Watching "Cathouse" while I wait to fall asleep. There's
an older Black man on the show. He has bought two women. These women
are professional sex workers and get paid tens of thousands of dollars
in a day. But here's the deal: he tries to sweet talk the women into
working for him. It appears that the man is a pimp. He tells the women
to "come live in luxury in my 18 room house." Now they're showing how
pimps try to recruit the women out of the Bunny Ranch. They're even
reading a letter a pimp wrote to one of the girls.
The women who work in the legal brothel are way too smart
for these guys. But I just can't believe a pimp would be so lame as to
write a legal sex worker what basically amounts to a love letter. I
thought they were supposed to be tough.
Trying to take my mind off of all the things I have to do.
Trying to decelerate from the night. Had to get all of my samples,
cards, and prizes ready for the event tomorrow. Everything is ready.
All I need are customers. Have to teach in the morning, take care of
Grant's St. Louis stuff (my son moved to Florida in December), make
sure my daughter is okay. Trying not to think about what's going to
happen when there finally is a case made for Trayvon Martin.
For some reason my Monday Wednesday class is at 96 percent
capacity. I only lost two students and since I was teaching in
overload - had to give permission for folks to join - this actually
means that I finish the semester with a full ship. I have a LOT of
Black male students. I think I have about 7 (24 percent of the class)
in my Tuesday/Thursday. I've noticed that there is some kind of
emotion just simmering. Had to calm one down at the beginning of class
and another at the end. I'm not calling security on them. I can tell
that they want to cry. They want to scream. They're about to explode.
The reason they do it in front of me is because they know I'm not
going to let anything bad happen to them. They're crying out. Both men
are working jobs, taking care of children, and have family members
(womenfolks) who are pulling at them. I try very hard to be tough. But
I want to cry too. I can't. There are 29 other people who are counting
on me to be the captain of the ship.
One young brother said to me, "if they didn't do nothin'
bout that lil dude in Florida who gon' give a damn about my cousin?" I
said, "be that as it may. Trayvon's gone home. Your cousin's gone
home. You got a job to do." I feel like a monster. This is why God
made men and women. I have the ability to be very calm, surgical, and
even cold WHEN I MUST. I don't like it. It's like it takes all the
sunshine out of my soul. But in these days, if I let it go on, if I
let it go and go and go....? I don't know what. I know that I can't.
In my soul I know that the best thing to do is to keep both men with
their shoulders FIRMLY set to the plow. I told them, "there's only one
man who I ever heard tell brought someone back from the grave." Why
did an older Black male student break the tension by telling me (and
the whole class) that Enoch brought somebody back too? The laugh was
necessary. That guy drives me crazy with the Hebrew Israelite stuff
but TODAY - oh man, he just don't know that I was two second from boo
hoo 'til he said that.
You always say I'm honest and I thank you for that. I
sincerely feel that I could have handled the situation better if I was
a man. I felt weak. I felt inadequate. I didn't show my weakness. I
hardly ever do. I feel like all of their emotion was absorbed,
incorporated, within me. I was so scared that I told my son to not go
anywhere near any protest being held in Florida. Just like the Black
women in slavery, I'm willing to put my body against the machine for
him. But I don't want him sacrificed for that senseless demonic game
of race. I can't stand it. I can't take the thought.
My children were brought up seeing lynching photography
and Black men lynched, burned, castrated, on postcards which traveled
through the US mail. I re-call once that Grant went to school and told
the truth about Abraham Lincoln. I had to go and explain why. That is
a moment which is funny now. I fight with myself....
Do we harm our children when we bring them up early and
acquaint them with the skin game? My ex-husband is White but we talked
about our child before we had her. He and I were of like mind - Sarah
had to know, TO BE MADE TO KNOW that she was not White. She's bi-
racial. She had TO BE MADE TO KNOW that for the purposes of the
outside world - she's Black.
