Category: Free the Jackson Five

Sitting on my desk is the final “absolute, no kidding, no extensions possible” request for my submission to the Harvard and Radcliffe Class of 1981 Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Report. After twenty-five years, Harvard wants an accounting of what I have done with my life. I ignored the three or four previous requests because I had trials to work up and columns to write.

Yeah, right.

Here’s the real reason. I am scared to commit to paper a life story that—let’s be real—almost certainly will not be as impressive as those of my classmates. Scarier yet, am I really prepared to stack the reality of my forty-six years up against all those expectations and lofty dreams I had when I marched out of Harvard Yard in June 1981?

In high school, I was a strange amalgamation of Steve Urkel from television’s Family Matters and Eddie Murphy’s Dr. Klump, with a touch of Richard Roundtree in Shaft. I was nerdy, but also cool (well, at least I tried to be). My classmates toted backpacks through the halls and wore jeans and T-shirts for their senior portraits; I proudly carried a briefcase to class and wore a tuxedo in mine. My parents, battle-scarred veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, were native Mississippians who moved our family to Denver in 1964. They were educated professionals, but both had grown up enduring the daily indignities of the old Jim Crow South. They very desperately believed that the “talented tenth,” as African-American scholar W.E.B. du Bois termed the best and the brightest black folk, had a moral duty to “uplift the race.” Therefore, my sisters and I were raised, as were most black middle-class kids in the late sixties and early seventies, to get the best credentials we could, so as to continue to carry out that duty.

When I got into Harvard, my father promptly plastered five Harvard bumper stickers onto our two cars. The Denver Post ran a story headlined “Collins Headed to Harvard.” The assistant principal at my high school asked me to forget the times he had reamed me for various transgressions and to instead remember him fondly when I “became somebody big.” And when I arrived in Cambridge in September of 1977, the entire Class of ’81 was shepherded into the Harvard Square Theatre, where we were told that we were the most brilliant and talented group of young people ever assembled in one place, destined to scale great heights in recorded human history. Of course, we knew that was a slight (but only slight) exaggeration.

Placing a kid like me, one already infused with an inflated sense of my own importance, in an institution like that was very dangerous. Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad I went to Harvard. I did learn that there were people—many people—smarter than I was. Unfortunately, I also believed that most of them were at either Harvard or similarly self-absorbed elite institutions.

I remember a late-night discussion during my senior year that involved deciding, only half jokingly, who in our little group would be best suited for which Cabinet post. We not only believed that great power and riches awaited us somewhere over the Ivy League rainbow, we were also all afraid of facing each other if, years later, we ended up back in Kansas—not powerful, not rich, just, well, ordinary.

Ever since my college days, I have heard, sometimes softly and sometimes quite loudly, an incessant murmuring in my head. Sometimes it comes just from my parents, asking, what have I done “for the race”? At other times, they are joined by the chorus of those damned Harvard ghosts, taunting me with my own boasts made long ago and with expectations that were never fulfilled: The fancy political appointment that never quite materialized. Those unmade millions resting in someone else’s bank account.

The truth of the matter is, I am not a master of the universe—far from it. If I follow the script for columns like this, I am supposed to say that I have come to terms with how my life has turned out, I no longer am tormented by those voices, and I cannot wait to see my fellow members of the Class of 1981 next summer. But I know that’s not entirely true. As much as I tell myself that I am content with my rather ordinary life—and, for the most part, I am—I still hear the voices, albeit not as forcefully as in years past. And if I am “real” with myself, I gotta admit that they can still push my buttons.

What does the boogeyman look like? For most Americans (even, I suspect, some of the darker ones), he’s probably big and black. The scary black man is an image older than the Republic and more enduring than apple pie and Chevrolet. The image of gangs running amok, snatching up women and anything else not nailed down, has fueled everything from D.W. Griffith’s notorious The Birth of a Nation to last month’s Hurricane Katrina media coverage, where blacks were described as “looters” while whites were merely making use of things they had “found.”

