The Impatient Optimist

A Quarter History

“My mother told me Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America,” I remember telling my teacher during a whole American History High School Course. I say whole because I remember signing up for an African American History Course and was quickly let down to learn that only half of the course would focus on Black History. The rest of the course was economics. Economics is cool but no one cared about economics. In a predominately black school district, we got a quarter of Black History.

I sometimes sit back and question why every year I got to take a different American History course in full but I got a quarter of Black History when I’m fully Black. Most of my teachers were white even my Black History one. It was underwhelming at best a lot of American History books tip-toed past slavery because whoever is doing the branding for American History is a PR Marvel/DC Comics level genius or a nightmare depending on who you ask. Most history books controlled this narrative that the Americans were the heroes. Hell, some history books depending on what state you’re in list slavery as “immigration,” “involuntary relocation,” or “workers.” Slaves were none of those things. Unlike those American History Courses, we can’t just gloss over slavery and change the narrative. High Schoolers are old enough to read about America’s Villain Era which never seemed to end but to evolve.

“Columbus was lost.” At home, my mom made sure to teach me Black History through movies, computer games, books, and music, and even turned a vacation into a learning opportunity to visit Martin Luther King’s childhood home. She would even blast Tupac and tell me about how his mother was a Black Panther. She even taught me that the Black Panther Party wasn’t ancient history in fact it started in 1966 and they started the first free breakfast program because poor kids couldn’t learn if they were hungry. At one time they were feeding over 25000 kids a week. They started free medical clinics, they monitored the activity of the police in Black Communities, and they even had international chapters.

If the school wasn’t going to instill some Black History in me, she surely was going to make sure I had a well-rounded education that didn’t just make the Americans look like the heroes. She couldn’t trust the American Education System to educate me on Black History even though she knew that a lot of American infrastructure was built by slaves. We watched Roots, Hidden Colors, and even the ever-so-cute My Friend Martin. Martin Luther King Jr. came up every Black History Month. There’s nothing wrong with that because he was flawed but a phenomenal leader. The same system that praises him acts as if he died from natural causes though.

Back in school American History had so much depth and narration down to the boat names that Americans sailed here on. Meanwhile we got the same facts every year about Black History. Peanut Butter, Super Soaker, traffic lights, and black hair guru Madame CJ Walker.

I’m glad my mom gave me more because reducing Black History to an extract of its original essence was tasteless.

The Bank of Injustice

Every February people quote Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech as if he wasn’t murdered five years later for preaching equality. Every February people quote the same piece of the speech too. Rather it’s a school or corporation, you’re going to hear about the color of skin and content of character.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

To the average Black American it’s a nightmare because there were other parts of that speech that get swept under the rug and that check that Martin Luther King spoke about in his speech still fails to be cashed let alone acknowledged.

“100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check.”

According to TalkPoverty.org 19.5 percent of African Americans live in poverty compared to 8.2 percent of White Americans.

“It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. “

Unless something drastic happens the homeownership statistics for Black People won’t rise significantly to match their counterparts because when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed White People already had a head start on generational wealth. While White People were owning property and building wealth Black Americans were building American infrastructure for free. It turns out that that and the idea of never being able to trace one’s lineage is not enough evidence for reparations. I never want to compare struggles because each struggle is different but is racism so systematically ingrained in American society that reparations could never be? There have been multiple instances where countries have agreed to reparations for victims of crimes but when it comes to America and Slavery it seems never to be the time for the reparations conversation. Surely, it won’t fix the past because even our family historian can only trace our family tree back a few generations to a small town in South Carolina but it would make their contribution to society worth something. I can’t imagine the amount of wealth Whites were building while Black people were fighting against Red Lining in the 1960s.

Redlining in the 1960s was when banks classified neighborhoods as hazardous or too ghetto for investment due to the race of their residents. In turn, the banks didn’t lend money to people living in those neighborhoods. The 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed redlining but the damage was already done. If Black People couldn’t even buy houses in their own neighborhoods they were forced into high rents and they weren’t building generational wealth. Few banks gave out loans to residents of these neighborhoods but they were at astronomically higher interest rates which caused them to default on the mortgage essentially setting them up for failure.

“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.”

The Dream Deferred

Black History is always the shortest month of the year and it feels symbolic of something. We’ve always had to do so much more with so much less. One of my favorite poems by Langston Hughes is “Dream Deferred” and in its entirety, it’s a beautifully written poem but it’s those last two lines that stick with me. The whole poem questions a dream deferred and asks if it sags, “like a heavy load or does it explode.” For centuries African Americans have carried the load of protesting on the front lines, organizing, and pushing systematic change and not just for ourselves because we know how it feels to be at the bottom we were advocating for equality for all but if November taught us anything it taught Black People that our work and our ancestor’s work went unappreciated. When Black Women, the backbone of political grassroots organizing, washed their hands clean of American politics, it felt as if collectively we talked amongst each other and dug deep to fight the urge to try to fix things because we knew that work would also go unappreciated and undervalued. We found hobbies, we found each other and we saw the world around us for what it was. It wasn’t giving up but it was the Black Woman sighing in relief that she finally could put down the load and our into herself and her community if she chose to.

Check out
The Speeches We Don’t Talk About
We Need to Talk About the 200 Year Head Start