I will always remember how hard my mother worked to make sure that my brother and I were successful. She had little help from family as a young mother, save my grandparents and a few aunts, but she exhausted all of her resources before she would ever see us fail or fall prey to the society that never wanted us to succeed.
I grew up in York, Pennsylvania; it is our county seat, yet most of the prosperous individuals in York County live on the outskirts while they avoid the densely populated core. The predominant groups in the core of York are the groups that are most often considered "minorities." These largely Hispanic and African-American communities are often considered subhuman by largely Caucasian groups in the surrounding areas, not fit for human interaction or treatment as equals. Instead, people who live in the inner city are treated like animals. They are deemed the "Untouchables." They fear the idea that they have created of us. I say us, because I am a black male who resided in a single-income home in York city for years. They refuse to acknowledge their responsibility in the creation of our circumstances. I know my fellow York citizens as cat ladies and silly aunties. I have eaten meals with families who could hardly make it through the week with the little food they could buy, but they welcomed anyone without hesitation. I have attended the graduations, funerals and weddings of these individuals. We are a community. I know their souls, and they have helped raise me to be who I am today. We have always been united by struggle and by our yearning to overcome the chains that America has placed on us.
Despite knowing the gargantuan hearts and courage that the people of my city possess, it did not suffice for me to prosper the way my mother knew that I could. The schools and neighborhoods in York were not bad on purpose. Rather, they sat idle and unknowing as the forces of a greater power worked against them. The students were not overly defiant to the learning process, and the teachers were not willingly skipping vital information that was being taught in suburbia. The state government has ignored the needs of the urban youth and family structure for years. It refuses to provide the city with proper resources and morale to create a thriving school district. The very same neighborhoods that the government forced blacks into upon emancipation from slavery are the very entities that continue to be oppressed and feared by government officials in an unfounded manner. But we still rise.
My mother had no choice but to move our family to the neighboring farm town of Dover, Pennsylvania. It was the only way for my brother and me to have any chance of a successful life. It’s not that the education was incredibly better than that of the city, but it was deemed more important. Frankly, there were more white lives to be accountable for. The government and society will never leave a white person’s needs unanswered for long. It is the sad and unnerving truth. Therefore, it received more funding from the state which gave teachers more resources and incentive to do better for their students. By being a student of the school district, I had a greater chance of stepping foot onto a college campus.
Though living in Dover was quieter and more secluded than living in York, I was deafened by the screeching shriek of racism in the third grade. I remember being told that I could not be friends with another boy because I was black and he was white. Another student had made the remark to me and he had clearly been taught that ideology by his parents. He was taught at an early age that whites were supposed to be superior to blacks in every aspect of life, even on the monkey bars. As I grew older, neighboring kids would tell the kids in my neighborhood that we lived in “government housing” and that we should go back to the city. Not only is the hate that they were spewing false, as most racial rants are, but it was taught. The kids only made those crude comments because their parents spoke them into existence in their households. Millennials are still being raised to believe what their grandparents and great-grandparents did in the fifties. I had to learn that I was not the problem, nor was I inferior to anyone.
As I progressed to high school, I enjoyed academic and social successes. I was in honors classes, I maintained various leadership positions, and I was able to voice my opinions in many forums throughout my high school. Racism did not show itself in its usual vile verbal constant. However, it enveloped itself in a façade of phrases such as “You are the whitest black kid I know.” Excuse me? Did I hear you correctly? Yes, I speak with proper syntax. I do, indeed, dress with style and carry myself with an elegance. I love to indulge in British literature. When did those qualities ever become solely representative of white people? Last time I checked, I was raised in a black family which attended church services under a black pastor. My morals are not defined by white America. I was molded by the lessons of my African American mother, grandmother and aunties just as the children of slave masters were in times dating before the Civil War. Black men and women built America and raised its youth, and somehow we are expected to live in the shadows while our oppressors reap the benefits. In some twisted way, we are to remain silent on the issues that matter to us; these are the same issues that led to the demise of Dr. King and Malcolm X, yet brought us vital hope. I grew tired of being stripped of my blackness, and it’s something that my Caucasian friends still struggle to understand today. This is what has my people standing up in frustration for an oh-so-necessary revolution.
Until kids stop being gunned down by police without remorse or explanation, until colleges and universities are granted more funding than prisons and until I do not have to work three times harder than my white counterpart just to be seen as an equal contender in employment and educational opportunities, racism still exists in the form of social oppression. Until little black girls and boys can love their curly hair, full lips, and hazelnut skin in an unapologetic manner, they cannot truly be free. It is not acceptable to tell African Americans to “get over it” in reference to slavery or to “stop pulling the race card.” We, as a society, have to accept our shortcomings and flaws to be able to move forward. We cannot glaze over issues that have been prevalent even before the times when our slave-owning founding fathers solidified our country under the false pretenses of “liberty and justice for all” and the idea that “all men are created equal.” There is beauty in growth, and it so incredibly exhilarating to find yourself in something or someone that you’re so wildly different from. Though the literal chains have been relinquished from the wrists of my ancestors, economic and social ones threaten us less obviously but more dangerously.
