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.

Carnegie Mellon Stamp of Approval

17 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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Advice, Barbara Lazarus, Book Reviews, CMU, Coursework, Doctoral Completion, Graduate School, Hazing, Joe William Trotter Jr., John Modell, Oral Comprehensive Exams, PhD, Pitt, Politics of Academia, Prayer, Stamp of Approval, Steve Schlossman, Sycophants, Torture

Approved rubbed stamp in green, March 17, 2014. (http://depositphotos.com).

Two decades ago on this date, I took my oral PhD comprehensive exam. It was on a cloudy Thursday, a day after a late afternoon shower had left a rainbow over the otherwise dreary campus. Like the day after that rainbow, the exam was anticlimactic, more indicative of what I’d learned in two years as a grad student at Pitt than in my two semesters at Carnegie Mellon.

Getting to this exam was sheer torture. Not because I didn’t understand historiography, or hadn’t read at least 230 books and countless articles since my first day of grad school. No, it was torturous because the powers that were had insisted to make my schedule more like the one of a first-semester grad student the previous fall.

I ended up with two courses that I didn’t want and didn’t need, especially since the History Department at CMU had told me that they had accepted all of my master’s and PhD credits from the University of Pittsburgh. Though I had taken four grad seminars in US history (not to mention CMU Professor Joe Trotter’s grad seminar in African American history the year before), I was taking a first-year student’s grad seminar in US history – again! I also had to take comparative working-class history seminar with a combination of anti-race Marxists and brown-nosing sycophants more interested in an A than in actual evidence-based historical interpretation.

Prostate exam from Family Guy (1999-2003, 2005-present) screen shot, July 17, 2013. (http://chattanoogaradiotv.com).

That, and being broke for most of the ’93-’94 school year — I took what amounted to a $2,000 stipend cut in my transfer from Pitt to CMU — made me pretty cranky my first six months at the home of elitist lily-Whiteness. There were days in those courses where I wanted to literally strangle some of my fellow grad students for being so dense (in the case of first-years) or for being so obviously fake in their praise of a given professor’s argument (in the case of two sycophants in particular). Only the late Barbara Lazarus and Trotter kept me grounded enough so that I didn’t spend every moment of Fall ’93 making voodoo dolls out of Steve Schlossman and John Modell for putting me through the hazing process.

Somewhere around the beginning of November ’93 — after some much-needed time in prayer — I began to realize a few things. One, that I’d already done so much reading on topics like immigration, industrialization, slavery and the connections between race and class (and race, class and gender). So much so that unless it was an author of major interest, I could skim or skip the reading, or even find a few book reviews and compare them to my extensive library of notes on the other authors in a given subfield or field.

Two, that my time outside of class was still my time. I knew that I wanted to do multiculturalism as a dissertation topic, and that I wanted to do it in the context of Black Washington, DC. So I began ordering microfilm of Black weekly newspapers like the Washington Tribune and Washington Bee (going back as far as 1915) to look at as much material as possible. It calmed me to know that I was working on my dissertation topic nearly a year before Trotter and my committee would official approve it.

Three, I knew by January ’94 that Schlossman, et al. had agreed that the Spring ’94 semester would be my last one in coursework. I still had to take Modell’s goofy Historical Methodologies course, but having to do things like my oral comprehensives made going to class just bearable enough.

Acting a part quotes from actors, March 17, 2014. (http://thepeopleproject.com/actors/quotes).

Finally, I took out a loan. I’d only taken out one student loan since finishing undergrad in ’91, but it was obvious I couldn’t live off of a $7,500-per-year stipend. Really, no one could, not without rooming with another student or having a spouse with a real income. The money came in at the beginning of March, making my march to become ABD that year that much easier.

By the time I walked into the second-floor conference room in Baker Hall to take my orals, I knew there wasn’t a question about what I knew and how well I knew it. It was about whether I could show the folks at CMU that I could play along with them in their version of grad school, which wasn’t any different from any other history doctoral program’s version. And I did play along, for two hours, more than long enough to move on to the dissertation proposal round.

When I said years later to my friend Laurell that Humanities and Mount Vernon High School had prepared me more for grad school than it did for undergrad at Pitt, this was what I meant!

