My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.

Browsing Category Race Matters

Dr. King’s Birthday: Commemorating and Remembering

by on ·Activism, Family, Race Matters

The observance of Dr. King’s birthday stirs a lot of memories. It reminds me of the tragic way his life was cut short when he was assassinated 56 years ago, four months after his 39th birthday. On the other hand, like numerous others, I felt a sense of pride when Dr. King’s birthday became a  federal holiday in 1986. But what I think about most on Dr. King’s Day is the March on Washington.

I was a naïve junior high school student on summer break when the March on Washington occurried. Before that, I was aware of the civil rights crusade, although, to my knowledge, no one in my family was active in the movement. And since we were living in Washington, DC, the place some of my Carolina relatives referred to as “up North,” I felt distanced from — but was not oblivious to — the demonstrations and violence against demonstrators in the Dixie states.

I acquired my early education about the civil rights movement from the TV, and by perusing newspapers and other publications my dad brought home. Our family only had one old black-and-white television during my childhood, and my parents controlled the viewing. Each evening, after my dad arrived home from work and the family finished eating dinner, dad would turn on the nightly news. My siblings and I had no choice but to watch the news with him – boring as we thought it was – or find something else to occupy our time until we could reclaim the TV. Then, we would watch some of our favorite programs:  Leave It to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, I Love Lucy, and My Three Sons. I only remember three black programs airing back then:  Beulah, Amos and Andy, and The Nat King Cole Show. As the civil rights and black pride movement progressed, numerous black people, the NAACP, and others alleged that Beulah (a black maid) and Amos and Andy promoted stereotyping. Those shows were canceled but remained in syndication for years.

Dad subscribed to The Washington Daily News and frequently brought home editions of other papers, including The Capital Spotlight, The Washington Afro-American, and Ebony and Jet magazines. I will never forget how horrified I was the first time I opened Jet and saw a photo of Emmett Till’s disfigured body after he was murdered in Drew, Mississippi, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River.

On August 28, 1963, when my Aunt Sarah, a schoolteacher in New York, arrived in DC with some of her coworkers from the Big Apple to participate in the March on Washington, I no longer considered the civil rights movement to be just another sad news story. Suddenly, it was a big deal. I actually knew someone who was going to participate in the march. My aunt would be among the numerous people joining the largest gathering for civil rights of its time.

Aunt Sarah and her friends tried to persuade my mother and me to go to the march with them, but mother declined for both of us. We had watched too many newscasts showing civil rights demonstrations where adults and even school-aged children were violently attacked, blasted with high-powered fire hoses, and wrongfully jailed. And I knew from overhearing the conversations of some of our neighbors who hung out on the front stoop of the apartment building where we lived that they believed hostile white crowds were planning to attack marchers on the National Mall with the same maliciousness used against protesters in southern states. I also remember being as surprised as many adults that the anticipated city-wide clashing between non-violent marchers and anti-protesters in the streets of DC did not occur.

I’ve always felt proud knowing my Aunt Sarah was one of the estimated 250,000 people who participated in the March on Washington, the largest gathering for civil rights during that time. In hindsight, I regret that I did not march with her.

I once read the following quote. I don’t remember where I read it, but it has stayed with me. “Everything will come in its own time at exactly the right time for you.”  And so it did. I missed the opportunity to stand with my aunt amid the crowd, to be there – in person – to hear Dr. King give his iconic speech. But since then, I’ve participated in several protests, rallies, and marches for worthy causes, including the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington in August 2013.

So, every year, on Dr. Martin Luther King Day, as I remember Dr. King’s tremendous contribution to civil rights, I also think of my late Aunt Sarah (who died on Thanksgiving Day in 2011). How fortunate was she to attend the March on Washington and hear The Dreamer speak? She created a small niche in American history and a significant one in our family history because she was right there in the crowd. Black and proud.

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Move Your Boat!!!

by on ·Opinion, Race Matters, The Way I See It

Beware when a black woman removes her earrings, but when a brother snatches off his cap, you’d better back your a** up because the brother ain’t backing down.

