• About Me
  • Other Writings
  • Interview Clips
  • All About Me: American Racism, American Narcissism, and the Conversation America Can’t Have
  • Video Clips
  • Boy @ The Window Pictures
  • Boy @ The Window Theme Music

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

~

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: False Accusations

Charlatans United

20 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

American Racism, Black Women, Charlatans, False Accusations, Law Enforcement, Long-Term Unemployment, Maurice Eugene Washington, Misogynoir, Pitt, Rape, Respectability Politics, Rev. Al Sharpton, Stepfather, Summer of 1988, Tawana Brawley, Trust, unemployment


The Rev. Al Sharpton, et al., at a press conference providing an update regarding the Tawana Brawley rape case, Queens, NY, 1988. (http://www.wbur.org/; AP)

If I have to pick a point in my life where I began to realize how hypocritical humans could be, my second summer after high school would be such a time. The long, hot summer of ’88, of nearly 50 consecutive days of highs in the Triple-H (hot, hazy, and humid) 90s in New York and its immediate suburbs. It was my first summer after starting college at the University of Pittsburgh, and if it weren’t for sheer determination, it would have been my only year at Pitt.

News wise, there were two local events that dominated my summer of unemployment in Mount Vernon and The City. One was the Tawana Brawley story. Between the end of November of the previous year and the end of June, the Rev. Al Sharpton and his entourage used the bully pulpit of the fourth estate to generate outrage and consternation regarding the alleged rape of one Tawana Brawley. A month or so before her sixteenth birthday, good samaritans found Brawley outside an apartment building in which her family had once lived, lying in a garbage bag, covered in dog feces and with racial slurs written on her body. Brawley had been missing for four days.

There wasn’t much agreement on anything else beyond these facts. Brawley claimed that three White men had repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted her, including a local police officer, then later denied being raped, but remained adamant about other forms of sexual assault. At one point, a cop who had recently killed himself was a suspect in the alleged Brawley rape. At another point, Sharpton and company accused the Dutchess County Assistant DA Steven Pagones of being one of Brawley’s three rapist (he later sued Brawley and Sharpton for defamation). Sharpton claimed throughout to believe Brawley, but others in his group later disclosed that the blowhard had his own doubts about Brawley’s story a few weeks after agreeing to represent her in the public eye.

Wappingers Falls is in Dutchess County, just two counties north of Westchester County and Mount Vernon, a hour-and-thirty-minute drive from Manhattan (give or take). After Eleanor Bumpurs and Michael Stewart, I rarely believed authority figures regarding their crime reportage. But by June, I also realized that not everything is a conspiracy, and that even racists can occasionally be on the right side of the law. I learned, above all else, that Sharpton was a charlatan. He used Brawley’s true life story of familial abuse and misogynoir and fear of more abuse to raise his profile on the New York and national stage. Especially in this case, as Brawley’s mother and stepfather took a dim view on Brawley’s time out with boys, a view shared by Whites all too willing to see Black girls and women as over-sexualized playthings.

If Brawley wasn’t raped or sexual assaulted, she was certainly abused physically and psychologically. It was bad enough that her name was out there and known (a violation of her rights as a potential rape survivor), especially since Brawley was still a minor. It was bad enough that there was a significant racial gap, where six out of every seven Whites polled believed she was lying (versus only half of African Americans polled). That Sharpton put Brawley’s name in the public arena for months with additional and unsubstantiated accusations? He took advantage of her for months, adding another layer of abuse to this teenager’s life. It’s practically unforgivable. And no, Sharpton’s work to get Trayvon Martin’s murder in 2012 the attention it and he deserved and his self-serving eulogy at Michael Brown’s funeral in 2014 do not make up for his original media sins.

The other charlatan I had to deal with that summer was my idiot stepfather and another one of his get-rich-quick schemes. He had spent nearly all of 1988 unemployed and lying around at 616, between losing his car salesman job and burning out the engine of his green 1976 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. It made my summer at 616 almost unbearable. I hadn’t spent this much time around the asshole since my summer of abuse.

In July and August, Maurice had the wonderful idea of starting his own limo service. One of our neighbors on the second floor had moved from driving a limo to starting his own service over the previous eight years. Maurice wanted in.

