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nmazca.blog embedded in the floating world |
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What was it, April? Sure, that's when it'd stopped snowing (more or less). I'd gone to the Mega-Lo-Mart at Severance Town Center in order to buy a couple of feeders and some seed for the birds that visited Dr. Drugs' backyard. That store was the site of a very interesting cultural confluence, situated as it was between large enclaves of African-Americans, Eastern Europeans and Orthodox Jews (with a liberal addition of Asians and Latinos). Didn't get to see all that much ethnic heterogeneity in Wallingford. Anyhow, I had been shifting back and forth, talking to myself about how I was not going to pay $6.99 for a plastic tube with two pieces of metal on the end, when a little boy bumped into a display of lawn torches in the main aisle. Two fell over and clattered on the floor. His mother, who was black, turned around, smacked him in the head, snapped "Look what you did, stupid!" and then picked up the torches as the boy cried. A week or two later, at the other end of Lee Road: I was traipsing through the aisles at Nature's Bin, almost certainly with a bag of granola and two or three Almond Ginger Wha Guru Chews in hand. A 30ish white woman and her son walked by, and the boy's hand knocked two or three chocolates onto the floor. He was going to walk on by, but his mother said, "Wait, we have to pick these up. Help me." He stood there for a minute, perhaps wondering if he was about to be in trouble. Then he bent down to help. So. Am I saying that [less affluent] black parents are violent and temperamental? That [co-op shopping] white parents are patient and mindful? To make generalities is not my objective. I've worked with mostly black (and all poor) kids who live in Section 8 housing on a flood plain in Columbus OH *, and mostly white kids who live with hellafied advantages on top of the Hill in Seattle. Constructive and cutting parenting methods go both ways. Fortunately, tools for modification are available. Of course, I do have a particular concern with the way that some black kids behave, and the choices + treatment that influences that behavior. What was on my mind at Mega-Lo was something I'd just read, and considered quite relevant: "[Chuck D]: We still have that slave mentality. We are a HATE TO LOVE Generation. This is post-slavery. This is a post-slavery mentality." So let's go to mid-May, back in Seattle: I was on the 5 or 358, headed back to Wallingford after running around during the night. I was off in my head, or maybe nose-down in something, when I heard a man's voice rise up in hostility behind me. I thought he was talking to the kids who I'd seen get on at the same stop, and I bristled. Then I listened to what he was saying. "Don't speak to your kids like that. 'Shut up and get over here! Fix your face and you better keep it that way. You make me sick, goin' on like that...' That just breaks a child's spirit. It's a holdover from slavery. People are still raising their children in a way to satisfy white people, to satisfy the slave master. "Back then, the slave had to be rough with the child, to be strict about how the child behaved and portrayed themself, because they knew that if the child acted a certain way, they'd be dead. But now, that's been passed down from slavery and black folks still behave this way because they're concerned about being the right way to white people's expectations. They're still trying to make the slave master happy. "Treating a child like that made them obedient and fearful, and so they'd make good workers for the slave master. Now it just holds them back. These kids have all the same talent, all the same potential of these other kids. But when they hear that mess -- 'Shut up, grown folks is talkin' now.' -- that breaks their spirit, it wrecks their esteem. "And so while these white children learn how to make use of their talent and express themselves, all these black kids have learned is how to socially adapt so that they don't get hit. They learn how to adapt and respond to power, and then they use that power on others. That's why you've got all these people saying these black kids are a lower class, they're ignorant, don't want to learn anything and don't pay attention, they're manipulative -- because so many of 'em were brought up to respond to that kind of treatment. They grow up seein' someone wield power on them, and they grow up and want to wield power over someone else.** "I know there's a line, there's a limit for how they can act, but don't break your child's spirit." And finally, from a church sign: "Children have more need of models than critics." * No Child Left Undenied ** Regard America as the powerful parent and Iraqis as the collective child. How many times have I read statements like "We/They need someone to be violent." or "Violence is all we/they understand."? Violence doesn't work. (Reporting from) The back of the bus |
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