A Saving Grace

“A Saving Grace”

Published by The Ladder: Storytelling Across The Curriclum (Fall 2012)

By Tim’m T. West

I encounter them more and more these days as a college admissions evaluator—heartfelt, brave stories by high school seniors who “come out” in their personal statements. The frequency of “coming  out” essays or Gay/Straight Alliance mentions in extracurricular profiles, are a promising indicator that schools are creating environments in which LGBT youth are nurtured and thrive. Still, these are perhaps the fortunate students. As an educator and youth advocate still very much attuned to challenges to serving LGBT students, I am aware that many environments still choose to relegate the topic to silence or worse seek to “ban” same-sex attraction or social activity. While I celebrate the trends of more tolerance and affirmation in the United States, I don’t wish to undermine the critical work that school districts and teachers are still doing to create “safe spaces” for LGBT youth. There is empathetic value in offering an experience-based testimony of my own struggles as a young student in Public Schools; and the various saviors who prevented the kind of hopeless, down-spiraling dejection that can lead to LGBT teen suicide. Sharing stories is one way to broach a difficult topic with complex solutions-in-the-making.

I had a very early awareness of my sexuality—a point that is no doubt disputed by adults and some professionals who negate the emergence of “sexuality” for kids under the age of consent. It is double-standard “awareness” when it’s common for teachers and staff to make reference to kid-crushes between opposite-sex children, without being able to imagine the viability that some young people experience same-sex attraction as early as elementary or middle school. There is the “heteronormative” assumption that “playing house” is innocent modeling of a healthy sexuality; while any same-sex “play” is resulting, not from any difference in orientation, but some perversion of normal sexuality. In elementary school, I had crushes on boys and girls—imagined a future where love with either could result in a life together. However, I was quickly and frequently informed that there was only one way to make family; and that my perceived liberty to think otherwise would surely lead me to hell or a miserable existence of silence and torment. It is no wonder that I turned to school as an obsessive attachment to avoid discomfort with a natural option denied me.

I grew up a very masculine-identified boy. Little league football quarterbacking and being a kid-boxer were among the ways I avoided some of the bullying and taunting subject to more effeminate males my age. I enjoyed sports. I did not however enjoy the notion that reading books or enjoying arts made me less of a boy. I did not enjoy the peer to peer gay bullying I witnessed; and was disturbed even more by the all too frequent cases of teachers and faculty reinforcing the gender and sexuality norms that tormented many of my peers who presented as different. Some of the most insidious, homophobic bullying I witnessed in school came from adults charged with making school a safe space, not other students.

Each time I saw someone thought to be gay or lesbian bullied, I felt an enormous sense of guilt for being able to “pass”. This guilt turned into bouts of anger that seemed to come from nowhere, but that were an emotional response to a life where I reprimanded myself for my silence. While I avoided some of the ridicule by being gender normative, the feelings of dejection and confusion were all the more buried. There was no language to discuss how masculine-identified boy could reconcile feelings of homosexuality; especially in a home where a minister, coach, and former military man was the head of household who defined hypermasculinity as the only way. Images in the media then only depicted gays as frivolous spectacles of ridicule or carriers of AIDS who deserved to die. With so few positive images to identify with, I poured myself into books and became an exemplary student, a good athlete, and the ultimate student leader—thinking perhaps that if I were “perfect”, and my being gay was discovered, I would have already overcompensated for the “weakness”. I graduated a popular and promising honor student … with severe ulcer issues, clinical depression, and a failed suicide attempt. Interviewing at West Point, they asked, I told; not of any sexual relations with men, for I hadn’t had any; but I did admit to the mere thoughts about attraction to men. In the military of 1989, so a man thinketh…so is he. But I was proud of my integrity. It was the honesty befitting of a soldier. This marked the beginning of a life walking in the light of my truth. I believed as my grandmother taught that the truth will set you free.

