Health is Wealth
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| tshina & little m |
First of all, I've been thinking about Life a lot lately. Even more so than usual, because I am actually giving myself the time and opportunity to do this. Instead of intermittent thoughts here and there--thoughts interrupted so many times that I feel as though I barely ever get to develop them,, I'm allowing myself to really go to not only what I really think about things, but what I'm going to do about it.
I was compelled to do this because as a human being on this planet, and as someone who was working as a teacher, I became increasingly concerned with some of the patterns that have emerged and are emerging.
As I've undoubtedly mentioned before, I attended Eugene Lang College. At Lang, I received some stellar professors, many with a Leftist/Progressive spin. The joke was that if you went to Lang, you were on the watchlist. Jokes aside, I did get a pretty privileged exposure to protest politics, world-class teachers and a kick-ass location (the West Village). When I went to Lang, it was a super small school with an impressive student to teacher ratio. In my Latin American Politics class, there were just the two of us and our professor. It was an amazing class. I loved the other, larger classes as well, and had the amazing opportunity to study with Jane Lazaar, Jaime Menriquez, Greg Tewksbury, Suzanne Lori Parks. Yeah, it was an amazing experience marred only by the realities of the socio-economic realities of the 90s.
But again, I was privileged. I had one foot in the trendy lifestyle of a Manhattan arts student, and the other, though barely, in the world that my father had created or, rather, had manifested itself around him.
As you know, my parents were immigrants from the charismatic Caribbean twin-island republic of Trinidad and Tobago. In America, they became "black", but in Trinidad, they both experienced a wider span of colour to either hide or gloat in. My father migrated to Brooklyn, New York in the mid-late 60s. America had opened her arms to the poor, the weary, the dispossessed--the labour, it was said, was needed. It was a promising time for my father.
Without getting into all the details, I recognized quite early the differences and attitudes between the African Americans and those from the Caribbean around me. I was the only "American" in the family, and so always felt an affinity and natural curiosity to other "Americans" as well, in this search for what being "American" truly is.
I saw the pride in the African Americans around me. It was from my classmates at P.S. 152 that I first heard, "I'm Black and I'm proud!" It was Tracy, and we were in the 3rd grade. I was fascinated by my classmates who rocked names like Makeba, Kenyatta, Mecca. I loved the creativity that I heard in the names, the relief from the squareness of names that came out of the television: Judy or Jane or what have you. I loved the way some of the girls had their hair elaborately cornrowed with colourful beads and soon learned to cornrow my own hair when my mother revealed that she didn't know how to. The children I mostly went to school with were all neatly dressed, jeans impeccably ironed, sneakers spanking white. Hair neatly cut. My mother complained once that she didn't understand how people could afford to look so good.
It was apparent from a very early age that my parents didn't share some of the same values as their American neighbors and I always felt a bit sad about that. As I grew up and met more and more people from the Caribbean, my heart always broke when I heard the usual codified lament regarding African Americans.
Audre Lorde once wrote that it was only in Trinidad that Africa could not still be detected in our walk.
And as the years went by, my identity grew, largely seasoned with African American southern culture, shared with me through the kind graciousness of my neighbor who took me in as one of her own. Like all things that I wonder about, I decided to educate myself on the issues, and came to better understand how the historical differences between America and the Caribbean led to different results, although mostly the same. The biggest difference I discovered was that while the Caribbean, particularly Trindad had already experienced its head-of-state being Black from the 60s, maybe 70s--the U.S. would have to wait a few years to have that distinction.
Why? Because the legal and social systems in place in the U.S. are more limiting to the poor, than say in Trinidad. At least in Trinidad, the hospitals are free.
It's a lot more complicated than I'm getting into it right now, but one of thoughts I've been contemplating for a long time is that perceived difference between the so-called haves and haven-nots.
As a child I quickly grew accustomed to words like "recession" and "laid-off". Money was always tight, if existent, and I learned quickly that we didn't have much. Witnessing the turmoil that my father experienced before my very eyes, and much of the many cultural phenomena that began to blossom about me in the early 80s in Brooklyn: teenage pregnancies and jail sentences became the two most important things to avoid, other than death.
But again, I have been privileged to experience other cultures. When I was shipped to Trinidad after getting suspended from my 5th grade class, I quickly saw the similarities and differences between the two countries. First of all, seeing a country led by a person of colour instilled a feeling of possibility within me, I had not possessed before. Even as a youngster I had already learned that a Black person had never been President, and if one ever would, would always remain debatable.
Poverty has always been of interest to me. So it made sense when I learned in college that the zoning policies were all mostly driven by race and class, that ghettoes were deliberately built and that public education systems were increasingly being encouraged to fail. Look, I love New York, but something is wrong when, "New York City, the capital of world finance, where the Wall Street elite is reaping record profits, is also one of the most economically unequal cities in the world. One, if incomplete, measure of this social disparity comes in a new study by the city’s Commission on Economic Opportunity (CEO), which reports that as of 2011 over 20 percent of the residents in America’s most populous city lived in poverty."http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/30/nycp-a30.html
While in Trinidad I did experience something I will never forget though: that asphyxiating feeling of no opportunities. That to be certain, was to be had in New York. So, after going to public school in Manhattan, I chose to go to Lang. And while there at Lang, I was introduced to Marx, Lenin, the true nature of Capitalism, gender and racial theory etc. In short, all of the knowledge necessary to shift the paradigm of the power structure that was responsible for this inequality on our planet.
