Whiteness, Symbols and Racial Context

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Affirmative Action, Class Privilege, Colorblind Racism, Colorblindness, Entitlement, Individual Racism, Individualism, Institutional Racism, Privilege, Racial Assumptions, Racial Context, Racial Stereotypes, Racism, Structural Racism, Symbolism, Symbols, Whiteness

The Matrix (1999) meme (only, the “What if I told you” part is incorrect) featuring Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, May 21, 2014. (http://imgflip.com).

For most Whites, racism’s an individual thing. For most Whites, Racism must be obvious. For most Whites, racial bias can only be a deliberate choice. For most Whites, racism’s not infused in the fabric of American culture, or baked into America’s institutions, or infused in its very political and economic structure. Of course, these “most Whites” are just plain wrong. What scares them on this issue — maybe even more than actually using the words “race” or “racism” — is the possibility that though racism is learned, that it also isn’t a decision. It’s an assumption, or really, many layers of assumptions. Of “rights.” Of entitlement. Of privilege. Of being special. Of being colorblind. Of folks knowing their place, and they as Whites knowing where to place these folks.

As I wrote in another social media context last week, part of the insidious nature of Whiteness — aside from its ability to morph over time — are the issues of symbolism and context. Racism for most is obvious and relies heavily on the most obvious of symbols, like in the case of hooded KKK members burning crosses, or in Donald Sterling‘s case, an elderly rich White guy whose Archie Bunker paternalism can be seen from space.

These incidents are the tip of the proverbial iceberg of race and racism in the US because most people of color exist outside the context that comes with Whiteness. For walking in Whiteness without any acknowledgement of one’s privilege — but with tons of assumptions of privilege — is the psychological and social equivalent of breathing and walking at the same time — one only thinks about it when forced to. If those Black and Brown are on TV in orange jump suits, it fits the narrative and context of Whiteness. If someone like me is a college professor in a predominantly White classroom, however, the context doesn’t fit the Whiteness playbook, and with that systems error, many of my White students manifest so many racial assumptions.

Writer, educator and NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on ABC’s This Week discussing NBA’s response to Donald Sterling’s racist statements, May 4, 2014. (http://www.politifact.com).

These out-of-context scenarios occur on individual and institutional scales. Like having White co-workers only recognize me in the context of being at work and at a desk, but being scared upon seeing me board an elevator with them five minutes after the end of a work day. Or in spotting me searching for something at a store, only to ask me to help them find something for them, assuming that I work there. Or in assuming that in the context of sports and entertainment, anyone Black or Brown with an IQ higher than 100 with verbal skills is “angry,” or is “too cerebral” to be successful, or has “an attitude problem.”

Then there’s the assumption that no matter one’s grades, test scores or degrees, that wee folk of color achieved all we have because of affirmative action, the symbol of so-called reverse racism in the US (talk about the narcissism and master-race assumptions of intelligence embedded in this line of reasoning!). For most of the history of Whiteness and racism in American history, this was an infrequent prospect. These days, these microaggressions and racist behaviors occur almost every moment of every day. Precisely because there are so many successful Black and Brown folks, at least in the semi-conscious mind of Whites in the midst of their own Whiteness. This despite the reality that these successful Black and Brown folks are only symbols of the very success that has eluded a broad majority of those of color.

Agent Mr. Smith (played by Hugo Weaving) about to explode, The Matrix (1999), May 21, 2014. (http://www.oocities.org/)

But the context here will rarely be obvious to those awash in Whiteness. Structural inequality and racism, institutional racism, even internalized racism — all confirm the world that most operating in Whiteness can see, precisely because this world is the one in which they are comfortable and virtually unchallenged. Challenging the very structures and institutions upon which Whiteness has been built is like trying to metaphorically deconstruct The Matrix. Most living in Whiteness don’t want to wake up, For waking up would obliterate their world, their very understanding of their existence. And that’s too high a price for recognizing racism and inequality, and their own inadvertent hand in both.