Today it is said that “it gets better” for LGBT teens. I am grateful for many saving graces who offered hope and understanding amidst such painful and confusing years. There was an instance when a biology teacher reprimanded a student for making jokes about “nasty people with AIDS”. There was an insightful English teacher who asked if I’d read Walt Whitman and James Baldwin—men who I came to understand were gay also famous and writers. I came to believe that I didn’t have to die and that there might be something to live for. Twenty some-odd years later, I’ve become a beacon of light for others through the books I’ve published, songs I’ve written and performed, and speeches and lectures I’ve given. The climate is a bit more promising today—but not without conversation between educators, not on how to compromise morals or religious beliefs, but how to remain committed to ensuring that ALL children feel safe, loved, and affirmed in our schools. An educator myself, I’m happy to have been that saving grace for students who are sorting through a range of issues, around sexuality and beyond. There’s so much our young people can accomplish when they are, first, certain that they are cared for and loved.

(photo of Anthology "For Colored Boys". I am fortunate to be a contributor)

Good day, Brotha Frank Ocean

I am a member and founder of the now-defunct Deep Dickollective referenced in the NY Times piece written by James C. McKinley, Jr. and published on my 40th birthday. We achieved a great deal of critical success in the 10 years we moved crowds Bay-area and beyond; and those years offered a platform for continued work as an openly gay-identified solo artist. It was refreshing to be honored for perhaps being a stepping stone in creating a world where you could reveal yourself with a great deal more support than the forced invisibility so many talented gay and bisexual artists have been met with. You present an opportunity to be a game-changer when many have sought a formula for acceptance.

I can't honestly say that I was familiar with your body of work, prior to your coming out letter. Many people assumed that I knew you but I won't front. I should be familiar with you, based on your talent alone, but as an indie artist with little hope that the market will ever honor the "real" of how black men live and breathe beyond the often hyperbolic, braggadocio-filled caricatures we see in media, I'd pretty much tuned out. Still, I can say that I'm proud of you. Your letter alone made me a fan; but on the eve of your highly anticipated release I felt I'd be remiss not to offer my support for the cultural impact your disclosure may have on the youth cultures shaped largely by Hip-Hop & Soul music. 

I am writing namely to congratulate you for your courage to "let people in" rather than the "coming out" many call it. "Coming out" makes such a spectacle of the simple truth about what love can move one to do. Your letter and your loving are simply the "real" so often referenced in a Hip-Hop that seems to be more committed to swag than seriousness. My good friend Karamo Brown once challenged me to see self-revelation about sexuality, not as "coming out" of hiding, but "letting others in" to your truth. The former is so often associated with shame and secrecy, that I've grown to appreciate the distinction. My reaction to your letter and the responses that it has generated (many affirming) is probably more ambivalent than some might expect. It has become trendy for people to support being real in Hip-Hop about homosexuality, even when little support and resources are put in the service of elevating LGBT artists or supporting a world where they can be heard. Being an ally doesn't mean you don't join the mob who decides to beat the gay down. It's the more active fight, before the fight, that honors human dignity enough to keep the mob from even forming.

Remember that your triumph is personal. You capture the poetry inherent in "the love that dare not speak its name" when you courageously decide to sing it. Understand this: Those who take issue with your sexuality? They have the issue. Please don't confuse other people's "baggage" with your clarity of feeling-- beautifully executed in the letter-gone-public originally written in December 2011. Feel no pressure to "represent" anything beyond a brotha who has decided to huMAN up and honor the volition of his heart. Your loving is political because it shouldn't have to be. You describe feelings similar to my 20 year search to find the life-partner I'm convinced I'll grow old with. Remember that as a lover of music, and songwriter, you have the ability, freedom, and platform to represent a range of human emotions and experiences. That said, as much as the market will try to shape who you are into a product, never betray your process. Continue to "keep it real" in ways many who criticize you would have never been able to do. Hold those accountable who say they have your back to put their money where their mouth is: market success requires support I believe you already have and will continue to have. It's great timing. With the President's recent endorsement of Gay Marriage, many are being asked to declare where they stand. Stand for something, brother.

Lastly, when love knocks on your door again, remember: It's not about Hip-Hop, or "realness", or Gay Marriage platforms, or the 2012 election; provided it's even a male who you decide to share your love with. Your song is a truth that, like opening your heart to love, quite simply takes your breath away. At 40 I'm embracing that feeling like I never have before. Beyond beats and rhymes, there is the breath, once broken and labored, that sustains you. Breathe easy knowing you've already arrived and worked hard for the success you'll receive. Nothing can be further from your truth.

Props and Congratulations.

