Check, Please: Black Folks and Tipping

The summer before I started college, almost 10 years ago in Baltimore County, I became a waiter. It was a rite of passage into the workforce, albeit an unglamorous one. Working in a restaurant gave me my first real experience interacting with all sorts of people in an intimate way. At the end of the day, regardless of socioeconomic class, a hungry person is a hungry person — making people unpredictable, and their tips negotiable.

Elderly people, the soup-salad-and-bread-stick thrifty types:horrible tippers. And those high-rolling suited professionals who were quick to flash their American Express cards: shamefully bad tippers.And to my kinfolk in the black community, I must say: If slavery wasn’t acceptable when we fought the Civil War … (more on this later).

To continue reading this article on TheRoot, click here.

 

 

 

Installation #9

Good Things Come In Twos

This year, all I want for Father’s Day is a nice twelve hour nap. No cards. No fancy dinners. And definitely no telephone calls. When I wake up, I’ll go through my file cabinet and take out some folders. Skip through some photos of my daughter and let silence fill the air as I reflect where did all the time go?

Two days before Father’s Day, my daughter will cross the stage trading in her kindergarten status for a numbered one. The other day, she bit my finger to demonstrate that her two front teeth are coming loose.

On a cosmic level, it’s only right that her graduation and father’s day should fall on the same weekend. After all, we’re in this together: treading unfamiliar waters. For her, she’s moving toward first grade and reading harder books. I, on the other hand, am balancing how to help her read those harder books and work on my first book (not to mention work and graduate school). 

Like clock work, she asks me to rub her back before going to sleep. Dead tired, I tell her to wait up for me— as I hurriedly go to finish the dishes, sweep the floor, look over her homework (making sure her letters are curlicued), wash out a uniform for the next morning, try to forget about writing. And before you know it the sun fades and there she is fast asleep.

Increasingly, I suffer from insomnia. I attribute it to being a writer with an active mind. On those nights, I wake up at odd hours to make sure the door is locked or to check if the apartment is at the right temperature. I watch her chest move like an ocean under a knitted blue quilt. She likes to hug up against the wall as if she’s a pillar keeping the walls steady and balanced. I pull a piece of cover over her arms. She wiggles her nose. My chest aches, I sometimes want to wake her up just to ask if she’s okay? Whether she’s having a good dream? Did she go before getting in bed?

I decide against waking her up. I turn off the lights and trip over one of her toys. Before I can swear at my highest octave, I stare at one of her drawings on the refrigerator. I marvel at how perfectly she drew me: bespectacled, a book in hand, just the two of us holding hands moving . . . somewhere, together, the way it ought to be.

 

Abdul Ali is the editor of Words Matter.

Installation # 8

Looking at all of the mixed kids today, one would never guess that back in the day, we kids were an oddity.  I was born in Cambridge, Maryland in 1969 to a married black woman and a married white man.  Needless to say, they kept their relationship under wraps.  Neither of them were happy in their marriages but were too afraid to leave.  When I was born, my mother ended the relationship with my biological father.  As far as she was concerned, she and her black husband were the proud parents of a 7 lbs., 9 oz. baby girl, that happened to look not so black and my biological father could stay unhappily married to his white wife.  Mom was afraid to let the world, or at least the Eastern Shore of Maryland know that she and a white man produced a bi-racial child.  People just didn’t do that in Cambridge.  No mixing of races.  Yet, whenever we were out as a family, it was quite obvious that some race-mixing took place.

As a kid, God forbid that I questioned my color whenever I was around my parents and other family members who didn’t look like me.  Relatives would tell me, “You look just like your father’s grandmother”.   “You have hair like your grandfather on your mother’s side.  He was from New Guinea, you know”.  I always looked like someone in the family…who just happened to be dead…and there were no pictures (evidence) to prove otherwise.  See where I’m going with this?  It’s not like I hadn’t figured it out, but I respected that it wasn’t a topic to bring up, so I kept it to myself.  When my mom finally told me about her relationship with my biological father, I was not shocked, to say the least.

All throughout K-12, me and another girl were the only two bi-racial kids in our school.  I identified as black, she as white.  Every so often, we were questioned about my blackness and her whiteness.

Now, whenever I visit my hometown, it’s like it caught up with the rest of the world…multi-culti people everywhere.   My how time and a little bit of progression change things. 