What Can Brown Do For You (Now)?: 60 Years Come & Gone

16 Friday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Eclectic, Politics, race

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Affirmative Action, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Colorblind Racism, Coma, Desegregation, Diversity, DNR, Higher Education, Integration, K-16 Education, Life Support, Public Education, Racial Diversity, Racial Inequality, Racism, Re-segregation, Resegregation, Schuette v. Coalition (2014), Supreme Court, Supreme Court decisions, Whiteness

What can brown do for you?, Brown Squadron, Relay for Life, 2007. (http://www.behance.net/).

Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the great Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision (1954), a Monday that lived in infamy among White supremacists in the South for decades, as the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional basis for Jim Crow segregation by a 9-0 vote. But six decades later, the Brown decision is in a coma and on life support, with a DNR order hanging over it, waiting for a close relative to sign. This after the Supreme Court ruled in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (2014) last month that states like Michigan can amend their constitutions via majority vote to ban affirmative action. With this 6-2 decision, the Roberts court effectively ended any serious efforts at racial inclusion and diversity in public institutions, especially public K-16 education.

While deliberate exclusion of people of color, women and other minorities from America’s public institutions remains unconstitutional (and illegal, by the way — see the Civil Rights Act of 1964), this last court decision has now made it possible for public institutions to refrain from making any effort to include anyone other than White males in admissions and hiring policies. Yet there has been a long road to travel for us to reach this point, as it has taken lobbyists, law makers and lawyers roughly forty years to wound, disable and incapacitate Brown.

Bill Schuette, (Michigan’s attorney general), with Jennifer Gratz (of Gratz v. Bollinger decision [2003] and the XIV Foundation), outside Supreme Court, Washington, DC October 2013. (Susan Walsh/AP via New York Times).

If one were old enough to remember the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg decision (1971) — the one where the Supreme Court upheld widespread busing as a methodology for public school integration — it would have seemed that the matter was settled, at least legally. After all, in the seventeen years between Brown and Swann, the court had consistently ruled in favor of policies that made racial integration the centerpiece of a strategy to bring equal opportunity to America’s public institutions. And especially during President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s administration and with Congress, between the Civil Rights Act (now weeks away from turning fifty), the Voting Rights Act (1965), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) and the Higher Education Act (1965), it seemed that segregation was itself about to be dead and buried.

Well, segregation — and the structural and institutional racism that supports it — is alive, as much as the evil undead can be alive and unwell. And the forces and people who never wanted desegregation — or worse, integration — in the first place have worked my entire lifetime for this moment. They simply took the NAACP’s legal strategy to end Plessy with Brown, just so they could strangle it while sleeping, right through the Supreme Court. Including the:

– Milliken v. Bradley decision (1974). Limited desegregation efforts in Detroit to its city limits, making it possible for suburban areas to refuse to partake in school desegregation efforts across the country.

– Bakke v. University of California at Davis decision (1978). Racial quotas for seats at colleges via admission policies found unconstitutional – race can be accounted for as part of admissions decisions, but no actual numbers should be involved.

– Missouri v. Jenkins decision (1995). Forcing the Kansas City school district to spend $200 million per year since 1990 (after 13 years of court battles) for magnet schools and busing was too much (beyond court’s remedial authority) — and forced the lower court to accept a less expensive (and less effective) desegregation plan.

– Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger decisions (2003). The split decisions upheld race as one of a plethora of criteria public higher education institutions like the University of Michigan Law School and the University of Michigan (undergraduate division) could use in their admission process, as racial diversity and equity remained a laudable goal. But the court ruled that ranking race and other factors with a numbers system was the equivalent of a quota system, making this formula — but not the policy — unconstitutional.

Flatlining EKG, March 2010. (http://potashinvestingnews.com/).

Now Brown is truly hanging by a thread, and with it, the ideal of racial equality and equality of opportunity for visible minorities. I don’t want to hear about the Texas state system’s socioeconomic admissions policies or Richard Kahlenberg’s tired argument about getting at racial diversity through the economic. Most poor students can’t afford even public institutions like the University of Texas at Austin, and Kahlenberg’s center-right argument disguises the issue of racial and economic inequality in K-12 public education.

Let’s face it while we’re still fighting — and yes, we need to keep fighting on this front. On this issue, the folks on the side of colorblind racism and segregation have all but won. Brown may well remain the most important Supreme Court decision in the history of the US. With the Schuette decision, though, we might as well find a priest to administer last rites.