Tim'm T. West

Day 2: Mpowered beyond measure

Day 2 of the Mpowerment Summit surpassed my greatest expectations. For all that I gained from presentations about Program Implementation or Sustainability or the implication and impact of our National AIDS Strategy, it was the passion and sense of purpose of Summit participants that most struck me-- a kind of egalitarian connection to the promise of the intervention by everyone from its developers to outreach coordinators. We did a lot of affirming and huggin. It was strangely welcomed given my experiences of detachment and disconnect with the reasons we convene to talk about prevention in the first place: a belief that death by AIDS is preventable.

In the breaths between  program rhetoric is when this becomes most obvious; a level of engagement that I haven't really seen around HIV prevention in quite some time. The young men we serve are colorful, creative, vulnerable, hopeful, and yes... sexual beings. There's a rather insidious way that behavioral science makes of young men of color, their breath, pulse, and desire-ability, a thing to be measured-- something catastrophically determinable and formulaic-- in an effort to manage its mortality: Center for Disease Control, to be sure, a self-fulfilling prophecy embodied by many dying to stay alive. Ironic that some wonder why the most human some young brothas feel is when they are in throws of passion, touched by something fleshy and visceral, unbridled by devices of protection and fear. What, in the loving between men, can be measured? Can we accept whatever it is about spirit that is immeasurable? If there was no money to save us, would we save ourselves?

Today, between presentations and lively discussion, I received a few logos developed by young men in the Prodigies of Pride CORE group-- designs  I believe capture the hope and promise of a burgeoning community who truly believes they are on the verge of something truly groundbreaking. They are not exhausted or disillusioned for all their impatience for magic. They are more interested in joy than prevention. I also received a picture of them today that mirrored this potentiality. For all branding their brilliance could conjure, there will be no greater branding for me than their smiles. Brothas who extend arms to hold each other up never let each other down. This picture captured this hopefulness between young men who were, just weeks ago, not-so-distant strangers.

I believe that Mpowement's recipe for success is nothing at all if not capturing the imaginations and dreams of young men who shape it as superheroes defying the nihilism and apathy HIV statistics would suggest. I get to work on behalf of brave souls who remind be that it's okay to believe again, be angered by the injustice of of a system's disregard and neglect, who remind me that it's cool to hope for a dance...especially with another, to find associate no shame with my lovemaking capacity. Sometimes, consumed by metrics and scopes, I forget. The young men I work with don't let me...most often by example of their shameless living and loving. Prevention is pretty simple for young men always preparing for their next flirt. They deserve the protection of that joy. I simply offer a few safe options. They get to decide: agency

I often feel that many in ASOs serving gay men have become long-term survivors, not of AIDS itself, but a infrastructure that has sought to manage a disease still infused with heteronormative shame. They struggle against a burden of proof that "gays", still disproportionately affected by HIV in the United States, are worth saving. Mpowerment is an intervention with a foundation, not in explicit testing and condom distribution, but the bold notion that young men who love themselves and affirm their manner of loving, will care enough to protect themselves and those they care about. I heard a song and a poem over the past two days that offered some of the more incredible prevention messages I have experineced... en joy!

Still, spirit is not a deliverable. Joy cannot be quantified. For all our song and spirit, we are stubbornly hopeful if believing that anything beyond numbers will satisfy this burden of proof that gay men are more than HIV risks or sex that so simplistically defines us. For many risings numbers are simply a indicator of the pathology as hypothesis. Our young men are all too often faces, interchangeable and transitory, able to hold the wait of a time when AIDS is a thing of the past. But until then there is the weight of our frustration. We have to prove, mostly to ourselves, that we are worth saving at all.

When I see pictures of the young men I serve each day, it's one of those moments when the numbers become lite and insignificant in the face of hopefulness I aim to nurture. How amazing it is to have found, not a job, but a movement that is a mirror for this journey I continue to stumble into. God always seems to catch me, pick me up when I forget that dying is an option I relinquished because I wanted, more, to live. I go to work, facing metrics and overly-ambitious targets and all, because I feel so incredibly human trying to be superhuman. Sometimes the young brothas I wake to serve remember to bring parts of my confidence with them by admitting they don't know how and expecting me to show them. They simply believe I have something to offer... and so I approximate the dexterity and bravery they expect. It's hopelessness backfiring into hopefulness.