My First Boy @ The Window Interview

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Book Promotion, CMU, Honesty, Lily-White, PR, Public Relations, Whiteness

Screen shot of CMU website’s front page, January 29, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).

I had my first interview related to Boy @ The Window two and a half weeks ago, with a public relations person working on behalf of the Carnegie Mellon University website, CMU.edu. But this interview will likely never be posted on Carnegie Mellon’s website. Why, pray tell? Because I was honest about my CMU experience, in that it was bitter work, a frustrating time, a place in which I felt isolated in its lily-White conservatism (with a nod toward Asian students as honorary Whites).

I didn’t say all this in my interview. Okay, here’s what they asked and what I actually said (also on my Boy @ The Window Facebook page):

Q: Why did you choose to attend CMU and pursue a Ph.D. in history?
A: Joe Trotter, in a word, was my deciding factor. I didn’t want to earn all of my degrees in history at the University of Pittsburgh, and the history department offered to accept my master’s degree and Ph.D. credits from Pitt. Plus, CMU’s history program was simply better, in that I knew I could graduate years ahead of time. But I came because I wanted to work with Joe Trotter.

Q: You mention that you’ve based your career in the areas of education reform and multiculturalism -why? Could you describe your work in these areas a bit more?
A: From the time I began reading history when I was nine years old, I’ve wondered about the horrors of this world, and how we as humans have shown a capacity for compassion and strength despite those horrors. My interest in multiculturalism was a natural extension of my quest to understand my past, those horrors, and especially the people from various backgrounds whom were my classmates in middle school and high school in Mount Vernon, New York. The irony was, though, that I didn’t consciously recognize these connections until I began working on Boy @ The Window. As for education reform, especially around college access and retention, it’s that sense that despite it all, access to higher education can and does transform lives, and provide a pathway to a more productive life. Multiculturalism was my dissertation research while at CMU – not to mention my first book, Fear of a “Black” America (2004) — while my interest in education reform began in my work in the nonprofit world. First with Presidential Classroom in 1999 and 2000, then with an initiative known as Partnerships for College Access and Success (PCAS), where I was the deputy director from 2004 to 2008.

Q: Did CMU play a role in your difficult journey to success? (Perhaps network, training, culture, etc…) Any professor/mentors to note?
A: Yes, because I earned my Ph.D. while at CMU. But in order to become the writer I am now, I actually had to unlearn much of what I learned as a writer while at CMU. By the time I began my doctoral work at CMU in the fall of 1993, my difficult journey was mostly complete. In terms of mentors, the late Barbara Lazarus was mine during my four years at CMU. She was the toughest and kindest administrator, a sharp and clear mind, a quick wit, one of the positive memories I have of CMU.

Q: You work as an author, academic, consultant and more – why such a varied path? Did your time at CMU help you to span these various fields and topics?
A: CMU helped me on my eclectic path because my dissertation committee provided no help in my search for work after I graduated in May 1997. I had to find a way to use the skills I picked up as a historian and academic writer before I could go about the task of remaking myself as a writer. Luckily my dissertation research was as much about education history – and to a lesser extent, education policy – as it was about US and African American history. This helped me find work in the nonprofit sector, as well as adjunct work in schools of education like at Duquesne and George Washington University. I think that the lesson I learned at CMU was that I needed to decide and define my own path, with or without the help of those who taught me.

Q: Have you stayed in touch with anyone, been back to campus or been involved in any CMU groups or activities I should mention? (I realize you live in Silver Spring..)
A: I’ve been back to CMU four times since I graduated in 1997, two of those times to visit with Barbara Lazarus before she passed away in 2003. I have remained in touch with a couple of folks who were in graduate school with me at CMU between 1993 and 1997, but with a wife, a near-preteen son and so much taking up my time, I don’t stay involved with CMU much at all. Mine was hardly a positive experience, and there were times that I as an African American male didn’t exactly feel welcome on campus. So by necessity, my interactions with the CMU community have been limited over the past 17 years.

Within 24 hours of my interview answers, I noticed on my blog site that traffic regarding my CMU-related posts had increased by nine-fold, and stayed that way for a day or two. I guess the public relations folks at Carnegie Mellon wanted a more positive and race-less view from me about my experiences there. Oh well.

