An Essay On What They Call Us Page 8

required to provide specific and accurate cultural, ancestral and community data as a condition to receive the benefit, but the so-called “race” of a person should be irrelevant.

  The Future of America

  Perhaps after the 2020 U.S. Census, and perhaps even before, the people will realize the meaning of Dr. King’s words, that as Americans, we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. And perhaps we can make the most of that transformative moment in November 2008, when we all caught a brief glimpse of the shining America that the best of our Founding Fathers, our fallen soldiers, our ancestors, our history and that Dr. King dreamed for us, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men [and women] are created equal.’”

  So there I was, at six years old, standing in the cold, standing under a carport in Madrid in the pouring rain, the skies growing dark. By rote, I had memorized my home address and phone number, but I had been traumatized by the meanness of Carl’s father and by the name he called me, so I was afraid to ask anyone else for a ride. And finally, summoning courage that came from somewhere beyond me, I wiped my face, went back to the man’s door and knocked.

  “I don’t have a ride home, and I don’t know the way. I need you to take me home,” I demanded.

  He seemed angry at first, and then it seemed he melted in the light of decency as a rueful Carl watched in the background.

  “You know your address? I’ll take you,” he mumbled, appearing resentful that he had yielded to his better self.

  The short ride home was tense and silent. When he stopped the car, he looked over at me and said, “You gotta understand – when I was young, a group of black boys jumped me, beat me up real bad. That’s why I don’t like black people.”

  I was six years old. I didn’t understand it then and I don’t accept it now. I only know the man was a victim of an America where it was acceptable to curse at a vulnerable little black boy, call him a nasty name and order him away from the door, an America where 3,446 blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1968, an America of Jim Crow and discrimination in employment, housing, schools and equal protection under the law, and an America that denied black people human dignity, decency and the right to vote.

  In time I learned that “nigger” was not just another word or name – that during the 1950s and 1960s it was often accompanied by unspeakable violence, sanctioned murder and the gross mistreatment of black people – that is what made the word so foul. It was a conjuring word, and to speak it summoned all the evil, hate, violence and injustice of the bloody and wretched history that lied beneath it. It was a vile word, and those who spoke it did so to dehumanize, degrade and destroy the spirit of a people, a culture and an entire legacy.

  That was his America, but even at six years old, I knew it was not mine. I imagined something better. I knew America and its people were capable of something better. I later grew up in an America that was indeed different from the place he knew. It was not perfect, not the America I dreamed, but it was better than his. Yet over time I realized in brief moments and instances where we, as a people, were headed.

  Whether the people realized it or not, the American government itself fostered and fomented a culture of racism and prejudice as tools of control and manipulation. And so racism is an institution of America, necessary to divide and define, to create resentment and hate. A parent can teach a child to hate for one reason or another, but it was America’s institutionalized racism that gave a false rationalization to that hate.

  While Carl’s dad had justified it in his own mind, and people probably let him get away with it because he was part of a racist culture, it was an irrational excuse, even to a six year old. Could I justify and rationalize then a hate for all white people because of what he did to me? Of course not.

  America still has far to go, and it will take years to undo the legacy of perpetrated hate and division cultivated over three centuries. The wounds run deep and still seep, the scars are still sensitive to light and the mended bones still ache. When I went back to school, Carl and I never spoke again.

  Power to the People

  Yet the people have within their will the power to dismantle institutionalized racism in America at the fundamental level. They have the power to control the racial narrative, to create their own definitions and meanings, and that power lies in self identity: What We Call Ourselves

  For the reader or the listener, if you take nothing else away from this essay, I ask you to reflect on it the next time you fill out the government section of a form requiring you to identify yourself according to the government’s premeditated definitions for race. If you have dreamed of a better America for yourself and for your children, write in “HUMAN.” It is the only accurate answer.

  And in 2020, during the U.S. Census, please comply with the enumerators. Be as accurate as possible when answering questions about how many people live in your home, including names, date of birth, gender, relationship to the respondent, how many months each person has lived at the residence and whether or not the residence is rented or owned.

  On Question 8, the ethnicity question, use that area to indicate your identification with a culture. If you are not “Hispanic,” check the box, “No, not of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin,” and then neatly write-in the cultural group or community you identify with in the space provided below, be it “Black,” “Hmong,” “Southerner,” “Croatian,” “American,” “Argentinean and Chinese” or whatever ethnicities or cultures you call your own. I imagine it will make the job of the U.S. Census Bureau a little more different the first time through, but they are smart over there. They will adapt and allow the people to define who they are.

  But on Question 9, the race question, Americans must take a stand against racism. Because the bureau’s definitions for race are ever changing, inconsistent and praetorian, we must assume the question is not purposed to accurately portray the “racial” make-up of communities in America. Its true purpose is to divide Americans on the illusion of race and racial definition. For that reason, Americans must answer that question in the only way it can be answered honestly and accurately: check none of the boxes and write-in “HUMAN” in the space provided for “Some other race.”

  Perhaps then, we will be able to set our sights on the last and most significant government definer, the birth certificate. And perhaps then, in a post-racial society, America will be able to rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, perhaps then Americans will be able to strike off the shackles of racism and government that divide and diminish our nation and its ideals, and perhaps then

  we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

  Dedicated to the continuing dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

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