Black families have always understood that the best way to protect their menfolk from those who would harm them was to minimize the “scary” factor. I grew up in the sixties and early seventies, a time when many white Americans believed that the only things standing between them and hordes of scary black men were guns, tough cops, and a rigidly enforced system of racial segregation. When my family moved to lily-white southeast Denver in 1968, we knew we were entering alien, hostile territory. Therefore, my parents did all they could to make me the antithesis of the scary black man.

The stereotypical scary black boy (who of course grows into the scary black man) is anti-social, anti-work, anti-school, and lusts after white women. So I learned to say “yes sir” to adults. I got my first job when I was thirteen. I caught hell if I dared to bring home less than stellar grades, and I was taught that the quickest route to “seeing the devil’s pitchfork” lay between a pair of white female thighs. My parents showed me not only the way to success—through hard work and respect for others—but also how to avoid scaring white people.

Yet, growing up, I found that following the rules did little to assuage white fears. It was not what I did, but who I was—my mere presence—that made me scary. Still, I resisted accepting that.

In college, I learned all I could about the genesis of the scary black man. I took Afro-American history courses and pondered the inherent contradictions in owning slaves while espousing religious and political freedom, as the early colonists did. I came to understand that in order to justify brutalizing my forefathers, white people had stereotyped them as fearsome, less-than-human beings, devoid of any hint of “divine spark” and the power it imbued.

I genuinely wanted to be good, but acting scary toward whites—playing off those long-held stereotypes, even benefiting from them—was tempting. “Going for bad” can be an exhilarating experience. It can, at least in the short term, lessen feelings of disrespect and powerlessness. Therefore, I understand why some African-American men, believing it impossible to fight the assumption that they are scary, decide to pre-empt whites and simply “go there.” At times, it appears to be an attractive offensive option.

In fact, the expression “don’t make me go there” originated as black slang for “Back off, jack—I’m about to go ‘scary black man’ on you!” Truth be told, I’ve gone there myself. Once, during my sophomore year in college, I was walking through the Boston Common when three or four white townies threatened to jump me. I knew what these guys were capable of. “I’m a crazy black motherf—er!” I yelled. “I love cutting white folks. Y’all wanna be next?” Though they could have taken me out, one muttered, “Leave him be. No telling what this nigger is liable to do.”

Now, as then, I have used my physical stature, my education, my profession, and yes, my color to get something or gain influence in a particular situation. However, because my profession and education give me options that many African-American males don’t have, I rarely have to “go there.” Would I take the high road as often if I were poor and uneducated?

A fellow Rake writer recently spoke about a visiting friend who, while riding her bike late at night in South Minneapolis, was accosted by a black man who grabbed the handlebars, looked her dead in the eye, and said, “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you, bitch?” He didn’t rob or touch her. He simply wanted to elicit fear, to feel that rush. I can only imagine how impotent he must feel daily, able to gain power only by terrorizing an innocent white woman.

What if, by a wave of some magic wand, we could banish the scary black man from our collective psyche? Are we ready for a world where physical appearance is no longer the barometer by which we measure someone’s entitlement to respect and power? Given the recent coverage of Hurricane Katrina, it seems unlikely.

Minneapolis gets high marks for its “quality of life,” but the home addresses of its cops tell a different story. According to police insiders, less than ten percent of Minneapolis’ police force lives within city limits. Mayor R.T. Rybak and would-be mayor Hennepin County Commish Peter McLaughlin both claim they want more cops living in the city, but think it’s better to make it happen with the carrot (financial incentives) rather than the stick (no residency, no job). Neither believes the “political will” exists to revive a residency requirement, but it’s worth noting that their assessments are based on feedback from the very groups that oppose residency—i.e., public employees such as the cops and their suburban allies in the Legislature.

