A Letter to Dez Bryant

Should have quoted him

Dez, I couldn't help but pause when I read your Instagram quotes.  You start by saying you usually mind your own business.  You then say that it is not our job to carry the burden, but to lead by example.  I am trying to understand what compelled you to now be a spokesperson for your people by echoing the sentiments of a retired basketball player? For your statement to hold court it would have to be substantiated by facts versus a very popular, tired trope that all of the ills indigenous, but not exclusive, to the black community lie singularly in the choices that they have made and any convo to the contrary is simply parroting the victim culture that in some people's minds is unmerited or exaggerated. Let me be clear, I BELIEVE in personal responsibility

The closing line of venerated television broadcaster Walter Cronkite was “and that’s the way it is” to conclude the major network’s evening news program.  It seems that the specious argument that the occurrence of racism has subsided to the point of being relegated to the margins of our culture has become the new trending topic.  I know you meant well in your pronouncement, and the Conservatives have been reposting your “blurb” with impunity but let me give you a little context Mr.”I Quote Charles Barkley” for history.

If one speaks of micro aggression or racially-tinged innuendo, articles or codified pejoratives being used in business or leisure communication there is now a backlash of charges of race baiting or the more ominous phrase “pulling the race card.”  Revisionists now have expunged any narrative that gives context to why this social cancer is not only still present, but is palpably metastasizing. 

The question becomes in what form has this societal ill morphed?  The rabidly racist had become pariahs, ( well at least until the last Presidential election) hiding in the digital underbelly of social media and ostensibly banished as outliers and aberrations or relics of the days gone by.  The pundits would assuage that any voicing of inequity, injustice or discrimination is predicated on a “culture of complaint”, victimization or whining in which plaintiffs are simply seeking concessions versus being required to meet the established criteria like everyone else. Even worse, the mere suggestion that an individual or organization is a purveyor of racist ideations, practices, policies or procedures is asinine and replete with an ulterior motive of getting over.

So, in this post-racial era there is a national mandate to absolutely forget the past and its incendiary parts.  Give no context to oppression, terrorism, injustice and de jure and de facto practices that at a minimum were affronts to the Constitution.  The retort has become life is about choices.  You can’t reasonably expect people to continue to give latitude to decisions that you make as justification for your cause be it Black Lives Matter, anti-police brutality rallies or

 protest against discriminatory lending and housing practices.

Racism as a social construct has intrinsically been about control and oppression of a targeted people group.  Its insidious outcroppings have been the extralegal practice of lynching, racial profiling, disparate sentencing guidelines, redlining, higher interest rates on everything from cars to mortgages and restrictive covenants and deeds.  It also spawned eugenics which advocated egregious pseudo-scientific experiments that included everything from deliberately infecting participants with highly contagious diseases to medical experimentation that was fatal.  Remember, all of this is post slavery! But, you seem to have limited your historical narrative to the stalwart verbal musings of Mr. “Turrible” who is well versed in the turpitude of American history?!

Legions of successful blacks are highlighted as proof positive that the wealth, education and class disparity rest singularly with the choices of those on the margins.  The 70 percent of households that are without fathers, the black-on-black crime, the unemployment rate, the recidivism rate, the over representation in social metrics that are negative are all because of choices of the identified group.

The penchant to ascribe many of the disparities to systemic racism doesn’t pass muster.  William Ernest Henley’s humanist poem “Invictus” declares that we are the captains of our fate, the masters of our soul, so this dribble about inequity and injustice tied to race is a dissonant chorus of reckless irresponsibility. So, we will continue to disagree on this topic even with a mountain of empirical data to show the nexus between the past and the present.  Black people, the message is clear: Shut up, get up, pull your boot straps up, own up, get your hustle up, pull your pants up,(you know something about that) clean your neighborhoods up, put your guns up, get your grades up, get your representation up, build your wealth up, get your home ownership up, get your business ownership up, get your identity as an American up,……. wake-up this is a new era and your pandering usage of this tired trope of racism will no longer be tolerated.  And that, is still, just the way it is!!!

On the 8th Day

                                                               

                                                                      On the 8^th Day

From the moment I stood in the room alone with my dad’s spiritless body, the cadence of time accelerated with a rapidity that compressed days into hours, and hours into moments that just allowed me to grab the sustenance I needed to greet the cascade of mourners and well-wishers.  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, I was fatherless and the son of a widow. For the first time in my life, the epistemology of son ship had to be revisited.  Existentially, I am still the son of my father but the veil of death has given me pause; a new permanent tense to address fatherhood-he was.

