Face Me: Father's Day Confrontation with Reality

When running low on patience and blood pressure medication, it is not a good idea to let another human being influence you to the point of confrontation, but there is something about ego and arrogance that drives us to do insane things in the name of sanity. I mean, who in their right mind would let someone speak to them in a disrespectful tone and not respond, right?

While I would love to write about the good old-fashioned cussing I gave to the ex-husband, why go there on this blog, right? I could just tell the truth and shame the devil... or myself.

I have been unemployed from full-time work for over a year. All the bills are late, I fear waking up one morning and the car is repossessed. I peak out of the window overtime I hear a neighbor drive up and get out of their car. The eviction notice came and even though I have a plan in place to get money, the plan involves my 47 year old body doing the work that my 20 something mindset

 thinks I can handle.

Off to the Temp Agency. I filled out the application. The next day I go back in. "Give me whatever you have that can put money in my hand quickly to get some bills paid." I find myself picking up heavy boxes from a conveyor belt in -20 degree temperatures at an ice cream factory, for $9.00 + an hour. 

I work with some decent men. Six Black men, one Latino man, and me. I suit up. I say little. They are nice and teamwork is real because I am short and sometimes I have to use my shot put throwing arm to sling the boxes up on the crates. I can't see the patterns the boxes go into when they are stacked that high, so the brothers help me. 

I share this because I can see the conversations about class swirl around me like buzzards circling a dead carcass. The ex-husband became nice all of sudden and bragged about paying the cable bill because I couldn't afford to pay it so our daughter could watch TV. If I were still working at the university, he would have NEVER done that. He misinterpreted our daughter's excitement for belittlement of me when she yelled through the phone, "Mommy works at the ice cream factory, she makes ice cream." What a cool thing for her to have talks with me about how ice cream gets to the store for her to go in to purchase it, right?

Well, the ex-husband chastised her for making fun of Mommy having to work at a factory instead of at the university. I chimed in and said, "Wait, wait, she is excited that I work there. what are you saying?"  It was then that I realized I was not imagining the tone in his voice. He was happy that I had --in his mind-- fallen down, failed.  He was gloating and happy that I am struggling. And he has not offered to help with one dime of rent to keep stability in our child's life  --- never mind the 5 to 7 times he "fell" and lived with us until he "got back on his feet".

So, he got what he did not expect. Money or no money, job or no job, I am still Jethro and Helen's child. The essence of who I am is not defined by poverty or wealth. I drove to his home and asked a simple question: "Do you want to say to my face what you said to me over the phone before you hung   up in my face?"  Folk started looking for the exit. He asked me to talk outside. Now all his neighbors know our business -- mostly his.

I choose peace and serenity, but don't disrespect me, because if you do, you disrespect my Ancestors and some of them will rise in me and handle situations on a level that I don't even understand most times. 

The lesson for me is to continue to face difficult situations and handle difficult people the best way I know how. The reality is that some people who have been close to you, hate you for wanting to be the best you can be. They see your set-backs as failures and they are happy for you to fail --even when the hard times that get visited upon you by default is visited upon their own flesh and blood.

Jolivette Anderson "The Poet Warrior"

(c) June 21, 2015

JA 'the poet warrior': DEFINITION: 'African American'

JA 'the poet warrior': DEFINITION: 'African American':      I developed this definition, 3 years ago, to help teach students I interacted with at Purdue University how one term carries with it a ...

DEFINITION: 'African American'

     I developed this definition, 3 years ago, to help teach students I interacted with at Purdue University how one term carries with it a history of cultural, political, and even spiritual implications. 
     The use and understanding of the term must be accompanied by other terms --used overtime-- to categorize the racial group in the United States that is made up of African people. 
     The trauma that brought us to this nation-space lives in us, but we have refused to value it properly. We have refused to make who we have been constructed to become -- to date -- a major part of our generational ties to children and community. We abandoned our own stories - the majority of us have done this. Now, it seems, the only thing that unifies us is our collective anger and outrage when what we should be the proprietors of -- our image, our experiences, our Black lives --is claimed by those we did not invite to the 'racial identity development for Black folks' party. 
     Funny thing, we should have been having those parties for real. If we had, all the "cultural appropriation" in the world would not disturb our peace the way it has over the past week.

I presented this definition at the Association of Black Cultural Centers Annual Conference at Purdue University, October 2012.

African American: An Inclusive Definition of a Racial Group in the United States

By Jolivette Anderson-Douoning

© October 17, 2012

African American

1. A person born or living in the United States who is descended from regions of the African continent where the people have dark hue or pigment in their skin that give them a definitive color.  A person previously identified as ‘Black’, ‘Negro’ or ‘Colored’ who has relatives that were either enslaved persons (Slaves) or Free Blacks (Free Persons of Color) in the United States or its founding colonies.  A person who can be connected through family history and/or Bloodline to a person- known or unknown- who entered the United States as property or  - whose skin was dark enough for them to be classified as potential property, if they could not prove their status as a ‘free person of color’. A person born in the United States to parents with dark skin. A person that can – based on appearance alone-- be viewed as a shade of the colors black or brown. A person that has historically received dehumanizing treatment because of the color of their skin. A person that may have a family lineage in the U.S. that dates back to the early 1600 or before. A person whose identity has followed a trajectory that included the following identifiers:  
1. African
2. Captive
3. Slave (Enslaved Person)
4. Free Person of Color (Free Black)
5. Colored
6. Negro
7. Afro American
8. Black
9. African American
2. A person of African Descent born in the United States to bi-racial parents where one parent is White and the other is of African descent born outside of the U.S. and has been generationally immersed in the customs and culture of their native land. A person whose identity has been categorized as:
1. Mixed
2. Bi-Racial
3. Mulatto (Quadroon, Octoroon, etc. based on percentages of African blood)