She knew, I think before she was ten, that the dictionary
definition of the word "nigger" has NOTHING TO DO with how it is
actually used or has been used historically. But I'm backtracking,
experiencing some type of hindsight tonight. I'm thinking about that
21st century lamb slaughtered in the rain.
In 1676 there was an inter-racial uprising. It is known as
Bacon's Rebellion. That is the point in the history of the New World
where Black skin became the permanent mark of slavery, of a lesser
human or a higher beast, of burdens to be born, and very little
kindness.
336 years later, it was necessary to take a 17 year old's
life for what? 336 years later, those in command of the law let the
man go. After all, just another dead Negro and aren't they killing
each other every day?
I'm second guessing myself. I shouldn't have let the
children sleep in multi-racial slumber. How do you think other bi-
racial children feel when they find out what a nigger really is? How
do you think they feel when they find out that they are grossly
unprepared for the racial realities of America? But I'm afraid that
I've made my four folks too cynical. Too aware. Grant (my youngest
son) better not be protesting anything. I made him promise. Let the
other men go. I need him.
I've been offered all manners of things if I would just
"let my children lead their own lives." Yes. That's what the Negro
said to me. "I don't mind the young one. I wouldn't want a woman who
left her child." But he DID want a woman who would cut off her adult
children. As long as I live my children have a place at my dinner
table. They can take a shower. They can get some rest. They can't
live with me. Then, I'd just be adding to the problem of unmotivated
Black men. The men MUST make their own way. I'll send you a little
fifty dollar western union if you get down on your luck. But that's
about it. See, that's my surgical side coming up again.
I will not raise a man I wouldn't marry. I don't date
basement bums. That's that. But here's the thing and back to my
"opportunity" - what kind of peace of mind would I have if I did
something like that? I wouldn't have any. Nuff said. We recently let
two of our sons go out in the big world on their own. We wished them
well. It was past time. But put them out for a man? Hell nawl! That's
a sin I'll save for the next lifetime.
I'm thinking about a lot of things tonight. I need to go
to sleep. I teach an early class. Took two sleeping pills an hour ago.
My heart, my soul, and my mind have put an over ride on the pills, my
age, and this body. I'm remembering when the boys were fat, round,
golden babies. I'm thinking about Trayvon's mother. Tonight, I believe
we're sharing the same mind. She can't help but be thinking about that
boy right now. I know she ain't even studying Zimmerman. We all are
thinking about our sons. What kind of wilderness is this that our sons
are acceptable beasts to be hunted and left for dead?
You are thinking about your sons. Trayvon's mother is
thinking about her baby. I know this moment in time has drawn the
energy of Black women together. I feel the spirit of Camille Cosby.
Her son Ennis stopped to help a woman and then the same woman just
left him to die after he'd been shot. Left him like trash on the side
of the road. She said, "I was scared." He wasn't too scared to help
her. I think of the pain Maya Angelou endured when the police wouldn't
search for her kidnapped son, Guy. Maya found her own son. She
searched for him on foot and bus and trolley car!!!!
And our men don't want us because they say we're
golddiggers, bitches, demanding, and have too much drama. How much
have we taken on for their sake? How much have we endured so they can
stand over us and tell us we're not good enough? How much more will we
endure.
I request that all Black American men be put on the
endangered species list and placed under the protection of the
Department of the Interior. They're human. But apparently their hide
is very valuable. Why would you waste a bullet on something worthless?
I love you. Love yourself. Think twice before you shoot a
man who looks like you. Think three times before you run your mouth
and entrap a man who looks like you. Think four times before you break
another mother's heart. Please, for peace sake, do this for me and the
other 20 million Black American women. If you don't stop..
Death has become such a regular obscenity in the Black
community that we no longer even bother to dress up for the homegoing.
Over priced jeans, slave labour athletic shoes, and a RIP t shirt -
that's THEY wear. I'm old/ Nearly half a century. I still get dressed
up, look decent. But as I said, death of our men is no more and no
less than the regular obscenity of Black American life and the
apathetically palatable pornography of American life.
--
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