Diversity Isn’t As Simple As Reaching Out To HBCUs

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Politics, race, Work, Youth

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Academy for Educational Development, Admissions, Black Students, Carnegie Mellon University, Center for American Progress, Diversity, Diversity Solutions, Enrollement, Graduation, HBCUs, Hiring Process, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Latino Students, Montgomery County MD, Montgomery County Public Schools, Panacea, Predominantly White Institutions, PWIs, STEM Fields, Tokenism, University of Pittsburgh, White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Founders Library, Howard University, Washington, DC, April 9, 2006. (David Monack via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

There were many things that made me want to holler during my graduate school days two decades ago. One of them was constantly hearing that there were no students or faculty of color to be found because no one Black or Brown was qualified, or “in the pipeline,” or interested in this field or that field. I’d hear this at meetings on Pitt’s campus, at meetings on Carnegie Mellon’s campus, at conferences like the American Education Research Association’s annual meeting, at other academic conferences and settings.

Thank goodness those days are over. Now most of us realize there’s a few folks Black and Latino to find in almost every career option. But a new excuse for lack of diversity in higher education and on the job front has come up in meetings, at conferences, and in conversations, at least in terms of solutions. In job interviews, at local meetings regarding Montgomery County Public Schools, at Center for American Progress conferences on K-12 reform, at my previous jobs with the Academy for Educational Development and in other settings. The way to solve the diversity problem seems to come down to one prescriptive. “We need to reach out to HBCUs.”

So, it all comes down to the 110 or so Historically Black Colleges and Universities to solve the lack of diversity problem facing K-12 education, higher education, STEM careers, social justice nonprofits, public service, civic education, journalism, international development and foreign service, among other sectors? Really? Statistics over the past twenty years have shown that about twenty percent of all African American undergraduate students attend HBCUs. Statistics also show that about eleven percent of all Blacks who complete a four-year degree do so at a HBCU. According to the latest data from the US Department of Education (in conjunction with the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities), nearly 30,000 Blacks graduated with either a two-year or four-year degree from an HBCU in 2011.

The interesting thing about this initiative is that it has existed in some form or another since President Jimmy Carter signed the original executive order creating it in 1980, with every president contributing to it or strengthening it since then. This White House initiative has always been about helping HBCUs build their capacities for admitting, enrolling and graduating more African American students. Yet there’s a huge snag around the capacity of HBCUs to meet the goal to bring the number of undergraduate degrees produced on par with the overall 2020 goal of making the US the number one producer of college graduates again. It would mean that HBCUs would be responsible for graduating 166,713 students a year by 2020.

Besides the reality that this is a near-impossible goal for most HBCUs– most lack the resources necessary

Old New York City Subway token, phased out (like notion of token Black ought to be), May 30, 2005. (Jessamyn West via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

to admit and enroll so many students — there’s a couple of trends being ignored by the worlds of work and academia. HBCUs aren’t some untapped resource that folks at predominantly White institutions and in various fields suddenly discovered in the late-1990s and the ’00s. HBCU graduates have been working in all of these fields that have lacked diversity in terms of demographics and ideas for years.

With only eleven percent of all Black graduates, few, if any, fields will benefit from the one-shot solution they hope HBCUs will provide. Unless the goal of a school district, a social justice organization or a business is only to hire one, a ’70s-era goal in the 2010s that’s hardly worth a sentence of my time.

The other trend is the overall trend of the kinds of higher institutions African Americans attend. About half of all Black undergraduates — traditional students, adult learners and first-generation students — enroll at two-year schools, community colleges and for-profit institutions (the last a black hole if one’s expecting students to actually graduate). Which means that about thirty percent of all African American students — about 600,000 in all — attend predominantly White four-year institutions.

It’s not as if folks in leading positions propose that to increase the number of Latinos in certain fields, the answer would somehow lie in the couple of dozen Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), right? Or that to bring more women into the STEM fields, that a singular strategy would involve outreach to Sarah Lawrence, Spelman, Bryn Mawr, and Vassar? At least one would hope not.

It seems that a multi-pronged approach to addressing diversity issues for a school district, a technical field, the nonprofit sector or academia needs to be in order. One that starts much earlier, like in elementary school. One that doesn’t treat Black students at predominantly White institutions as a foregone conclusion, and HBCUs as a panacea.