This person will also have been identified as: 

1. Colored 
2. Negro 
3. Afro-American 
4. Black and 
5. African American (negating exclusively their White parentage but would never be identified exclusively as a White person, negating their African parentage)

This person will also have a ‘bi-cultural’ heritage but may not practice it due to living in American culture.

3.  A person of Black African descent born outside of the United States who has immigrated to the United States. A person residing in the U.S. as a Permanent Resident (African in America = African American) or who has become a naturalized citizen. A person who is connected to his/her ethnic (tribal) identity by name, by family relationships, and by cultural practice whether in their native land or in the United States. A person who lives in the U.S and may be a citizen but identifies him/herself primarily as either:

1. African
2. West (other region) African
3. Immigrant
4. Citizen of Country of Birth (ex: Nigerian, Ivorian, Ghanaian, etc.)
5. American (note: not African American)

The above definition was put together to assist those who don’t know the history of African Americans in the United States. It is meant to foster a greater understanding of how diverse one term (African American) can be when applied to all people with dark skin living in the United States. It is written to take into account the ‘treatment’ people received due to the color of their skin. It is designed also to acknowledge a host of tensions that exist between African American peoples with specific focus paid to those who have generational memory of Jim Crow and Slavery. It is my opinion that we who descend from the institution of Slavery and Jim Crow are viewed as complainers, victims, or people who play the victim instead of a people who struggle with the remnants of the treatment received by our ancestors who were forced to interact with their children and each other in a way that rewired the individual brain of men and women as well as the family structure. This rewiring also caused the acceptance of behaviors that became so commonplace that it is now identified as ‘cultural’ or ‘Black Culture’. It is a manufactured ‘difference’ made by Black people to survive harsh treatment, hostile environments and the constant indignity of being labeled as ‘inferior’ or ‘subhuman’ under a white supremacy system.

JA 'the poet warrior': Color, Character, and Rachel Dolezal: A Tale of Fl...

JA 'the poet warrior': Color, Character, and Rachel Dolezal: A Tale of Fl...: Color, Character, and Rachel Dolezal: A Tale of Fluid Identities by Jolivette Anderson-Douoning aka Jolivette ‘the poet warrior June 12...

Color, Character, and Rachel Dolezal: A Tale of Fluid Identities

Color, Character, and Rachel Dolezal: A Tale of Fluid Identities

by Jolivette Anderson-Douoning aka Jolivette ‘the poet warrior

June 12, 2015

I was taught in my early age that it was “okay to respect white people but never trust white people”. As I recall, there was always a sense of anxiety or urgency in my parents home, when White people were discussed. If a White person drove down Ledbetter Street while we were playing dodgeball or kickball, we would all stop, look, wait to see where they were going, and then continue with our gameplay. If they kept driving we knew they were lost.  If they slowed down to look at addresses, we knew they were looking for Mr. Raye who owned his own marine shop and fixed motors on fishing boats. He was pretty much the only person we knew in our neighborhood who interacted with white people at his home. Any other white person was deemed suspect and potentially dangerous. By the way, they did not have names. My grandmother referred to them in my presence by race and gender i.e. “the white lady”.

I provide this background of my upbringing in an all Black neighborhood in Shreveport so you will know that I -like millions of other Black people- have struggled to be the good and decent people our parents raised us to be, but the experiences I discuss above happened in the 1970s, before Reganomics gutted and destroyed Black neighborhoods. The services to parks, community centers, and after-school programs that provided the extra support needed to have healthier Black families and to maintain healthy Black communities were removed and replaced with ‘domestic weapons of mass destruction’ like guns and drugs. The neighborhood changed and it made our parents change so we had to change. We had to see the world very differently as individuals and as members of a racial group that was on a decline as it relates to values — to be clear, we knew right from wrong, but circumstance made many of us choose wrong. 

There have been a few white people who have challenged me to think beyond my parents fears of “respect don’t trust”. I remember most of their names: Tammy, Todd, Susie, Dale, Wendy, Carol, and Rachel. Tammy and Todd entered Hollywood Elementary School in my 2nd and 3rd grade classes. Tammy’s nose would bleed often and Todd ate boogers quite often. I thought they were weird by nature of what they did and because their skin was very pale. Susie, Dale and Wendy were from Linwood Jr. High. Susie totally embraced being Black, so much so that I got really tired of her hanging with all the Black girls, talking like us, acting like us, and trying to be us — and I told her just that. I was mean to her, she was mean to me, but no fist-a-cuffs ensued. Dale was my first ‘white boy crush’. Wendy was the girl who liked him and got in good with me because he thought I was cool but did not know I liked him… blah, blah, blah.