As I wrote in Boy @ The Window:

Afterward, Maurice went to his once well-off friend, who had survived a three-year period of very local and very public court battles and prison time over alleged incidents of child abuse and molestation at her daycare in Mount Vernon. The woman and her husband were financially ruined in the process, even though neither of them were directly involved in the incidents that occurred at the daycare. Somehow Maurice managed to get $1,000 out of his friend for his limo idea, likely some of the last money she lent anyone before her death in 1989. It’s more likely that “Hebrew-Israelite” Maurice bought lobster tails and moo shu pork at a Chinese restaurant with the money than attempted in any way to use it as collateral to get the downstairs neighbor to give him a shot at driving a limo.

By this time 30 years ago, I had already had my fill of hucksters between Sharpton and Maurice. Their misogyny, their need to use others, their harebrained ideas for fortune and fame. Maybe that’s why I never bought my stepfather’s act when he was dating my mom as a seven-year-old. Maybe that’s why I never, ever, found 45 appealing from the first time I read about him in the New York Daily News in 1984.

Bearing False Witness At Work – It Can Hurt

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Academy for Educational Development, AED, Bigotry, Bipolar Disorder, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, False Accusations, Hostile Workplace, Juan Mezzich, Ken, New Voices, New Voices Fellowship Program, Paranoia, Racism, Sexual Harassment, Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health, Western Psych, Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic


Hannah Arendt on false witnesses, November 16, 2013. (http://izquotes.com/).

Hannah Arendt on false witnesses, November 16, 2013. (http://izquotes.com/).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the fact that this week ten years ago, I endured what was the beginning of a three-month period of a hostile work environment (one that was already not-so-optimal to begin with). It was brought on by my then immediate supervisor’s paranoia and jealousy, and intensified by his then undisclosed bipolar disorder. I’ve written about my three years of hell with Ken before on this blog, most notably in “The Messiah Complex At Work, Part 1” from a couple of years ago.

What I haven’t really discussed at all was how I felt about all of this as I went through it. As a man, as a Black man, as a person who believed in social justice, including in a workplace in which we funded social justice projects. I’d only been accused of sexual harassment one other time, by a boss whose best friend had been harassing me at work for the better part of two months, in the early part of ’89. Now, fourteen years later, here was Ken, at an HR meeting he set up, accusing me of saying things that I never said, of thoughts that I never had.

I was already used to being guilty before being innocent. With police. In a public setting, like a supermarket or bookstore. But not at work, and for the most part, not while I was at Pitt or Carnegie Mellon. Why? Because I tended to be at my most guarded while at work back then. In fact, during an exit interview the year before, a former program assistant at New Voices said that I needed to be “more open” at work if a team like ours was ever to reach its full potential. She may have been right. If only I had bosses who were more open, more relaxed, less accusatory, and in Ken’s case, on his meds.

Archie Bunker from All In The Family (1971-78) screen shot, June 2013. (http://www.chicagonow.com/).

Archie Bunker from All In The Family (1971-78) screen shot, June 2013. (http://www.chicagonow.com/).

There are few things worse in one’s job or career than reckless false accusations. Even if proven completely untrue, there are some who’ll choose to look at those accused with less trust and more suspicion. And Ken, for all of his bluster about social justice, had proven himself to be as much of a bigot as former executive director at Presidential Classroom, an openly admitted bigot. He could’ve accused me of insubordination, of wanting his job, of not doing my job well enough. Instead, Ken relied on the whole hyper-sexualized Black male motif, as if my testosterone was dripping right out of my penis, like some animal in heat.

Of course, some of you will say, “He had untreated bipolar disorder. He didn’t know what he was doing. Cut him some slack.” No, I can’t and I won’t. As I’ve noted in another post regarding Ken’s condition, bipolar disorder doesn’t equal insanity or irrational behavior necessarily. I worked for Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health between ’89 and ’92, and for Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic at Pitt between ’89 and ’91. I became pretty good at understanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. I did learn a thing or two from having Dr. Juan Mezzich as a boss while I worked at Western Psych between my junior year and first year of grad school at Pitt. 