The seven days, the 168 hours, the confluence of planning, meeting, calling, cancelling, notifying, buying, untying, discarding, undoing gives you an illusion of subduing the stillness.  All of the accoutrements that are tagged to my father are now on static display, frozen in time, never to be held, directed, worn or guided by his savvy, insight and wisdom.  Death, the stranger that we will all be introduced to has interjected a dissonance that is disruptive and cohesive. My siblings and I have marshaled our time and resources to protect our mother for her gradation of pain would be the most intense of the three of us. At times I would see the erudite, seasoned world traveler morph into the fragile, devastated teenager mourning the loss of her first love, her heartbeat, her Boaz.

No one told me that the little boy in me would grieve the loss of the first real-life superhero he ever knew and emotions would vacillate between the present father, son, and husband to the lost little boy who does not know how to mourn the immortal.  Psalm 91:1, 2 became my solace.  It states, “He that dwells in the secret place of the most High, shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty, I will say to the Lord He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in Him will I trust.”

We are given the feast of kings for consecutive days and invite all those that provide to also partake. Mi familia is now more than ever the body of Christ manifest through kindness; the aroma of the fruit of the spirit effervesces throughout my parents’ home.  The staccato of the phone punctuates the robust conversations filling every room in the foyer, den and kitchen. Day becomes evening, evening becomes night and mornings roll out like the baker’s bread. Alas, the close of this eternity where we will see for the first time since I prayed over my father’s body, him lying in repose, the last of the things he occupied on static display.

The unfettered presence of God is beyond the reason, understanding and comprehension of our finite minds yet a part of you wants the spirit of your loved one to repopulate the body they left behind and give you one more moment in time. But the magnificence articulated in scripture makes it clear that even the compounded love of everyone in this chapel has no order of magnitude to compare with the love of God that my father experienced the moment he transitioned.  So, we anguish and celebrate simultaneously. He looks peaceful, without pain, discomfort or anguish. My father has ascended into the bosom of Jesus, the one he ultimately lived for.

The celebration of his life required a certain comportment, restraint, dignity.  The temple filled with rapturous sounds from choirs that shook the rafters with powerful melodies, hymns and songs. The cavernous hole seemed to begin to fill somewhat with the exuberance of the service, an event my father would have enjoyed especially with the overwhelming turn out of family, friends and acquaintances.  Our words were heartfelt, hilarious and touching. The pastor delivered what was most important to my father, the word of God and the honors at his internment were powerful and awash in respect.  This celebration bolstered our spirits through the remainder of the evening and allowed us to reunite with decades-old friends. The chapter closed at midnight and the advent of the eighth day would have to be in part fueled by the residue of the previous week.  The presence of my father filled the home that was now to be singularly occupied by his bride of 57 years. It is now that Abba father, Daddy God, begins to provide the comfort, the peace, the strength to do more than muster for the day.  To greet each new moment of each day with a verve and energy that He alone can provide in abundance.  Our new normal is predicated on an attempt to navigate without the patriarch that provided stability, guidance, humor and comfort. He is faithful to give us what we need. 

A Better Place

                                                        A Better Place

                      

                   Better is the existential constant being pursued by all of us

                    While leaving the carnage of good and okay strewn in the streets,

                                 Hamlets and homes from shore to shore

                                 The crush of affluence singes the nerves

                          Slowly weakening one’s ability to rest in sufficiency

             The stench of poverty removes, deadens one’s sense of taste and smell

                         Food is no longer for pleasure; it’s now sustenance and life

           Better is illusory, it’s the next moment, the next opportunity, the next relationship

           The next job, the next house, the next high, the next thrill, the next record broken

                           And it creeps away into the surly bonds of eternity

                            For better is omnipresent, sitting between now and next

                            It drives commerce, technology, leisure and romance

                         It is the precursor to next, casting constant shade on now,

                       withering this piece of eternity, making it not as sweet, as good as it

                                         needs to be for you and me

An Homage to NFL Sundays (The Back draft)

                              

                                             

In about a week, an event tantamount to the lottery will  occur in the city of Philadelphia.  It will symbolically represent the culmination of the childhood dreams of millions of young men from every walk of life, from every part of the country.  I couldn’t help but be captivated by an open letter to all the potential draftees from perennial Pro-bowler Larry Fitzgerald.  In his letter, as only one who has had the experience could, he encapsulates the palpable emotions, anticipation, anxiety and sheer rush of having your name called by the commissioner of the NFL.

