Hurt, Healing and Hope – My Personal Story Around Race and Why I do What I Do
What does racial equity look like in the year 2042? This was the question recently posed by a colleague. While pondering, I’m tempted to look outside myself — to examine inequities in criminal justice, education, etc. But this doesn’t tell the deeper story. That story lies within.
The year is 1993. The place: Hunter College in New York City. A young kid from the housing projects in Brooklyn walks into the Black and Puerto Rican Studies department. On the wall is an excerpt (normally attributed to Nelson Mandela) from a book written by Marianne Williamson. The title of the excerpt: “Our Deepest Fear.”
The opening reads: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? …”
The excerpt spoke to me. I’m still convinced it was written for me. Growing up, my deepest fear was that I was inadequate. I had no reason to believe otherwise.
When childhood friends who you’ve known since 3rd grade go to jail for murder;
When your Puerto Rican girlfriend says you can’t walk her home, nervous her parents will see you, because you’re “negro” or “moreno;”
When the people who walk the streets begging for money all look like you;
When the longest and most intimate moment with your father is 15 minutes in a funeral home alongside his casket 20 years after your birth, and the rumored cause of death is AIDS;
When your most moving and impactful experience with a black male (a high school English teacher) isn’t until you’re age 15;
When a single drug – crack cocaine – radically changes the world around you, and over a ten-year period produces carnage and devastation unlike anything you’ve ever seen — people who once worked don’t work no more; people once vibrant and healthy now fragile and fatigued; people you could once trust now steal and con;
When you watch more than one friend’s mother – once strong and steady – literally and figuratively “crack” under a drug because life is too heavy and she doesn’t have the strength to carry the load anymore, then you will truly understand what Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he talked about “clouds of inferiority” developing in the little “mental skies” of young people.
Over time, I developed a cocoon of love and warmth: I was raised by a deeply religious grandmother who prayed for me; a strong and assertive mother who had me at 16 and who fought and sacrificed for me; guided by two black men – one a high school teacher, another a community organizer — who saw genius and talent in me; inspired and elevated by a Puerto Rican Congresswoman who created a leadership platform (and a job) for me; and encouraged by a small network of friends who told me to simply be me.
But these experiences came in waves. Growing up, the world around me was still one of stress and strife not safety and support.
Since this period, my journey through adulthood has been about healing and recovery … making sense of these experiences and their residuals — how they currently play out in my psyche and that of friends who lived similar lives:
For instance, why do I have two brains? – a regular brain and a race brain; the regular brain filters everything I see, say, hear and experience through the race brain. It’s a tennis match that never stops. On a daily basis, dialogue between the two plays out like this:
Regular brain: “I have something to say in this meeting.”
Race brain: “But you’re black, no one will listen. Do they even know you’re in the room?”
Regular brain: “Maybe you’re right. Then again, maybe you’re wrong.”
Race brain: “I wouldn’t do it if I were you.”
Regular brain: “Here it goes; I’m going to do it anyway.”
But, too late! The brain-to-brain conversation took five minutes and the meeting has already moved forward. Most days I overcome. I manage to mesh the two brains. But it’s a mental and emotional exercise that leaves me drained by the day’s end.
Or, why do I love black people so much and fear them so much at the same time? Why do I still retain a heightened “fight or flight” sense around groups of young black men, even though I’m the father of three black boys?
Or, why do I on a daily basis (without thinking about it or explicitly asked or required to do it) put on the standard uniform of the “successful” black man working in “white” or multi-racial circles? (i.e., decreased bass in voice; restrained emotion – avoiding at all costs confrontation or anything that can be deemed “angry” or “hostile). The motto: Bottle it up during the day; let it out at night.
A black male approaching 50, this is my life. A tale of hurt, healing and hope.
So when I answer the question: What does racial equity look like in 2042?; the answer is a deeply personal one.
My deepest fear is that the social justice field’s pursuit of racial equity has (and will continue to) overlooked the broad and deep psychic and emotional carnage that race and racism has inflicted on us all, black people in particular.