But somehow, I’ll find myself at another meeting in the near future, hearing from some leader or official about their efforts to address diversity by contacting HBCUs as their one and only solution. A conversation that I find myself dreading more and more.

Milk-N-Things

21 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, race, Youth

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Adulthood, Black Males, Coming-of-Age, Discrimination, Fear of Black Males, Frank Sinatra, Hutchinson River Parkway, Milk-n-Things, Pelham New York, Persecution, Race, Racism, Shopping While Black

Major fire Sunday evening at F&Y Store (formerly Milk-n-Things), Grand Cleaners, Pelham, New York, March 9, 2008. (PelhamWeekly.com). Qualifies as fair use because of low resolution of picture and subject of this blog post.

As most folks who aren’t Black males have learned in the past couple of months, part of our collective coming-of-age story involves this sordid and cruel rite of passage to manhood. One in which people we’ve known since childhood suddenly start to treat us as if we’ve committed a crime or an unpardonable sin. No matter how smart, how tall or short, how athletic or waif-like, this ritual has continued unabated in American culture for as long as there have been free Black males living their lives.

My whole year between my seventeenth and eighteenth birthday in ’87 was like that. Between a crossing guard I’d know since third grade, some of my classmates, my idiot Mount Vernon High School principal, the late Richard Capozzola (see post “Capo, Mi Capo” from September ’09) and Tower Records (see my post “Why Black Men Carry A Public Anger” from March ’12). I was constantly shown through their eyes how my man-sized Black body was a threat to them.

One of the bigger kickers that year was an incident at the former Pelham, New York mini-mart Milk-n-Things. It was in a strip mall across the street from a Mobil gas station, off a Hutchinson River Parkway exit, just across the bridge on East Lincoln connecting Mount Vernon to Pelham. The store was two doors down from the laundromat in which we washed our clothes every week (or just about) between ’78 and ’87, and next to Hutchinson Elementary School and Pelham Library.

I’d been shopping there on my own since ’77, before I’d started third grade. Over the years, I’d gotten used to the smell of cheap cologne, the noise of broken Italian and Brooklyn-ese as spoken by the Hair Club for Couples, the people who owned Milk-n-Things. Not to mention their love of all things from the ’50s, especially with a gigantic picture of Frank Sinatra on the wall that greeted customers upon entrance. By the time I was fourteen, it dawned on me that these folks may have been mobbed up, but what did that matter to me?

Then one day in April ’87, the Italian folks who owned Milk-n-Things reacted to me as if they’d never seen me before. As usual, I went there to buy a few groceries late in the evening, somewhere around 9 pm, when C-Town had already closed. Milk, eggs and butter were among the things I planned to buy. When I got to the counter, the old Italian lady said, “I got you on camera.”

“On camera doing what?,” I asked without thinking.

“You know whatcha been up to. I got you stealing, thief,” she said as if she had another word in mind.

“There’s no way you could have me on camera. You might have someone else on camera, but I know I haven’t stolen a thing,” I said, as I felt both hurt and rage coming out of me.

“Get out of my store now before I call the cops!,” the woman yelled.

I left the groceries and took back my money, feeling persecuted. This was a store I’d been shopping at for ten years. Now this Frank Sinatra-worshiping bitch has the nerve to accuse me of stealing right out of the blue? “Fine,” I thought. “You’re not getting another dime of my money.” That was the last time I shopped there.

I actually didn’t step foot into the space again until ’06, during a Thanksgiving visit with family. By that time, it was no longer Milk-n-Things, and the Italians who owned the place had long since moved away. I went in, realized they had nothing I wanted, and left. No one walked up to me to check my pockets as I walked out. I was mildly surprised.

The Master’s – Too Young, Too Soon

14 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Politics, race, Youth

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Academic Politics, Comprehensive Exam, Department of HIstory, Doctoral Research, History Department, Larry Glasco, Lawrence Glasco, Master's Degree, Oral Exam, Paula Baker, Pitt, Self-Discovery, University of Pittsburgh, Van Beck Hall

The Masters 2011, 13th fairway and green, Augusta National Golf Club, Augusta, GA, April 6, 2011. (Ed-supergolfdude via Flickr.com). In public domain.