More importantly he poignantly shares the iterations from high school, college and now the exclusive, hyper-competitive environment of the professional gridiron, replete with athletes that are all hungry, talented and seeking a place in one of the world’s most exclusive fraternities.  He cautions them to not make simply getting drafted the biggest accomplishment of their lives. With sage articulation he advises them to evaluate their inner-circle, understanding that some of their homeboys won’t make the cut.  He doesn’t attempt to propagate abstract notions of this field of endeavor, Fitz keeps it straight 100 with no chaser.

In an age of selfies-, self-aggrandizement, and swag, he tells them to come in observing the veterans who have become what they seek to be and SHUT UP!  His anecdotal renderings are instantly credible because he is that seasoned, successful veteran who has held it down both on and off the field.  Somehow, even after reading that compelling composition, I couldn’t shake a nagging, back story that has become a part of the ambient temperature of feel-good narratives that will be spun up through the draft this evening.

For a number of these NFL prospects, tonight represents a literal, generational change of fortune with instant riches possessing the capacity to alter their future family tree.  This proverbial lottery will not only remove them from the ominous existential threat of violence that is a quotidian part of their urban hamlets, but serve as an “underground railroad” for family members and friends stuck in the sweltering confines of de-industrialization, failed social policies, suffocating poverty and urban blight.

What I frustratingly feel has been lost in the backdrop of these ongoing, feel-good stories is this lack of context that created these pockets of despair or what I call urban “Dante’s Infernos.”  James Harden, star point guard for the Houston Rockets, described his neighborhood as a bowl.  The only things that seem to be able to create enough momentum for escape velocity from these vestiges of our apartheid past is extraordinary academic aptitude or mutant-like athleticism. An exposition featuring the full living palette of our nation’s sordid history that spawned and ultimately contributed to the festering dysfunction in these bowls is at best a sidebar that we have become culturally oblivious to.

Our vicarious connection was made organic through beats and rhymes and videos of street poets spewing hood lyrics of genocidal violence, drug infestation and inner-city despair.  This dystopian theatre allowed us to hear without seeing, touching or, if truth be told, really caring.  We were mesmerized by the poetic brilliance yet polarized concerning causation.  For every one of these young men that are able to grasp the golden ring of the NFL, thousands are not just left in their wake, but will continue to populate the Siberian wasteland that is their home.  The almost billion dollars in contractual agreements that will transfer instant wealth to these twenty-somethings will affect little material change on the “domain of lost souls” from which they escaped.

Like the designated land for dumps that are part of the municipal ecosystem to treat waste, these ghettos, hoods, hamlets or whatever you choose to call them will geographically exist on the periphery and be noted as the birthplace of these now venerated professional athletes.  What is unspoken is that in some instances, the deleterious imprint of these confines shapes the decision making of these newly-minted thousandnaires and millionaires.  The systemic dysfunction comes with emotional and social ties that constantly call like the alluring and dangerous Sirens of Homer’s Odyssey.

Those that heed the call of their homies who pledge allegiance to the code of the street find their lifetime dreams derailed, delayed and in some extreme instances denied. Like Icarus failing to heed the instruction of his father not to fly too close to the sun, their tribal attachment to the inferno sears their ties to their childhood dream leaving them crashing back into the barren land they had worked all their young lives to escape. This tired trope is not a frequent occurrence but the point of this missive is not about how often it happens.  The real objective is to get people to start asking why these desolate places exist on the scale and scope that they do. 

The last feature I saw highlighting the “escape” of another promising athlete fully engulfed visually the random substance abuse, fratricide, poverty and other societal ills as if they were implacable. We seem to have collectively accepted not just that “the poor will always be with us” as anecdotal, but that the archetype for poverty will overwhelmingly be this people group devoid of de facto and de jure practices that facilitated it.  It is my hope that these Horatio Alger stories will stop being so antiseptic and start peeling the hideous scabs away and drill down into this uncomfortable, real-life Twilight Zone.