When I followed up to find out what they planned to do with my interview, this was what they emailed in response:

Dear Dr. Collins,

Melissa forwarded your message to me. Thank you for sharing your story with us. We are currently vetting a larger number than expected potential stories for use on the homepage. We will keep your responses on file, and let you know if we move forward on a story.

Have a great day,
Heidi

What they really meant to say was, “We’re experiencing technical difficulties with your answers, please stand by…”

In Denigration of the Black and Accomplished

20 Monday Jan 2014

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

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Abuse, Academic Culture, Academic Politics, Accomplishments, Achievements, Black Milwaukee, CMU, Denigration, Joe Trotter, Joe William Trotter Jr., Larry Glasco, Laurence Glasco, Meritocracy, Neglect, Pitt, Richard Oestreicher, Running Interference, Scholarship, Whiteness

Screenshot of Richard Sherman post-game interview with Erin Andrews, NFC Championship Game, Seattle, WA, January 19, 2014. (http://msn.foxsports.com).

I plan half of my blog posts in advance. At the beginning of every year, I make up a list of topics that I intend to cover, listed by month, and then go through that list. For the other half, I take advantage of relevant news stories or sudden life experiences that also seem relevant.

Today’s post is a combination of planning and the impromptu. I’d already planned to write about the tightrope of being Black and accomplished — actually, more like the noose of it. But thanks to @profragsdale’s tweet, aka, Rhonda Ragsdale, an Associate Professor of History at Lone Star College-North Harris (Houston, Texas) and a PhD candidate at Rice University, I started on this topic a day early. Her tweet was the kick-off to eight hours of tweets about the cold and often cold-shoulder reception women — and Black male and LGBT — faculty and grad students receive when bringing up, discussing or even promoting themselves and their accomplishments.

Only to see more of these tweets and thoughts confirmed in another arena. The response of the racist, George-Zimmerman-set to Richard Sherman’s post-game interview with Erin Andrews on FOX within a couple of moments after he made the play to seal the game for his Seattle Seahawks to go play in Super Bowl XLVIII. You, Black man, can’t have a flash of anger and moment of passion on TV after playing in the NFC Championship Game, for then your accomplishments will be used against you. (Sarcasm aside, Sherman’s taunting will likely result in a fine, but that’s the NFL).

Single Drum Rollers with Rock Crushing Drum crushing soil and rocks (similar to how Whiteness can crush Black accomplishments), January 20, 2014. (http://bomag.com).

My post is much, much closer to home. I had the blessing and the curse of having two Black males as my official advisors while in grad school at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, Larry Glasco for two years at Pitt, and Joe Trotter for four years at CMU. My gripes and complaints about their neglect, selective attentions to my development, and, in Trotter’s case, harassment and psychological torture I’ve already documented well here. What I haven’t discussed is that they were part of a cycle of academic abuse that they passed down to my generation of grad students, and likely some of my colleagues are passing on to their grad students as I write today.

My best example of how denigration in academia works was a conversation I had with Dick Oestreicher, a Pitt professor for my grad seminar in American Working-Class History in Fall ’92. I was in Trotter’s African American History seminar at CMU at the same time. Oestreicher asked me what else I was taking that semester, I guess because I’d proven resistant to the idea that social class had primacy over all forms of inequality, even in the US (a neo-Marxist to the core, I guessed).

When I told him I was in Trotter’s seminar, Oestreicher said, “Oh, I’ve heard of him,” with the disdain a fashion designer usually reserved for suits off Sears’ rack. You’ve “heard of him?” Really? Trotter, an award-winner scholar and author with a groundbreaking book on Black migration, urbanization and class formation in Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-1945 (1985; 2007), and you’ve heard of him? A colleague only three blocks and one bridge away, and you’ve heard of him? Even now, the only word I have to that is, “Wow!”

If Oestreicher was the only one to do that, and only to Trotter, then my observations here would be suspect. But I witnessed this same kind of thing from other White history professors at Pitt and CMU toward Trotter and Glasco during my grad school years. Heck, one of the reasons I left for CMU in the first place was because I knew several of the most powerful professors in the Pitt history department didn’t respect Glasco’s work, and by extension, my own progress and work.