Back in Chicago, I refuel by smiles. I re-energize when I transform anger into action. I get beyond the what-had-happened-was with the what-we-gonna-do-about-it-is... And so we do.

Why it's Personal: Day 1 Mpowerment Summit Blog.

There's sometimes an expectation when you do social services, education, or non-profit youth advocacy that you maintain an (un)safe distance between the services and assistance you provide, and the YOU who is providing the services. Client-centered. Detach. De-personalize. Don't deauthorize. Catch phrases that are the tightrope the more passionate of us walk daily. I am fortunate to work at a Center where I bring all of me, each day. I am also a seasoned non-profit professional who has learned to discipline my passion in order to preserve its benefits while tempering the excesses. The blessing to do the work can become all too burdensome when you don't leave concern about the young men you work with and their issues at your physical work space. The work my team does, not being easy with the emphasis on scopes and program objectives, there are moments that (re)humanize the work you do, not as just labor OR love, but a balanced labor of love.

During one recent meeting, celebrating recent program successes with the impending program evaluation and site visits, my purpose became clearer to me. Many moons ago, I was a young, black, bisexual, ambitious, creative young man with lots of information about safer sex and self-esteem, but no roadmap. At the intersection of SEARCHING and HOME, I found that I was lost. I began to discover myself when the reality of living was illuminated by the prospect of certain death. Late-June. Gay Pride. Almost 27. Still young. HIV positive now. Expected? HIV diagnosis isn't and shouldn't be the expectation; and this is why I get excited about the work I do, the reason why stresses never overshadow the successes.

Each day I come to work, and most of the days I don't, I get to help guide beautiful, creative, dynamic, and conscientious young men of color into leadership and greater self-efficacy. On Saturday, March 24, 2012, I was proud beyond belief of the diverse young leaders of Mpowerment: Prodigies of Pride leading clear, candid, sensitive, intelligent, provocative discussions about their lives, loving, sexing, stereotype-fighting, and winning. Their "5 guys, 5 clips" dialogue utilized brief social media clips from Youtube to forge intimate revelations about their own experiences and that sparked some great conversations about everything from dating and sex in the age of HIV to disgruntlement with our two-party political system. Tired and exhausted, I beamed with pride at their success, with just a few days advance notice to work some magic. So yes, this work is personal! I see aspects and parts of myself in each of the young men I work with. A bit of a papa bear, I sometimes want to "save" them in ways I didn't have a toolkit for to "save" myself at their age: lost and too prideful to ask for directions. Sometimes the more you know the more people expect you to know better. But being high-functioning and intelligent are little defense against feelings of rejection and loneliness.

Even I seek help in better serving the young men I work with. I've arrived in San Francisco at the mPowerment Summit and Training to gain some tools I can use in helping direct their respective journeys. At my best, the work doesn't require that I distance myself from the work, but to more passionately understand and affirm my connection to the work. I enjoy being happy. I enjoy being successful. I most enjoy seeing the young men I work with being happy and successful. I am angered when people devalue and stereotype young  Black and Latino men who show daily evidence that they are more that "grave" statistics that so often define them. I get excited about seeing the potential of a diverse community of young men of color helping each other find each other at lost and lonely intersections.

The programs and interventions we work through are simply maps to a number sound paths to health and happiness. At the root of my interest in being a better youth advocate is my desire to be a better human being.  I hope to leave San Francisco on Friday-- this metropolis where I, some 13 years ago, discovered just how precious my life is-- all the more committed to be an example reflecting all the promise of shine a diamond in the rough can hold. mPowered young men know, without fail, that they are loved and valued; these Prodigies of Pride I seek to guide, never lost... as long as I and others remain committed to finding them...wherever they are.

(photo with Jason Black, former mentee and co-worker, now Prevention Program Manager at Legacy in Houston. Very proud of him!!!).

