Fully Present Post 50

In part two, I suggested three things African Americans can do to help repair ourselves. They included active civic engagement, financial literacy to build generational wealth, and education in service to a fulfilling career. The remaining four suggestions are presented here.

We all know that white Americans and many immigrants often boast about how their family came to the United States with nothing but were able to pull themselves up by their “bootstraps” to improve the lives of subsequent generations through hard work. This is truly “the land of opportunity”, they will say with pride. Having that life experience and mindset, many are quick to point to African Americans and wonder what is wrong with those people? Why do they remain at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder? They’ll say slavery ended a long time ago, so their lack of success must be caused by their cultural deficiencies or perhaps their inferior DNA. They ask themselves why these people wallow in the past and keep claiming victimhood?

Either they are unaware, or they conveniently sidestep the years of Jim Crowe, the unfettered terror of violence, real estate redlining, racism, prejudice, detrimental government policies, and desperate treatment in employment, media coverage, housing, healthcare, education, banking, and the criminal justice system. They ignore the reality that whole communities and powerful individuals, often in backroom decision-making where no one is looking, curtailed our progress and ruined our collective reputation. Even though the law demands fairness and equal treatment, time after time, fairness and equal treatment have been elusive when it comes to African Americans. However, many Americans are mostly unaware of the mistreatment of their fellow Americans. I’ve had many white students express shock and dismay when they are presented with the economic and social disparities linked to discrimination, racism, and governmental policies. Many of these unsuspecting Americans will point to the small handful of black people who overcame both the visible and invisible obstacles to become successful as proof that the system is in fact equal, fair and just.

That was the great mind trip I faced as a teenager. There was the stated promise of fairness and equal treatment, but the reality I repeatedly encountered was so different. What I came to realize at an early age when I discovered the difference in school resources offered to white children and denied to children of color, was that I had to persist anyway. I learned that I had to find a window when a door was closed. I had to run while others could walk. I had to develop the courage, a strategy, and the tact to defend my integrity, my intelligence, my abilities, and my work. I recall the time when a white female PhD student at USC encouraged me to confront a white male English professor to insist that my paper deserved an “A” and not the “B” he gave it. After reading my paper, she was adamant that I confront him, and she told me how to approach the situation. Without any protest, the professor gave me the “A”. Until then I had been accustomed to being short-changed and I had accepted that I needed to be undeniably superior to get what others were given.

Experience taught me that I couldn’t be as good, I had to be better and that even then, I could be viewed as a threat to insecure people. For many years, I bore emotional blows with a smile. I saw betrayal up close and personal. However, I chose my fights carefully and won a few, but lost even more. It seemed like there were potential fights everywhere. I could have protested many times but didn’t like the time when I was the first in line for a sample at Costco, but the older white lady server literally moved my hand away to first serve the white woman behind me. I let it slide because I was happy to allow everyone around me to observe this woman’s blatant racist behavior. However, I should have, but didn’t protest in 1978 when an apartment manager informed us newlyweds when we arrived for our appointment to see an available apartment that it was already rented. We called again and found out that it wasn’t. We were young and decided that we could find another apartment. I’ve always felt guilty and ashamed by our short-sighted behavior that day. If that happened today, I would report it. And since that incident, I have called out discriminatory practices whenever I encounter them.

So, my fourth piece of advice for African Americans is to protect our mental health by picking our fights carefully. Walking away from a fight is emotionally draining, but actual fights are even more emotionally draining. However, some fights are definitely worth having. I eventually decided to fight whenever I saw discrimination and whenever a situation threatened my children’s health and education or to defend my wallet and my reputation. I have and I’m in favor of sitting down with a mental health professional to unpack the trauma that practically every African American endures. Some of it is generational and some is connected to specific events, and even more is from the accumulation of daily indignities we suffer at the hands of the media, unwitting associates, and people we barely know. We internalize the message that we aren’t valued when the media highlights the one missing blonde girl, but completely ignores the many black girls who go missing, are trafficked and murdered. It is traumatizing to see young black men murdered by other young black men or the police. It is traumatizing to have government leaders belittle black history and villainize Black Lives Matter. We like to think we are strong, but even the most resilient among us, can benefit from counseling. I know I have benefited greatly from it.

For many years, I’ve said that black people in this country need to hire a public relations firm to enhance our collective image. I wish we would pool our resources and do it! Too many people continue to harbor a largely negative image of black people. We are viewed as highly emotional, prone to violence, overly loud, wildly colorful, overly sexual, uneducated, poor and lazy, but athletic people who can sing and dance. We’re good for a laugh and a roll in the hay but seen as a threat when we want to be taken seriously. It would be great if one of our few multi-millionaires hired that public relations firm to remind folks that we are simply human beings with as varied a skill set and mindset as any other individual human beings. But unless that happens, each of us is a public relations statement for the entire race.

One might think that black women hired such a firm. Since Oprah and a few others, we have come to be viewed as these invincible creatures who don’t feel pain, can handle all manner of physical and emotional abuse, are loud and intimidating, full of wisdom, and possess some kind of “black girl magic”. However, this false narrative hides some disturbing facts we must address. For starters, although we are the most highly educated group, we are still paid only 64 cents for every one dollar earned by white males. In addition, we have the highest abortion rates among any ethnic group and the highest maternal mortality rates, dying from pregnancy complications nearly three times more often than white women. The loss of Roe will hit black women the hardest, especially since 45 percent of black women under the age of 55 live in red states with limited or no access to abortion. These same women continue to have limited access to birth control and pre-natal healthcare. A disaster is at our doorstep, so we need to push to change this situation immediately or many of our sisters will die and many more black babies will be born into dire circumstances. Each of us must act as a public relations firm within our circle of influence to highlight our challenges and to suggest solutions so that we can work to change things.

My sixth piece of advice is to move away from living in predominately black neighborhoods to residing in integrated neighborhoods. Separate has never been equal! We need a second migration that takes us to communities that offer healthier water and air, better schools, access to healthcare, better job and business opportunities, improved shopping at better prices, and safer communities. When poor black people cluster together, it’s easier for the government to withhold resources and further marginalize people. But if we start spreading out across the nation instead of clustering in small pockets, we have a much better chance of thriving. It is only in communities of color that armed guards are found in the stores. It is only in communities of color that there are liquor stores instead of grocery stores and banks on every corner. It is only in communities of color that you have to wait multiple hours to vote. It is only in communities of color that there are bars on the windows. It is only in communities of color that schools are under-resourced.

While there are a few challenges to living as a minority in other parts of town, those challenges are far fewer than living in an impoverished, over-policed, and under-resourced community. I know this from experience. The benefits far outweigh the costs. If I had to choose where to raise my family all over again, I’d convince my brother and his family to move with us so that their lives could have been easier. The few black families in our neighborhood quickly found each other and we supported each other throughout the years. The best thing about the choice was the opportunity to build equity in our house while the kids obtained a solid K-12 education. The second-best thing was the sustained opportunity to expose people to an actual black family so they could see beyond the media’s negative portrayal of African Americans.

I admit to having to gently challenge the occasional, “I don’t consider you black” or “You’re so articulate?” or “Your kids are so well behaved.” I admit to having to be an advocate for my kids on several occasions when white teachers wanted to automatically track them into lower levels. However, I didn’t need a gifted certification to get the job done like my mother needed for me. That’s progress. And we enjoyed the security of a neighborhood free from the threat of gang violence, police brutality, and burglary. My kids ran a candy store out of our garage that was profitable. They were popular in school, and I always reminded them that being a fly in the buttermilk makes you extra visible, so use that to your advantage not your disadvantage.

My final piece of advice to African Americans is to support, even fund, other African Americans who are trying to educate themselves, start businesses, and are fighting to uplift the values of liberty, justice, and equality through their creativity, talents, protests, entrepreneurial endeavors, and political leadership.

No one is coming to rescue us or to repair the damage that has been done. But with determination, a few smart moves, and mutual support, I truly believe we can repair ourselves.