Foot On My Neck & Head, symbolic of my years as a Hebrew-Israelite (also of grad school), April 18, 2011. (Donald Earl Collins).

Maybe that was part of the reason why Trotter would constantly “run interference” on my behalf, to protect my “interests” during my four years there. Because, despite all the long hours, the sweat, tears and blood, there were folks at CMU who just saw him as a mere Black man, not a colleague or scholar every bit their equal. Given the books, the articles, the grants and so many other accomplishments, Trotter was easily the most productive professor in the department.

None of this justified how Trotter treated me when I was his student. I was semi-aware of the racial politics of accomplishment denial that folks around us practiced. I often chalked it up to jealousy or stress, thinking that the quality of my work or — to use Trotter’s terminology — my scholarship would show the academic world my worth. What White disdain toward Glasco and Trotter — and Trotter’s harassment of me — taught me, though, is that I’d have to be White in order for my accomplishments to seriously matter in academia, and I wasn’t planning on being White in my lifetime. And, that intellectual Whiteness can be nurtured and grown into Black professors.

In the years since finishing my own PhD, I’ve faced my own dilemmas around my achievements. I’ve at times attempted to fit in by downplaying my publications, by not bringing up my degrees, by not talking about my fellowship awards. What have I learned? To deny myself of my own accomplishments is like making a fine wine but not even daring to take a sip. White accomplishment deniers be damned.

CMU “Pope Girl” Update # 2

12 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Carnegie Mellon University, Christianity, culture, Pittsburgh, Religion

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CMU, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pope Girl, Public Nudity

I was wondering why my Carnegie Mellon blog post on Spring Carnival and the “Pope Girl” was trending again, and then I saw this, courtesy of Kaitlynn Riely of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Monday, June 10:

“A Carnegie Mellon University student who dressed as a naked pope and another who portrayed a naked astronaut during an on-campus art parade in April will have their indecent-exposure charges withdrawn so long as they each complete 80 hours of community service.

The agreement, struck by CMU, the district attorney’s office and the students, was ‘a great result’ for Katherine B. O’Connor, 19, and Robb S. Godshaw, 22, who had been scheduled for preliminary hearings Monday morning, said attorney Jon Pushinsky, who represented Ms. O’Connor on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.”

O’Connor, a.k.a. “Pope Girl,” and Godshaw must complete their community service in 120 days. Good for them. Now the ACLU can get back to PRISM, NSA and the Obama Administration.

Where Audacity Meets Second-Guessing

25 Saturday May 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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"A Substance of Things Hoped For", Ambition, Arrogance, Audacity, Boldness, CMU, Courage, Dissertation, Doctoral Thesis, Doubt, Fear, Harold Scott, Multicultural Education, Multiculturalism, Peter Stearns, PhD, Pitt, Racial Determinism, Second-Guessing

Second-guessing to the extreme, May 25, 2013. (http://pualingo.com).

I’m a great second-guesser of myself (and of others). But I’m especially hard on myself in that department. Even when I know that what I’m doing is the right thing, that I’m taking the right path and proper course of action. I remind myself of what to do, what to say, how to say what I need to say, and even then, I wonder often if my move was to bold, my words too direct, my tone too know-it-all-esque.

Still, there are plenty of times as an adult where I’ve decided to not give in to my second-guessing impulses, to remain bold and aggressive despite the potential problems with a plan. Graduate school at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon was probably the longest time as an adult in which I did little second-guessing, at least when I was awake.

Something happened on my marathon march to the doctorate the week before Memorial Day ’93, one where, for once, someone did my second-guessing for me. And no, it wasn’t Joe Trotter or any of the other usual professorial suspects. This one came courtesy of Harold Scott, an acquaintance (and now friend) who was a visiting professor at Pitt’s GSPIA (Graduate School of Public and International Affairs) at the time. I met with him twenty years ago to discuss my transition from the University of Pittsburgh to Carnegie Mellon’s history department, to glean insights from a recent PhD and a man ten years my senior.

I’d met Harold a few times before, mostly in the context of joint Pitt-CMU gatherings related to issues of racial diversity and retention of grad students of color. Aside from discovering that Harold was an anti-affirmative action baby, the only other thing I knew about him was that he was the first African American to earn a doctorate from CMU’s history department.