In 1993, north Minneapolis DFLer Richard Jefferson convinced his initially skeptical state Legislature colleagues to allow Minneapolis and St. Paul to require that their public employees live in the cities they served. Jefferson argued that residency would shore up the municipal tax base and keep city employees—particularly police officers—from appearing as mercenaries who took their money and their stabilizing presence home to the suburbs every night. But by 1999, the Minneapolis Police Federation succeeded in getting it repealed, with the help of a group of largely suburban legislators, led by former state senator and Minneapolis police captain Rich Stanek. Stanek says several Minneapolis City Council members, allegedly facing recruiting problems and city worker opposition, wanted to deep-six the residency requirement even before the Legislature did, but, fearing a grass-roots backlash, they lost their nerve.

When I asked McLaughlin if he thought Minneapolis should lobby the Legislature to reinstate the authority, he replied that doing so “would be a misplaced use of the city’s political capital.” Rybak supports the “concept” of a residency requirement, adding, “The presence of cops living in the city does create a greater sense of community and makes everyone feel safer.” But he also said he would rather focus on diversifying the department, starting with outreach at inner-city high schools.

Rybak’s unspoken assumption—that recruiting black and brown city kids means they will live in the city after they become cops—is probably wrong. According to Sgt. Charlie Adams, head of the Minneapolis Black Police Officers Association, virtually none of Minneapolis’ forty-eight or so black cops live in the city. He himself left north Minneapolis for Brooklyn Park four years ago. “I grew up in the city, loved it, and used to be all for residency,” he said. “When I lived in North Minneapolis, however, I had to teach my kids to hit the ground when they heard gunfire. Now I don’t have to worry about things like that. Furthermore, I like the fact that I am relatively anonymous up here. My biggest problem is figuring out which neighbor’s dog pooped in my yard. And that suits me just fine.” With a bit of prodding, Adams admitted that in the suburbs he could live “incognegro,” safely insulated from the Minneapolitan expectations that he be at the community’s beck and call 24/7.

Let’s face it—the majority of people living in the metropolitan area are suburbanites. Should cops be penalized for having similar residential preferences?

Minneapolis City Council Member Natalie Johnson Lee is not terribly sympathetic to the anonymity argument. She believes that a critical mass of police officers must live in the city before cops can truly become a part of the “fabric of our community.” She makes no bones that getting cops “24/7” is one of the primary reasons she supports both a residency requirement and a fight to renew Minneapolis’ authority to impose it.

I’m with Johnson Lee on this one. Commuting in for an eight-hour shift and then checking out may be acceptable for average citizens, including other public employees, but cops are part of a gun-carrying, arrest-making quasi-military force. Along with these powers, cops have a special responsibility to really know and understand the citizens that they have pledged “to serve and protect.” Ask anyone who has lived in a college dorm, served in the military, or spent three weeks at Camp Gitcheegumee—living among people from different cultures breaks down stereotypes and builds trust, the key piece in establishing a real community. In a city where, rightly or wrongly, many minority citizens do not trust the police, I know that I’m more likely to trust someone if he’s committed enough to my community to share in its joys and challenges 24/7.

If you casually mention at a social gathering that you think little boys are more destructive than little girls, most people will probably agree. Even those who do not will probably give scant notice to the fact that you were making assumptions about behavior based on a physical attribute—a practice more commonly known as stereotyping. Now, what if you said something like, “There’s a new boy in my kid’s class named Da’Quan—I bet he’s poor and black.” Assuming you run in a politically correct crowd, you will be called a stereotyper, a racial profiler, or worse.

Yet whether we openly admit it or not, we do conjure certain images for certain names. I admit that when I hear “Demetrius” or “Marquis,” I do not expect to see a kid with blond hair and blue eyes.

What’s in a name? Plenty, according to economists Steven Levitt, who is white, and Roland Fryer, who is black. They decided to see if African-Americans with distinctively “black” names like DeShawn or Precious had harder lives than others. The researchers used birth certificate data from the sixteen million children born in California since 1961, including name and gender, along with the parents’ marital status, ZIP code, and education. They discovered that in the early sixties, blacks and whites drew names from the same general pool. With the advent of the black power movement, that quickly changed. In 1970, girls born in black neighborhoods received names that were twice as common among blacks than whites. Today, four out of every ten black girls born in California receive a name that none of a hundred thousand white girls receives. And a third of the black girls born there have a unique name.