I doubt we will ever receive the reparations we deserve. So, I don’t think it is wise to for us to wait for any kind of national rescue plan. We’ve been battered, bruised, bullied, and broken by a history of slavery, discrimination, and racism. But we’re still here and it’s time for us to repair our broken parts by ourselves. I’d like to offer my humble prescriptions for repair and restoration.

As African Americans, I believe that we are living in a time of both challenge and opportunity. The forces set against the progress of anyone who is not white, male, heterosexual, and Christian (at least in name) are emboldened by politicians backed by a few wealthy donors. They have seized control of the Supreme Court, numerous state houses, some school boards, police departments, and their goal is to re-gain the presidency. And now the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Affirmative Action just as it overturned a woman’s right to an abortion. These same people who make laws and policies that negatively affect the lives of the poor, transgender youth, and people of color are the same people who now clothe themselves in color blindness and who love to quote sections of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech while constantly reminding us that they are the Party of Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves. However, their actual actions present a threatening challenge. But I am not entirely disheartened because I recognize that the progress we’ve made thus far continues to offer a window of opportunity. With some thought, effort, and a change of mindset, we can make current policies and programs work in our favor and not against us. In this post and the next, I will lay out the seven things I believe we can do individually and collectively to ensure our forward progress toward securing the American ideal in our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

The first thing we must absolutely do is understand how our government functions and then become engaged as petitioners, voters, and perhaps elected officials. Not everyone wants to run for public office, but each of must understand the beliefs and values of those who do before supporting any candidacy and voting for anyone. In today’s political climate, we must give as much attention to the election of school board members as we do to presidential candidates. Just as important as voting is the exercising of our right to petition leaders to meet our needs by contacting them directly and/or participating in peaceful protests when necessary. Exercising our right to vote and to petition our government are fundamental to securing our civil liberties, protecting our lives, and improving our justice system. No one should be in doubt that these rights are currently under attack by white Christian nationalists.

The second thing we can do is get our money situation right. In a capitalistic society that depends on the exploitation of cheap labor and gullible consumers to maximize profits, it is imperative that we cease being the cheap labor and become smart consumers. Forget the notion of “keeping up with the Jones” and instead imitate the example of the financially independent. For starters, we’ll do better if we adopt the habit of saving and investing rather than spending on things that perish quickly and add little value to our lives. It is self-destructive to spend money on products that harm us. So, let’s stop doing that. It’s a good idea to adopt the mindset that it is far better to be paid interest than to pay interest. I haven’t run a balance on a credit card for over 20 years, yet each year I collect cash rewards from each of my credit cards. I do direct deposit or maintain a minimum balance to enjoy free checking accounts. When I must buy something, I support black businesses whenever possible or shop within my city boundaries, so the sales tax dollars benefit my city. If monthly bills exceed monthly income, then either reduce living expenses or find another revenue stream. I learned long ago that small actions like bringing my lunch to work and making my own coffee provided a hefty amount of monthly savings that I could invest. There is a scripture that my mother taught us early in life that says, “A wise man saves for the future, but the foolish man spends everything he makes” (Proverbs 21:20).

I also like what Suze Orman says about clothes and jewelry, but I heard her advice too late. I’ve learned that dressing professionally has a positive psychological impact on both the wearer, customers, and on colleagues. So, I viewed my professional wardrobe as a necessary investment and spared no expense on dressing professionally. It really is true that people who are well dressed are treated better and taken more seriously. However, according to Suze, you really only need one high quality pair of earrings. It is better money management to invest in a few classic but high-quality clothes and shoes that will last than to follow the fashion trends. Admittedly, I failed in this area. While I did stick to the classics, I accumulated far more clothes and jewelry than I needed to the point that I was shocked when I retired and donated my professional wardrobe. I’m embarrassed to admit how much money I wasted over the years.

And finally, when it comes to money, purchasing insurance for the purpose of hedging against financial ruin due to health issues, untimely death, accidents, and natural disaster is a wise financial decision. I view insurance as an investment in financial security. The number one cause of bankruptcy in this country is high medical bills. How many times do you hear of families starting a GoFundMe page to pay for medical bills or to bury a loved one? Far too often. Medical insurance is a necessity. Car insurance is required if you drive a vehicle. Additionally, every financial advisor I’ve ever consulted advised me to purchase term life insurance because it was an affordable way to ensure the continued financial stability of surviving family members. The younger you are when you purchase it, the cheaper it is. And home insurance has twice saved us thousands of dollars from flood damage from a broken pipe and once from wind damage when an entire fence came crashing down. When I was working, I had personal liability insurance since I was advising students on issues that could impact their lives and needed protection in case I was ever sued. Let’s get our financial situation in order, starting with a good paying job, savings and investments, wise spending habits, and adequate insurance.

The third thing to do involves a commitment to hard work. If we’re going to work hard, demand a fair wage for that work. But the kind of work people do matters. Drug dealers work hard, but that job is both destructive and dangerous and will likely end with incarceration or death. I believe that humans need purposeful work to maintain a healthy self-esteem as well as to provide funds for living. No legitimate job is without dignity; however, some jobs are designed to exploit the uneducated, unskilled, and undocumented. The time has come for us to encourage each other to choose career paths that are legal, safe, fulfilling, secure, and jobs that pay us well enough to live without government assistance.

And that starts with ensuring that our children and grandchildren obtain the necessary education, whether through college or trade school. Although college is a worthwhile investment, it can be achieved without accumulating massive amounts of student debt. Two years of community college for a trade or as a prerequisite to transferring to a four-year university is affordable and selecting a state university over a private one is typically more economical unless scholarships are substantial. Student loans should be avoided whenever possible. However, if a student load exists, it should be repaid without delay as interest continues to accrue during every deferral. Some people end up owing 2-5 times more than they borrowed because of this. It is far better to work a part-time job than to take out a student loan.

As previously mentioned, Affirmative Action is likely to end. It was useful in that it opened the door for those few fortunate souls among us who were prepared to enter. And those doors remain open to everyone. I’ve been saying for a long time that we need to take this new opportunity to better prepare ourselves. I even had a non-profit called “Reachable Heights” that conducted workshops for black parents on how to prepare their children for higher education. Now, more than ever, it is our responsibility to fully prepare our children to compete for admission to the trades and colleges to which we were once denied entrance based on our skin color. Since racial exclusion is no longer the case, our community must join with parents to raise the expectation of academic excellence from our schools and our children. We should cease to rely on government policies and programs for preferential admission treatment because we allowed our primary schools to fail us. We are capable of gaining entrance based on merit if we put forth the effort. The time has come for us to make the necessary investment in our K-12 schools and for us to improve our children’s attitude toward academic achievement. I know from experience that the lack of school resources doesn’t determine academic achievement, but the high expectations and commitment on the part of parents does. Parents and the community must support and push currently failing schools and our own children to move toward academic excellence.

These first three things: civil engagement, financial literacy, and hard work coupled with the pursuit of educational excellence are my first prescriptions to begin repairing ourselves. In my next post, I’ll present the remaining four things that we can do to repair ourselves without waiting for reparations that may never come.

In my previous post I wrote about reparations to heal a nation. I explained in great detail why they are owed, to whom they are owed, and how I’d like to see them distributed. I printed out my post and sent a copy to President Biden, my House and Senate representatives, and the majority and minority leaders of both the House and Senate. I even sent a copy to Governor DeSantis. I fully understand that actual reparations as I described may be impossible, however, I feel a duty to offer solutions and to exercise my right to petition our government. Because reparations may never come, I want to address how we as African Americans can once again work to repair ourselves.

After slavery, we did our best to repair, restore and rebuild our battered lives. We were denied the forty acres and a mule, but we forged a way forward anyway. America did not invite us to join the “melting pot”, so we were forced into segregation, the lowest paying jobs and the worse sections of town. In 1916, we began moving north and west seeking jobs, leaving Jim Crow, and escaping racial violence. By the 1970s, 47% of us had fled the South. We established our own communities, our own businesses, our own schools, and our own churches and mosques. In the South, we had a little assistance from land grants to set up our own colleges and universities. We established social and political organizations to strengthen our communities and fight for our Constitutional rights. But we soon learned that much of what we built for ourselves or gained politically was subjected to a backlash from the white supremacists in the country. In fact, during the 1920s, the KKK boasted a membership of 4-5 million members across the country. The pockets of individual and community prosperity were targeted by jealous white folks and nefarious government intervention that allowed lynchings, broad discrimination, and land theft. Whole communities were targeted and destroyed.