Twenty years ago today, I took my master’s oral exam and passed, and my committee recommended me into Pitt’s history doctoral program. It should’ve been a day of celebration, as I had knocked out a second degree two weeks shy of two semesters, in just seven and a half months. But, as with many euphoric events in my life, the other shoe dropped, one that led me down a road to a degree and betrayal from my eventual dissertation committee.

The two-hour comprehensive exam was easy enough. My advisor Larry Glasco (see my “Larry Glasco and the Suzy-Q Hypothesis” post from August ’11), along with Paula Baker (see my “Paula Baker and the 4.0 Aftermath” post from February ’12) and Van Beck Hall (department chair) made up my oral examination committee. Most of the questions weren’t about my research and coursework during the 1991-92 school year. They were about my potential dissertation topic and how I’d approach it from a coursework and research perspective. The first question was, in fact, “If we recommend you into the PhD program here, what would your research topic be?”

Needless to say, those questions put me at ease for finishing my master’s and moving forward into the world of the doctoral student. I waited anxiously for ten minutes before my committee came out of the conference room within the department to congratulate me on my performance. I managed to hide my smile as Paula and Hall shook my hand, knowing how easy it would be for professors to misinterpret relief and happiness for cocky arrogance.

NY Knicks' Jeremy Lin double-teamed by Dallas Mavericks, MSG, New York, February 19, 2012. (Trendsetter via Streetball.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of limited reproduction/distribution value.

It didn’t take long for Larry to burst my bubble, though. “You passed, but we’re going to have to slow you down,” he said. I was, according to at least one member of the committee, “moving way too fast,” at least that was what Larry followed up with. I was stunned. It was as if I’d done something wrong, as if I’d broken some golden rule around what age I should’ve been and how long I should’ve taken to do my master’s work.

I went home that Tuesday evening and tried not to think about what Larry had said. But that was all I could think about. How was it that I was to blame for knocking out a thirty-credit master’s program — including language proficiency requirement, master’s research and reading papers, and five graduate seminars — in two semesters? Or that I was only twenty-two when I did all of this? It didn’t seem fair that a history program as difficult as Pitt’s had professors who intended to make the path toward a PhD even more difficult for me.

I think that despite my DC trip and Georgetown University visit that March, that the night after my master’s oral exam was the first time I knew that it was time to leave Pitt for greener doctoral pastures. I liked Larry, and I generally trusted him. But given my history with the department (see my post “The Miracle of Dr. Jack Daniel” from May ’11), it seemed suicidal to try to complete a PhD there. I already knew that there were grad students there who had reached the dissertation stage in the early-70s — before I was in kindergarten — and had yet to finish. I also knew that Larry had about as much influence on departmental politics as I did.

Maybe it was too soon. Maybe I was too young. Maybe Larry was attempting to look out for my best interests. What I did know, though, flew in the face of all three of those assumptions. It really was time to move on.

Walking In New Orleans

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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1994, Absolut Vodka, AERA, American Educational Research Association, Armstrong Park, Bruce Anthony Jones, Career Development, Citron Lemonade, Conference Presentation, Identity Issues, In The Closet, New Orleans, Pralines, Presentation, Travel, Trips, Tulane

My AERA 1994 annual meeting program for New Orleans, April 11, 2012. (Donald Earl Collins).

Only in the past two decades have I done any travel worth mentioning (see “My First Vacation, Valedictorian Included” post from March ’12). When I have traveled, it’s mostly been for work or for career.

Some of my most significant career-related trips have been as a result of presentations at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meetings, which will be in Vancouver, British Columbia (I won’t be in attendance this year — too expensive, and other reasons beyond that). It is just about the largest gathering of academic professionals that I know of in the US/Canada, with 15,000-20,000 attendees and presenters.

Over the years, I’ve attended six AERA conferences, and presented at three (in ’94, ’96 and ’07). The first one, though, was the most memorable, for a variety of reasons. For one, I actually spent my first two days of this nine-day trip in Houston, as I managed to arrange a layover before heading out to New Orleans to visit the Gill side of my lineage for the first time (see my “We Are Family” post from April ’09). That was strange, mostly in a good way, as I could see my mother reflected in the eyes and accents of my uncles and cousins.

Holiday Inn, French Quarter, New Orleans, 2012. (Google Maps), where folks stayed for AERA 1994.