I made that jovial remark about the riverfront dock brawl that occurred on Saturday, August 5, in Montgomery, Alabama. I posted it in jest as a comment on a few Facebook pages, including my own. Although many folks recognized the humor in my remark and responded with a smiling emoji, at least one of my socially conscious friends didn’t. Instead, he asked me, “Why do you people make everything about race? Why couldn’t it just be two men fighting over a disagreement?

I said, “Did we see the same thing, two men merely disagreeing, or was one man attacking and the other defending himself?”

“Something like that,” he said.

Then, I asked, ” When are you going to wake up and smell the coffee, and what will it take?”

This friend  (I’ll call him Urkel, though Mr. Different Strokes might be more suitable) sometimes agitates me. And although our occasional conversations are usually congenial, discussions about racial issues are a hot potato that we often toss back and forth, disagreeing and sometimes being disagreeable until we abruptly drop the subject.

I’ve known Urkel for a while, and he told me he usually doesn’t discuss racial issues with black people even when asked his opinion because it often leads to a nasty argument. He considers that topic, along with religion and politics, off limits. Frankly, I wonder if he was born with (or sometime during his life developed) a black gene deficiency because, contrary to what some people reading this might think, he is a black man. His deep walnut complexion and vernacular would not allow him to pass for white if he wanted to. Based on our conversations, and though he has never admitted it, I think he wishes he could pass. His self-loathing is apparent, but not to him.

He has a distorted tendency to fault the black man for most of his problems. For instance, we’ve had heated debates over race-related events, including the murders of George Floyd, Philando Castile, and the “alledged” suicide of Sanda Bland. Aside from his warped view of reality, Urkel is kind and level-headed. 

(Sorry about that, Urkel. I couldn’t stifle the laugh.)

Although honest communication is critical to understanding another person’s perspective, sometimes one can’t help but wonder if the person they are conversing with is not only uninformed and misinformed but blind, deaf, and dumb. Or perhaps they live in an alternate universe.

Regarding Urkel’s question about why I read race into everything, I told him it’s not true. However, the past is always present; I call it as I see it. In the riverfront dock incident, this armchair quarter-back saw a white man charging and assaulting a black man because his pride would not let him be seen as subservient by adhering to the directive of a black man.

And at the risk of sounding condescending, I’ll add that I have an amicable relationship with non-racist white friends throughout the country whom I’ve known and cared about for years.

I don’t condone violence, but black people are sick and tired of being disrespected. We are not our ancestors. I think activist groups like Black Lives Matter have clarified that. The men who came to the rescue of the dock captain, including the guy who jumped off the boat and swam to the dock, embody the words of Maya Angelo, “I am the hope and the dream of the slave.”

Despite how often the media, TV programs, and movies portray black people, many of us are not violent. Many friends and acquaintances have told me their parents raised them as I was raised:  you don’t start a fight, but you don’t run away from one. When I was a child, if I ran inside my home after getting into a fist-swinging scuffle with one of the kids in the hood (usually girls, but sometimes boys), my mother would send me right back out there. Her attitude was the only way to stop a bully was to stand up to her (or him), and mother was right. Unfortunately, too many bullies today are cowards. They eschew a fistfight. Instead, they’ll go home, get a gun, and come back and shoot you.

If the dock captain (identified in a CNN article as Damien Pickett) had been white, would the aggressor (Richard Roberts) have reacted the same way toward him? I doubt it. Roberts may have been a new “kid” on the dock, but he refused several times when Pickett asked him to move his pontoon boat. In his rage, Roberts didn’t see red; he saw black and went after Pickett. And then backup came by land and sea to aid Pickett. One man swung a chair. Rapper Gmac Cash even wrote a song about the incident.

To the amusement of Wakanda fans, MSNBC host Joy Reed humorously wrote, “I’m gonna tell my grandkids this was Black Panther and the Avengers.”

I’ll tell mine that when Roberts started the brawl, if he didn’t know then, he knows now that homies don’t play that.

