Audubann’s Weblog

I recently had a conversation with a few associates who were Caucasian. Some lived in the southern United States and some lived in the northern U.S. They said that African-Americans in urban areas complain a lot, but don’t vote. Also, that they were too lazy and ignorant to inform themselves of the issues so that they could vote correctly if they did go the voting polls. In vain, I tried to explain to them that many minorities in urban areas are impoverished and with poverty often comes substandard educations. They either did not understand the issue or just did not care. However, citizens need to understand and care. If I could have informed it to them in writing, I would have done so as follows.

It was a sweltering August night and the buzzing street lights seemed to add to the heat. As I came around the corner with my aunt and cousin I could see a large crowd of people in the street. There looked to be well over 100 people. My cousin was a little curious about the scene and my aunt did not seem to care at all. When we were close enough, my cousin and I stopped to watch.

A young lady was scampering in an erratic course. She was wearing shoes, white khaki shorts and a ripped t-shirt. The sweat was drinking off of her in rivulets. It was easy to see that she was very frightened and fatigued.

My cousin asked, “What going on to a nearby kid who looked to be about 14 or 15 years-old who answered, “That’s her brother.”

I was relieved that her brother had shown up. He was wearing Nike shoes and long jean shorts. He was sweating profusely and looked angry. His sister was afraid and tired and he was going to help her. “That’s a good thing,” I said aloud. My cousin looked at me like I was retarded. He often times treated me that way went I came to visit him and my aunt. I soon realized why he had looked at me that way.

The girl’s brother was skinny. He looked to be maybe a year older than myself and much smaller in size than his sister. When he reached her, his fist clenched and he hit her in the face. She stumbled a bit and struck back at him. Even though she hit him, he landed another blow on her that cause her to tremble and wobble backwards. The crowd whooped and hollered at the spectacle.

“Rip her shirt off!” someone yelled. “Yeah, rip that bitch’s shirt off!” another guy yelled. To my surprise, even the women in the crowd laughed and verbally urged on the spectacle. The boy’s sister must have heard the crowd. He punched in the face again and she cried out loud. I was surprised that she had not been crying the entire time. The two siblings reminded me of trained boxers. As the girl was gasping for air, her brother hit her again and she hunched over a bit. Quickly, the boy grabbed her shirt and pulled it hard. As he pulled with one hand, he punched her with the other. The girl started crying so loudly that she could be heard over the crowd’s cheering. She no longer cared about dodging and returning punches. She only cared about keeping her shirt on. Within a few seconds, she lost both fights. As her right breast spilled out, the crowd cheered. The girl who could not have been more than 15 years-old had breast that were well into the size of a woman’s and the sight was a shock to my thirteen year-old eyes.

The girl ran off pushing her way through the crowd. The people she ran into shouted threats and insults at her. She ran between two buildings and into an ally way. My cousin was laughing and my aunt looked annoyed at us having stopped for even less than two minutes. I looked at the kid who had answered my cousin’s question. “Why was he doing that to his sister?” I asked him. The kid looked annoyed and almost like he was going to hit me. I was thankful when he looked at my cousin first who was tall for his age. My cousin gave a slightly derisive look my way to diffuse the tension. The kid decided that I wasn’t worth trying to beat-up. “She stole five dollars from him.”

“Really,” I asked without thinking.

“That’s what I heard,” the kid responded. Another person chimed in as well.

“Yeah, that bitch always be stealing from him. He told her that he was going to beat her ass if she did it again,” said an older girl who overheard us.

All of this happened in the U.S. in the summer of 1994. It took only 2 minutes and looked to be something that went on routinely. The Chicago intersection near where we got off the bus was 77^th and Halsted Street. A current Google Maps street view of the intersection shows it to be in the same condition, except for this time, there seems to be a small parking lot with parked police cruisers. It did not occur to me at the time, but now I know that it is significant not only that a brother and sister in the streets for minutes on end over five dollars, but that the police never came. No lights flashed through the neighborhood, trying to sort out what happened.