But New Orleans was a unique experience beyond my two days with my extended family in Houston. The night I arrived, there were five homicides, including at least two in the French Quarter. About an hour after I check in at the rundown Holiday Inn in which I roomed with my professor Bruce Anthony Jones, another professor, and a doctoral student from Pitt’s School of Education, we went for a walk on Bourbon Street. It was a nice, warm and breezy night for the walk, at least until I saw two people doing ballistic vomiting on a corner about two blocks from our hotel.

The next day, that Monday afternoon, was our presentation on multicultural education. We went and met up with another Pitt education doctoral student at some restaurant a couple of blocks away for lunch, all dressed up and ramped up for our presentations. It was sunny and warm at midday, the perfect day to eat outdoors. When we ordered, I hadn’t really noticed the fact that all of the drinks on the menu were alcoholic ones. I asked Bruce about the Citron Lemonade, and he said, “That’s a good choice.” Despite years around my alcohol dad, I didn’t know that the Citron part was Absolut Vodka with a lemon twist.

Apparently, neither did my fellow grad students. I was on my second one when I felt a serious buzz, before I

1-liter bottle of Absolut Citron Vodka, April 11, 2012. (Donald Earl Collins).

slowed down to savor the taste of lemons, sugar and vodka on my tongue. The other two students seemed similarly relaxed. I said to Bruce, “[y]ou didn’t tell me that this drink had vodka in it!” Bruce said to all of us in response, “but you’re all relaxed now, right?,” in reference to our presentation. His comment reminded me to look at my watch, which showed that our presentation was in fifteen minutes. We hurried to pay our bill, walked quickly to the Marriott, and did what turned out to be a solid presentation.

The business part of the week was over, but the rest of the week in New Orleans became a learning experience. I did an informational interview with two professors from Illinois State University, who told me to finish my doctorate at Carnegie Mellon. Barbara (one of the two Pitt doctoral students) and me checked out the blues and jazz bars in the Quarter, and went to Armstrong Park for an Afrocentric event that Saturday. I took the trolley out of downtown to the Tulane district and then back to experience more of the city. And I bought pralines on behalf of Kate Lynch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, who apparently loved the stuff.

But the most disturbing part of the trip occurred between that Friday morning and Sunday morning. The other Pitt grad student had been acting a bit strange during the week, spending less time at AERA, sleeping in late at our hotel, and showing no interest in hanging out with the rest of us. Then, he just disappeared. He packed up and left without a note and without paying his share of the hotel bill. We didn’t know until the following Tuesday that he had spent the weekend in Biloxi, Mississippi, allegedly hanging out on the beach.

I said to Bruce, “[m]aybe there was just too much testosterone in the room for him.” Bruce didn’t say anything, as he looked completely confused. I knew that at least one of the professors with whom we roomed was gay, and that Bruce was in the closet as well. I assumed, correctly as it turned out, that my grad student roommate bugged out because he needed a release from the tension he felt being around these professors. Me being heterosexual and spending the week at AERA and on the town, I didn’t notice that my fellow grad student was gay until after he’d disappeared himself.

It was a sad way to end such a wonderfully strange trip. New Orleans was a great city with a diverse culture and history, and despite Katrina and the city’s Whitening, maybe it still is. I just have no desire to return, as once was enough for me, good and bad.

Anatomy of An Abuser, Hebrew-Israelite Style

07 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, music, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Benson & Hedges Menthol, Blackness, Child Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Isshin-ryu Karate, Manhood, Psychological Abuse, Religion, The Jammers, Verbal Abuse

Abomination as played by Tim Roth, The Incredible Hulk (2008) screen shot, April 6, 2012. (http://www.comics2film.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws, as the image is only used once and is rendered in low resolution to avoid piracy.

This month marks thirty years since my idiot stepfather Maurice Washington first attempted to make me a man, a Black man, a Hebrew-Israelite man, all at the same time, through karate and physical abuse. But there were any number of signs that his conversion to this strange mix of Afrocentricity and Judaism wasn’t genuine, and that his re-entry into our lives as husband and father in April ’81 was teetering on the edge of disaster only twelve months later. At least for me, my older brother Darren, Maurice’s two young boys, and for my mother. Certainly not for him.