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The Gift: Contemplating the Black Doll, White Doll

by on ·Food for Thought, Lifestyle and Culture, Race Matters

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ― C.G. Jung

In this Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine, Damon Young wrote a column titled, “Someone gave our daughter a White doll. How do we, um, “disappear” it?” Young’s column is published weekly on the inside back cover of the magazine in the space previously utilized by Gene Weingarten, a former syndicated humor columnist for the paper.

Young, a noted journalist, has written for numerous newspapers and other publications and is also the author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays. In addition, he is the winner or nominee of several awards, including the NAACP Image Award. He has earned his props.

Since Young began publishing his (humorous?) perspective columns in The Washington Post Magazine, I’ve read many of them. One that impressed me, entitled “The Whitest thing I’ve ever seen,” was about the infamous Will Smith slap at the Oscars.

The column in today’s paper flashed me back to an afternoon decades ago, sometime in the mid-1980s. One of my former employers, Harper (Note: I am using pseudonyms for my employer and all of his family members) and his wife had invited me to their home to visit with his adult daughter, Sandy, and her first child, a daughter Ashley. If I remember correctly, Baby Ashley was around three or four months old.

Sandy’s husband, Nick, may have been there too, but I don’t remember seeing him. I had an excellent relationship with these people and had met Sandy on a few occasions before when she had visited her dad from her home on the West Coast.

I could go on about the genuine friendship I had with this family. I liked them a lot, and I feel those feelings were reciprocal, but I want to cut to the chase and reveal how this ties in with Young’s column.

Before visiting the Harper’s home that day, I had contemplated what gift to buy for the baby. I figured that perhaps baby showers and the couple’s friends had already brought numerous presents for Ashley. However, I wanted to give her something unique, so that’s what I got.

After I gave Sandy the nicely store-wrapped gift box during my visit, she opened it to discover a beautiful black baby doll for Ashley.

Some people might question my gift choice, but I saw it this way. Although Sandy and her husband are white, I felt they would have no problem with the black doll. (For my readers who may not have noticed from some of my previous posts, I’m a black woman. Now, back to the topic.) I usually bought black dolls for my daughter but wasn’t bothered when she was gifted white dolls (as she sometimes was). My cousin, Andre, had even sent her a Cabbage Patch doll when he was in the military and stationed in Germany. I still have that doll in my home.

If I were right in thinking that Sandy and her husband were as open-minded and socially conscious as Sandy’s dad, then I knew they would see nothing wrong with diversifying their daughter’s doll collection.

Sandy thanked me and expressed her appreciation. Several months later, I don’t remember whether Sandy sent me a note or if her dad delivered the message, but Sandy wanted me to know how much the child was enjoying her doll. Ashley is a grown woman now, and the doll — I don’t know what became of her.

After reading Young’s column this morning, I was a bit irritated and had some serious cognitive dissonance going on. I was questioning my gift choice all those years ago while at the same time feeling disturbed by Young’s reaction to his daughter’s white doll.

I saw no harm in my choice for Ashley’s doll collection, which I figured would likely grow as she would. But talk about second-guessing a done deal. Young’s column had me wondering if my idea had not been good despite how it seemed at the time. After I left the get-together, did the Harper family react the same way the Youngs had toward the white doll? Did they contemplate what to do with the black doll? My gut feeling says no.

Click on the link to read Young’s column, “Someone gave our daughter a White doll. How do we, um, “disappear” it?” And, since I am always curious to know what my readers think, I’d appreciate your comments on this post.

 

 

 

 

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Viewing Ukraine from the Dark Side

by on ·Humanity, Opinion, Politics, Race Matters

Co-written with David White

Some of my friends, who, like me, are people of color, seem indifferent to what is happening in Ukraine. I am not indifferent, but I am troubled by the lack of compassion.

Some justify their apathy by referencing our history, the history of Blacks in America. They cite the horrific things that happened to our ancestors and the atrocities still happening today; from pre-civil rights era lynchings and the heinous murder of Emmett Till to the contemporary “modern-day lynchings” – death by cop of George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, and countless others.

When MSNBC interviewed some black and brown students stranded in Ukraine, they described how people like them are being prevented from boarding trains and are facing other slights. Like the millions of Ukrainians, the foreigners just want to get out of the country.