Fast forward 30-35 years.  I’ve gotten over the stigma of growing up a mixed kid.  I know who I am.  I know that recognizing all of me doesn’t take away from any part of me.  I live by that train of thought and I’ve become quite comfortable with myself over these 40 years.  I’m also divorced and the mother of a beautiful 6 year-old girl. 

“Mommy, why are you white and I’m brown”?  I would get this question all the time, starting when my daughter was around 3 years-old.  “I’m not white”, I would counter.  “Well, you aren’t brown”.  Damn quick child of mine.  “Mommy, why don’t I look like you”?  I knew that I would have to have the “race talk” with her.  Oh, how I wanted to avoid it for as long as possible, but I knew that was an unrealistic expectation in the world we live in.  I always wanted my child to value people for their actions and deeds; not make judgments based on the color of their skin.  I wanted my child to love herself because she is worthy and not get caught up in the color game.  We get so consumed with light-skinned, dark-skinned, good hair (whatever that is), long hair, and all this other stuff that is a part of our history but completely takes away from who we are as human beings.  How do you say all of this to a child who is aware of her surroundings but also naïve?

So the explanation begins.  “Black is black, is black, is black” (big shout to Jungle Brothers and Q-Tip).  While talking to my child about color differences and its beauty, I am aware that I am molding my child to be a black woman in America.  She is going to be reminded of her race and gender all the time.  At times, those reminders are going to be fueled by hatred and bigotry.  Can I help her become strong enough to deal with that?  Yes, I can.  “Look in the mirror”, I said to her.  “Touch your brown face, feel your thick hair, look at the sparkle in your dark brown eyes.  You are perfect.  And so am I.  Daddy, Grandma, Mom Mom and Pop Pop are perfect too”.   “What about my black grand pop and white grand pop in heaven”?  “Yes, baby, they are also perfect”.

Our conversations about race and color have become very common over the last three years.  She knows that I am half-black and half-white for what it’s worth and it’s no big deal.  Why should it be?  We love to stand in front of the mirror and look at ourselves together.  She knows that the blood of her parents, grandparents and ancestors run through her.  She likes her friends because they are nice and tell funny jokes.

Recently, my daughter brought home her kindergarten journal  called “All About Me” that she created during the school year.  In it, she wrote sentences and drew pictures about her family, friends, and herself. 

“When I grow up, I want to be a teacher”. 

“My favorite colors are pink and purple”. 

“I like to play until dinner is ready”. 

“My DS is light pink and sparkly”.

 “I am brown and I am happy about it”. 

Yes I can.

Joy Adams works in Higher Education and lives in Maryland with her daughter, Camille.

Father Forgive Me, installation #6

“Father forgive me, we got some issues.”- Jay Z

            It was a few days after my father’s 50^th birthday, and I still struggled with what it meant to call the man who’s name I carry dad.  I climbed into the dust and cracks of my black leather seat and headed to his apartment. The truth is I had no gifts.  Over the years, my own mistakes had taught me that a man can wrong every one close to him with what he can do with his hands, and spend the rest of his life trying to redeem himself only to fail.  And yet whatever forgiveness my dad needed I’d held it back. I’d become a master at using distance to push away hard truths like I wanted a father to teach me how to throw a left hand, how to rumble in the streets even when afraid, how to multiply fractions, choose the ripest watermelons.

            My father lives in the kind of place people call rough, a neighborhood where young black boys can be seen posted up on corners through all hours of the day trafficking death; where police officers suspect you first – suspect you of drug dealing, of being a felony waiting to happen, of just be wrong, in the wrong skin, on the wrong block, with the wrong intentions – before anything else.  Each time I bend the corner to drive up his street part of me is thankful I’ve never rested my head in a place so heavy with violence, with bootleg schools and so many folks who seem to suffer from the want of more.  And then I catch myself recycling stereotypes, catch myself forgetting the stories of the folks I know who live on these streets, catch myself forgetting my father.  This is why I drive to see the man who bought Similac for me as a child, who left the possibility of a college degree to be a father, the man who lost woman he says he still loves in the insanity of a DC street and those hard 80s: he reminds me of what it means to be a survivor, and what it means to grasp the kind of redemption that never appears in newspapers or television.