Levitt and Fryer concluded that a person with a distinctively “black” name does indeed have a worse life outcome than a Claire or a Luke. They reasoned that the demographic profile of the parents of uniquely named children—who themselves are unmarried, poor, undereducated teenage mothers with distinctive black names—doomed these kids to lives of poverty. However, they blithely attributed the mothers’ willingness to bestow “black” names as an attempt to show “solidarity” with the black community.

That may be true, but there is perhaps another factor at play. These young, single mothers cannot give their children the security, education, and material comfort of more successful families. Perhaps bestowing a unique name on their children is a naïve attempt to leave a legacy—an asset, if you will—to kids to whom they can give little else.

As far as I know, no one has yet analyzed the kinds of names that relatively affluent, educated black parents give their children. Among my family and close African-American friends, there is a Joseph, two Alexanders, and a Quinn, a Brooke, a Carson, a Colin, a Melanie, a Mitchell, and a Johnny. None of their names makes the California top twenty “blackest boy” or “blackest girl” name lists. And, though it may make me sound like an assimilationist, I take comfort in that. I thought long and hard about how my sons’ names would play when they were adults. In fact, I used to joke that they would make a great impression on letterhead, or being read aloud at a college graduation. I did not want their names to broadcast their ethnicity to the world—or camouflage it. I also did not want them to be unfairly judged before they ever recited their first alphabet in class.

Another study, from the University of Florida researcher David Figlio, confirms what African-American parents have long suspected—that teachers’ expectations of their students are based in part on names. According to Figlio, black students with unusual (i.e. “black”) names are less likely to be placed in gifted programs than black students with more mainstream (read “white”) names. He also found that students with Asian names were more often placed in gifted programs than siblings with similar test scores and common American names.

In other words, there is an academic pecking order in our schools that appears to be linked to students’ first names, but is really tied to expectations. What self-respecting teacher would admit to doing this? Can you imagine an employer conceding that it screens prospective employees based on their names? There is empirical proof that it does happen—both in education and, according to several resume-screening studies, on the job.

I think stereotyping based on names is wrong. I also think we all do it. Given that reality, the efforts of poor, single mothers to leave a legacy by giving their children “black” names are sadly misguided. Unwittingly, they are making an already tough road for their kids tougher yet.

St. Paul Human Rights Director Tyrone Terrill, usually nattily attired, does not look like a flame-throwing, flak jacket-wearing radical. But some think he sounded like one in his recent open letter chastising the local African-American community for failing to distance itself from gang members and their “terrorist” acts. The letter, published in the Minneapolis Spokesman May 12, has generated such an uproar that Terrill might want to pick up a kevlar flak jacket just in case. As with Bill Cosby on a national level, Terrill has found himself at the center of a growing cultural firestorm. Should the African-American community excommunicate gangbangers and those who, by either their silence or tacit support, “enable” their criminal mayhem?

In 1996, Minneapolis had so many gang-related murders that the city gained the unflattering moniker “Murderapolis.” Within two or three years, however, increased police surveillance, targeted prosecutions, and longer sentences removed many gang members from local streets. Unfortunately, many are back and ready to regain lost turf. By August last summer, the number of North Minneapolis killings was double that from 2003.

This increasingly violent tableau inspired Terrill to write his letter. “I just felt moved to do something,” he told me recently. “Many in our community know exactly who the gangbangers are, and yet we often fail to call them out.” Terrill believes that those who turn a blind eye to gangsterism are no different than Southern whites who tolerated lynching and cross burnings. “NOW is the time for us to stop saying that our kids do not have summer jobs and recreational activities, so turning to gang activity is the alternative,” Terrill wrote in his letter. He also called for local gang members “to completely remove themselves from any affiliation with gangs or known gang organizations” by June 1, “or suffer the consequences of their actions.”