Imagine trying your best to climb a ladder and having someone constantly pulling you down or worse, burning the ladder beneath your feet. That is what happened. And I think African Americans collectively lost some faith that the “American Dream” was even attainable. While some wallowed in despair, others chose to quietly strategize, and still others chose to fight publicly for access to that “Dream”. I recognize now that my family in general were the quiet strategy folks who kept their heads down and quietly prepared to enter every door of opportunity through education, hard work, and undeniable competence. Although they were quiet, they supported the civil rights movement and were shocked by its sudden end. I recall an extended time of confusion shortly after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

Eventually, that confusion led me to have a serious conversation with my mother when I was a teenager. I challenged her conviction that I could do or become anything I wanted. Despite the new civil right laws, even at that young age, I could sense the contradiction between her words and the forces that were clearly against black progress. Thankfully, she was able to convince me to continue to strive for excellence and progress. She quoted scriptures like, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” and “A man’s gift will make room for him and bring him before kings”. I engraved those scriptures upon my heart and used her high expectations and constant words of encouragement as fuel to strive in school and in life despite the obstacles that sometimes exposed themselves.

I think it was helpful to spend my childhood surrounded by people from a variety of different cultures. In previous posts, I shared the life-lessons I gained from my encounter with other cultures. I believe those lessons served as a buffer against the internalized oppression many black people adopted. For example, I recall accusations like “acting white” being hurled at black students who tried to excel in school. I escaped that by attending school with academically competitive Asian students during a crucial time of my development. But that whole “acting white” nonsense greeted me at the black middle school I decided to attend. However, I was able to counter it by starting a club titled, “Get it Together”. I worked hard to convince my peers that excellence itself was a worthy pursuit.

America sent black students to poorly resourced schools but short-sighted voices within our own community were able to convince too many of us that to care about school was a white thing to be rejected. In fairness to them, perhaps they remained traumatized by those burned ladders and wanted to protect us from disappointment. But the truth is that a black child had to be emotionally strong enough to withstand that kind of pressure. Even the adults in our black church weren’t too keen on pursuing too much education. I recall the pastor of our church taking my teenage brother aside and trying to convince him to pursue the ministry rather than college as this was a safe and prosperous career choice. After that conversation, my brother rejected the church altogether and went to college. My mother, in her wisdom, left the black church and began attending a predominately white church in the San Fernando Valley where pursuing a higher education was encouraged.

The negative attitude toward education, especially among the most impoverished black people is a self-inflicted wound that contributes to a lack of mentors and role models in poor black communities. My husband talks about the unemployed black men he encountered on the streets in Baltimore who freely shared their uneducated worldly advice. He says he was on a path to nowhere good when he was drafted for Vietnam. He credits his six years in the Air Force for saving him from following in their footsteps.

For most of my childhood, society only encouraged black men to pursue trade jobs, music, the ministry and eventually sports. Businessmen, academics, and professionals were viewed as “uppity negros” often subjected to ridicule by blacks and whites alike. My father was one of those “uppity negros” who was a professional limited to work solely within the black community. I think his fraternal organization was of some comfort to him but the pressures he faced were immense. Although, he never complained about his struggles, he drank heavily and eventually died from his alcoholism.

There were so many frustrated black men like my father. It didn’t help that the federal government enacted anti-family policies, sanctioned the sale of illicit drugs in the black community, nor that we had more liquor stores than grocery stores in our communities. When any group of people are put under constant stress, discrimination, mistreatment, duress and subjected to pollutants in the water and air, there is bound to be a mental health crisis within that community. Hopeless and desperate people behave in desperate ways whether that be violence or an escape through drugs and alcohol. And the police were there to arrest, and judges were there to incarcerate those who acted out. In 2010 one third of black males had felony records.

But if I could point to one bright spot, I would have to point at liberal Hollywood producers who decided to show a different side of black life. I recall watching the show, “Julia” about a loving single black nurse raising her son. Then there was the “Jeffersons” about a successful black business owner and his family. And then there was “The Cosby Show” that for the first time depicted the family life of black professionals. These shows went a long way toward changing the image of black people, not only among white people, but among black people. “The Cosby Show” and subsequent shows like the “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” represented the prospect for a culture shift.

I’ll end my post here because it is getting long. However, in my next post, I’ll continue to address the opportunity to repair our lives without reparation before dark forces close the doors and it is too late.

Let’s begin with the basic definition of reparation. When one party has harmed another, it’s healthy for both parties if the perpetrator acknowledges and apologizes for the harm inflicted and to then offer to somehow repair the damage inflicted upon the harmed party. That’s the meaning of reparation. It’s to acknowledge and make amends, allowing for healing and restoration. The U.S. has paid reparations to native Americans, former slave owners, and Japanese Americans. However, African Americans had their promise of 40 acres and a mule revoked soon after President Lincoln was assassinated. The issue of reparations is once again a topic of discussion.

In the United States, it is impossible to deny that African Americans who are the descendants of slaves have suffered tremendous harm throughout the history of this nation. Some people (like me) believe African Americans are owed something for the 243 years of legalized slavery followed by Jim Crow segregation and legalized discrimination in addition to targeted oppression and destruction of Black lives and livelihoods in almost every sector of American life. At its inception 65% of African Americans were locked out of receiving Social Security benefits as farm workers and domestics and African American veterans were denied GI benefits that subsidized college and housing after WWII. At every turn, U.S. policies denied African Americans the right to equitable pursuits of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is no wonder that African Americans today have one tenth the net worth of their white counterparts. Even college educated blacks earn less on average than white persons with only a high school diploma.

There are those who argue that nothing is owed because they were not personally responsible for slavery since they were not alive and had nothing to do with the systemic racism that continues to harm black people in general and African Americans in particular. Some even contend that systemic racism is a myth that should be banished from our vocabulary.

I will address those people later. But for the purpose of reparations, I make a distinction between black people and African Americans. “Black people” is an all-encompassing term for people with black heritage while African American refers specially to black people who are the descendants of United States slaves. I make the distinction because of a divergent history of trauma and harm suffered at the hands of the American government and its citizens. Many black immigrants were not subjected to the pre-civil rights era trauma caused by legalized terror, blatant discrimination, and ridicule heaped upon African Americans. However, it cannot be denied that their black skin today subjects them to lingering systemic racism, covert discrimination and physical danger. For this reason, I contend that all black people in this nation are “owed” reparations, with the greatest amount to be reserved for African Americans.

Some would say that the U.S. has already paid reparations in the form of Affirmative Action. And to some extent, I would agree. Affirmative Action certainly opened the door to opportunities that had been previously closed. However, one requirement of Affirmative Action is that the candidate for college admission or a certain job has to meet the “qualifications” to be given preferential treatment for selection. Only a few African Americans who could actually meet the qualifications because they lacked access to the academic rigor, mentorships, and experiences necessary to gain those requisite qualifications. It is often argued that the greatest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action were white women and Asian Americans.

In previous posts, I detailed my personal journey through K-12 and how academic expectations and opportunities in this country are distributed along economic, ethnic, and racial lines. As author Jonathan Kozol reports, children in low-income areas are offered considerably fewer academic resources than others and absent parental advocacy and participation in those schools, the children receive an inferior education. The top 10% of those students may “qualify” for college admission when grades are given priority over SAT scores, but many of them will struggle to catch up academically and socially during their first years of college.