AP US History Exam Day & Harold Meltzer

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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AP, AP American History, AP US History, AP US History Exam, Appreciation, College Board, Coping Strategies, ETS, Exam Day, Harold Meltzer, Kaplan, Mentoring, Photographic Memory, Princeton Review, Privilege, Self-Discovery, Teaching and Learning

AP Day (cropped), May 9, 2014. (Tim Needles/http://artroom161.blogspot.com/).

Twenty-eight years ago on this day/date, I was on my way to Mount Vernon High School, listening to Mr. Mister, Simple Minds, Sting and Whitney along the way. I was a few minutes away from a three-hour exam that could change my future. It wasn’t exactly the sunniest or warmest of days, though. That second Tuesday in May ’86 was brisk and heavy with clouds, a high of only 52°F. Still, with the way I felt that morning, May 13th might as well have been sunny with a high of seventy-two.

I’ve written about my AP US History exam experience and Harold Meltzer ad nauseum here in this blog, as well as in Boy @ The Window. How I felt in the months and weeks before the exam. My expectations for a “5” and what that meant in comparison to taking something much less representative of the college experience, like the SAT. My perspective on my AP classmates and the general sense of obnoxious whining that permeated our classroom in throughout March and April ’86, and in whispers the following year. The keys to my academic success, and me being conscious of those keys, for the very first time. And, of course, the mentoring and tutelage of the late Harold Meltzer, the only teacher after elementary school who took a genuine interest in my development as a human being, not just in my grades or in my intellectual abilities.

I was a high school junior whom, at sixteen years old, had more wisdom about what would leave me well prepared for college than most parents, teachers and so-called education reformers possessed in ’86 or in 2014. Taking Algebra in eighth grade, AP courses in eleventh and twelfth grade, accelerated math and science classes all through high school. I knew even then that the APUSH exam was far more representative of my academic preparation than any SAT score would indicate, no matter how high.

AP US History For Dummies cover (2008), May 13, 2014. (http://bookoutlet.com/).

Yet I’ve found myself in debates with folks in recent months over an issue that’s been well settled in the education world for more than a decade. Over a single four-digit score that many thought should be the difference between going to an elite school and attending a no-name local technical institute. These folks refused to recognize what even the College Board and ETS recognize. That social class and racial privilege have been infused in the SAT process for years, with so many students taking SAT-prep courses at Princeton Review and Kaplan being all the prima facie evidence I need.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Advanced Placement (or International Baccalaureate, for that matter) is much better. But in terms of the actual amount of time spent in direct preparation, with the right teacher, even an impoverished Black kid like I was could attend a public school with a magnet program and earn a “5” — without spending $1,500 on Kaplan or Princeton Review.

Enough on that. Today, I can truly say that AP US History Exam ’86 Day was a fundamentally important milestone for me. It sealed the deal I made for myself in the midst of the summer of abuse, to get out of 616, out of Mount Vernon, and into college. Thanks Humanities. Thanks, Mr. Meltzer. Thanks, classmates. And, thank God!

My First Adult Job Interview, Teachers College

12 Monday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Upper West Side, Work, Youth

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Barnes & Noble, Beacon Theater, Calling, CMU, Disillusionment, Finishing Second, Hotel Beacon, job interview, Job Talk, Joe William Trotter Jr., PTSD, Racial Harassment, Rage, Steven Schlossman, Teachers College, Walking While Black, Writer, Writing

Teachers College today, West 120th (between Broadway and Amsterdam), New York, NY, April 15, 2014. (http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/).

Seventeen years ago this week (check the calendar – the days and dates coincide with the week of May 12-18, ’97) was perhaps one of the most euphoric and bitterly disappointing weeks in my entire adult life. It was such a strange week that it forced me into second guessing myself and my path in life for many years afterward.

But it didn’t start out that way. On Monday, May 12th, I did my very first post-doctoral interview, for an assistant professor position at Teachers College (Columbia’s school of education) in Morningside Heights (West Harlem, really). I’d flown in from Pittsburgh the evening before, and stayed at the Hotel Beacon at Teachers College’s expense, because Monday was going to be a very long day. It was loud that Sunday night, as there was some event at the Beacon Theater. But somehow, I had just enough discipline and memories of New York’s smells and sounds to fall asleep comfortably.