To Be A Man

Featured on The Story with Dick Gordon

To Be A Man

The Objectification of Freedom: A Dad's Feminist Awakening

I have witnessed her grow into her body. Time flies. The very curves and voluptuousness that appear in my now-grown daughter were not so long ago flattened by a pre-adolescent "innocence" that was perhaps more my fantasy than my daughter's reality. It was the seemingly necessary de-sexualization of a young girl for my own "peace of mind"-- a way of seeing her as sex-incapable, abstinent; girlie flirtation, at best, marked by the innocence of school girl crushes or puppy love. I would come to discover that her reality was much much different. She has grown into a woman who owns her own body-- its decisions, its actions, inaction, its desirability and explorations. Is it any surprise that I helped raise a feminist, if unsure she's even comfortable with such a term and its connotations?


As I sat in the Chicago box theater's front row to see my daughter, Shannon Matesky's, developing one-woman show "She Think She Grown," any fantasy of "innocent" girlhood is shattered. While attuned to much of the hardship she encountered, particularly in the foster care system, and "pre-Dad", I had no idea about some of what would be revealed to me, for the first time, on stage. This show-- a therapeutic exposition of a woman brilliantly struggling to find her voice in the world, in her own grown-woman way-- was masterfully executed if uncomfortable at moments to watch as someone who cares... who wishes I could have rescued her from some of life's hardships, or been there earlier in her life. Shay has always been independent-- a quality that as a feminist-minded Dad, I applaud with liberal resolve. I never cared much who Shay dated when she came of age to date, only that she was happy, not being abused, sexually responsible. I was attentive to her coming of age in high school and the necessary explorations: bisexuality, boys, her just doing her!


My principal concern was that she knew she could come to me with anything- a reassurance of my unconditional love, if with the expected paternal protectiveness. I was among the first to hear about her first college boyfriend, first major breakup, and the struggles thereafter to balance an artistic career with what becomes of desire-ability. Unlike her Dad, who seems sometimes to live for loving-- often to my own detriment-- Shay is stridently, if stubbornly, independent; resolved that career and dreams should wait for no man or woman. I think she could stand to be a little more like me, allowing dreams of being loved well to happily coexist with creative aspirations. But then there are the realities she's witnessed of Dad's trail of heartbreaks. She believes I could stand to be more like her-- unwilling to allow distractions in loving to deter or shape a creative or professional future. I think we both still have a lot to learn from each other.


Our notion of family is far from traditional, but more so, as we say, like Cherrie Moraga familia from scratch. Even as she is now a college graduate and adult, we continue to develop and nurture the mix we make through life's generous supply of ingredients. Single-dad, queer & grown-daughter, bisexual. We both float in the world with a magnetism that both allures and burns-- like a moth to a flame. Our plays and poetry are sometimes the way we best communicate life experiences-- if an oddly public call-and-response, through growth processes, both respectively and as father-daughter. It's so much more difficult to sit and talk about some of these things. We respect the stage as a mode of disclosure. Since I moved to Chicago and we talk more often we are becoming braver to have talk-backs, beyond the audience, one-on-one. So it is in this growth that I have began to struggle with certain feminist tendencies around womanhood and sexual objectification. With a daughter, I am unable to see feminism outside of the lens of my relationship to Shay, or my mother, or sisters, or nieces. And it troubles me that sexism is such an insidiously ever-present normality that I'm thought of as abnormal for trying to challenge it. I don't like that women get paid less for the same work. I hate when the value of a woman is measured through her sex or baby-making ability. I respect a woman's right to choose a destiny I don't believe is not best for her... because i value that same freedom. What is feminism if not about full freedom?


Being a feminist Dad for me has meant not reducing my daughter's body to an object-to-be-protected... as some extension of my property. It's about encouraging and nurturing spaces for her to self-actualize as she believes will benefit the life she's building FOR HERSELF. There's a way that feminism, unfortunately, re-objectifies the female body in its effort not to. We reduce women to the parts we wish to "protect" even as we critique objectification. It's a very paternalistic, patriarchal, and patronizing gesture. Shay has grown into a full-figured woman. Men and women alike look at her with desire...on and off stage. I can no longer pretend not to notice. She has evolved into quite a beautiful young woman. I recall a recent play (Rivera's "Sonnets for an Old Century")-- a role she understated a bit, though she appears prominently appears in the first scene-- her first lines including the repetition of "sex", replete with suggestive and matching gyrations. At Spoken Word events, I witness how she now gives a brief disclaimer if I'm in the room and she's performing a new piece that I may find provocative or sexual in nature... but I'm getting used to it. I suppose she's a lot like her Dad in some ways. How could I ever exalt my freedom to spit, rap, speak, be and become in the ways I have over the years, before her eyes, and expect less from her? And this is the irony of true equality-- one that enables me to take a critical look at all my feminist leanings, and flip them in a way that suggests: "It's her body, and she'll live like she wants to"...even if it doesn't jive with anyone's "feminist agenda". About this, I am proud. I experience great pride in the woman I helped raise every time I see her perform or hear about her work from others.