Dick Cheney as an example of Pollyanna Principle, March 16, 2003. (http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/cheney.jpg).

So we both asked questions. I learned how Harold suffered at the hands of a mutual leading professor between us and the department, mostly in the form of isolation and arbitrarily bad pay as an instructor once he became ABD. He learned that I had a lot of ambition as a twenty-three year-old doctoral student. My plan at the time was to complete my PhD by the end of ’95, a little more than two and a half years from the date of our ’93 meeting.

Harold laughed, almost hysterically, as I stepped him through all my steps between late-May ’93 and December ’95. He noted that I had at least one year of coursework to complete at CMU before they’d give me their “stamp of approval” to move on to my written and oral comps, much less the dissertation. (Except that I’d already taken my written comps). Most importantly, Harold didn’t understand how I expected to write a doctoral thesis of significant research and girth in little more than a year, assuming that I’d have have to teach at some point, assuming that I had to find literally hundreds of sources.

Then we discussed my dissertation topic specifically. I talked about multiculturalism and multicultural education, about Black Washington, DC and Negro Education Week, about Carter G. Woodson and Alain Locke and W. E. B. Du Bois. I talked about the counter-literature that laid out multiculturalism as either Polyanna or as a mask for Afrocentricity without the Black nationalism that White scholars had ascribed to it.

Somehow in my discussion of the literature, between Arthur Schlesinger and Diane Ravitch, Thomas Sowell and James Banks, and Gary Nash and Cornel West, Harold had but one question. “Are you a ‘racial determinist’?,” he asked. I didn’t know exactly what that term meant, but I already knew what a cultural determinist was. I answered, “Yes and no.” I went on to describe the many situations in which I believed race played a role, if not a dominant role, in American history or culture. That’s not the definition, by the way, as it’s a variant of biological determinism, and very Nazi-like.

That’s when we really began to go back and forth. But I don’t think much of that argument was about racial determinism or where I stood on it at all. I think Harold thought that I was both arrogant and naive. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’ve left that impression, or the last. But yes, at twenty-three, I’d set my sights on a degree, a dissertation and book topic, and a career that I wanted, and had made the decision to not let my over-thinking second-guessing get the better of me. That Harold and others weren’t privy to my process likely made my bold plans and predictions seem ridiculous.

Brett Farve and yet another interception, 2009 NFC Championship Game, January 24, 2010. (Ronald Martinez/http://bleacherreport.com).

Yet there was more going on here, much of which wouldn’t become apparent to me until the end of ’95, when I was six chapters into my eight-chapter dissertation. Harold was my warning that the grad school process alone could beat the living hell out of me, that the professors at CMU — White or Black — had an old-fashioned attitude about how long it ought to take someone like me to finish. Harold went through a gauntlet to finish his doctorate in ’90, only to struggle to find work.

In being the second African American to go through the same gauntlet, I eventually realized that my speed and strength of purpose didn’t really matter in the lily-White thinking of the powers that were at CMU. And by the time I started second-guessing my decisions, I practically already had my degree.

What I Didn’t Know (in ’81, in ’97, in ’13)…

18 Saturday May 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, music, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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616 East Lincoln Avenue, Anticipation, Back Stabbers, Bruce Anthony Jones, Child Abuse, CMU, Domestic Violence, Family, Hustling, Joe Trotter, Joe William Trotter Jr., Not Knowing, O'Jays, Pitt, Poverty, Publishing, Success, The Matrix (1999), Welfare Poverty, Wisdom, Writing

Noah with me, January 3, 2004 [he was five months old]. (Angelia N. Levy).

Noah with me, February 28, 2004 [he was seven months old]. (Angelia N. Levy).

What I didn’t know across the past thirty-two years could be another book for me. I assume that would be the case for anyone would could look back across their life and second-guess themselves over that long a period of time. For me, though, the significance of today comes out of my mathematics background. You see, today’s my sixteenth PhD graduation anniversary. Not all that significant, I suppose. Except that I’m as far away from the end of my graduate school days at Carnegie Mellon today as I was from the first days of being a Hebrew-Israelite and watching my family fall into welfare poverty when I graduated in ’97.