My day started at 8:30 am, so of course, I was up before seven. I put on my one and only suit — at least, the only suit I owned that fit my six-three, 215-pound frame — went over my job talk on multiculturalism, and went on my pensive way to the 72nd Street Subway entrance on Broadway. It was a meat-packed ride to 125th Street, where I had to get off (I had forgotten to walk down to 66th Street to catch the local 1 instead of the express 2 train) and walk the six or so blocks to Teachers College.

Original control house (left) and newer control house, on opposite sides of 72nd Street (IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line), New York, NY, April 13, 2010. (Gryffindor via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

After that, my day was an eight-hour blur, meeting with faculty, grad students and deans. Making sure not to eat too much while being grilled with questions over lunch. Giving my job talk and making sure to tell jokes, to bring up facts relevant to this history of education job, and, of course, to smile. Talking with grad students about how I finished my 505-page dissertation in twenty-seven months, about my teaching style and about growing up in Mount Vernon. It was as intense a process as I had expected it to be, but I felt at the end that I’d done everything possible to get the job.

I knew that I was one out of only five candidates invited to interview, out of over 500 applicants. I even had the chair of the History Department, Steve Schlossman, lobby on my behalf for the job, prior to my interview. And, despite my former advisor in Joe Trotter, I’d managed to put together a group of letters from folks that should’ve passed muster. All I could do after the interview was wait.

But life didn’t wait to intervene. After leaving the interview for the hotel, I changed into my more casual clothing, jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt, and went off to Tower Records and Barnes & Noble on 66th and Broadway, and later, Haagan Dazs (that last one was a big gastrointestinal mistake!).

From the moment I walked in the door at Barnes & Noble until I left a half-hour later, a Latino security guard tailed me as I perused books in the African American nonfiction, Cultural Studies and Music sections of the store, across three floors. As I walked out, I walked up to the guard and said

“While you were stalking me, you probably let half a dozen White folks slip out of here with books and CDs. Did you learn anything while you were watching me?”

“I was just doing my job,” the dumb-ass security guard said in response.

“Well, if following a Black guy around for thirty minutes is part of your job, you deserve to lose your job,” I said to him as I walked out.

It was a bit of a harbinger of things to come. I was more pissed off about these everyday slights — or, rather, microaggressions — than I’d been before Trotter and my doctorate. And I was less patient about waiting for what I wanted than I’d been as a grad student.

What your second-place prize often looks like, May 12, 2014. (http://www.wmciu.org.uk/).

Three weeks later, I received a reimbursement check for my travel and other expenses, and within twenty-four hours, a call from the search committee chair. I’d finished second for the job. Second! To whom, I still don’t know. The chair kept telling me, “you didn’t do anything wrong…you did a very good set of interviews,” as if those compliments would pay my rent next month. I was disappointed, hopeful, but disappointed. It was my first shot, my best shot, and I’d given my best effort. “What now?,” I thought.

It’s a question that I still must ask seventeen years, two books and two careers later. I’ve long since realized that the question of what my life would’ve been like if I’d gotten the Teachers College job was moot, because my issues were about more than finding work. I still would’ve been unhappy, with a New York-esque rage to go with it.

So I counted my blessings, and I count them still. Not getting this particular job bought me the time and energy I needed. I needed that time, to see myself as the writer I also wanted to be, not just the educator and thinker I already knew I was. A better, more personable, more revealing and feeling writer than the cold and metallic one that grad school and Trotter helped turn me into by the end of ’96.

Last Dance, The Last Class

09 Friday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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"Last Dance" (1979), Boredom, CMU, Coming-of-Age, Coursework, Department of HIstory, Donna Summer, Grad School, Growing Up, Loneliness, Pitt, Single-Minded, Student Life

The late Donna Summer, album cover, circa 1979, May 9, 2014. (http://digboston.com/).