As early as September ’81, my chronically unemployed stepfather had started acting strange, expecting us to run errands for him without question or comment. Armed with the conviction that comes with a recent religious conversion (who during the early-80s was “Judah ben Israel;” see my “The Tyranny of Salvation” post from April ’11), Maurice began to demand that we call him “Dad.” We were required to wear our kufis whenever we left 616, which identified us immediately as our stepfather’s kids to our idiot 616 and 630 East Lincoln neighbors.

Maurice also made it mandatory for us to pray aloud every night, giving us a four-page, single-spaced document full of “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe…” lines to recite as part of our daily Black Jewish ritual. The first time we went through it, in both Hebrew and English, it took well over an hour. If we started to nod off, Maurice would slap us upside the head, or actually give us one of his “whuppins.”

His language was also changing, becoming coarser and more threatening as ’81 turned into ’82. For just asking, “Why?” or “What?,” my stepfather would often say, “Take that base outta ya voice, boy, before I cave yo’ chest in!” Maurice would sometimes sing his threats, bellowing “I’m gonna beat yo’ ass, jus’ like a car burns gas,” adding, “And you know that!” at the end. That last part was something he pulled from a song by a disco group called The Jammers. His language was worse now than it had been before he had separated from Mom eighteen months earlier. I found myself scratching my head, and not just because it itched.

By April, Maurice had become a hanger-on at a newly opened Karate studio down the street from 616, next

Benson & Hedges Menthol, hard green pack, April 6, 2012. (http://cigarettespedia.com).

door to the old dry cleaner business on East Lincoln Avenue. He made me come to the studio because he wanted to show me “how to be a man.” But when I saw him on my almost daily runs to the grocery store, he mostly hung out with young Turks and wannabe thugs from the Pearsall Drive projects across the street. Maurice smoked up a storm of Benson & Hedges Menthol while talking about women, being a Hebrew-Israelite, and about me as his kid, at least when I happened to walk by.

My stepfather made it known that he thought of me as soft, a boy who spent too much time in books and not enough time on New York’s mean streets. These despite the fact that we lived in Mount Vernon, a quietly violent city whose meanest streets were on the South Side, the part of town that bordered the Bronx. Not that 616 and the Pearsall Drive projects (consisting of six five-story buildings) down the street didn’t qualify as “mean.” They were tough by North Side standards, but at least people didn’t go into parks with baseball bats attempting to head hunt (see my “A Baseball Bat and a Father’s Absence” post from July ’11).

Maurice had tried to teach me and my older brother Darren Isshin-ryu Karate two years earlier. Despite myself, I did pick up a few moves. Now he decided that I would learn how to fight no matter the consequences. It was all about breaking bones and inflicting maximum pain. When I told Maurice that I didn’t want to learn, he said “You will learn because I’m your father” as he started to throw hard punches into my midsection.

Squidward losing to Seabear, SpongeBob camping episode, 2011, April 6, 2012. (Nickelodeon). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws due to picture's low resolution.

After I yelled “You’re not my father!,” he drop-kicked me to the floor. Maurice, all six-foot-one and 270 pounds of him, then pulled me up by my arms, slammed me back-first into a mirrored wall, and punched me several times in the head, chest, and stomach until several of the men in the studio surrounded him. My stepfather, completely exasperated and winded, yelled “Don’t you EVER say that again, muthafucka! I’ll kill you next time!” I ran for home with a knot on my forehead that didn’t go down for almost a week.

I was slowly learning a very valuable lesson (see my “Never As Good As The First Time” post from April ’11). I didn’t have control over anything in my life, even my emotions. I also learned to not trust Black men, especially fast talkers who thought with their fists and penises like dumb ass Maurice. It took several years for me to unlearn part of that second lesson, no thanks to him.

Peanuts Land

01 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Ass-Whuppin', Charles Schulz, Charlie Brown, Ebony Pictorial History of Black America, Grounding, Imagination, Inspiration, Intellectual Development, Lucy Van Pelt, Peanuts, Peanuts Gang, Reading, Running Away, Snoopy, World Book Encyclopedia, World War II

Snoopy and Charlie Brown taking a nap, circa 1964, March 10, 2012. (http://wallpaperpimp.com via United Features Syndicate). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution, subject matter and is no longer in production.