As an adult, Carol embraced me when I moved to Indiana and helped bring me back from a traumatic experience, and has recently found out that her great grandfather was a Black man, a photographer from the Harlem Renaissance. With the introduction of Google, I searched my name several years back. I found that a performance I had done in Jackson, Mississippi for Smith Robertson Museum was mentioned next to a piece of art titled Afrika. I knew immediately that it was Rachel, yes Sister Rachel Dolezal. 

The museum curator, Turry Flucker, invited me to meet Rachel to discuss the opening night of an exhibit showcasing her art. He had to prep me for this meeting, and he did. If he had not prepared me, it might have gotten awkward, even ugly. I might have gone back to the Susie incident in Jr. High School, and Turry would have lost points with me. He was Black, southern, and intuitive enough to know that my personal mission to “uplift Black people or die trying” did not include white people at that time or in that stage my “racial identity development.” I admit that Rachel confused the hell out of me. 

She was quiet, intense, respectful, and an extremely talented visual artist. She showed slides of her work and explained her method and approach to creating fine art. All of her subject matter was about Black people. Then something she said struck my heart so hard, so deep, I was challenged, if not forced, to open myself up to change. This young girl with blond hair and blue eyes said, “I remember being very young and saying [to an adult] they are so beautiful, Black people are so beautiful to me…”.  It was one of those spiritual moments of connection. She was honest about having white skin and loving Black people. You can see that love in her visual art just as people see it in my brutal honesty about race in my poetry, my arts activism, and my academic work. 

At a recent conference at Purdue, a professor used the phrase ‘blue-eyed soul’ that has been used to describe artists like Teena Marie and other whites who were genuine in their love and appreciation of Black culture to the point of making folks question their racial make-up. To sound Black, to look Black, to be Black are all infinitives, grammatically speaking, but the infinite must be viewed through a cultural lens when speaking of Black people and our specific history in America. I recall Minister Louis Farrakhan speaking of his relationship with the white Catholic minister, Rev. Flagle saying, “Color [of skin] would not matter if it had not been made an issue.” 

So, for all of my supposed militancy. For all of my friends and family who have no idea what I do as a Race Educator, and who think that I hate white people just for being white — her is my official ‘No, that is NOT who I am, that is NOT what I do.' My love and allegiance is forever and always with Black people, African people of the Diaspora, but I am not closed-minded enough, ignorant enough, or arrogant and egotistical enough to NOT build relationships with white people with a shared interests toward making a better world, when I have the access and the energy to do so. My Ancestors will not be pleased with me knowing I have been given these gifts of communication and made a choice to not use them to make a better way for Black folks -- just because I refuse to work with a person who has white skin.   

Rachel Dolezal has been one of my life teachers and an inspiration to me along the way. As she struggles with the fluidity of her identity that comes from real life experiences; 1) seeing the beauty of Black people from a very early age and seeing herself in her thoughts, dreams, and childhood drawings as a beautiful Black person, 2) discovering her talents and expressing that beauty and love through stunning fine art pieces, 3) being in a relationship with a Black man that produced a beautiful son, 4) legally raising her little brother who is now a young Black man, and 5) knowing up close and personal — by the access her white skin gives her — how brutal and vicious the systems of racial injustice are. The treatment of and the brutalities against Black bodies that are carried out institutionally are rooted in the social structures of white neighborhoods and networks. These are the rules, the social policies that turn into governmental policies, and they function the way they do because many white people do NOT want too many Black folks in “their space”. What is spoken around the dinner tables gets acted out in court rooms, schools, and  yes, swimming pools too. 

I am saddened Sister Rachel is going through this firestorm of media attention. It can’t be easy on her and her children. Just as her art work challenged me to see her and all white people differently, I do believe her social justice work in her local community, and how she chooses to identify herself based on what has happened in her life has the power to change us all. 

How we look at individuals and racial identity must be discussed with audiences of all backgrounds. Rachel’s choices have been put on a world stage. She will feel compassion from some and experience diatribes from others. She has to decide what really matters and continue to raise her children as a mother who is raising two Black young men, a mother who happens to have white skin.  Her color and her character are being questioned, and I see her current struggle as a challenge to me and folks in my circles to continue to define and redefine -- in academe and community activist ciphers-- what it means to be Black and what it means to be a human being.

__________________________________________________________

Jolivette Anderson-Douoning (Jolivette the poet warrior) is a PhD student in American Studies / Curriculum & Instruction at Purdue University. Her research work is titled The Antonio Zamora Years, The Creation of Black Cultural Centers as Safe Spaces to Teach, Learn and Talk Race: From Hidden Curriculum to Public Pedagogy when Culture Migrates from Black Communities to White Campuses.  She is creator of the D. Ciphers Migration Curriculum and a one-woman theatre piece titled Race Me, Face Me, Living in the Shadows of the Lynching Tree ~ A Poetry Reading, Performance, and Public Pedagogy~. She can be reached at DrJolly2015@gmail.com