Twenty years ago on this date was my last formal class as a formal student, a grad course at Carnegie Mellon with Kate Lynch on Comparative Urban History. I spent that evening of my last day of classes polishing up a twenty-five page research essay that compared the development of public housing practices in Toronto, Berlin and Chicago. It was too ambitious a paper, especially given that I did all the research for it in the final four weeks of that semester, after spending a week at AERA (American Educational Research Association) in New Orleans presenting on a panel and networking, and two days meeting the Gill side of my extended family for the first time. I just wanted to get it done, though.

I made my final edits to my introduction and argument and to a few of my citations and references just before 9:30 pm that second Monday in May ’94. I was working in a computer lab in Wean Hall, using one of the rare PCs on campus. Rare because Carnegie Mellon had made a ridiculous deal with Apple back in ’83 to be a Macintosh campus — a terrible move if you were using Macs in the 1990s.

Apple Macintosh II Computer, April 15, 2004. (Alexander Schaelss via Wikipedia). Released via GNU FDL/CC-SA-3.0.

Normally I wrote my papers on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus, as my alumnus status gave me access to computers and Hillman Library. Plus, it took Pitt almost a year to shut down my grad school accounts, allowing me to make thousands of copies of materials that I would’ve needed a month’s worth of my stipend to make at Carnegie Mellon’s Hunt Library. And, even after a year of torture and courses, nearly all of my friends and interests remained across the bridge connecting Oakland and Pitt with Schenley Park and the southern end of Carnegie Mellon’s campus.

Once I completed my paper, I walked over to Baker Hall, went up to the second floor, and dropped it off for Lynch to review and grade. It was all over but the dissertation overview defense and the dissertation itself. I was happy, but I was more relieved than happy. The last year of transferring to and doing coursework at Carnegie Mellon had taken a toll on me. For the first time ever, I found myself actually hating classes and school in general. Sure, there were individual teachers and professors I despised. Dr. Demontravel. David Wolf. Estelle Abel. Dick Ostreicher. But not the formal process of classroom learning itself. It took a year of redundant courses at CMU at the insistence of the powers that were to steal that immutable joy of learning from me. At least, temporarily.

I thought about it the next day. My first day of kindergarten was September 8, ’74, which meant that I had experienced twenty school years between the ages of four and twenty-four. For virtually all of my life, I’d been a student, from kindergarten to PhD, between Presidents Nixon and Ford and Bill Clinton. I had done several thousand assignments, hundreds of exams, and dozens of papers and essays. Combining undergrad and grad school, I’d taken fifty-eight (58) courses. It’s a wonder I hadn’t tired of listening to mercurial professors any sooner.

Keep Calm and Hate School poster, May 9, 2014. (http://keepcalmstudios.com).

Keep Calm and Hate School poster, May 9, 2014. (http://keepcalmstudio.com).

I spent the next few days doing something I normally didn’t have time for. I slept in late, took lots of naps, and watched my Knicks play and struggle with the Jordan-less Bulls in the NBA’s second round of playoffs. It would be the most rest I’d have for the rest of ’94.

Two decades later, and I’ve taught nearly as many courses as I took to earn my bachelors, masters and doctorate. I do like the view of a classroom — in-person or virtual — from the instructor’s perspective. But I learned so much about being a teacher, too, from what to do and what not to do, long before my final semesters at Carnegie Mellon. Ms. Griffin, Mrs. Shannon, Mrs. O’Daniel, Mrs. Bryant, Harold Meltzer were great counterbalances to the teachers/professors who were as inspiring as watching paint dry in a desert.

There Are No White Liberals — Really

07 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion

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Affirmative Action, Anti-Racism, Centrism, Colorblindness, Conservatives, Egalitarianism, Jessie Daniels, Joe Feagin, Mark Naison, Progressives, Race Card, Racism, Radical Conservatism, Right Wing, Social Justice, Tim Wise, White Liberals

Stephen Colbert meets with members of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Washington, DC, June 30, 2011. (Yuri Gripas via http://slate.com).

