“Can you take me somewhere?” My then-boyfriend texted me.
“Sure.” I texted back. “I’m in class right now, but I’ll take you when I get out.
“Okay.” He replied
“Where do you need to go?” I asked.
“Irvington.”
“Okay.” I added the emoji blowing a kiss.
I arrived at his home around 1:30 and texted him, “I’m outside.” He exited his home and got into my car. I greeted him with a wet kiss, entered the directions into the “Maps” app in my phone, and then set off for our destination. On our way there, we made small talk. I told him about my classes and how much I enjoyed them while my man talked about how he slept for most of the day. Overtime, the car went silent. My boyfriend started to peruse the internet on his phone and I wandered inside my vibrant imagination. After a while, I exited my thoughts and looked at my phone. The app said we had a little over twenty minutes until we reached our destination. I didn’t want there to be this awkward silence between us, so I decided to strike up another conversation. I realized we hadn’t talked about why he was going to this Irvington. Why was he going there? Why don’t I ask him about it? I thought. So, I did just that.
“What-cha doing in Irvington?” I said with a beaming smile.
He looked up at me. “I have business.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of business?” I prodded
He smiled and looked back down at his phone. “Just business.”
My ex was a stubborn man. I knew I wouldn’t get anything out of him, so I decided to focus on my driving and he, his phone. But when we entered Irvington, the conversation started up again.
“Oh wow.” My eyes were wide, and my eyebrows raised.
Before us, there was an ambulance with flickering lights parked outside of an apartment. Police cars and police tape blocked off the peripheral street and a paramedic was positioned at the bottom of the home’s steps.
“My first time here and this is what I see?” I joked.
“Whoa.” My ex said. His words meant shock, but his tone was apathetic. And when I turned to him, his face was emotionless. I continued driving.
“You know,” he started, “they say this is one of the most dangerous places in America?”
“What!?” I turned my head back and forth, trying to keep my eyes on the road while I spoke. “And you took me here!?”
He was silent, and I didn’t press him further. We came to a stop light near the ambulance and I began to observe my surroundings. The streets were cracked and due for repair, the nearby stores had propaganda littered all over the windows, and the homes were in poor conditions. Farther down the road, I could see a dilapidated home, and smoke coming from atop the houses. Despite Irvington’s loud atmosphere, the streets were quiet. The few people crowded near the ambulance watched in silence. Not even the ambulance made a sound. One man kept twisting his head back and forth as he walked by. But what I noticed the most was how they were all black, particularly dark-skinned. I watched them rather than the commotion of the ambulance.
The light turned green and I eased forward. We finally arrived at the home and I opted to stay in the car while my ex did his “business.” Fifteen minutes passed before I drove us both back to Teaneck, NJ.
In my bed, I went over what happened. It seemed so surreal. It was so different than what I pictured. On the news, Hip Hop/rap music, propaganda, etc. I hear of how “the hood” is riddled with drugs, money, gangs, murder, and poverty amongst many other things. It drove a fear in me. And I prayed that I would never live to see such an atmosphere. But that day I went into “the hood,” that day I went into Irvington, I wasn’t afraid. I was calm and curious. Even though I was shocked by the immediate appearance of an ambulance upon entering the community, my heat didn’t skip a beat.
All the people I saw in that place were black. And not only were they black, they were extremely dark-skinned. In Rapper Kendrick Lamar’s song, King Kunta, he raps, “When you got the yams (What's the yams?)/ The yam is the power that be.” Lamar references to “yams.” The usage of the vegetable is taken from the book Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. In the book, a man purchases a yam and upon tasting it, he reconnects with his roots. King Kunta’s yams references a black man’s connection with his roots. And when there is this deep connection with your roots, you have power. “Know your history,” is what the song says. Being surrounded by these people, these dark-skinned, beautiful hoodlums, I felt connected to my roots. The fact that they were dark-skinned made me especially happy. They were just black. No cream or sugar. As a black person, who has lived in a mostly-white rural area all my life, I felt one with these people and their culture. My people. Being the only black person, stunted my growth as a black person. I made white friends, learned white “culture,” I talked the talk and walked the walk. I did whatever deed necessary. But what I also did, something so damaging to my black self, was deny who I am and try to include myself in a people that would never include me. No matter how hard I tried, I could never appropriate myself out of my skin. No matter how much I denied my self-hate, no matter how much I wanted a white boy to dilute my chocolate skin with caramel babies I would still be black. I’d suffer through racism just to be included in the “all white parties.” I’ve been told that I couldn’t swim, had the police called on me for playing basketball near a white man’s yard, called Omarion, 21 Savage, as well as many other names of famous black people, had the N-word used around me, compared to monkeys and apes, and had “friends” who wouldn’t come to my defense when racist things were said. After all this time, these people were not a home but a symbolic representative of I’m-not-racist slavery. And I had chained myself and given them the key.
My trip to Irvington, despite how dangerous it was, opened my eyes. All of this bottled up 21-year old self-hatred needed to stop. I needed to find a place to call home. And I did. In the crime-ridden streets of Irvington, I found a home. A home, not for physical, but communal living. All my life, I had been missing an identity. And who would have figured it was only twenty-three minutes away from my home. Living around people the same shade as me, invigorates me. I find myself questioning and probing the “very white” education I had learned. Instead, I find myself squandering for the blackest history that I can find. I raise a fist for the Black Panthers founder Huey Newton, I see the dream that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached about, and I strive to fight “by any means necessary” for racial equality like Malcolm X. The past may have chained me down, but this nigga is running free. And no matter what is said, I will never stop learning. I’ve found my yams. And in these yams I find not only power, but myself.
