I recently gave my aunt a copy of Isabel Wilkersons wonder full book on the Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns. She has been tearing through the book seemingly unable to put it down. However what has been a real joy for me is how it has sparked conversations about my rich familys past. About the the Bhambatha rebellion, about my grandfather, who was the grandchild of Bhambatha and how he fought the apartheid system. What has stayed with me is how little of this history was shared with me when I was growing up, how little I knew of the river of African memory and history that I was standing in. My mother assumed, fairly but erroneously, that democracy meant equality, and so her focus was not on the past but on preparing her children for the future, for a better, more successful future. Which she somehow equated with the accumulation of things, like education, which meant degrees, houses, cars etc. But my mom also encouraged us to be proud of our Blackness-- no Jesus that looked like Elvis Presley ever adorned the walls of our home. But, I was also told on more than one occasion that I was sent to university to get an education, not to be a Black revolutionary- but she was already too late. I suppose I am not the only one who was given this schizophrenic script- be Black, be proud of your Blackness, but dont defend your Blackness too loudly, and certainly dont let it get in the way of a job. Like so many poor people, the job was the pot of gold; if you were middle class then it was a career. Both were code for keep your head down and dont make trouble with the white folks. Apartheid mentality dressed in tailored dresses and suits. And many of us took that script and we went into the world and we got things, lots of things. But I am not sure if we became better people-- which is always what we needed to be-- better, more courageous, more vociferously Black, more willing to be defiant, more willing to struggle and sacrifice for the next generation. We children, by and large, reflect our generations learned evasion of our history of struggle and sacrifice. Like our parents, we have more things and like them, sadly, not becoming better people because the generation before us has passed on a inter-generational legacy of laissez-faire negritude and consumer driver Black nationalism, where the goal is not to be free, but to purchase a reasonable facsimile of freedom. Hold our children, our grandchildren and our children in our communities close and tell them of the Black heroes who could fly, and then watch as you slowly begin to soar in their eyes. And they decide to follow your example and begin to fly too.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 06:36:26 +0000
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