I loved Charles Schulz’ Peanuts comic strip and his Charlie Brown and Snoopy books growing up. From the time I turned seven all the way through sixth grade, they helped expand my mind and world beyond 616 East Lincoln Avenue, apartment number A32 and Mount Vernon, New York. So much so that when I had read all of the books available to me through Mount Vernon Public Library, I took the idea of Charlie Brown

Lucy and Charlie Brown, from a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, November 20, 1973. (http://billluton.com via United Features Syndicate). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution and subject matter.

to heart. I saw myself as the Black version of the lonely misfit of a kid, who could almost grab the brass ring but couldn’t quite hold on to it, who had some friends, but not close ones.

World Book Encyclopedia literally changed my life between December ’78 and April ’79. And with that change came my ability to use Charles Schulz’ Peanuts as the image in my mind’s eye for understanding it all. It was after running away from home to get away from my new stepfather, the now-and-forever abuser and idiot Maurice Washington, whom had married my mother in October ’78. Because my stepfather had pissed me off with another one of his rules, and because I knew that my guardians had already started to argue about money, I ran away from home. I packed two days’ worth of clothing and walked out with the plan that I would get to New Rochelle, find a boat, stowaway and eventually get to Europe or France. There, I could be free.

The Pelham Manor Police found me three-and-a-half hours later, having lured me into the squad car with the promise of hot dogs and orange soda. My mother gave me the belt-ass-whuppin’ of my life at the time, as it seemed to last forever, with her screaming, “You do this again, you won’t be around to cry about it!” I was on lockdown in me and my older brother Darren’s bedroom for six weeks afterward.

It was during those six weeks of no TV and no going outside that I decided to punish my mother and stepfather by ignoring them with books. I cracked open the “A” volume of the ’78 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia and began reading. And reading. And reading. “I’ll show them!,” I thought. Pretty soon I didn’t miss TV. I didn’t have lots of friends, so going out to play became less and less of a hardship. So I kept reading.

By the time I decided to go outside again, it was April ’79, well past my six-week grounding. But going

McDonald's Big Mac styrofoam container, 1975, February 27, 2011. (bolio88 via Flickriver.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws, as picture is for illustrative purposes only, and said container is no longer manufactured by McDonald.

outside to play for the first time in four months felt more alien to me that what I had been doing after reading sections of World Book Encyclopedia. I’d taken what I’d learned about city government, taxes, urban planning, population density, and created what I called “Peanuts Town” in our bedroom. Charlie Brown was the mayor, and Lucy Van Pelt was his wife. Snoopy, of course, was the deputy mayor and in charge of law enforcement. Once my father Jimme came back into our lives, I’d buy Matchbox cars to drive around the city, and created a restaurant and entertainment row of the city that included a McDonald’s Big Mac and Burger King fries containers as restaurants.

By the end of fifth grade in June ’80, my encyclopedic world view had expanded to include national and international issues, including history and World War II. And not just through World Book Encyclopedia, as I cruised through Ebony’s four-volume Pictorial History of Black America collection that spring also. I made “Peanuts Town” the capital of “Peanuts Land,” and Charlie Brown was the president. By this time, Charlie and Lucy had kids, just like I had a younger baby brother in Maurice.

Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace on his doghouse Sopwith Camel, circa 1964 (scanned from Thermos lunchbox), January 23, 2008. (Maravin via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution, with image no longer in production.

I made up maps of this country, including its natural resources and its naval bases. I’d make ships out of aluminum foil, stamped into shapes using the old, heavy wooden frame windows we had in our bedroom. I had made at least fifty battleships, aircraft carriers and cruisers, preparing for the Soviet threat. All without the prospect of nuclear war.

As I kept reading and using my imagination, my SRA tests for fourth and fifth grade confirmed that all of this deep thinking was paying off. I had raised my reading score from 3.9 (just barely at the fourth grade level) to a 7.4 (the equivalent of an above average seventh grader) by the end of fourth grade, and to an 11.0 by the end of fifth. A story of irony, imagination and naivete, the story of my young life, a boy at the window. One of success, of living, of wisdom and love and understand, of self-discovery, of all the things that makes one human.

Why Black Men Carry A Public Anger

21 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, High Rise Buildings, Mount Vernon High School, music, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Upper West Side, Youth

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Anger, Barnes & Noble, Bigotry, Black Males, Columbia University, Driving While Black, Fear, George Zimmerman, Lincoln Square, Manhattan, Murder, Racism, Teachers College, Tower Records, Trayvon Martin, Walking While Black, West Side

Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrested by Cambridge Police, Cambridge, MA, July 22, 2009. (http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/07/22/alg_henry-louis.jpg via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of historical significance of photo and topic and its poor resolution.