Not surprisingly, the very vocal opposers of Affirmative Action call it “reverse discrimination” citing the struggle of these students as a failure of Affirmative Action and a disservice to the students, most of whom are black or brown and poor. These short-sighted naysayers will argue that Affirmative Action weakens workforce competency and dumbs down higher education by including these sub-par individuals into spaces they really don’t belong. In reality, the actual failure is the systemic racism that denies these workers and students access to the living conditions, K-12 education and experiences that would adequately prepare them for well-paid jobs and college coursework. I know this from my own career in education.

In my experience, most of these college students will make it to graduation if they receive adequate moral and financial support and if they are willing to spend extra hours studying. They won’t have the highest grades at graduation because of their initial struggle, but they will eventually catch up and thrive. For example, I mentored a black male student who wanted to become a doctor. He was a top student athlete at his urban high school and was admitted to our university as a biochemistry major because he was pre-med. I recall his dismay when he first encountered the periodic table and realized that all his classmates were already more than familiar with it, having had the opportunity at their high schools to take chemistry and even AP chemistry courses. His high school didn’t offer chemistry and he had never been in a lab. This student quit the football team to concentrate on catching up. Today he is a physicians’ assistant. The opponents of Affirmative Action are decrying the access points but ignoring the possible upward mobility of people who are given opportunities because of it. Most will thrive in their jobs and classrooms when given the opportunity along with accompanying support.

Affirmative Action was reparations for people like me, who because of my family situation and my mother’s advocacy were able to take advantage of it. For me, it was an open door that I was prepared to enter. Other people like my student, who despite the failures of his K-12 education was able to show enough promise and to study hard enough to overcome the hurdles that poverty and an inferior K-12 education placed before him. However, Affirmative Action does very little for most African Americans because the vast majority lack the fortitude or funds to persist in college or worse, they lack the opportunity to gain the necessary qualifications for admission. Affirmative Action alone is nowhere near adequate reparations for African Americans.

Instead, I am advocating for reparations in the form of a substantial investment in predominantly black pre-K-12 schools. These schools need everything from highly qualified teachers, state of the art school facilities, and school resources comparable to schools in high property tax areas. Second, I would offer paid college or trade school tuition and books to every African American student. And I would forgive the student loan debt of those earning less than $75,000 per year. Third, I would offer interest free government loans to black business owners to establish and expand businesses within predominately black communities as well as subsidies to major retailers to open much needed shopping centers in black communities that lack them. Fourth, I would offer a $40,000 cash payment to African Americans above the age of fifty with a bonus of $20,000 payable to the children or grandchildren of WWII veterans who were denied GI Bill benefits; a $30,000 cash payment to African Americans from age 41 to 50; a $20,000 cash payment to African Americans from age 20 to 40; and a $1,000 cash payment up to $20,000 for black Americans who have lived in the U.S. for each year of citizenship up to 20 years. Fifth, reparations must be made to former prison inmates who were either over-sentenced or wrongly accused. Those who served out their sentences should have their voting rights restored. Those who were exonerated should be compensated at a rate of $50,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment and provided free job training or college tuition and fees. And those whose sentences are deemed to be excessive compared to non-black inmates for similar crimes should have their sentences reduced and if the excess time has already been served, they should be compensated for their extra years of incarceration at a rate of $40,000 per year, payable to survivors if the situation warrants. And finally, sixth, every African American living today should receive free healthcare as reparation for government sanctioned environmental toxins, illicit drug infestation, and a history of inhumane medical experimentation on African American bodies.

As a reasonable person, I dismiss the argument that nothing is owed. The fact is that every white person in this country benefited from the mistreatment of African Americans in one way or another. Even though white Americans living today were not personally responsible for the original sin of slavery nor the terrorism, discrimination, systemic inequality and bigotry that followed it, it should be evident that a great portion of the infrastructure, medical breakthroughs, generational wealth, and social status they enjoy today can be attributed to it. Reparations is the right thing to do. It will make amends for the damage this nation has done to the lives and livelihoods of blacks and African Americans in its quest to build wealth and dominate on the world stage. And most certainly, reparations will help improve our collective lives as it will ultimately address our mental health crisis along with the poverty and the crime that plague this nation.

Instead of hiding from our history (because it makes people uncomfortable), we should acknowledge the wrongs of the past and make amends so that we can heal and prosper together. Reparations is a way forward toward healing and unity of an entire nation, with truth as the path toward freedom and release from the chains that bind us to our past failures. It would be a better lesson for our children to learn that the nation hurt African American people, but it apologized and made amends by repairing the damage.

When I look in the mirror, I see more than my milk chocolate skin color. I see the joys and traumas, the victories and defeats, and the pride and challenges of my life and the lives of generations that preceded me. I also see a woman with an easy smile, a heart full of love and compassion, empathy, creativity, and far too many worries. I see a woman who struggles with weight, hypertension, bad eyesight, and kidney disease. I see a mother and grandmother who is passionate about making the lives of the next generation better than her own. I see a human being who is concerned that mankind continues to fail black people and worse, that black people too often continue to fail ourselves. I see a woman who is tired but determined.

I learned early on that people and governments will disappoint me and that the only person I can rely on is myself. But at times, even I disappoint myself. I know as well as anyone that emotions often get in the way of doing what is good, right, and best for myself. For example, how many times have I sought comfort inside a bowl of potato chips? Too many times. However, I still consider myself one of the lucky ones.

Despite my shortcomings, I managed to get a good education, survive childbirth, retire from a good career, be happily married, be financially well off, and to live long enough to see my grandchildren. I didn’t need to be perfect to achieve this, just good enough and lucky enough to escape a few traps, dodge a few bullets, and circumvent a few pitfalls strategically laid to ensnare African Americans.

It’s disheartening to know that seventy percent of African Americans households are making less than $75,000 per year and are therefore not living as well as most Americans. According to Pew, 40% of African American households earn less than $30,000 per year. And having a household net worth over 1 million dollars puts me in the top 2% of black families while 20% of us live below the poverty level lets me know outside forces are actively at work. I fully recognize that a large part of my success can be attributed to pure luck (since God is no respecter of persons), but another part can be attributed to an alternative mindset I adopted, abandoning some aspects of black culture. I weaved together these desperate cultural attributes from my multicultural experience growing up and formed new habits that served me well. That’s what I want to talk about first.

I learned from my church friends to love God, to love others, to forgive, to walk humbly, to do justice, to be generous, and that faith without works is dead. From my alcoholic father, I learned to avoid alcohol and mind-altering substances, but I also learned the virtues of hard work, entrepreneurial endeavors, and to only buy property where the property values will rise. I learned from my mother that the pursuit of personal interests and talents was a worthwhile financial investment and to insist upon opportunities to prove the naysayers wrong. I learned from my Asian friends that competition can drive personal achievement upwards, and that competence has real world value. I learned from white people to value time and the efficient use of it and to watch my back. I learned from my Jewish friends to be frugal and to invest money and that investing is far better than spending. I learned from my Latino friends to value family relationships. I learned from my AKA sorority sisters that Black Girl Magic is real and that I’m not alone in wanting to improve black communities. I learned from my black friends and family to lean into color, creativity, and confidence. I learned from my international students that culture is a powerful driving force in human behavior, but that aspects of a culture can be rejected, revised, and eventually changed. Watching their transformation gave me hope.

As I was introduced to attributes from other cultures, I questioned some of the black cultural cues I absorbed growing up. For example, prior to attending school with a lot of Asians, high grades were easy to achieve because expectations were low, and the academic rigor was even lower. It was at the Asian elementary school that I came to understand that too much time spent playing sports, dancing, and listening to music jeopardized my academic achievement. Admittedly, my favorite past time before going to that school was watching television, listening to music, singing in the church choir, learning the newest dances, and playing sports. But I didn’t want to look stupid among my new classmates, so I had to change how I was spending my time. I wanted to compete academically, so I eventually spent less time singing, dancing, watching television and playing sports and a lot more time reading and studying. Surprisingly, I found that I enjoyed the acquisition of knowledge. I loved learning and the reward of high grades. I never abandoned the fun things, but they were no longer my biggest priority. However, among black family and friends, I became a lot less hip. I was known for (and not really appreciated) for my school smarts.