My contrarian friends feel they have no skin connection to the Ukrainians and therefore lack empathy, and that’s their prerogative. I, on the other hand, can’t help but feel empathy. Whenever I learn about man’s inhumanity to man; I always recall the words of Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

My cousin, David, and I share feelings about what is happening in Ukraine. I’ve summarized below some of what he expressed to me:

Unfortunately, it takes a tyrant like Putin to devise and implement a diabolical plan to take over a small, democratic country before people begin doing a much-needed self-evaluation. He is showing us precisely what happens when self-serving dictators run amok. Things turn out badly for many innocent people who simply want to live their lives.

The warning sirens began sounding shortly before the Orange One was elected when he asked Russia to help him get elected – by any means necessary – and Russia did!

Then, for the next four years, we watched 45 kowtowing and kissing Putin’s ring. We saw him stroke the flames in Ukraine to please Putin and advance his own crooked agenda while his Republican cohorts shrugged and looked the other way.

All we have to do is look back at this country four years ago and how we haven’t entirely extricated ourselves from our own mess. It really can be depressing. But, hopefully inspiring, to make sure we fix it now and ensure it doesn’t happen again.

The most frustrating part is that we know the formula for peace – the ideals of brotherhood and equality. But the price is the denial of selfish aims and goals. A price too high for too many people.

Scruples, morals, principles – things that take so much time and energy to teach, fight an eternal and existential battle against what Freud would call the “Id”; the drive to put self and selfish desires above anything that intrudes upon those pursuits. If Putin would see the Ukrainians as human beings worthy of life, liberty, and a pursuit of happiness equal to his and those he cares about (if any), then what he is doing would be unimaginable.

It’s why I don’t question the decisions that Biden makes on behalf of this country or why I didn’t question Obama’s motives. You don’t put yourself out there to face the disdain and contempt (for you and your family) while fighting for things like basic healthcare, decent wages, and fair treatment in law and justice unless you are grounded in something beyond yourself.

That’s why it is easy for me to know who to vote for in most elections. And the Republicans are making it practically a slam-dunk. Everything they do and say is based on the premise that the world is about the “haves and the have-nots” and their assumption that the “have-nots” should know their place and be satisfied with it! So if they have to contrive, cheat, lie or kill to maintain that social order, it’s okay with them because the ends justify the means.

A world where people they have ordained to be less worthy are treated as equal to them is intolerable and against their self-designed world order. No advantages? Unthinkable. No (enforced, perceived) superiority? Blasphemous. For they have (tried) to convince themselves that a Divine has appointed them over all others- at least that’s the lure demagogues like Hitler and his ilk have employed, perhaps since human existence began.

Zelenskyy is an inspiration reminiscent of so many brave heroes of the recent and not so distant past, like Nelson Mandela, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malala Yousafzai. and many more.

I feel that Putin has bitten off more than he can chew and has incurred the wrath of an entire world (with a few minor exceptions), and this transgression will be too much for him to overcome. The only thing I feel disconcerted about is how much destruction he is willing to inflict on his way down. Unfortunately, his type doesn’t ever accept the errors of their ways; they merely double down.

The best we can do is pray and stay grounded in what is right. The principle proffered by Rev. Theodore Parker and the quote by Dr. King, who encapsulated it, says, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

We must keep our faith that it will work out okay. And knowing of your fondness for quotes, let me close with this, another one by Dr. King, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

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Visiting Black Lives Matter Plaza–Part 1 of 2

by on ·Activism, Lifestyle and Culture, Political, Race Matters

Last Sunday, I took a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. OK, I’m being overdramatic. However, the nearly empty roads along the generally bustling Sixteenth Street corridor resembled a scene from the Twilight Zone. Hardly anyone was on the streets.

Until that day, aside from a doctor’s appointment and a couple of outings to the store, I had not wandered outside my home since mid-March. That’s when the COVID pandemic showed up like an uninvited houseguest and drove everybody into isolation.