Within days, St. Paul NAACP Branch President Nathaniel Khaliq publicly assailed Terrill for misusing his position as St. Paul’s Human Rights chief (the letter was written on city letterhead) to target gang members and their families. Khaliq bitterly noted that Terrill’s statement coincided with stepped-up police enforcement efforts that also targeted African-American males. Minneapolis NAACP Branch President Duane Reed, while acknowledging the need for personal safety and law enforcement, took issue with Terrill’s statement equating gang members with terrorists. “[That] takes our community to a place that is not constructive,” Reed said. “We need to focus on the reasons why some of our young people are involved in criminal activities.”

One African-American leader, who asked to not be identified, theorized that Terrill’s comments might be part of a larger scheme to scare foundations into supporting nonprofit organizations that provide a livelihood for community activists. “Whites get scared when there is a rash of crime,” he said, making it easier for certain people to raise money. He suggested that Terrill, a Republican, might be trying to ingratiate himself with the likes of St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly, who endorsed George W. Bush, and U.S. Senator Norm Coleman.

Terrill believes this is an unsubstantiated personal attack. “I have fought for the civil and human rights of gang members in St. Paul and Minneapolis.” He adds, however, that his sympathy for those who remain in the gang world has grown thin.
I was more empathetic to people like Khaliq and Reed when I lived in a relatively posh neighborhood in south Minneapolis. I signed petitions condemning police misconduct against people of color and wrote emphatically about the link between poverty and criminal behavior.

However, I have since moved to north Minneapolis. Most of my neighbors are solid, hard-working people. Yet I know that some of them have children in gangs. Some of their children have gangbanger friends. If getting rid of gangs means that some families must practice “tough love,” so be it. If it means that some families unwilling to enforce difficult rules get ostracized from the community, so be it. Our community must stop committing character assassinations on those with the guts to speak the brutal truth. Some claim that Terrill’s letter lets “the Man,” in all his various permutations, off the hook. Man or no Man, we have got to do our part. African-Americans must be willing to face the truth that we cannot save those who are unwilling to save themselves.

In springtime, every man’s fancy turns to love–and, in my case, to commencement speeches. I love reading them, listening to them, critiquing them, even the bad ones. I dream of marching with colleagues through a cheering thong of graduates, resplendent in flowing robes, and delivering a simple yet powerful address that brings the youthful crowd to its feet.

Well, it ain’t happening this year. I didn’t even get so much as a nibble from my toddler’s preschool. So I decided to share highlights from the commencement speech I would give, if I’m ever asked.

“To the graduates of the class of 2005: Probably many of you are thinking, ‘Why should I listen to this middle-aged, hair-challenged man whose abdomen has clearly seen better days?’ Because I want to give you a head start in learning something that it took me years to fully accept–that despite your best efforts, life will physically transform you. You will lose twenty pounds, only to find them reappear behind you. You will spend thousands of dollars to convince others that you are better-looking than you actually are. You will fail, because good looks, sad to say, are fleeting.

“You may choose to focus your life’s energy on your looks and on other transient things, like clothes or the techno gadget of the moment. Certainly our culture encourages this. But when you are staring fifty in the eye, as I am, you will have nothing to sustain you when it stares coldly, unblinkingly back at you.

“The alternative is to figure out, as I eventually did, that you can weather the physical transformation of life if you embrace the spiritual one. Spiritual transformation, unlike the physical, is not inevitable. It means living with integrity and accepting that you are merely a tiny part of an invisible web that connects every living thing. Your contribution to building that web will also build your character.

“I have two books on spiritual transformation to recommend to you. The first is a classic, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm X came into this world as Malcolm Little and spent the first half of his life becoming a gangster. In prison, he converted to the Nation of Islam and ultimately became one of the most charismatic leaders America has ever produced. Thanks to Spike Lee’s film, most Americans know at least the bare outlines of that story. But less examined is Malcolm X’s spiritual journey, from the bigoted version of Islam practiced by many in this country to the authentic Islam of the Prophet Mohammed. He never became so comfortable with the spiritual status quo–which for him was the racially bastardized Nation of Islam teachings–that he could not question it and move beyond it when he had to in order to maintain his personal integrity.