I learned from my father that home values increase more rapidly in white neighborhoods and that the free public schools are as good as the private schools in poor neighborhoods, so that is where we purchased homes. Since the fourth grade, I’ve only lived in white neighborhoods, and I think experiencing white culture (including being banned from the white neighborhood school) has helped me appreciate the vibrancy of black creativity and cuisine while also learning to navigate white spaces while fully understanding my “outsider” status.

Other encounters eventually shaped other aspects of my life as well. Spending time with my Jewish friends taught me that building wealth came from spending as little as possible on worthwhile products and investing as much as possible. Eventually, my investment growth outpaced my monthly income from my job. Latino encounters taught me to accept and enjoy the diversity of personalities within my family, to invest in family members, and not to cut ties with family members so easily. Growing up, I saw how easily ties were cut among black family and friends for offenses that went unforgiven. I saw jealously instead of financial investment in each other’s ideas. Beyond my family’s unique culture of investing in each other’s endeavors, I saw that pooling resources was like pulling teeth because there was too little trust in each other. I often asked my black college students if they could ask extended family to help them study abroad or pay for books and they said, “no”. The first time I studied abroad, the funds came from multiple extended family members. My mother helped me start a business and purchase my first house. I in turn helped my children with their endeavors and they in turn are willing and able to invest in each other without hesitation.

My point is that although African Americans in this country face very real problems with systemic racism, a few aspects of our culture work against our progress as a people. For example, our emphasis on sports and entertainment above academics, especially among our young males limits our educational and job prospects. Our obsession with fancy hair, fancy cars and expensive trendy clothes hampers our ability to purchase property and invest in the market. And finally, our lack of trust and loyalty to each other and the insane willingness to step on each other and even kill each other to preserve face or to get ahead is destroying us from within and ruining our collective reputation. I can say from the experience of my extended family that living in a black neighborhood is more dangerous, more expensive, less healthy, and more oppressive than living as a black family among whites. These are aspects of our culture that are within our power to change. However, other issues are harder to address.

For example, we are more prone to hypertension because of our genetics. Slave traders licked the faces of potential slaves to select the saltiest prospects because they were more likely to survive the middle passage. Those are the ancestors of most African Americans and account for our higher incidence of hypertension. However, our limited access to healthy foods, exposure to toxins, and inadequate healthcare have a lot to do with our poor health outcomes as well.

I have little faith in the government to improve our situation. In fact, Republican leaders are moving towards making things worse for us across the spectrum, including the removal of our historic contributions to this nation. In red states in the South where most of us reside (56%) the rollback of abortion rights will most negatively affect black women. We already have the highest abortion rates, but we also have the highest maternal mortality rates. Black women are three times more likely to die from complications in pregnancy and childbirth than white women. And of those born, the challenges they will face are enormous. But we are not helpless against these forces.

I advise my African American brothers and sisters to do the following: 1) Value, support and maintain relationships with each other by quickly forgiving forgivable trespasses; 2) Support leaders who uplift us by contributing to their campaigns and voting; 3) Stop wasting money and start saving and investing; 4) Move, eat better, avoid substances, and exercise; 5) Prioritize education in academic or trades; 6) Use birth control; 7) Work hard and seek promotion and better pay; 8) Know and understand your detractors; 9) Contribute to the community; 10) Keep the faith while doing the work.

People without boots have a difficult time pulling themselves up by them. I suggest we start putting on the boots we can find in our schools, among successful family members, and inside the few social programs remaining. And with a little luck and a few cultural tweaks, we can then start pulling ourselves up.

When it comes down to it, any able-bodied human in their right mind would choose to leave home if the living conditions were unbearable. The migrants at our Southern border made a choice that we ourselves would likely make if our circumstances at home were as dire as theirs. We all need a safe place to live. We all need shelter and enough to eat. We all want an opportunity to work and advance in this life.

Humans have been migrating since the beginning of mankind for a variety of reasons. First, there are survival reasons like the need to flee 1) the violence of war or gangs, 2) starvation from draught, famine or inflation, 3) natural disasters, 4) a lack of jobs or opportunity, 5) racial, religious, or political persecution. Then there are those, like my ancestors, who were forced to migrate for the exploitation of their labor. And finally, there are a few fortunate people who migrate by choice. These adventurous folks usually have enough wealth, social status, education, or talent that puts them ahead of the line for immigration in most countries. They aren’t the subject of our current immigration debate and in truth, borders mean very little to them because they are welcomed everywhere.

The romantic narrative of the U.S. is that we are a nation of immigrants. But in reality, we are a nation that tries hard to ignore the land theft and genocide of the indigenous people who already lived here, the enslavement of black people, and the exclusion of non-white and non-Christian people from fair immigration policies. We have never been a welcoming nation to immigrants from everywhere, despite the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”.

It’s inaccurate to say that our immigration system is broken. Certainly, it is under-funded. However, the disfunction is working as it was intended. Our system has always been designed to severely limit the legal entry of poor people of color. Lawmakers keep illegal immigration in place so that cheap labor remains available because taxes are being collected from them, labor complaints are few, and most social benefits can be denied. One could argue that the need for cheap labor drives the continuous under-funding public schools in poor areas.

Let’s face it, the U.S. economy has always thrived on cheap labor. Post-slavery and post-civil rights, our government leaders silently welcomed the able-bodied and highly ambitious people of color who illegally crossed our borders. They wrestled jobs away from poor blacks with their cheaper labor and fewer complaints about working conditions. Our government allowed drug trafficking because the drugs were primarily limited to poor black and brown communities while boosting the economy of our Southern neighbors and providing a reason to imprison a large population of poor people of color, ensuring they couldn’t vote and would be forever doomed as cheap labor. The situation was manageable and suited its intended purposes just fine.

But things changed when white folks started demanding greater quantities of drugs and started dying from them. Interesting, but not at all surprising how drug addiction stopped being criminal and became a public health issue as soon as a growing number of whites were affected. With money to be made, other countries entered the drug supply chain and conditions South of the border deteriorated to the extent that people started doing what desperate people do. They leave their homes in order to survive.

The Statue of Liberty seems like an open invitation, and they are coming. However, the white nationalists don’t want them here in numbers beyond their ability to exploit their cheap labor. They fail to see all humans as fully human with value and so their empathy level is as low as ever. To their core, they believe the lie that white skin is somehow superior and more deserving of life and opportunity in this nation. They forgot that their ancestors were migrants, too, who fled all kinds of disasters or came seeking opportunity. What makes them better than the migrants showing up at our Southern border any different from those who showed up at Ellis Island? Nothing except the color of their skin. And Republican leaders rely on their bigotry to force their true agenda.

Remember when they convinced their constituents to be afraid of Muslim terrorists and their “Sharia Law” taking over our government? Then they introduced fear of Asians whom they blame for bringing Covid-19. These days, they stoke fears of being overrun by brown immigrants, fleeing violence and poverty. Trump and his MAGA news outlets successfully convinced his followers that those southern migrants were to be feared as rapists and drug traffickers coming to kill them and take over the nation. He later said the quiet part out loud when he said he preferred people from white nations to immigrate and not those from “shit hole” countries. Funny, but that has always been the case. Think of how easily this country turned on a dime on behalf of Ukraine migrants.

I spent my career in higher education working in the segment of our immigration system that deals with foreign students coming to the U.S. and sometimes staying beyond their degree to work, marry, and become U.S. permanent residents and then citizens. Those with a lot of money would literally buy themselves a green card by setting up a business. Those with coveted degrees in science and technology would work themselves into eventual citizenship. Those who married a U.S. citizen for actual love got to stay provided they married a citizen with enough money. The students who came here from around the world are generally among the wealthiest and most privileged in their home country. The poorest rarely find their way here to study but when they do come, it takes a tremendous amount of effort to sustain them. Preference was always given to the wealthy.

