think that there are some many positives from dating they outweigh almost any negatives. For me, it meant that a girl had found me attractive. Even though I was not good looking to the kids who disliked me, I met a wonderful Irish catholic school student  at a political campaign headquarters not far from where I lived. She played guitar, sang and was a wonderful girl. She liked the features tat my detractors found so repulsive. While some people prefer the small thin lips that a lot of white people have, she enjoyed kissing my dark, full African-American lips. Trust me on this, because it’s part of self acceptance. As you learn to develop who you are and what you believe, you will find romantic opportunities available.

My advice is to use all of these techniques so that you can get beyond the point where you have to fight people on the street because you can defeat them with your mind.

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Haircuts from your uncle for suicide survivors

Unidentified African-American children at the turn of the 20th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I  note that today is  National Suicide Survivors  Day  where ironically we celebrate failure. Our loved ones, friends, or maybe we ourselves were in distress and that lead to a suicide attempt. Someone took some  pills and fell asleep. Not a big deal. Woke up 16 hours later and went back to school.

But on a more serious note there are  those particularly among African-American men who have lived through haircuts from your uncle. There are the true heroes. It’s not just because I am one. The time squirming, the hot blades, the desire for an out-of-body experience, all  those rites of passage. What is there to do with straight hair? You cut off some and it just continues to hang wherever the hell it wants to. But African-American “no I won’t” hair is a whole nother ball game.

This is shit that you press when you become old enough or at some point in your adulthood realize that you have survived enough of these chemicals. I have lived through jeri-curl and dirty sheets. I will not look like my white friends no matter what I do to my kinky hair and I am okay.

So, where am I in all of this? I survived the death of my younger brother, my near death and the pain of my friends. I survived nappy hair. I even survived Sarah Palin. I don’t get haircuts from my uncles and I am not a candidate for suicide. I will not cut my nephews’  hair. Things do get better.

Unidentified African American woman with Afro-textured hair, cerca 1850 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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