I hadn’t planned on posting this piece until June, when it will be twenty-five and fifteen years since my shopping while Black incidents literally a block apart on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But in light of the Trayvon Martin murder — and that’s what this is, a murder — at the hands of the racist vigilante George Zimmerman more than three weeks ago, it makes sense to do this post now.

Tower Records, 1961 Broadway (NW corner of 66th and Broadway, Lincoln Square), New York City, November 22, 2006. (Stuart Johnson via Flickr.com). In public domain.

Tower Records, Friday afternoon, June 19th, ’87, the day after I graduated from Mount Vernon High School (see more from my “The Day After” post from June ’08). With high school now over, I was in a celebratory mood. I took the 2 train from 241st to 72nd and walked the six short blocks to the great Tower Records on 66th. I had my latest Walkman, my first Sony Walkman, actually, and my book bag with my recent tape investments, including a few I’d bought at Tower Records the previous Friday. Investments like Fleetwood Mac’s Tango In The Night, Genesis’ Invisible Touch, and Glass Tiger (yes, Glass Tiger — absolutely terrible).

I went into the store and began to browse the R&B and Pop/Rock sections for tapes. There I noticed some plastic wrapping on the floor, as if someone had taken a tape out of its case and stolen it. While I thought about the wrapper on the floor, three White security guards came out of nowhere, grabbed me and dragged me to a storage room downstairs.

“We got you for stealing,” one of them said, presumably the store’s head of security.

“You don’t have me for anything. Is this because I’m Black?”

“Well, how do you explain the wrappers we found on the floor and the tapes in your bag?”

“The wrappers were on the floor when I got there and the tapes . . .”

“You’re going to jail, asshole, when we bring the cops in here!”

“First of all, I’m not going anywhere. The tapes are all mine, and some of them I bought in this store last Friday. I have the receipt at home. Don’t you have ways to verify my purchases?”

“We don’t believe you!”

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me. I’m under eighteen. You can’t hold me or turn me over to police without calling my parents. I’m not even from here, I’m from Westchester County, and my receipts are back home there.”

“If we were outside instead of in here, I’d slap you around, wise-ass!”

“Then I guess I’m the lucky one. Why don’t we check the receipts from your cash registers up front for my purchases from last Friday? I know they’ll show that I’m right and you’re wrong!”

The hotheaded White man who did all of the talking got up and made a threatening slap gesture with the back of his left hand before the other ones grabbed him and told him to calm down. They let me go. On my way out, I said, “I hope you learned that not every Black person coming in your store is a thief!” It would be ten years before I went into Tower Records again (of course, Tower Records went out of business in ’06).

That next time was May 12, ’97, and I had just finished a day-long interview for an assistant professor

Barnes & Noble, 1972 Broadway (NE corner of 66th and Broadway), New York City, December 30, 2010, three days before it closed. (Jim In Times Square via Flickr.com). In public domain.

position at Teacher College (Columbia University’s school of education). I had no problems as I browsed Tower Records for about twenty minutes. It was my first time there since the ’87 incident. Then I went across the street to the Barnes & Noble mega-store. From the moment I walked in the door 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 as I walked out, not to return until Christmas ’02.

Over the years, I have been stopped by police in Mount Vernon, Pittsburgh, DC and L.A., followed by police in Maryland, Pittsburgh and L.A., patted down by police at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, and followed by more security guards — including ones guarding those precious gated communities — than I’d ever care to count. My only crime was being a Black male in America’s public sphere.

Trayvon Martin in hoodie, March 19, 2012. (http://media.metronews.topscms.com/). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because photo is an illustration of one of the subjects of this post.

Like so many others, I could’ve easily been Trayvon Martin twenty-five, fifteen and even five years ago. This constant tightrope dance that we must do to make old White ladies and scared White guys and ig’nit Black folks feel comfortable. So that I’m not arrested, or maimed, or killed. So that I can go about the business of being me and making myself and the people in my life better. As Nathan McCall would say, it “makes me wanna holler.”

Short of moving to a nation not built on the imperialism and fear of Black males in particular, all I can do, for better and for worse, is to prepare my son for this very racial America in which we still live. And yes, that makes me angry.