My first time taking the 6.04 mile walk along Sixteenth Street happened on 911. Planes had flown into the twin towers in New York, and another crashed into the western side of the Pentagon. Reporters broadcast that a hijacked plane, later identified as United Airlines Flight 93, was believed to be heading to the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Subsequently, that aircraft crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. D.C.’s Metro service had been canceled, and everyone was scrambling to move away from the business district ahead of another anticipated terrorist attack. I had no choice but to take the long, solitary walk home.

I had not rewalked that path since retiring a decade ago. Until Sunday, September 13, Grandparent’s Day, this energetic nana decided to challenge herself, to see if I could still go the distance. My purpose was twofold. I had been yearning to visit the area north of Lafayette Square (nicknamed the President’s Park) since June 5, 2020. On that day, hundreds of demonstrators turned out to protest the murder-by-cop of George Floyd. Later, the defiant D.C. mayor renamed the block Black Lives Matter Plaza.

A longtime history buff, I wanted to visit the area and feel the history. To walk the path and stand on the spot where the late Congressman John Lewis made his last public appearance on June 7, five weeks before his death.

So at 7 a.m. Sunday, my daughter and I leave my home and trek over to Carton Baron. From there, we head south. I’ve lived all my life in Chocolate City, and the scenic, tree-lined 16th Street, bordered by nicely manicured lawns, clean sidewalks, and charming houses, has always been my favorite thoroughfare.

Sixteenth Street runs north-to-south in a straight line. If you start at Eastern Avenue in Silver Spring, Maryland, and go south, you’ll pass picturesque homes, the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Rock Creek Park, and Carter Baron. Also along the way are several foreign embassies, including the Embassy of the Republics of the Congo, Cambodia, Lithuania, and Angola.

Near the halfway point of our excursion, we stop briefly in Malcolm X Park. I’ve loved that place since I was a teenager and used to visit there occasionally with my friends. Also known as Meridian Hill Park, the property sits across the street from Howard University’s Meridian Hill Hall. The Hall was one of Howard’s dorms until the building was sold in 2016. The developer plans to convert it to rental housing.

Continuing downtown, we pass Scott circle. Mounted in its center is the equestrian statue of Civil War General Winfield Scott. A short distance away, on the right-hand side of the street, the National Geographic Museum stands temporarily closed. Its windows boarded-up since the George Floyd protests. We go a few more blocks and 90 minutes after we started our trip, we cross K Street and arrive at Black Lives Plaza.

At the entrance of the plaza, on the right-hand side at the corner of 16th & K, stands the Regis Hotel. (Decades ago, when I worked in a government affairs office in the building directly across the street, it was called the Sheraton-Carlton.)

As I stand there, reminiscing, I remember spring 1991. I am watching from the fourth-floor window as Queen Elizabeth and her security detail exit the hotel, climb into her motorcade and drive away. How thrilling, I think at the time, I’ve seen the queen. She was in town then, visiting President George H.W. and Barbara Bush. I later learned that the queen also toured some areas of the city with Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon and other locals.

It was that same window that I rushed to one morning about a year later, after hearing screams coming from outside. I looked down to see a young woman who I later learned worked for Xerox, being dragged beneath the back wheel of a box truck. Pedestrians screaming and gesturing eventually caught the attention of the oblivious driver, and he stopped the truck a few feet beyond the entrance of our building. Paramedics rushed to the scene and extracted the women from beneath the truck. She survived. News reports revealed that the truck driver, who had numerous prior driving violations and was subsequently fired, said he had not seen the woman when she stepped off the curb.

My old workplace building has a new facade and now houses P.J. Clarke’s restaurant. Posted in front of the structure, to the left and right of the double doors, are two large Black Lives Matter signs. Nearly every building on that block and several nearby have signs of assorted shapes and sizes displaying the same persuasive message.

On the same side as the Regis, at the opposite end of the block at H Street, is the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Police cars stationed at both ends of the block restrict vehicles from entering.

There are only about a dozen people in the plaza. In front of the building alongside the Regis, four or five young people are seated in a semi-circle in what appears to be folding lawn chairs. They look as relaxed as if they are socializing in their living room. I wonder if they are some of the numerous activists who participate in the protests that have been ongoing intermittently since the death of George Floyd. (Continued in Part 2)

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