Up From…

I woke up this morning to an amazing sunrise.  I walked outside to get the Sunday paper and the birds were chirping; squirrels were digging up the lawn looking for last year’s nut or whatever – there was a perfect chaotic stillness all around that I too often sleep through or forget to appreciate.  It was damn near a Disney movie.  I sat down on the hood of my truck to watch the final threads of amber dawn spill through the naked backyard trees and realized that all I was required to do today had already been done.

I settled in to the morning paper bullshit on the front stoop and was pleasantly shocked to see that last November’s Chrysanthemums were peeking through the dirt having apparently survived the winter.  As I celebrated that win, I heard my down the street neighbor Hanoi Will say, Hey!  Did you know I served with Ulysses S. Grant?  I replied, Damn Will, that’s a new one.  Hanoi Will is a Vietnam veteran and every conversation I ever have with him starts with a similar question but always ends with his pontific explanation of Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror.

Will is a late middle-aged, middle-class African-American fellow and I’d call him a friend of mine.  For the record, he has also served with William T. Sherman, George S. Patton, Douglas Big Chief MacArthur, William Westmoreland – effectively anyone who is anyone in the annals of U.S. Military history; it just depends on the day I suppose.  Aside from the Michael Jackson constant, his other go-to story is his plight as a black man in a white man’s army, fighting as he puts it, the white man’s war.  I won’t condescend and say I have any real understanding of what he is ever talking about but some days I get it more than others.  What I always know is that he’s a good man and as far as I can see, the country he fought and damn near died for could care less.

It wasn’t quite 9:00 in the AM and as I was still reeling from yet another manic conversation with Hanoi Will, I determined to read a book that’s been collecting dust on my shelves for years, Up From Slavery.  I won’t break it down for you entirely because I think you have to come to it on your own terms.  If you don’t know, it is Booker T. Washington’s autobiography; published in 1901.  If I’m honest, it is one of those books that almost all liberals own (have never read) and display prominently on their most public bookshelf for the entire world to see.  I regrettably fell into that category until after this morning.  It’s a quick read and should be required for all Americans.  It’s not even (150) pages but it’s packed with information about what it means…what it should mean to be an American.  I’m coming at this from a middle-class white boy perspective – I can’t imagine what it must mean to the African-American community.

I will admit that BTW’s humility and deference to others is off-putting to my 20^th century punk rock understanding of individualism.  I recognize however that it was the only way that a black voice would have even been mildly palatable to a society that had been trained to believe that all black men were wild animals and their only motivation was to ravage white women – what an unfortunate commentary on the values of this Christian nation, right?  That said I can’t deny the power of the story.  I want him to be a bad-ass and kick the shit out of whomever, whatever, but he never does – he never even speaks ill of his oppressors.  It’s a lesson in how to resist from a positive place.  Not only to resist, but to overcome that which is keeping you down.  Can you imagine being a f*@$ing slave?  A slave?  Just let that sink in for a minute.   

If nothing else it’s a lesson in how to overcome, right?  It’s almost an American ideal at this point in time to be disappointed in your life, to feel disenfranchised at some level.  It is true that if you are not pissed off, you are not paying attention because we have made a mockery of what were the founding fathers hopes.  There is nothing that is fair about the free United States of America and having read this book it is clear that there never was.  I can assure you though, that whatever hardship you perceive as insurmountable pales in comparison to what Booker faced.  The mechanisms that you feel are keeping you from realizing your truth are miniscule when compared to the absolute machine that was in place to hold post-Civil War Negroes down.

We all have bad days.  We all feel at times that the circumstances of our lives are conspiring against us, that the world is pissing down our back.  Those days almost always pass, but the next time you feel like you’re having one of those days, I implore you to read Up From Slavery.  It will fill you with understanding of personal responsibility, the value of hard work.  It might not change anything for you but you’ll begin to understand the subtlety and power of race, of what society thinks is fair, even still.  You’ll learn how to advance your agenda against all costs, how to affect a society you’d be proud to be a part of. 

If you’re determined to be pissed off about your lot in life, don’t read this book and don’t listen to a word I’ve said.  It will only teach you how to work positively with and understand other people, people that you disagree with on every level.  It will only show you how to pick yourself up from whatever it is…up from your dipshit boss, up from your lunatic husband or wife, up from the shitty neighborhood you grew up in, up from poverty, up from whatever.  It’s imperative to understand that the most successful people on earth didn’t do it all by themselves.  No matter what you’ve heard, everyone has needed and has accepted a hand up.

I don’t think I ever understood…I damn sure never wanted to accept that reality until I read Up From Slavery.  No matter what you’ve heard, everyone has needed a hand up – no one has ever done anything completely on their own, but it always starts with you.  You can’t be helped if you’re not willing to see that you need it.

I walked outside just now and watched the timid sun retreat beyond points westward.  The birds are still chirping, the squirrels are still digging and it remains perfectly chaotically still.