The Name I Call Myself: On Race (Pt. 1)

How I Celebrated Black History Month
I first realized that I was treacherously unsatisfied with Black History Month about 4 years ago. I have worked in education for the past 12 years, in special education for the last 8. In this time, I have been one of only a handful of black students and coworkers, which has meant, no matter how "diverse" my workplaces have been, that I have continued to exist as a minority among minorities.

When black history month is celebrated in a school, it usually looks something like this:

• Plaster grainy, black&white photographs of famous African-Americans on the walls. Always draw from a pool of the same 20 people. Descriptions of what these people are known for may or may not be included. 
• Talk about segregation in the 1960's and the civil rights movement A LOT. Make it clear to the students that segregation WAS. Use more black&white photos (this time from the 1960's). Talk a lot about buses and water fountains (use my presence in the room as an example that segregation is totally over, if convenient). Talk about how hard it was to be a black person. Invite white students to shake their heads sorrowfully at the reality of former injustices. Do not leave room for me to comment on the lesson. 
• Talk extensively about Martin Luther King, Jr. and how, because of him, black and white people, nay all peoples in America, can be friends. Talk about how great it is that no one is racist now. Emphasize that the president is black.

In my classroom, I have a cultural awareness poster that I change every month to go along with our monthly assemblies. For February in years past, I have done what is expected: I printed out various photos of famous African-Americans and put them up on the poster, along with a poem by Langston Hughes and a map of Africa filled with titles of various careers and occupations that have been held by blacks. I spice things up by intentionally using photos of famous black Americans both in color and black&white, both dead and alive, both male and female. I always feel that I have gone the extra mile, hopefully providing visual proof that not all good black people are dead.

This year, I started asking questions. What is the point of Black History Month? Why do I cringe at the thought of it? What, if anything, can be accomplished in the 28 days we have been given to combat hundreds of years worth of disrespect and dehumanization? Then, it struck me. I find it atrocious that we have to put up, during Black History Month, pictures of African-Americans that are "worthy." It feels like the whole month is spent saying that black people are not all good-for-nothing. It feels like a display of exceptions. And, the worst part of all, it means a month of sitting through classes, staff meetings, and assemblies where people who are not black describe to other people who are not black, in my presence, with an air of unquestionable authority, what blackness is. This gave me an idea.

I returned to my poster. On a 3x5 card in bright red marker I wrote: "BLACK PEOPLE ARE. . ." Then, on more 3x5 cards, in the same red ink I wrote adjectives that corresponded with the photographs I'd chosen. Under a picture of Jesse Owens leaping over a hurdle I wrote "FAST." Under a picture of Harriet Tubman I wrote "BRAVE." Under a picture of Maya Angelou I wrote "CREATIVE." Under a picture of George Washington Carver I wrote "INTELLIGENT." I felt shocked at myself for my boldness: how dare I affirm explicitly and without permission what I know to be true? How dare I not qualify my assertion with the word "some." This is not how Black History Month is supposed to be celebrated.

I think black history month ought to be about creating new language, forming new assumptions, and letting 1,000 positive adjectives fall from our mouths, all about what it means to be black. I just want someone to run around Los Angeles, covering billboards with the phrase "Black people are. . . " and then writing in one hundred thousand good words. Why? Because the other 337 days of the year society is saying "Black people are. . ." and ending that statement in 1,000,000,000 ugly ways. The best thing we can do during Black History Month is to say that it is good to be black, and then to hush and let the words sink in, uncontested.

So I spent this Black History Month entrenched in blackness. I intentionally spent the time celebrating the work of black musicians, artists, authors, and filmmakers. I read books by black authors talking about blackness, I listened to spoken word artists talking about how to love themselves when everyone around them is calling them unlovable. I engaged in discussions with my white friends about their experiences and how they were different from my own; I had long talks with my mother about her experience of blackness in Jamaica and then during the civil rights movement in America as an immigrant. I visited a black, Episcopalian church, I listened to a lot of Nina Simone. I thought about lies I have been told my whole life. I looked for, and found, living black role models, because it is important that we know that not all good black people are dead. And I worked on explicit self-definition, remembering that most of the problems we have with race in America come from us naming each other to make ourselves look better-than, which is an act of destruction.