Often, people are unsurprised by our kinship. Shay has not been an object or extension of my own movements through life, but a trailblazer creating a legacy of her own that will surely surpass my body of work, give how early she started. She is a being, full of freedom, with choices to make-- some of which I may not agree with. Recently we had a discussion about Beyonce and the mixed messaging lyrically she gives to young girls who "run the world" if through sometimes self-objectifying manipulations. I suggest that self-objectification for gain or favor is, ultimately, "a woman's choice". She suggests "choice", shaped by coercive market demands or by necessity, isn't really choice. It's partially my fault she thinks this way: critically. I'll take partial credit, owning that she very much has a mind of her own-- whatever my minimal influence. Most importantly, Shay Matestky knows she has my love and support-- something my mother has given to me, despite our differences on certain issues. And isn't this the point of feminism and true equality? That each man and woman have the ability to fulfill his or her own destiny as they see fit, with full control of their bodies, full freedom to fly, sit still, soar? What a life! What a wonderful, amazing, beautifully-ugly, tragic-joyful way to experience it all, accept it all. What else is feminism, if not a commitment to full, human freedom?

post e-race... izm: or the collective disrememberence of color lines.

We're all equal now. Obama's symbolic election in 2008, marked instant proof of racial equality for those riddled with guilt about the unmistakable disparities in almost every negative statistical category from HIV/AIDS or heart disease to breast cancer morbidity rates or home foreclosures... black suffering is equal to that of white suffering. Well ain't that some equal opportunity. Many "I'm not racist at all" whites had been wanting that sigh of relief for a minute, and Obama's election became the evidence needed. His daughters attend Sidwell Friends, both Michelle and Barack are Ivy League educated, what's there to complain about, black (and brown) people?


I'm especially attuned to this newfound EQUALITY on my DC METRO ride from Ft. Totten in the mornings to Tenleytown where I teach Washington National Cathedral Scholars on the St. Albans campus. The demographics of those getting on at various stops is as statistically balanced as a Gerber commercial. Yeah, right?! In our post-racial America, aspiration is great deal more showy than reality. We need the black covergirl, the latina-or-could-be-Asian girl, and our standard white beauty in commercials. Equal. We live in a society where "... we all just get along", "some of my best friends are black" is actually true for some whites, and where even white people are fascinated by Tyler Perry movies and can do the cupid shuffle. We have overcome!


I notice this equality no more than when I get off at Tenleytown, with other people of color who arrive with me from more "urban" parts of the city. (Don't you just love how "urban" has become chic for ... well... colored?). Many or most aren't faculty or administrators at one of the many upper northwest secondary or post-secondary institutions. A guesstimate is that at least half of the Black and Latino folk who arrive with me there are help staff or cleaners or other positions graciously prepared by the first-rate public school system. It's the uniform. In our equal society, I don't see whites with these uniforms in equal numbers. On the buses going down Wisconsin, they have on a very ... well... "Wisconsin" (and I don't mean Milwaukee, Wiscompton) kinda business attire. But everybody wears a uniform. Even me. I wear my "safe black guy" uniform to Tenleytown. It's the performative necessity of being-and-race in America.

In 2006, I once attended a School Board meeting discussing racial demographics and how better schools were failing poorer children in which one Montgomery County parent lamented the negative effects of diversifying schools-- noting that tracking was good, because it prepared our "best" for "good colleges" and that there would always need to be people to do manual labor, cook and clean. This, of course wasn't a "racial" comment, but one about class, though its speaker had little class. Perhaps she didn't notice the crude overlaps between poor and working class people in the DMV and people of color. No.. I didn't say 1966, I said 2006, but i digress. We have arrived. Even if I'm not sure what people of non-color look like? But i again digress...