What I’ve learned in recent months from Twitter, Facebook, The Atlantic and The New York Times, from recent Supreme Court decisions, and from attempts to justify oligarchy and bigotry, is the following. That the term “White liberal” is a media falsehood, meant to create a distinction without any significant differences. That most White liberals are “liberal” by default, only because they’re not conservative — or really, reactionary — enough. That most Whites who see themselves as liberal also believe in colorblindness as a racial philosophy or refuse to acknowledge their own privilege of Whiteness and structural racism as major obstacles on the path toward an egalitarian society. And that people who look and write like me can and should be ignored, precisely because I’m Black and underprivileged by default.

There are in fact Whites who do acknowledge the privilege of their own Whiteness, who do understand the gigantic barriers of structural racism, institutional and individual racism. Some of those are leftists, many more, though, are racists who have fully embraced Whiteness as their cloak of superiority. Hence Donald Trump, Donald Sterling (heck, maybe even Donald Duck), Paul Ryan, Cliven Bundy, Tom Perkins, and, if you’re aware of recent racism rows in the UK, Jeremy Clarkson.

There are the rare handful, though, who are leftist enough to have also become active on the anti-racism front. I’m lucky to count quite a few of them as friends, or at least, colleagues. Some of these folks, whether Tim Wise or Mark Naison, Jessie Daniels or Joe Feagin, sure enough, do acknowledge that their rare enlightenment has its limits, that they, too, can and do get it wrong sometimes in discussing race and racism. They even acknowledge that they have Whiteness and other -isms, that they aren’t perfect or in need of a pedestal because they’ve managed to look past their privilege to be radical leftists.

Colorblind racism cartoon, February 27, 2013. (Gabriel Ivan Orendain-Necochea/Daily Sundial via http://sundial.csun.edu).

That leaves this fairly large plurality of Whites who see themselves as “liberals,” but refuse to realize that they are liberals because they aren’t fearful or hateful enough to be right-wingers. Politically, they’re basically centrists, folks who don’t want to rock the boat on any issues involving social class, social mobility or structural inequality. They may care about a green planet, recognize that evolution is real and climate change is man-made, but will still see racism as an individual issue, and not one baked into the bricks and mortar of our society and its institutions.

These are the media standard “White liberals,” ones who care more about an individual White guy who uses the N-word on TV than they do about a White supremacist terrorist shooting up a community center or a place of worship. In fact, the media and these liberals will all but refuse to use the word “terrorist” in reference to systemic White violence against communities of color or those of different religious backgrounds. They’ll be the ones who’ll start with the sentence, “I don’t care if you’re black, white, green or red…,” as if racism were a simple matter of melanin, and not material and psychological advantages that begin at conception and end well after death. Not to mention, there aren’t any actual “green” or “red” skin-colored humans.

Yet, despite their colorblindness, they couldn’t possibly conceive of Blacks and Latinos smart enough to make it to an elite college without the handout of affirmative action, or of large numbers of people of color in positions of leadership in business and in politics, or of a feminism without the contradiction of femininity. For that matter, so-called colorblind White “liberals” still find it easy to call race a “card” that people of color pull out only when it’s somehow convenient for us, or lament the need for historically Black colleges and universities or other Black institutions. Some have even argued for a White History Month, which is ridiculous, considering how Whiteness is ever-present (kind of like the way the most religious of Christians think about God).

So, after four and a half decades as a born and bred American, I’ve realized that the average White liberal is not only not a leftist, Marxist or an anti-racist. That not only that the media labels them as “liberals” by default. But that they are as much to blame for our sorry state of affairs regarding race in America as Frazier Glenn Miller, Wade Michael Page, the NYPD, the LAPD, evangelical Christianity and those Southern Democrats who became Republicans between 1964 and 1994.

When Nightmares Go Nuclear

03 Saturday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, High Rise Buildings, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, music, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Youth

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"99 Luftballons" (1983), Dreams, Ebony Pictorial History of Black America (1974), Lerone Bennett, Mrs. O'Daniel, Nena, Nightmares, Nuclear Annihilation, Nuclear War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Subliminal Messages, Terminator 2 (1991), Textbooks, The Day After (1983), Whiteness

Color version of mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945. (http://www.mphpa.org via US Army Air Force). In public domain.