Sure, social justice leaders get structural inequity including structural racism, but what about the mental and emotional damage caused by structural forces?
Non-blacks are not exempt from this question. I sometimes wonder what the mental impact is even on “liberal” or “progressive” whites who are constantly “fixing,” “organizing,” and “servicing” “poor,” “disenfranchised” or “marginalized” communities of color.
When your worldview of blackness is from a place of “deficit,” is a “progressive” even capable of seeing black from a place of abundance? With dozens of training and leadership programs in the social justice field, many targeted on people of color, does this negatively-charged view of blackness partly explain why so few blacks are in senior leadership positions within “progressive” not-for-profit organizations?
Or maybe not? Maybe the race brain takes over and tells the regular brain: “You’re not good enough. You can’t do the job.” Maybe black people (and other people of color) self-impose handicaps; maybe we shrink away from opportunities? Or maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle?
That said, racial equity in 2042 entails psychic and emotional wellness, especially for black people. It represents an end to the “race brain.” Victory for the “regular brain.”
To be clear, my argument here is for a dual appreciation for the complex way that overlapping structural and cultural forces impact psychic and emotional well being. Let’s continue organizing and building power. But let’s do the inner – psychic and emotional — work as well.
To better illustrate my point, I like to use the image of being knocked down. When someone knocks you down, you may break a bone or get a cut. When you get back up or when someone helps you up, the broken bone and cut are still there. And require treatment and healing over time. Structural inequities work the same way. When the lack of a job, crappy jobs or low performing schools metaphorically knock people down, bones (i.e., hope, spirit, opportunity, etc.) are broken in the process. Simply getting up or being picked up (i.e., obtaining living wage work, etc.) doesn’t bring about healing. Healing these wounds requires a deeper, more long-term treatment. The conventional approach to social change assumes that once you’re back on your feet, healing has taken place.
The picture I paint above, including my own story, is not a universal portrait of black American family and community life. For every ten that share the above story, there is probably another ten that see all or part of their story reflected in that of Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, in their description of life in a striving, emotionally-nurturing two-parent family on the Southside of Chicago.
But if we’re to achieve racial equity in 2042, there can’t be two black stories. Just as there can’t be two brains. So what does racial equity in 2042 look like?
If we’re successful, there’s no more “shifting,” a term introduced by Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden in their book Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America. The authors document how, in response to race and gender oppression, black women were “made to hide their true selves to placate White colleagues … “ “From one moment to the next they change their outward behavior, attitude, or tone, shifting “White,” then shifting “Black” again, shifting “corporate,” then shifting “cool.”
If we’re successful, culture and cultural reclamation will be an integral part of our organizing and social change work in all communities, particularly black and other communities of color.
In her book, The Challenge for Africa, the late Wangari Maathai (she passed in 2011), leader of the Greenbelt Movement and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, argues that “Culture could be the missing link to creativity, productivity and confidence.” The challenge for communities that have been “de-cultured” is to “rediscover their cultural heritages, and use them to both reconnect with the past and help direct them in their political, spiritual, economic and social development.”
If we’re successful, we will universally instill (regardless of academic status) in young black men and women everywhere the “Morehouse Mystique.” In his book, The Morehouse Mystique: Lessons to Develop Black Men, Dr. John H. Eaves quotes a mother of a Morehouse College student reflecting on the assault of positive accolades directed towards students.
She notes, “Within 15 minutes, Morehouse College eliminated four years of negativity that my son experienced about himself in high school.” Adding to this, a 1995 graduate of Morehouse notes that “I grew in terms of my self confidence and my aspirations. Morehouse forces you to think big, forces you to have high aspirations …”
The Williamson excerpt that so inspired me in my formative years closed as follows:
“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
This is my goal. To tell my story. To let my light shine. Victory for the regular brain. Defeat to the race brain. And a move toward true racial equity in 2042.
By Dushaw Hockett
Founder and Executive Director, Safe Places for the Advancement of Community and Equity (SPACEs)