Even in Lansing, 10 years later, the problem of apathy and ignorance plagues us. In July of 2004, I saw a man knock down another man. The man doing the knocking down towered in stature over the other. The smaller one got up and lurched at the taller one, only to be knocked down again, but this time he was bleeding heavily and did not move to get up. I called the police and described the two African-American men and was horrified at what the operator told me.

“Well sir, are they fighting now?”

“No, I the big is walking down the street and the little guy has a friend who I think and hope is taking him to the hospital.”

“Well then sir, call us back if they start fighting again.”

I was livid at this. “What! There were two men fighting right here in downtown. Two blocks away from the capital. One probably has a serious concussion. And you aren’t going to do anything?”

The dispatcher sounded irritated. “Sir, we are too busy with other things going on around the city. You said that they stopped fighting and that the injured one was being taken to the hospital. Now is there anything else?”

How can people be expected to think about voting when they cannot even depend upon their government to be concerned about their safety and health? More importantly, how did things get this way? How is it that a minority group is in such a situation that no one cares about them and they don’t even care about themselves?

I have repeatedly learned that nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

By luck, I found a book at a friend’s home that was in mint condition. The book was a dark red and on the cover was written the name Israel Zangwill and the title “Children of the Ghetto. I looked inside and saw that it had a copyright date of 1892 and was without a reprint date. I was confused. There weren’t that many African-Americans in Chicago, Detroit or New York at the time for there to even be ghettos. And Las Angeles was barely even a city at the time. My friend’s mother would not let me take the book for fear of damage, so I went to a computer lab and did some research. A Google search and book review search on Amazon showed that the book was indeed from 1892 and was about Jews. That it was a journalistic report in novel form of a study of Jews living in England.

This small drop of information empowered me with a healthier and more informed understanding. It is not that African-Americans are more violent and self-abasing than other groups. It is that we are going through what every other ethnic group has gone through already. We are clustered in ghettos and are disenfranchised by means I trust my readers already understand and so I will not go into in this document.

I have come to understand that very few people, if any are evil. Even those who make the worst proclamations about a people are not evil. Often, I do not believe that they view themselves as having any ill intent. They are misinformed and confused. Zangwill was a journalist. He wrote about a people, even if it was a fictional writing, to exposit to the world what he witnessed in his “…Study of a Peculiar People.” Even if everything was not accurate or correct about everything he reported, at least he did it. At least he cared enough to let the world know about the significance of ghettos and social issues stemming from them.

I do not know what it will take to inform others so that they have a healthy understanding of why the world is as it is. People who do not feel safe within their own families and their neighborhoods are not going to see themselves as a valid part of the legal framework for the decision making in community, save for being damned to poverty and as the enemies of the those in authority and those who enforce the will of governmental authorities.

The common response I get when I point out these issues is, “Well that isn’t my problem. I have enough things to worry about.” Much of such a response is narcissism, but to the part of it that is a valid argument, I answer that soon enough, we will be paying for our negligence to one another by way of lowered progress per person and an overall less Gross Domestic Product. People who are less educated, incarcerated and full of angst are not likely to add to the overall equity of our republic. It is my belief that an understanding of the world is easy enough to come by- a person simply needs to be informed. For that I will continue to write. I will continue to inform myself and others around me.

It is coming up on what would be my ten-year high school reunion and it has caused me to spend much time contemplating my life. Technically, I am uneducated African-American from a broken home who has even served jail time and has a brother in prison on a murder conviction and it is important that I point out that I do not have a criminal record. Furthermore, I am probably one of very few students who have ever attended MSU without ever having a high school diploma.

Due to my lack of monies and the efforts of my son’s mother and her family, I have truly learned what it means to represent one’s self in a court of law. I now understand that there are not only strict laws concerning conduct in court, but that half of the battle is in just knowing how to even file a motion correctly. I cannot fully explain what drives some people to hostility and resentment over skin color or economic class. I do not know why my son’s Caucasian grandparents have an inherent disdain for me or why his mother has sided with them. I just know that I have an obligation to raise my son in a healthy fashion and ensure that he is grows up correctly informed about the world he lives in.