I look at our immigration system and I realize that Congress has little to no will to improve upon a system that lets in just enough poor desperate people to provide cheap labor to industries that need it. A small amount will be legally admitted, but most will be undocumented and that is by design. Congress has the authority to drastically increase the number of guest workers allowed into the country, but it refuses because wages and working conditions will have to improve and prices will increase. These improvements will impact industries like agriculture, meat processing, hospitality, construction, and garment making. These are jobs Americans typically no longer want to do. And DeSantis in Florida is finding that out.

That said, what’s happening in Florida scares me. DeSantis knows that certain industries need cheap labor and forcing undocumented immigrants to leave his state has created a crisis that he will need to address. My fear is that he has just opened the door for him to exploit the labor of prisoners as the 13th Amendment allows. Most of the prison population in this country are black and brown people. Sound familiar? I’m curious to see if he goes the route of legalized slavery. It would not surprise me as crops rot in the fields and construction halts.

Other red states who are anti-immigrant are lowering the child labor standards to fill their need for cheap labor. Their obvious targets are the children from poor areas with failing schools and few opportunities. Without an education, these children will become part of the permanent cheap labor force and so will the children they will be forced to give birth to.

You see, lawmakers know that the anti-abortion laws don’t affect wealthy women who can afford contraception and easily obtain an abortion by traveling. But it does force the poorest women among us to give birth. The white children can be adopted, but we all know that black and brown babies are far less desirable among those who can afford to adopt. They will be raised by poor mothers or become wards of the state. Pro-life Republican leaders are really about providing industry with homegrown cheap labor to exploit while simultaneously closing our borders to drugs and brown people.

As long as white people keep thinking they are superior and Americans keep demanding illicit drugs and the rest of us insist on buying cheap goods and services provided by exploited cheap labor whether from undocumented immigrants, homegrown cheap labor, or perhaps a return to slave labor, absolutely nothing will change in our economic system that thrives on human labor exploitation.

Before I continue with my family’s story, I’ll take a moment to wish all the mothers, mother’s to be, and grandmothers a very happy Mother’s Day. I hope your family expresses their love and appreciation for all you do. And if they don’t, I encourage you to give yourself a pat on the back and treat yourself to time off or a special treat. You deserve the recognition.

Now I’ll continue our journey as blacks in America.

Our family had moved from Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley foothills to escape the growing dangers from multiple directions. My brothers transferred from the affluent, primarily Jewish high school they attended in Los Angeles to the less affluent, but overwhelmingly white high school available in the area. I, on the other hand was given a choice between the white junior high (middle school) in the same neighborhood as my brothers’ high school or the predominately black junior high in a different neighbor. My mother left the decision to me and was considerate enough to allow me to tour both schools.

So, after walking around both schools during a quiet summer afternoon when no one was around except for a few administrators, I chose the predominately black middle school (grades to 7th-9th) back in those days. I didn’t choose it because the campus was nicer; it was decidedly inferior, but because I had never been to a school where most of the kids looked like me. Up to this point in my life, I had been one of the only black girls among Mexican, white, Asian, and Jewish children. The only time I got to interact with black kids was on rare play dates with my few black classmates and at church or family gatherings, so I thought this was going to be a great experience.

I was in the eighth grade. Had I been paying attention, I would have realized something was amiss when the counselor said that they would place me in the highest academic track, considering the school I was transferring from. I distinctly remember asking myself why they had an academic track at the junior high level? They didn’t have that kind of thing at my previous junior high. My previous school was filled with wealthy white, primarily Jewish kids and only a small handful of my Asian friends from elementary school. I loved the beautiful brick buildings and the academic rigor as well as the exposure to yet another culture that valued academic challenge as much as I did. That was my mindset.

In fact, as far as I could tell, all of our black family and friends valued education and so I assumed it was part of our culture as well. I soon learned that other players had somehow stripped education from our grasp and poisoned our collective academic aspirations. We valued education, but it was often denied to us.

When school started that fall, I was shocked to see that each of my classes were filled with the only white kids in the school and small handful of other black kids. I didn’t know enough to question why only a small number of black kids were receiving the best education they had to offer. Looking back, it didn’t seem to be a lack of desire among the kids for academic rigor, but rather a lack of expectation on the part of the white teachers and administrators in charge to provide it. My black friends were creative, intelligent, and ambitious. And sadly, I came to realize much later that black children and often their parents were not even aware that they were being offered a below standard K-12 education. I was a lucky kid who slipped through the cracks of a prescribed oppression scheme.

Interestingly, it was at this middle school that I, along with the other black kids in my class were tested for the gifted program. Were we such an anomaly? I didn’t think so. Or were we an experiment? Only two of us passed the test and we were given the distinction as being a “state-identified gifted student”, a designation that would later become the weapon my mother needed to fight for my academic placement at the white high school I would attend the following year.

I was proud of my mother’s boldness when she marched over to the high school and demanded that administrators enroll me in honors courses as well as the German language class that I had requested but was flatly told was probably too difficult for me. Armed with my straight A report card and a certification that I was state identified as “gifted” she also reminded them that they were being paid extra to have me at their school. I got my classes.

However, the message was clear to me that as a black person, I had to be more qualified than my white peers to gain access to white spaces and to gain any sort of recognition for my work. Thankfully, I thrived academically and made my family proud. And I earned an “A” in German for the entire six semesters. You’d think that with my stellar grades and extracurricular activities and awards that I’d have an easy time selecting among the best colleges and universities in the country, but that wasn’t the case. I was Ivy League material, but never even heard of the Ivy Leagues.

My one and only visit to the college guidance counselor proved futile. The counselor hardly looked at me and offered me zero guidance on my college choices. I only really knew of the local universities our gifted program toured, and so I ultimately ended up following the footsteps of my older brother who attended the University of Southern California. It was the only school I applied to, and I was accepted with a full tuition scholarship. Affirmative Action was in place to provide people of my skin color the opportunity to attend top schools if qualified and I was definitely qualified. Some still think Affirmative Action takes spaces away from qualified white students when legacy admissions have long been a form of Affirmative Action for white students, and no one bats an eye.

I understood that a few turns of luck and my mother’s advocacy made it possible for me to be qualified. The K-12 educational system was designed to track black children out of higher education at every stage with inferior schools, substandard curriculum, and low expectations. For most black children, especially if they are poor, the system was not set up to provide them with adequate college preparation. Affirmative Action was of no use to most of them. However, it cracked open the doors for the exceptionally lucky few like me, but literally opened the flood gates of higher education and job opportunities for the academically prepared Asian students and white females.

As black people finally realize just how rigged the system has been against us, we are finally taking steps to increase our numbers in higher education, corporate America, and politics. The diversity, equity and inclusion policies found in medicine, education, and corporate America, designed to mitigate the actual harms of racism and white supremacy are under attack before their full benefits can be realized. The pre-Civil Rights racism and white supremacy that severely limited black opportunity, ravaged black communities, introduced drugs, denied access to the building blocks of generational wealth, underfunded schools, and destroyed black families with police brutality and incarceration were neither benign nor unfortunate policies of our historical pass. We are just digging out from their effects but there are some who want to drag us back.

It’s very clear to me that people need context for understanding that programs like Affirmative Action, and laws like the Voting Rights Act and fair housing and police reform and educational equity and the push for sentencing reform are not a form of reverse discrimination. Nor do they pretend that racism and discrimination never existed, and that the U.S. has always lived up to its ideal of a colorblind society as some would have us believe. The lingering white supremacists among us want to erase this context along with the history of discrimination in America as they work to pass policies that stop black and brown economic and social progress. They seek to introduce a false narrative that America is now and forever has been a fair country where hard work and ingenuity will make anyone rich.

I’ll conclude my family story here. Of course, I continued the challenge of being black in America as I raised my own children. I had to be just as bold of as my mother and on this Mother’s Day, I want to express my sincere love and gratitude to my late mother, Juanita Joni Ball, for raising me and being my biggest source of inspiration and my greatest advocate.

I’ll pick up where I left off last Sunday.