The problem? The Gulf War erupted while I was in college. Bush was in office. Again. I graduated from college. Had a foray in the publishing industry and luckily, ended up working with Marie Brown, someone who is dedicated to ensuring diversity in publishing. But what happened? What did I discover?
While in college I learned all about Assatta Shakur, Mumia Abdul Jamal, Angela Davis. I learned about all the slave uprisings. I learned that there have always been people, standing up to the system. But what I am realizing now, almost 20years later, is that it was as though it was history -- but how did the story end?
I worked at Marie's for four amazing years. In those years, I witnessed books that showcased Black dysfunction rake in over 6 figures, while stories that portrayed our humanity, that sustained that image in the public consciousness was suppressed, not allowed to be published. "Blacks don't read," was the justification, while stories that perpetuated dysfunction and offered no alternative images for our young minds to latch themselves unto and cultivate were hard to find. Every human being needs positive imagery. If you are of color or poor, most likely you do not really see yourself in the media. And when you don't see refreshing reflections of whether it be femininity, masculinity, motherhood, what have you - you can subconsciously begin to lose grip of your original self.
It happened in our music as well and there are a plethora of music journalists who wrote about the offsetting nature of the lyrics and attitudes expressed in "our" music. It became normal to call each other "bitch", "hoe", "nigger". It is a racist's wet-dream. We began to look at each other with suspicion (beef) and forget how to love each other as well (see any 90s gangster movie). Our heroes, we were told, were Pimps and drug dealers, cause, well, what's a brother to do in this world?
How about change it?
I've been around a lot of drug dealers in my life, and the one thing I never understood was why so many never just broke the mold and bucked the system. For real. Make enough money and get out. What is this money thing anyway?
Like poverty, I've been thinking a lot about money. I'll never forget when I was around 8 years old, and I asked my mother where money came from. I wanted to understand this system. I had to understand why it was that although my mother worked in a bank, we didn't have any money. But my mother didn't know. And I would continue asking until my attention drifted off to something a little more grounded, a little more realistic, like the intoxicating pink of a Barbie dress or the reconstructed toy-car engine I made.
People got all mad at Harry Belafonte the other day because he dared question Jay-Z's method of community empowerment. Even Oprah got mad at Belafonte. I say, Belafonte has a point. We can't even critic each other anymore, because we get silenced by "hating". Well, I'm not hating here, I'm sharing with you an observation.
Why is it that it is not allowed for people to air their criticisms of the system? If you are worshipping the same idols as they, you are lauded. If you demand some sort of deconstruction, you are silenced. I'm not mad at Belafonte.
Think about why things are the way they are. I challenge you to focus on that for a few days. Unplug your television. If you need to be on the computer google things such as Assatta Shakur, or, the Prison Industrial Complex, or even the BP Oil Spill. Watch a documentary like Farmageddon and ask yourself, is all of this okay?
People like to say that I'm an idealist. I like to say that as long as we don't even let ourselves discuss certain things, we will get nowhere. And I mean this as a planetary being. I've met so many people who have accepted that the way things are is how it's got to be. "Humans are made that way," they say, as they pop their croissant into their mouths and remember some charming Foucault quote. Most people are walking around still believing that Columbus landed on America. Many still don't realize what Martin Luther King Jr. was truly espousing at the time of his death. How many are aware of the true origins or our wars?
One more thing. While at my very elite and expensive private college I really was allowed to study socialism. It was offered to me as the only viable solution to capitalism. After living in Denmark for 14 years and having experienced living and keeping my eyes on what has been going on in the U.S. in this time, I can honestly say that I prefer, absolutely, a complete and thorough rethinking of words like "culture", "nation", "race" and most of all "freedom" and that Socialism, the way it has been expressed thus far, is far from ideal.
Is it freedom to be afraid? Whether your fears are for bills, the police, your co-workers' opinions? There are many stories of people who have spoken up, and people who continue to. You just have to look for them.
So where have all my contemplation led? When I look at what is going on in the world, I can safely say that for me, the most radically progressive and constructive existence I can envision for myself is a place where I can grow food for myself and my loved ones. Where I can heal the earth that I find myself on, and trust in the ancestral powers of the universe, trust that allowing myself to slow down, away from this rush to - where? that there is a power that is above all that is perceived.
There are some details to my past, like you, that have been traumatic. Whether they occurred in childhood or early adulthood, most of us can, in some way identify with an experience where our very foundation to how we believed life to be was forever changed. I ask you, how many of them were due to money? If you really think about it. I often think about my mother and how she'd often complain of, "Not feeling good," when we were under a particular economic strain. Having families are to be joyous experiences, not liabilities.
Many think they all have it figured out. Do you? And before you give up trying, why not give it a chance? It's never too late to unplug and listen to yourself. It's never too late to seek the answers and when you take up the quest, you will see that answers abound.
Anyway, life changes abound as well. My lovely little home has expanded to include Tshina. I've known Tshina since my pregnancy with Kai - she was pregnant with her first child as well. Tshina is from South Africa. She's got 3 beautiful girls, two of which I get to enjoy at home. It feels as though I have a family here and it is wonderful.
farvel,
the lab