To tout my own horn, I can rightfully say that I am awesome. I have battled and won in my fight to be informed. I have been graced with great intelligence and perception. At a young age, I met some men and women who worked hard to repeatedly keep me informed. Two of the names are Orson Scott Card and John Barnes. They are authors who helped me to deal with complicated moral and social issues and I met them via book gifts from teachers and loans from the library.

In the end, I just want to give back. I want for people to not only understand their plight, but to be informed and feel empowered to exercise their inherent rights and abilities. There may be thousands of journalists already in work and more in college, but few of them have seen what I have and understand these issues the way I do. Because of this, I will not stop. I won’t stop no matter how many people have yet to be informed.

(This is the first two pages.  The setting might throw some of you off, but you will have to just keep reading to understand how this will unfold and tie into the DC universe.)

The October night was unusually warm. It caused John to believe more and more in the theory of global warming. While fighting overseas as a marine, he was only concerned about whether or not he was going to have the supplies he needed in order to accomplish his missions. So what if the vehicles gave off a lot of carbon emissions? If terrorist destroyed the world, who could care less about global warming? A lieutenant once even told him that global warming was just something made up by pacifist who would say anything to convince the world that the military was doing more harm than good.

Sweat ran down his face and arms as he pedaled toward his apartment. He could see blue and red lights up ahead. The campus police had stopped someone. He biked faster. A few seconds later and he saw who was in the stopped vehicle. It was a young white guy with slick brown hair. He was driving a station wagon with a bunch of stuff in the back with a mattress tied to the top. He looked to be either moving in or moving out.

John slowed down a bit to see who the officers were. To his horror, he saw that they weren’t actually officers at all. They were Stackhouse and Mulroy. They were posing as cops and for some reason had targeted this poor kid. He was unsure of what to do. Those two were very dangerous, but he couldn’t just leave that kid to be hurt. He thought to call the real police, but there probably wasn’t enough time. Especially at this late hour, the cops were probably busy dealing with rowdy students partying after the football team’s big win.

He made a right turn down the next sidewalk and sped up. He went about 100 yards down and stopped. Catching his breath, he hoped that he had enough distance and that it would actually work. He started pedaling at a middle gear. He was rapidly switching to higher gears in order to achieve maximum speed from his efforts.

As he got closer, he could see that Stackhouse and Mulroy had gotten the kid out of the car. John was at a diagonal and couldn’t see much of his front, so he just had to imagine the expression of fear that must have been on the poor kids face as Stackhouse raised the real enough baton and brought it down across the kids shoulder. The kid cried out and slumped to the ground. Stackhouse’s face was a profile of demented glee.

When John was shopping for his bike a few months earlier, the store manager had convinced him that he should get the expensive Trek because it had a titanium frame. Just in case he needed something tough for the times he went mounting biking. John knew that he probably would never go mountain biking, but his years of military service had taught him that stronger was always better. Even if it costs a little bit more. Skimping out on good equipment is what often led to needless casualties. He was glad he paid the extra money and he hoped that the company’s advertisements about the bike’s frame were sincere.

He switched into the highest of the twenty-two gears and reached what he thought would be his maximum speed. The south part of campus was nearly empty because even the freshmen were out of their dorms partying. The bike operated smoothly and made so little sound that it was inaudible over the police cruiser’s running engine. Now came the really hard part. John almost wished that he was like Spider Man and had mounted a camera somewhere to take a photo.

Stackhouse and Mulroy were too involved in taunting the kid to notice anything else. Thank goodness the kid was already on the ground so that John wouldn’t have to worry too much about him getting hurt too.

With out about twenty yards left, he did it. He knew he had to aim it just right, especially with the forward momentum the bike would maintain. He also had to make sure it was sideways, in order to take out both. He turned to his left side in the seat so that he was riding the bike on sideways. It took time and distance. He was only ten yards away and then they noticed him, but it was too late. John slammed down hard on the left side pedal and hunched over. His muscles were still ripe from working out at the gym not more than ten minutes earlier, making this easier. The bike flipped up high as expected and he grabbed the top cross bar. With the speed he had going, the hardly needed to add any more torque. The hardest part was just aiming it correctly. The bike somersaulted and turned several times on its side in the air. It went cleanly over the top of the kid’s station wagon and slammed into the upper torsos of Stackhouse and Mulroy. They were thrown several feet back and before they even hit the ground, blood spurted out from where the bike connected with their necks and faces. Good thing they were a pair tall bastards.