Our reunited family eventually moved into an even bigger house in a predominately white and Asian neighborhood. We were the first black family on the street. Interestingly, my two brothers and I had no problems fitting in with the neighborhood kids whether they were Asian or white. We had a lot of fun together. However, our acceptance ended at the school gates that fall. I never questioned why all the Asian kids on our street attended private schools. In retrospect, I now understand why. After the first week of school at the all-white elementary school, we were asked to leave and to attend the integrated school in a nearby neighborhood. This wasn’t the South; this was Los Angeles in the late-1960’s.

Although the Asian kids on our block didn’t attend the integrated school where we were sent, the students at the new school were predominately Asian. I was one of four black girls in the entire school but that wasn’t a new situation for me. From pre-school through 3rd grade, there was only one other black girl (Sheila) attending the predominately Mexican-American elementary school close to L.A. County Hospital where our mother worked. I adjusted fine.

It turned out that the Asian school was more academically competitive than the white school, but it was also much more poorly resourced than the ascetically beautiful whites only school. There were only bungalows for buildings, no gymnasium, no fancy playground, and no daily hot meals served in a nice cafeteria. Instead, we had a covered patio and a hot dog day every Thursday (plain or mustard). Despite the obvious economic disparities between the two schools, I thought school was great. I was challenged academically, and I developed wonderful friendships with children from different cultures, primarily first-generation children of Japanese immigrants. Much like my experiences with the Mexican-American children, I sampled their food and visited their homes after school to play. My multicultural upbringing taught me that beneath the cultural differences, we are essentially the same as human beings. While I was thriving at school, our home was descending into mayhem.

I never asked about the pressures that lead my father to drink heavily. But I suspect that the 1965 Los Angeles riots must have been difficult for him since he had worked so hard helping to establish a thriving business community there. My dad gradually descended into darkness and anger as he drank his Vodka and orange juice into the evening. Some days he brought home candy bars and games; other days, he brought home frustration and violence. I recall lying in bed some nights, waiting to see which father would enter our home. Sometimes, my mother knew he had been drinking and she would sneak us out the back door as he entered. We would spend time at a drive-in movie theater sleeping until she was certain he had fallen asleep, and it was then safe to return to our beds.

The backdrop of our family troubles was a turbulent in society where black frustration with discrimination in education, employment, housing, banking, and over-policing lead to unrest. It felt as though we were prohibited from prospering at every turn and that angered me too. But I didn’t understand why we were burning down our own stuff. In our outrage against injustice, we were destroying our own communities and our own futures. I realize now that my elders understood how ruthless and violent whites were towards us given little provocation, so destroying white neighborhoods was off limits. We had endured the Watts Riot in 1965. The same summer I was staying to Detroit, the 1967 Detroit riot broke out. I recall sitting in the living room with the lights off during part of that riot. My grandfather sat with his gun in his lap, determined to kill anyone who threatened his home and family. I wondered then whom he was afraid of. Was he afraid of other black people or the police? The answer was both. And that turned out to be the reality of black people like me for years to come. I’m afraid of desperate black people and fearful of insecure and entitled white people. Both are dangerous.

My overly-pressured, hardworking, but unpredictable alcoholic father was also threat. And so was the overtly friendly and wealthy white television producer who lived next door. This horrible man knew he could get away with sexually assaulting a ten-year-old black girl with impunity because he knew that my dad would be the one to go to prison for defending me. So, I said nothing and refused further entry with my brothers into his “fun” home. The deprived and depraved black gang members who stole leather coats from my two brothers were a threat. And the police who viewed all young black males as criminals were a threat. I was in middle school and my brothers were in high school when my grandparents decided to help my mother separate from my father for the second time. They provided her with a means to escape him and the now dangerous city.

We moved to the foothills of the San Fernando Valley, away from everything since the old neighborhood was changing and violence at the nearby high school was becoming a problem. Many of our neighbors had moved away (white flight). The black neighborhoods where we attended church and where our close friends and family all lived had become especially dangerous as desperation and lack of opportunity turned to criminality. Selling drugs, using drugs, and stealing from each other along with the pressure to join a gang for personal protection, economic opportunity, and excitement had become prevalent. My mother was right to move us out of Los Angeles so that we could be safe, build equity in a home, and obtain a decent public education. But getting the education we deserved turned out to be a battle of its own.

There was no question that my brothers would attend the all-white high school in our school district because it was the only high school. But I was given a choice between an all-white or a primarily black middle school. Having never attended a school where almost everyone looked like me, I chose the black middle school. That was an eye-opener on a variety of levels and deserves more attention that I can devote right now. So, I will continue the story in my next blog post.

My hope is that reading my story will help readers see the effects of systemic racism. The decisions lawmakers made to exclude black veterans from the G.I. Bill, to allow red-lining of neighborhoods, to allow the infusion of drugs into black neighborhoods, to ignore the reluctance of banks to loan money to black people, to permit the unfair hiring practices of businesses, the underwriting of targeted efforts within the criminal justice system to incarcerate black people while the media vigorously reported on it, and the blatant suppression of the vote, made it all the more difficult for black Americans to climb the social economic ladder. And now, just as we are beginning to climb up, there are those who want to push us back down.

People need context for understanding Affirmative Action and the Voting Rights Act and fair housing and police reform and educational equity and the push for sentencing reform. The formation of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs didn’t suddenly materialize as a means to harm white people. The agenda of DEI is to disrupt a system designed to make white people winners at the expense of others. The lingering white supremacists among us want to erase the context under which DEI was formed along with the history of discrimination in America so they can pass policies that stop black and brown economic and social progress. The goal is a permanent underclass to provide cheap (if not free) labor. The Republican Party in particular seeks to introduce a false narrative that America is now and has forever been a fair country where hard work and ingenuity will make anyone rich and those who fail, have done so because of a personal character flaw.

In this post, I decided to share a bit of my family history to illustrate how an average family is affected by racism in this country. New laws and policymaking that lack historical context makes for really bad laws and policy decisions and people of good will who lack this understanding will make harmful voting choices. The faith, living conditions, economic status, attitudes, and prospects of black people living today were largely influenced by past discriminatory laws and policies that were rooted in racism and white supremacy.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan. My grandparents, both maternal and paternal, were hardworking family-oriented people who left Mississippi during the period known as “The Great Migration”. Like many other blacks, they left the South to seek manufacturing jobs and better life opportunities while also fleeing the racial tensions and oppression of the Jim Crow laws. Both sides of my family found jobs in the automobile industry, allowing them to purchase homes in the safety of segregated black neighborhoods and to obtain an education for their children. For a time, both families enjoyed a stable black middle-class lifestyle in a thriving black community, complete with music recitals, a black-owned and operated newspaper, Sunday morning church services, annual family reunions, access to higher education including membership in Black Fraternal organizations.

My parents met in college. My dad was an Alpha Phi Alpha and my mom was a little sister. My mom’s best friend and several aunts on my dad’s side were members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated (where I also enjoy membership). Things were going well for my parents and their respective families who were gainfully employed and living a segregated but peaceful middle-class lifestyle in Detroit. However, conditions were horrible in the South and continued to drive black people north. As more people poured in, things started to change in the North as job opportunities shrank, access to home ownership became more difficult (due to red-lining and discriminatory bank policies), basic civil rights were denied, and aggressive policing took over. Frustrated, angry, and desperate people tend to break laws in order to survive. In response to oppressive laws and policies, the Civil Rights Movement was taking wings, finding sympathy and support from blacks in the north who were now in distress on all sides. This was the situation my two brothers and I were born into.

Shortly after I was born, my father decided to move our family of five to Los Angeles in search of safety and opportunity. My father was an ambitious and highly intelligent black man. It could not have been easy for him to have his opportunities both in business and in life continually limited because of the color of his skin. Shortly after arriving, he left us in Los Angeles in a housing project while he pursued a law degree and accounting certification in Texas. Meanwhile, my mother went to work at the Los Angeles County Hospital, my brothers spent two years back in Detroit, and my grandfather traveled to California to watch after me until a Mexican family started caring for me.