I find myself seeing bright orange, yellow and white lights filling the sky and obscuring everything around me. It doesn’t matter whether I’m above ground, at home, at school or work, or on a Subway platform underground in New York. Once these lights hit, it’s over. I find myself no longer in my body, for it no longer exists. Yet I still have eyes with which to witness. Through a purple haze, the intense heat, literally searing, melting and vaporizing flesh and bone. A shock wave, crushing and churning the world all at once. Spirits once safely in bodies are now on the same plane of this new existence with me, all watching as the light, the heat and the supersonic shock wave tear into our former world. Where do we go from here, as the world is no more?

That’s a milder version of a nightmare that has been with me now off and on for thirty-four years. I’m sure that I was among the hundreds of millions of folks in the West whom dreamt often of a nuclear nightmare. It was during the final phase of the Cold War, with Soviet and American aggressions, Reagan’s presidency, and a renewed arms race. All made the prospect of “99 Luftballons” (1983) and the launch of 1,000 nuclear tipped ICBMs and SLBMs and one billion or more dead a dreadful, gnawing fact that I couldn’t do a damn thing about.

Screen shot from The Day After (November 1983) ABC movie, presumably suburban Kansas City, MO/KS, October 21, 2007. (Stout/NY Times).

The very first time I fully understood the dangerous and fatal that defined this world was toward the end of fifth grade, in May ’80. It was an early May Thursday in Mrs. O’Daniel’s classroom at William H. Holmes Elementary in Mount Vernon, New York, a bright, sunny spring day. We were in independent reading mode, and Mrs. O’Daniel had given me permission to read ahead in our social studies textbook, which focused on American history.

We had left off with the Great Depression and all of the suffering that came with it. Of course, this was a collective history, one which didn’t even have the special sufferings of people of color or women in blue boxes — yet. So Whites represented all Americans. This wasn’t something I picked up on in ’80, at least consciously. But luckily, between Lerone Bennett’s edited three-volume Ebony Pictorial History of Black America (1974) at home and Mrs. O’Daniel constantly supplementing our knowledge at school, I was more aware of the deficiencies of textbooks long before I could articulate them.

As I turned the pages and read about the great battles of World War II, the horrors of Pearl Harbor and the gathering of the righteous power of the US to win the war, I suddenly saw something that shook me to my core. It was the picture of the atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud hovering over Nagasaki like death itself. It was in full color, bright and yellow and white, and obviously hot and broiling. The camera shot had managed to capture some of the landscape below, the area surrounding Nagasaki an August summer green. As I read about the 70,000 killed instantly at Hiroshima, an area the size of Mount Vernon completely flattened by a bomb that at its core had only a few pounds of weapons-grade uranium, I was frightened. I could be dead at a moment’s notice, or worse, suffer from radiation burns and sickness, in which case I’d truly be among the walking dead.

But this was only one phase of my nightmare. As things at 616 went from stable to completely out of control, my nuclear nightmares became more frequent. It seemed like there was a nuke for every day of the week during my last year as a Hebrew-Israelite. Watching The Day After on ABC in November ’83 didn’t help matters, but I also couldn’t help myself. I was both repulsed by and attracted to the idea of nuclear annihilation and survival. Maybe because I was already living through one hell of a disaster at 616.

Cropped screen shot of Los Angeles at beginning of nuclear strike, from Terminator 2 (1991), May 3, 2014. (http://youtube.com).

My nuclear nightmares continued at nearly daily pace until after I saw Terminator 2 in June ’91. At that point, I realized that my nightmares weren’t so much about the plausibility of surviving a nuclear holocaust as they were about surviving my own preteen and teenage years. It occurred to me there are worse things in life than dying, and like surviving nuclear war, surviving a violent and unstable childhood like mine has significant side effects. I could be occasionally be up, I was much more frequently down, I could occasionally fly into a rage. And I could have recurring nightmares of me murdering my now dead ex-stepfather. All signs of PTSD.

Realizing this, I took control over my dream world, and managed to push my plutonium-tipped dreams into a box, along with so many things from my decade of evangelistically twisted fire and brimstone from two religions. I still watch end-of-the-world movies, though without the extreme fervor of dream-based certainty of suffering a lingering death. Though I do often find it funny how White fears permeate these movies.