John didn’t get to see the impact, but knew it connected from the sound their bones made as the titanium frame slammed into them. There had been times in Afghanistan when he had to fight up close and the sound of bones breaking was familiar to him. Unfortunately for him, the effort of throwing the bike at such a high speed had caused him to flip with it. He landed hard on his back two feet in front of the station wagon with the wind knocked out of him. Hopefully, the kid would have enough sense to run away or call for help, because John was going to be getting up for a while.

This is something that I wrote to my self two and a half years ago.  I did not have any way to save it and I did not want to simply print it out only to have it become lost.  Often times, I wonder if there are others who are going through what I did and feeling all alone.  Feeling as if no one really understands what they are going through and will never assist them in clearing the way.

When I wrote this, I was broke, homeless and saw no way for me to make it back into college.  I was angry and hurt at not having a family to help me.  I was also angry over my encounters with many people who just did not understand what it could possibly be like to only have yourself to depend upon.  No friends.  No family.  No agencies.  Just yourself.

Thank goodness I learned how to type and how to use emails.  I sent this document to myself and with everything that was going on, I forgot about it.  Now, two years later, I smile and am so damn proud of my self.  Not only did I achieve many of my goals, but I had the tenacity to write about my thoughts and feelings.  I articulated what I needed to.  Here on WordPress.com, I see that many others are doing the same.  I am not alone.

Entitlement

By

Etienne L. Fields

Being a young man in this state of Michigan has been very difficult at times. In large part, this is due to the stratification I have suffered under all my life. No matter how I see my self. No matter how good; moral; pious the people around me claim to be, there are always a large number of them who wish to oppress me. From trying to deride me for the way I talk to treating like a villain for demanding equal treatment in the work place.

There have been some persons in my life who have been healthy and supportive influences. These persons told me that I would love college –that once there, I would be free to develop my self and seek out what it is that I want to do with my life. But I haven’t been there yet. Even when at Lansing Community College, I was often restrained. However, I can see a significant difference between a community college student and a university student.

This difference that I speak of is not quantified in hard work. Nor can it be understood by averaging students’ grade point averages. The difference is the realization that a person not only has the right to expect the opportunity to self actualize one’s potential, but should demand it as well. Many people mistake this demand as a sense of privilege and self-entitlement that many Caucasians are said to possess. That Caucasians have an inherent sense of entitlement and should thus let it be expressed. This is a mistake. Just because I am not Caucasian doesn’t mean that I am not entitled to the same environment to develop who I am. Or what I want and how I intend to go about achieving my goals.

If I had my way, I would be at a university. I would be studying history, philosophy, religion and I would converse about these topics with others of like mind. I don’t mean those who simply hold similar opinions, but those who hold the same passions as I do. Outside of a University setting, people rarely discuss these topics in a healthy fashion. Rarely are they appreciative of a person who attempts to.

No matter who I am or where I live, I am entitled to the opportunity to self actualize. I am entitled to be inaccurate and then correct myself. I am so beautiful and I expect to be treated as such. I will not try to prove my self worth, nor gain the respect of others around me.

I am made up of so many wonderful characteristics. If people choose to only speak of my quote-un-quote negative characteristics and judge me upon those- all the while saying how different I am; how weird I am –that is up to them. I will not seek to prove to others about my own self which is self-evident.

If I choose to fly away, they will curse me and throw stones in attempts to sunder me. If I attempt to rationalize with them, they will laugh. Those who would wrench me apart for being better, do so because they choose to.

What is most saddening is that those who choose to attack me are the very reason I am better. They have lowered the bar. They have made themselves less. If I had things my way, I would not be alone in my flight. I would have somewhere to perch myself. If I had my way, I would not be alone in this. If I had my way, I would have the resources to go about this at a place designated for higher thought and significant action.

At a university, I would have my way.