100th Commencement Ceremony program, Carnegie Mellon University, May 18, 1997. (Donald Earl Collins).

Two things will hurt your success in this life. One is not acting on the things you know you should or must do. I learned that hard lesson from watching my mother make the decision to not make any decisions until it was too late, all while growing up at 616. Two is the enormous danger of not knowing, and therefore, not being able to act or respond to new or damaging situations as they arise. I’ve learned that lesson pretty well, too. Sometimes the hard way, through really bad experiences or decisions I didn’t play out like a game of eleventh-dimension chess. Sometimes through insight, foresight, even divine inspiration, anticipating what I didn’t know ahead of time.

And even with anticipation, you still might not be able to do anything about what you do and don’t know, simply because you’re not in any position to change things. That was especially true in ’81. I knew that my now deceased idiot ex-stepfather Maurice Washington was no good. But when my Mom decided to end her six months’ separation from him, there was nothing I could really do about it. I knew that with inflation rates of 14.5 percent in ’79 and 11.8 percent in ’80 (thank you, Scholastic Weekly Reader) and my Mom income of roughly $15,000 per year that we had less and less to work with at home. Again, not much I could do about that, either. Even paper boy jobs were drying up by the time I turned twelve!

O’Jays Back Stabbers (1972) album cover, November 10, 2011. (Dan56 via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use as low-resolution illustration of subject matter.

What I didn’t know was how quick and violent the shift into poverty would be. What I didn’t know was that Maurice would use his/our conversion as Hebrew-Israelites as justification for abusing my Mom and me. What I didn’t know was that my Mom would have three more kids by this man between July ’81 and May ’84. What I didn’t know was that I would feel so low about the loss of my best friend and my sense of self that I’d attempt to take my own life on my fourteenth birthday, at the end of ’83.

But when I looked back on this in ’97, I mostly thought about the good things that had occurred in the fifteen years between the domestic violence my Mom endured on Memorial Day ’82 and my doctoral graduation ceremony. My independent conversion to Christianity in ’84. Knocking out a 5 on my AP US History exam without ever cracking open Morison and Commager. Overcoming poverty and my lack of self-esteem to build a life at Pitt and in Pittsburgh between ’88 and ’97.

Still, I’d already been wounded, badly. By the things I knew but did nothing about. By those things I could’ve anticipated but my efforts to counteract were insufficient. By those things I couldn’t have known at all. I knew I’d have problems with my “running interference” advisor Joe Trotter coming down the dissertation stretch. Yet because of departmental politics and my need to be done sooner rather than later, I did nothing about this until I was six chapters into an eight-chapter dissertation. I knew my mentor and committee member Bruce Anthony Jones could sometimes be unreliable. Yet I had no idea that he would completely abandon me and his other doctoral students the moment he signed his name to my and their dissertations.

My dissertation’s signature page, May 18, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins),

Most of all, I never anticipated that my Mom would actually be jealous of me, and would spend a whole week with me at 616 and in Pittsburgh doing and saying things to completely disparage what I’d worked so hard for. For me, for her, for my family. That was hard to get over. There are times I’m not sure if I’m entirely over this yet.

What I’m sure of in ’13, though, is what I do know, don’t know, and can only anticipate with the wisdom of experience and wisdom beyond my experience. I know that I love my wife, that there’s a lot in common between her and Crush #1 (for those of you who’ve read Boy @ The Window so far, the implications should be obvious), real and from my own imagination. I didn’t know that I’d have a kid, a son who at nearly ten is both wonderful and perplexing, and hopefully, off to a much better start in life than I ever got. I suspect that one of my references for jobs and consulting gigs has been undermining my efforts over the past five years, and have thus removed her as a reference.

What I don’t know — but can only hope and work like a dog toward — is whether Boy @ The Window will be a success. I’m not sure if quantifying it would help. I sold a thousand copies of Fear of a “Black” America between August ’04 and January ’07, without the benefit of this blog, Twitter, Facebook or the e-book platforms. How long before I sell my first hundred, thousand, 5,000 or more? I have no idea. But as they say, I “must walk the path, not just know it.”