My Back History Month Bibliography (to date):

• Z.Z. Packer Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
• Tracy K. Smith Ordinary Light
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Americanah
• Toni Morrison Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination 
• Toni Morrison God Help the Child
• Helen Oyeyemi Boy, Snow, Bird
• Zora Neale Hurston Mules and Men
• Tamara Winfrey Harris The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America 
• Issa Rae The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl
• Fran Ross Oreo
• Essence Magazine
• New African Woman Magazine 

The Principle of Self-Determination 
The point: freedom is me naming myself, narrating my own experience, and describing the scope of my own strengths and limitations. It does not matter how kind one's words or intentions are, they are judgments, limits, restrictions, invasions, and impositions. It simply isn't anyone else's job to tell me who or what I am. No one should attempt to tell me that I am worthy or that I am unworthy. Being black is what I say it is. And I say that it is good.


I'm just warming up, really.

Grace: A Beautiful Punch in the Face

My word of the year is grace. I’m living this year trying to understand what it means when we say that God is gracious, that we are transformed and renewed by grace, that grace is free and present and abundant all of the time. One thing I’ve been learning is that sometimes the working of grace in my life looks like a punch in the face—it shocks me, hurts me, makes me take a look around and reconsider my expectations. But other times, grace is like a warm hug, a spicy samosa shared with a friend, a cup of Earl Grey, laughing in the midst of a field of poppies, an infant’s little fingers wrapped around my pinky, breathing.

God gives us grace, in the packaging and dosage we most need, at the times when we most need it. I’m learning to recognize the presence of God in the everyday. I eat a strawberry: its sweet redness, its heart-shaped perfection, reminds me that God is good.

And then there are those other moments. The moments when what I most want is to just walk out of the room, out of the door, into nothingness, because existence feels futile, and frustrating, and impossible to bear. Then I think grace is like a sharp slap across my face, because it makes me remember that I have been created for something more: for something good, and true, and lovely. The me who was satisfied wandering around in circles pretending to live is more desperate than the me who is sitting on the ground, rubbing my sore jaw and wondering what just happened.

Grace is supernatural. That means that grace intervenes in nature—in the ordinary, the mundane, the status quo, the expected. Grace is wholly unexpected, wholly undeserved, and dearly needed. My natural self cannot get anywhere without God’s cosmic karate chop. I need God’s power not just to make all of my dreams come true, but to shatter the dreams that are built on false and shaky hopes, and to build new dreams on substantial foundations.

Grace meets me where I am, and then, like a whirlwind, it picks me up and whirls me around until I lose my bearings—leaving me somewhere else. The land may look barren—broken rocking chairs strewn about the desert, someone’s dazed cat stalking by on wobbly feet, but it is here, in this place, that I can meet God, because there is nothing else I expect to see. I have been taken out of myself to meet him. To meet God on his own terms, in his own timing, on his own fruitful soil.

To find one’s self in the economy of grace is to find that you do not have enough money for the journey. In fact, you are a thief and a stowaway and you have been found out. But instead of being tossed off the train, with your raggedy carpet bag tossed behind you, you find that you are invited to dine in the first class coach, provided you admit to the other passengers that your fashionable clothes are borrowed, and that your fare has been donated, not earned. It is in grace that we learn how poor we are. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This means, blessed are you when you can’t pretend anymore that you have anything to give, anything left to bargain with, anything to cover the fact that left to yourself you are only naked and mean and ugly.

Grace takes this ugly unkindness and dresses you up, beautifully, generously. Suddenly, you are the belle of the ball, and you remain here—in twinkling crystal slippers and a blue gown—until you forget that your carriage is really only a winter squash and that rodents alone will befriend you. Then, here comes grace, like a clock chiming twelve, to remind you that all you can claim for yourself are rags and woes and a bed made of ash.

Thank you, God, for the punch in the face that reminds us of how good you are, and of our poverty without you.

As Anne Lamott says,

“Remember, God loves you exactly the way you are, and he loves you too much to let you stay like this.”

A Vocation of One's Own

Sometimes I hate my job because it means that I am the only non-specialist in a world full of experts. I was not made to function as a maid of all work. I'm not a generalist by nature. I want to throw myself into some highly-specialized, creative and desperately needed, utterly meaningful work of my own. 

I've said it before and I've said it again: I want to be George MacDonald and Amy Carmichael smushed together into one person. This is who I am. You figure it out. 

She sees the realities of this world and alleviates human suffering with a sacrificial love. 

He sees the realities of the world to come and communicates them to others with the creative power of his soul. 

I need a vocation. 


This thought that is getting me through the desert of now:

"His Kingdom is Upside Down and in Him your part is large and lovely and needed and art."

Surely, I was created to be more than a Teacher's Assistant.