Darkness!

I think about my identity these days in hindsight. I imagine working with school-aged young people and watching them develop their own identities would do that to someone. In a meeting with the students of color yesterday, they were creating cross-the-line statements to ask at their next general body meeting. The first statement was "Cross the line if someone accused you of being on financial aid." Some of them started to discuss all the different times this has happened to them erroneously, in a room with students who are actually on financial aid. I asked, "so what if someone is on financial aid--this place is damn expensive!" Real quick, on the expense point, let me give you some comparisons. When I was in undergrad, NYU was the most expensive BS you could buy (and it still is). The high school where I work now costs more than NYU did then.

Back to the story. Some of the young people didn't understand my critique so I gave them an example. When I was a kid, everyone would say that I was Black. My response would be an emphatic "no I"m not!" as though something was terribly wrong with being Black. A more appropriate answer, and the one I use today, is "Yes I am and Black people come from all over the place." It reminded me also of the Dave Chappelle skit with Charlie Murphy recalling his days with Eddie Murphy and Rick James when Rick James kept calling the brothers "Darkness" because they were the darkest brothers in Hollywood at the time (this is before Wesley Snipes). Charlie Murphy's response? He punches Rick James. I thought black is beautiful; what's he punching dude for? And then I remembered the election, when everyone kept pushing, Obama isn't a Muslim, rather than saying what's wrong with being Muslim? Or how we correct young people now when they say "that's so gay"--What's wrong with being gay?

And then I began thinking what messages these young folks of color are learning about what is wrong with their identities. As the token Darkness Adult on this campus, I feel it. All the time. To whiteness and wealth, Black is cool, because they don't encounter it aside from the images on cable. And with whiteness and wealth comes the idea that they have access to anything. So my dreads are just so cool, they have to have them too! And is that a rapper on her t-shirt? I need that t-shirt too! Did she say "what up, foo?" to that other Black kid? I'm going to say it too! I've watched these future CEOs, inventors, politicians get up in front of the entire campus and say "She right there, she my N..." or "I'm fit'na' hit that." While I, Adult Darkness, glance at all of the Youth Darkness (there aren't that many, it takes like a second) and we shake our heads, rub our chins, and shrug our shoulders.

The group leaders of the people of color clubs began the year by listing all of the goals for the year. One stood out to me: I want them to know I am not like the Black kid on the corner. In a class where I visited, I confronted a student: what's wrong with the Black kid on the corner? "He's just ignorant." "Why?" "Because he can't pull his pants up." I looked at his sagging pants as the other students in the class looked confused. I could read their faces: isn't he one of them? They think you're one of them, I wanted to tell him. They notice that you drop the -r at the end of your words. They notice that you tip your hat to the side. They notice that you practice your dance moves at lunch time instead of buying the $10 organic, free-range entree that they did. They notice that your backpack isn't the newest, designer piece on the market. They notice that you take that bus back to Richmond at the end of the day. And they think it's so cool.