Kingda Ka, the world's tallest roller coaster, Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson, NJ (Exit 7A, NJ Turnpike), September 23, 2006. (Dusso Janladde via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

Kingda Ka, the world’s tallest roller coaster, Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson, NJ (Exit 7A, NJ Turnpike), September 23, 2006. (Dusso Janladde via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

One of the things I learned was that bipolar disorder generally exaggerates existing thoughts and behaviors. The psychosis can often be exasperated by stressful situations. For those with the illness, the highs are way too high, the lows so low that suicidal thoughts can become prevalent. If one tends to be paranoid, the paranoia becomes heightened, as was the case with Ken. Still, even with bipolar disorder, he was acting on his bigoted and paranoia template, there long before bipolar disorder manifested itself in him as an adult.

I understood all of this, even as I went through months of accusations and arbitrary changes to my work schedule. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a part of me that felt rage, wanted revenge, wanted to take the physically and emotional stunted twerp and stuff him in a garbage can. Or that I didn’t come to work at AED every day between November ’03 and February ’04 with thought that I should just quit, turn around, go home, watch my newborn son Noah and figure out my next step. Most of all, there were times I wanted to choke Ken until he told the truth, that he was a jealous-hearted bastard who lied about me to HR in order to put me in my place as a Black guy working under a White guy.

But I didn’t. I didn’t because I knew that I was right. I knew, somehow, that things would work out in my favor. I knew that God and the universe would vindicate me. If my life is proof of anything, it’s proof that my truth wins out in the end. Those thoughts dictated my actions and counteracted any feelings of rage or violence I had during those cloudy days. To Jonathan Martin and so many others out there, I think I know how you feel right now. Please hang in there, and hang on to the truth.

The Messiah Complex At Work, Part 1

12 Saturday Nov 2011

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Academy for Educational Development, AED, Bipolar Disorder, Driving Miss Daisy, False Accusations, Jealousy, Ken, Managing Your Boss, Manic Depression, Messiah Complex, Micromanagement, New Voices, New Voices Fellowship Program, Paternaiism, Race, Racism, Washington DC


Heinrich Himmler, ala Messiah Complex, 1938. (German Federal Archive via Wikipedia).

Today marks eight years since my former immediate supervisor Ken (see my “Working At AED: Alternate Sources of Fear” post from June ’11) forced me into a meeting with the head of HR and his “all-wise” boss Sandra “Driving Miss Daisy” in an effort to strip me of my Assistant Director of New Voices title at the now defunct Academy for Educational Development. All because I did my job while he was out of the office tacking on a couple of extra days after we’d attended the Independent Sector Conference in San Francisco the week before.

But this wasn’t about me or me doing my job as I’d been doing it for three years. No, this was about Ken in the middle of a period of emotional and psychological instability, and about me no longer trying to work around his moments of mania and depression. After all, I had a newborn son to worry about, a job search to keep secret, and a book I was determined to publish. Couple that with a fifteen percent cut in funding from the Ford Foundation for the New Voices program, and there was no way I’d make it through my last months with New Voices without Ken reacting irrationally.

Anglo Corned Beef, November 11, 2011. (cgi.ebay.com).

It didn’t help that Ken suddenly wanted to do a New Voices conference in Mumbai, India as part of the World Social Forum with no significant planning that August, while I was out on maternity leave. It also didn’t help that Yvonne, our center director, chose early retirement in June over being kept into “Driving Miss Daisy’s” box of highly talented and experienced but underutilized managers of color.

Most of all, it didn’t help that I was completely honest, for once, in my assessment of my performance in my annual review that October. I dutifully reported my recent publications in The Washington Post and a semi-scholarly journal, presentations, teaching of graduate courses at George Washington University, and so on. During that meeting, Ken all but told me he was jealous of the kind of year I was having professionally. He even asked me where I wanted to be in five years. “I want to be director of my own project, of something like New Voices,” I said, again being all too honest.

So, during a week in which we had zero babysitter coverage, where I’d taken the week off to take care of my three-month-old son, Ken insisted that I come into the office. All so I could listen to an hour of accusations, insinuations and wild speculations. He accused me of undermining his authority because I relayed State Department travel warnings for Mumbai to New Voices Fellows. He told me how “amusing it was” that I had titled my position Assistant Director, even though that was the title of my position when I applied for it, interviewed for it, and accepted the position three years earlier. And even though he’d been introducing me as his assistant director for three years.