When my dad returned to Los Angeles, he provided professional expertise to many black entrepreneurs in South Central Los Angeles as they built their businesses in the black section of L.A. Yes, California was also red-lined and segregated. For a time, we lived really well. We were well-connected, well-dressed, well-housed, and well-fed. For reasons still unknown to me, my parents separated for the first time when I was about six. We moved into a lovely house in Culver City and lived there until my mother made the mistake of marrying a man who was abusive to my brothers. That marriage didn’t last long. In the summer when I turned eight, my mother sent me to Detroit to stay with my grandparents.

When I returned, my mother and father were inexplicably back together and we were living in his beautiful home with a swimming pool. No one explained anything about what transpired while I was away, and I knew enough not to ask. That “culture of silence” surrounding trauma, sickness, and loss remains as a detrimental cultural legacy to this day. I was twenty-six years old when I finally asked what happened that summer. My mother’s response was short and lacked the clarity I desired. She clearly did not want to talk about it. I’m sad about the culture of silence, but I believe there are reasons for it that probably don’t serve us in the end.

I once thought it was a form of denial. But now I believe it is a kind of emotional defense mechanism to help us endure the hardships constantly coming our way. Perhaps to talk about the plethora of bad happenings to acknowledge pain, weakness, helplessness, or worse, a lack of faith. Perhaps there is a belief that wounds can’t healed if they are talked about. Perhaps we feel an obligation to spare others the emotional cost that accompanies sympathy and empathy because we are well aware that they are suffering their own trauma. Being black in America means there is plenty of trauma to go around.

There are the everyday indignities that black skin invites, both intentional and unintentional. There are blatant actions of discrimination at school or at work to contend with. There is the fear of violence from all directions including law enforcement. And then there are normal human problems to deal with on top of it all. With all that trauma, perhaps it is both inconsiderate and counter-productive to talk about painful incidents. That is the mindset I grew up with and to this day, I have friends and family who suffer in silence and die without anyone knowing what ailed them. For too long and for too many black folks, trauma is endured, but rarely shared, and probably accounts for the facade of the strong black woman who secretly suffers from high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, and any number of other ailments.

This post is becoming incredibly long, and I have so much more to tell. I will continue the story next Sunday. Until then, for my black readers especially, I want us to start talking. I know many of us take our burdens to the Lord and leave them there. But that deprives others of our experience and creates a false narrative about what our lives are really like. This silence doesn’t help political allies, nor does it help the children who come after us to understand our concerns, warnings, and admonitions we thus upon them.

Beyond telling our stories, I encourage therapy or at least journaling to ease the emotional burden of dealing with the everyday microaggressions, the injustice of discrimination, the many losses, the violence, the scars, the family secrets, and the numerous other traumas we were taught to handle in silence. I hope this post is shared with family and friends of every race because we have a big battle before us, and we all need to understand what is at stake and to be strong enough to fight.

It was both appalling and heartbreaking when an 84-year-old white man shot a 16-year-old black kid, not once, but twice, claiming that he became fearful when the kid mistakenly rang his doorbell several nights ago. As a black mother, I’m the one who has reason to be fearful for my college-educated, professional, and law-abiding 38-year-old son who has a target on his back because of his skin color. My daughter summed up that fear when she confessed on social media that she felt relieved that her mixed-race son could easily pass for white. As a mother and grandmother, I am keenly aware that it is my generation and the children we raised who continue to fail our children and our country. We haven’t overcome our racism. Racism is bigotry armed with power. Bigotry is hatred toward members of a particular identity group. The difference is the power to affect the lives and livelihoods of the hated individuals or groups. Racism has that power. White supremacists have always used lawmaking and guns as the power that undergirds their bigotry.

I live with racism and the effects of racism every day. It is the generational trauma and the trauma of today that saddens, angers, and ultimately ignites my passion to fight. It is accurate to say that dealing with the racism in our society affects my decisions and my daily behavior. Sometimes I smile to ease the discomfort of insecure white people in power. I can easily sense their discomfort. Sometimes I’m overly nice to receive the service I deserve as a human being from white service providers such as medical staff, policemen, or restaurant servers. And sometimes, like last week, I simply give my regards to the white woman following me around the Hallmark store in the Thousand Oaks Mall and then leave without purchasing a damned thing. I’ll take my purchasing power elsewhere. Those of us who follow the rules to climb the social-economic ladder by obtaining an education, working hard, and obeying the laws, are treated in accordance with a false narrative that our black skin makes us lessor Americans, inferior employees, and criminals who can sing, dance, and play sports. To some we are either entertainment or a threat.

Like with any other people who share a skin color, there are a few criminals among us. And frankly, I wish they would stop doing stupid ass stuff! In truth, individuals of all skin colors do stupid ass stuff! The difference with us is that the media highlights loudly and on repeat the misdeeds of black people that undermines our worth. Feeding into the problem is a historical law enforcement system designed to over-police black people whether they reside in black, white or mixed neighborhoods. It’s a vicious cycle of attack that we refuse to acknowledge and therefore can’t seem to break out of. The American psyche is so polluted with the false notion that black people are inherently dangerous criminals that the justice system treats us more harshly from start to finish and the media reinforces the stereotype. It follows that police handcuff five-year-old black children, man-handle black women, and shoot unarmed black men. How can we be surprised then, when an 84-year-old consumer of Fox News shoots to kill a young black male for ringing his doorbell?

We happen to live in a white area. I’ve mentioned before how my brother complained of being stopped by police when he came to visit me. I’ve also mentioned the racial profiling my students of color endured at the University. But I think it’s important to illustrate how over policing works for black people on a personal level.

One morning I was on my way to work at 6am. I spotted a police car a block from my house and confidently drove past him, checking my speed as a reflex to ensure I wasn’t speeding. As a rule, I don’t make a habit of speeding, but police cars make me nervous, so I always double check. Next thing I knew, the police car was behind me with flashing lights, and I promptly pulled over. The officer came up to the car and addressed me by name (which was strange). He asked if I knew what the speed limit was. I quoted it to him (35 miles/hour) and he informed me that it had been changed the prior week. He then asked me for my license and registration. I was shocked and still recall my exact response: “You’re not giving me a ticket, are you? Shouldn’t this be a warning? After all, there is no speed limit sign anywhere in sight and it was just changed. And besides that, you can’t say I’m a danger to anyone since there is literally no one on the street besides you and me.” And that is how I got my first of two speeding tickets. The second was just as egregious.

The magnitude of the unfairness was highlighted when I told my white male boss what had happened, and he told me that he too had been stopped over the weekend for driving 85 miles/hour on his way to the golf course, but he only received a warning to slow down. This is what over-policing looks like. Black people are more often stopped, cited, prosecuted and then sentenced more harshly for the same crimes as whites. We all need to ask ourselves what would have happened if Kyle Rittenhouse (the white teenager with a gun) had walked down those same streets during a Black Lives Matter protest if he was black? I wager he would be dead instead of the protester he killed.

At times, I thought that we as black people desperately needed to hire a really good public relations firm to clean up our image. But then we had Oprah and the Obamas and a host of really great black role models in the spotlight, and I thought maybe things would change. However, their success and popularity only challenged white supremacy and fueled white insecurity. It allowed deeply racists white folks to say racism ended because the nation gave black folks an opportunity. They could say with a straight face that the problem with black people is that they are generally too lazy, too uneducated, too promiscuous, and too violent as a culture to progress and to be held in high regard. White people in power point to Oprah and the Obamas as exceptions to the rule and continue to discriminate, disparage, and disregard our dignity as human beings, pointing to black on black crime as an example of our normal state. There is a segment of white society that has never accepted the equality of black people as Americans deserving of equal opportunity and respect and they are willing to fight to keep white superiority and rule.

It’s become clear that the racism problem is again at the forefront. The vocal denial of the problem by lawmakers and the actual attempts to rollback diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts in schools, particularly in red states is an extension of white nationalism that didn’t end with the Civil War. I think it is up to us as progressive Americans to acknowledge the problems, share our stories, boldly teach the history, and make sure that banned books land squarely in the hands school children everywhere.