hi yall!
im back at school, which is good and bad.
good cause i dont wanna be at home.
bad cause i dont wanna be at school.
good cause time continues flyin by and soon it twill be emancipaton day.
my time at home was okay. it just sorta... was. same ol same ol.
OOH i caught up with dallas tho! i went to visit her at her apartment saturday evening. it was so good seein her again, man. she's one of the few consistant friends i have. and for some reason it seems like ive already told this story here, but i dont think i have. anyway, she's got a nice lil apartment on 22nd & broadway...right.on.broadway (hellooooo derby!), got a job doin sumthin or the other downtown, got a boyfriend who she says isn't living there with her. but i dunno. he was there when i was there, in her room playin x-box. i was there a full hour before she even mentioned him for real, and when i went to say hi to him, he looked at me for 2 seconds, almost mouthed a 'sup' but not really, then went on ignoring me.
what's up w/ that?
none of my friends' boyfriends will talk to me.
?
anyway.
i told her she shld move with me to wherever i move to. she said she'd think about it. i sorta hope she decides too... it'll be nice not to be alone in some huge strange city, plus it'd be nice to be able to kick it like we used to.
i need to come closer to making some decisions, too.
the next GRE exam is April 3rd. results will be mailed out May 14th. that's officially past like evry grad school application deadline in the world. im gonna contact the career developlement center this week & hopefully they can help me.
a few weeks ago, my neice was telling me what she learned in school about abraham lincoln being 'the great emancipator.' she's 11. of course i proceed to tell her the TRUE story of lincoln, wanting to send all the freed slaves back to africa, freeing them only to win the war, his belief in their inferiority, all that good stuff. i then tell her to take that info back to her teacher & see what she says, so i can see what sorta education they givin kids these days. i ask her about it while im home over spring break.
basically her teacher told her that evrything i told her was a lie & evrything in the textbook is true.
im tired of typing, but my basic inclination is to write her a professional letter explaining to her why that was the wrong response to have, along with some information supporting what i told my neice, and a couple of book suggestions, mainly "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen and "Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream" by Lerone Bennett, Jr.
she's basically gettin the same bullshit education we all got.
will things ever change?
and am i overreacting?
the next day, she (my neice) was with us when me and my mommy got our hair done (i look like a dark n loveley commercial now, thank u very much). we started talking about it again... for whatever reason my neice doesnt want me to do anything about what her teacher said, and we tried to explain to her why she was wrong. we then went on to tell her lots of things she'll never learn in school, probably until college. that martin luther king didn't do the bus boycotting all by himself, that it was women who did most of the organizing and executing. that rosa parks wasn't the first woman to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. lotsa stuff. it was neat--3 generations of my female family sharing knowledge of our past generations. sounds like a mahogany card, but it was neat.
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i have a story.
im leaving my blk feminist theory class. i have a graded paper in my hand that my professor had just handed back. i wrote about the treatment of gender in 'bamboozled.' i got an A-. im reading the comments.
im walking behind this lil white girl, paying only enuff attn to keep from walking into something or falling as i read. we exit thru the same door. her boyfriend is on a bench underneath the trees outside. she and i reach him at about the same time.
im reading.
in the corner of my ear i think i hear him go 'niiiiii..'
i think i hear him finish, but im not sure. i cut my eyes at him as i walk past & try to gage their facial expressions to see if im right. i stop breathing and step lightly after i pass to see if i can hear what they say afterwards. appears they've gon on w/ their conversation. i keep walking.
by the time i get to my room, i forget all about it.
7:00 comes and im getting ready to leave again to get something to eat. the telephone rings. it's crazy billy from upstairs. crazy billy never calls me.
'hey, wanna meet me outside the hallway real quick?'
no, billy, not really. why?
'a friend of mine just wants to talk to u real quick.'
who?
'nick.'
i dont know a nick.
i go because im leaving anyway, but i keep my hand on my pepper spray, just in case.
standing on the landing is billy and the boy waiting for his girlfriend on the bench earlier. he is visibly shaken. he approaches and averts his eyes.
'hey, um i dont know if u heard what i said out there, um, earlier, but i um'
i glance at his hands. he can't keep them still. they look like powdered sparrows with their tails caught in bear traps, flitting and fighting and scared but unable to fly away.
'i was just quoting something from the chapelle show and i didn't mean any harm at all, and i dont know if your opinion of me is gonna change'
as soon as he starts talking i know what he is talking about, but it doesnt hit me til now. eventually his words become blurs and i try to get my bearings to handle the situation properly.
he looks like he's about to cry, and i feel bad for him. i hold no grudge against him at all, and i want him to know that, so i smile. i thank him for his apology. then i slip up-
'dont worry about it'
why did i tell him not to worry about it? fuck that, he shld worry about it. ...shldnt he? and am i smiling too much? should i be more upset? do i have to reprimand him and tell him exactly why what he said was wrong?
but wait... *was* what he said wrong?
i mean, he wasnt sayin it to or about me. but he's not black. i forgive him. will he now think that if any other black person ever hears him say it, that all he has to do is apologize and evrything's okay again?
and was he really sorry for saying it, or just that a black person heard him?
when i get to my room i call a friend to tell him what happened.
he says i handled it well. i am still unsure.
he also says that he and his sister predicted this happening with the growing success of Chapelle's show--he tells me that he saw white people becoming too comfortable with the word the more they watch the show.
i dont hate the kid.
i still wonder if i handled it correctly.
