The Talk? How about a life-long conversation? How about The TALKS? What a Black parent REALLY tells her children. Thedarkroome.com's contributor Teresa Wells Jones on...the constant caution of life in Oregon. That’s Odd! Teresa Wells Jones thedarkroome.com Brandon: “So you live in Portland, I hear it’s not cool for brothas outside of Portland?” Teresa: Truthfully it’s odd being black in Portland, Oregon because there just aren’t that many of us here. One need not leave the city to recognize that living in an exclusive suburb, being educated and upper middle class, with children who attend an elite Independent school while being black in Portland is an oddity! But the sad reality is that being black anywhere in America is still considered by some, odd. In fact, for young black males like Trayvon Martin being black not only means you’re odd, but it may also mean that you are seen as a suspect, a threat and menace to white society in general. I use the term “black” referring to my blackness to make a point. Dealing with racism is just a natural part of the everyday African American experience, it’s like air, you can’t see it but you know you breathe it, and it’s all around you, all the time. By the time a black person becomes an adult, regardless of if you are, as Eugene Robinson describes in his book Disintegration, any one of the four distinct groups now living in the US; the black middle-class majority; the abandoned minority; the transcendental elite; or an emergent group of biracial blacks or a recent black immigrant from Africa, walk down any street after dark or in broad day light if you please, in the wrong neighborhood, wearing the wrong outfit, or in Trayvon Martin’s case your own neighborhood, and you are just a N*@@%# whose life has no worth and can be stolen from you in an instant, by anyone who perceives you as such! This ever present danger, the burden of being black in America is one you get used to, used to a system where ones navigational skills must be highly developed, the ability to code switch, to know how to walk, to talk, to be, in order to survive, all this just to make the bigot feel comfortable and put them at ease with their own sickness, is second nature and rudimentary. However those of us who have made it into the educated middle class majority or the transcendental elite class, do not take for granted or ever fool ourselves into thinking that we are ever really fully in control. As an African American adult, you know for certain, survival means playing a game, a game where the stakes are high, a game where the terrain is designed for you to fail, where the very landscape is rigged and the deck is stacked against you. You know that the notion of equal access and social justice for the black man in America is really not a dream fully come to fruition, but an ongoing nightmare, it is a silent horror movie with no sub titles that seems to never end, one that we must still perform in, be peaceful in, cooperate in, exist in, and get along in, just …to survive. By the time you are an adult, you are keenly aware that one wrong move, or one wrong turn could mean GAME OVER, no second chances, and if you are a black male in America the game is really like playing Russian roulette, the gun is always pointed at your head, it is loaded and the trigger is cocked. Brandon, you asked me tonight, “Teresa, what do you tell your kids?” Simply recite what I wrote in this piece from the top down, aloud, over and over again, this is what I tell my children, except I always end my speech with, “baby please be careful, Mommy is afraid, no I am terrified for you to walk down the street to play lacrosse!” And my son looks at me and responds, “Mama I know, why do you think I carry my lacrosse stick and wear pink colored lacrosse shorts?” It pains my heart to know, that racism will not see the lacrosse stick or the pastel colored lacrosse shorts or the private school emblem stretched in bold letters across his sports hoodie, racism will just look and say, “huh, that’s odd, what’s that black kid doing in our neighborhood?” --Teresa Wells Jones is an actress, student, Portland resident and a thedarkroome.com contributor Sign of The Times brandonbowlin thedarkroome.com This is from a Michigan highway. And this is designed to hurt. I can’t tell everyone to be calm about it. Nor can I say that a majority of the conservative right doesn’t feel this way. From current opinion’s like John Derbyshire, Michelle Malkin, and a host of others they certainly feel something skewed towards averting the justice that Trayvon’s parents have been calling out for. And many of their constituents actually write things along this line in more definitive terms. However, what I can say is that, beyond a trial and its outcome…there is no winner. A life was lost. In a frightful horrible fashion. In one of the ways ALL Parents fear and have nightmares about (John Derbyshire not withstanding). There is no equivalent to a child, no matter what color, dying like this. And while justice may prevail…no one wins. No matter how many niggers one puts along side the road. Last week there was a rampage in Tulsa where Blacks were targeted and killed. Police say it was two men…one who lost his son last year to a shooting by a Blackman. THAT is just as horrid as Trayvon’s death. I assume they know the color of the shooter because they caught him and hopefully justice was metered out to the fullest extent of the law. They believe they caught the right man today...and...I call for justice. That’s what this is about…seeking justice. Not a lynch mob. Or town hangin’. Not a race-oriented regression into Black Toms and White Masters; where Herman Cain says that it’s okay to go to the back of the bus and Clarence Thomas reassures crackers that he’ll never speak out for anything (…but you can pay his wife to)! This is about trying to get to the truth, and along the way we seem to have stumbled across some old truths still lurking about. No more Crackers just being called the base. They are un-American bigoted Crackers…whose politics has one key. One note. They are not multi-dimensional nor tiered in thought. Really how can they be when color is so much a part of this nation now? Hell, keeping color in its place is a full-time JOB! Arizona is trying though. So is Alabama. Other states, through slimy shadows like Alec, are gonna face challenges from filth movers. Trashmen. These guys who claim civility and patriotism but move to revoke EVERYONE’S rights on ANY issue they don’t like. Even if it’s a detriment to their own way of life. For years the right has dangerously stoked, pushed, and prodded the “Cracker Politik”. At first speaking in tonal terms by calling then candidate Obama a mischaracterization with all the vehemence of nigger. Then Republican Senator after Senator and Representative after Representative insulted and challenged the seat of President Obama’s authority culminating in a full-frontal Soft Klanning lexicon that made the Cracker feel good about taking off his hood and representing his true self openly. And now ANYONE can be strip searched for a traffic stop…while Justices of the Supreme Court of The United States of America choose an insulting moniker of The Affordable Healthcare Act to send both a message of support to the crackers and one of condescension to the President of The United States of America. Now, this act could’ve been dealt by some misguided child. Or a lone mental patient. It could have come from a group so low down in the dredges of society that to them, the light of a flaming Cross is at least…a light. Yet, even though it is a dangerous sign in many ways as everyone else in America has witnessed the nervous breakdown of the right to its cracker roots, this thing…this horrible thing…is…. …expected. --brandonbowlin One of thedarkroome's writers goes National!!!! thedarkroome's David "Money Train" Watts is quoted in The Washington Post regarding his theory about just where George Zimmerman gets his lines. Click HERE for his post. |