He accused me of sexually harassing a New Voices Fellow and two staff members back in ’01 over two conversations that he had heard about third hand, and not from a staff member. One was about a strange site visit conversation that had nothing to do with anything approaching sexual harassment. The other conversation, it turned out, was about me and a former staff member’s gastrointestinal illnesses, something we had in common. Ken also accused me of wanting to take his job, of believing that I could do his job better than he could. Only on that last part I agreed, with a definitive nod of my head.

So when he asked me to accept having my title as Assistant Director stripped, along with the commensurate duties that went with that title (including supervisory authority), I said, “No, I think it’s time for me to move on from New Voices.” It left Ken in shock. Heck, it left me in shock, thinking about how we’d make it without my income if I couldn’t find another job over the next three months. The HR director and “Driving Miss Daisy,” though, weren’t surprised at all.

The meeting Ken had forced made my secret decision to move on an open one. Either way, it was inevitable. As I’d written in my journal after my annual review with Ken a couple of weeks before the meeting:

Mr. Magoo screen shot (and a serious lack of vision), June 23, 2011. (http://tumeke.blogspot.com).

“The most telling comment that my Director made during our fundraising effort came when I asked about his vision for our project. ‘I don’t know what the project’s vision should be,’ he said. I realized at that moment that everything we had worked for would fail, no matter how sound our ideas. My Director’s vision for the project did not extend beyond his need to feel needed, to feel as if he alone could keep our project – and by extension, himself – alive. I concluded that this was a dangerous position to find myself in professionally, and that it was beyond time to go.”

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

scr2555-proj697-a-kindle-logo-rgb-lg

Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

iBookstore-logo-300x100

Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

You can also add, read and review Boy @ The Window on Goodreads.com. Just click on the button below:

Boy @ The Window

Twitter Updates

  • @stephanixmedina I hear you. They don't deserve any protection. In fact, we should make abusive, attacking, powerfu… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 hours ago
  • @kayewhitehead @afronews 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 (but, is he really still in high school? Seems very mature, like, ready-to-take… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 hours ago
  • Basketball and Denzel... twitter.com/MarkGrote/stat… 3 hours ago
  • @polumechanos Yep. Over the yrs, it's mostly come in handy for courses on DC history & culture, and for book #1. Ot… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 hours ago
  • RT @lolaschild: This was my jawn. twitter.com/rodimusprime/s… 4 hours ago
  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Archives

  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007

Blogroll

  • Kimchi and Collard Greens
  • Thinking Queerly: Schools, politics and culture
  • Website for My First Book and Blog
  • WordPress.com

Recent Comments

BARRrr on Why Ferengi Are Jewish & T…
Kelly on Middle School Teachers, Middle…
decollins1969 on Why Ferengi Are Jewish & T…

NetworkedBlogs on Facebook

NetworkedBlogs
Blog:
Notes From a Boy @ The Window
Topics:
My Life, Culture & Education, Politics & Goofyness
 
Follow my blog

616 616 East Lincoln Avenue A.B. Davis Middle School Abuse Academia Academy for Educational Development Afrocentricity American Narcissism Authenticity Bigotry Blackness Boy @ The Window Carnegie Mellon University Child Abuse Class of 1987 CMU Coping Strategies Crush #1 Crush #2 Death Disillusionment Diversity Domestic Violence Economic Inequality Education Family Friendship Friendships Graduate School Hebrew-Israelites High-Stakes Testing Higher Education History Homelessness Humanities Humanities Program Hypocrisy Institutional Racism Internalized Racism Jealousy Joe Trotter Joe William Trotter Jr. K-12 Education Love Manhood Maurice Eugene Washington Maurice Washington Misogyny Mother-Son Relationship Mount Vernon High School Mount Vernon New York Mount Vernon public schools Multiculturalism MVHS Narcissism NFL Pitt Pittsburgh Politics of Education Poverty President Barack Obama Race Racial Stereotypes Racism Relationships Self-Awareness Self-Discovery Self-Reflection Sexism Social Justice Teaching and Learning University of Pittsburgh Violence Whiteness Writing

Top Rated

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×