Did I say that I noticed our post-racial equality no more than when I get of the Metro at Tenleytown from Ft. Totten?! I mis-speak. One Sunday I decided to dress down and to do some class preparations at a Starbucks in DuPont Circle. See, they are pushing the gentrifying gays out of DuPont as evidence that "gay is the new black". I thought black was still the old new black! Does that mean the gays are moving to PG county? I'm never gay enough so I can't seem to keep up with these things. But i digress. This post is about race. I'm sufficiently black-acting, i think. Still, the NAACP revoked my black card years ago because I still argue that the etymology of the "N" word suggests ignorance on the part of those who negatively re-appropriated (and mispronounced) it for a stigmatization niggaz bought into. Anyhow... so I'm just a colored, African-American, black Negro enjoying my Cafe Mocha whipped with fudgey swirls and working on my rubric when a white sista engages me in conversation about teaching. I try my best to just keep it simple when I'm in such spaces, generally referring to what i do with broad generalities like "teacher" (to which they "Awwww... how cute..." which pisses me off), "artist" (which they always assume is theater or dance, never creative writing), or "rapper" (see I would say emcee, but that would just be too difficult, and I enjoy the puzzled looks of how a brotha can be so many things and still manage to be [and these are her words]: "so well-spoken, ambitious, and brave". Well KUDOS!! Some big black man's gotta keep massa's chillrens in order, I do declare. We's equal now! We're so equal I don't even bother to suggest how it's insulting to say that a Professor of anything is "articulate", "knowledgeable" or "accomplished". My white colleagues are seldom if ever described as such. I've actually asked them. I was dressed down, so it wasn't so much racism, right? It's interesting how white profs and teachers dressing down and working in Starbucks is "having a casual, relaxed workday". I get to be "charming", "refreshing" (why? cuz I ain't robbin' nobody!?), or "talented" (cuz when you're black and smart, you're not intellectual or brilliant... any intellectual superiority is reducible to "talent"). Did I mention that I love playing basketball and proudly like chicken and watermelon (though seldom, if ever, together). Yep. Very Black. Almost Equal.


There is one last place that I really really really think shows how America has become post-racial: my classroom. Fifteen or so students of color, a few of whom like to interrogate or undermine my credentials because i started off "too cool" and then had the audacity to demand rigor and maturity. My Duke and Stanford degrees "don't mean nothing", even though some of these students aspire to attend such universities. You see, I'm not all that surprised when white sensibility of post-racialism rears it's ironic racist head. I'm most frustrated when students of color you prepare day and night to teach, some of whom don't often see black men in classrooms at all, don't respect the journey and passion you bring to the work. I used to do the suit and tie thing on the first days, just to feign some concern about authority and professionalism; when any fool can dress the part and not know at all what they are doing. I suppose I'm wrong for expecting my professionalism to show up in the experience and knowledge i relay. I think I care too much. Yep... those white liberals got to me and canceled out my street cred. Damn.


Yes, all too often, by my own (black students), I am tested: either not cool enough or too cool. Perhaps carrying the burden of having to be too many things in this limited space of six weeks to make an impression about how Social Justice and Activism can be facilitated through a broad base of social networking and communication mediums, namely the blogosphere. Things have improved. The students are doing extremely well...and 3 of 6 weeks in, I think we've had more developed and nuanced conversations that have enabled the kind of maturity and focus I'd hoped for. But some days it's still draining. Some days I wonder if one can care too much that we're not quite equal...and read the papers and see the stats and see that we're a far cry from a society in which people are judged, principally, by the content of their character. Perhaps the students I'm teaching this summer don't quite get it, being high-achievers. Perhaps they don't know their peers who year after year fill fewer classrooms and more jails for having dropped out, more section 8 housing for having become pregnant, or remain aimless and dejected because they have just given up hope.

Yes... many days I want to erace race.... don't wanna run the race. Want to race to that space people talk about called "post" that is the after-beyond of the reality that sticks to me like DC humidity mid-summer. But somehow I find courage to do it. "Brave" she said. Nice white woman. She didn't mean any harm or know any better. Meant well by it. Was telling the truth. I am brave. In equal measure to her courage to converse with a big, swole black dude, on a computer with a rubric, dressed down, in Starbucks...whip and fudgey swirls and all.