            In my head I’m thinking I should have brought a gift, but know it’s too late as I turn the corner empty handed. My first trip up the street I didn’t notice the bearded man standing on the stoop talking to the younger cat. I drove past him standing on a nearby stoop twice, his bear thick and a grayish white reminding me on Frederick Douglass but not reminding me of the man I know as dad.  As I drove past the second time he walked to the curb, and I could see his eyes, see that clear hard look of knowing something the world is just catching up too. He walked towards my car as I slowed, “Son, you didn’t recognize your old man did you?” And this is the thing, ever since the day I first walked into a county jail, ever since the day I first greeted a generation of black men behind bars, since the day I walked out of a prison for the last time as inmate, I’ve been searching for my father, and even on that day, just in the wake of his 50^th birthday, I was still trying to recognize him.

            “Pop I miss you, God help me forgive him I got some issues,” Jay Z rhymes on his track “Momma Loves Me.”  I should have told my father I missed him.  Told him that in this life measured by the breaks that we’ve both lived through it has taken me this long, nearly thirty years, to recognize that you don’t judge your father by his successes or failure, but by what people remember.  And I miss the gaps in my own memory, the spaces where a thrown football should be, where a whooping should be – where his hands calloused from work and danger tucking me in at night should be. I realized I’m chasing memories, something new to define my dad by. I thought about my little brother, and how at 50 years old my father was doing a better job by him, as a single father, than he’d ever done with my sisters or me.  I realized that today he was the kind of father I’m trying to be.  He once told me that if anything ever went wrong with my wife and me it was my fault. “Son, if something ain’t right, it’s your responsibility to fix it.”  He tells me personal responsibility is a standard to live by, and when my son is old enough to get it, I imagine me telling him this same mantra. When I walked up to the spot on the curb where he stood, I gave him a hug. Asked him to let me buy him a drink, figured brown liquor has always been good for burying hard memories and planting new ones.

R. Dwayne Betts is the author of the memoir, A Question of Freedom. And most recently, an award-winning collection of poems, Shahid Reads His Own Palm.

Fathering Words with E. Ethelbert Miller

Egberto Miller walks to the subway carrying his lunch. My mother has taken the time to fix him a good meal. I will remember the exchange of small brown paper bags more than hugs and kisses between my parents. When we moved into the St. Mary’s Housing Projects, we lived on the seventeenth floor; my mother would watch my father walk to work from the bedroom window. Behind her would be an unmade bed. The outline of my father’s body was still trapped against the sheets and blankets. My father never overslept when it was time to go to work. He never dragged himself out of bed. He was up and in the bathroom washing his body before you could even talk to him. This is why I believe he never dreamed. His eyes never had that soft, hazy, distant look. His eyes never looked tired. When you work hard everyday you don’t look tired; you are tired but you never mention it. There are no excuses.

I wonder what my mother thought about my father always sleeping? No time to really go anywhere. What was she thinking while bending over the stove? My father is sitting at the kitchen table. He props his head up with his hands. He is waiting for his meal. Years from now I will recognize this pose. It’s the picture we get from the loser’ locker room after the World Series, the Super Bowl or the N.B.A. finals. It’s defeat after making an error, the ball going in and out of the rim. A foot touching the line in the end zone. Or worst, the referee or umpire missing the call. Yet there is something heroic about my father. It took many years for me to realize the simple beauty behind how he ate his food. The care that he gave to even the most mundane task.

Just before I went off to college, he printed my name in the inside of a new typewriter case, his block letters so beautifully even. I looked at my name each time I took the typewriter out.

Excerpted from chapter two of Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer by E. Ethelbert Miller.
*Posted with permission of the author.

A Black Shadow Returns

contributed by Melanie Henderson
 
Most mornings, I drive to work. But after a weekend of tree-trimming with babyboy, baking, and gift-wrapping, I was running a little low on energy and time. So, I took a walk to work so the sounds of the city could wake me. While walking down K Street near what used to be the Sursum Cordas Project (moment of silence…it’s all electric-wired fences and unkempt grass now), I happened to look down. Low and behold, I saw a soggy postcard:

I remembered how the mystery and persistence in the bold angles and curves of blackprint gave a sort of haunting feeling to all travels through the District in the 80s. I remember asking my mom, “Who is Cool Disco Dan?” She didn’t know. I never knew. After a while, I didn’t care. Figured he was locked up somewhere for all that damn tagging. But, I did know this dude was on a mission to imprint his character across the District as often, as prominently, and as boldly as he could. From what I can remember, he never used colors like other taggers. But then, he wasn’t your average tagger or graffiti artist. You could tell he was serious about this. I mean, his tag was under bridges at heights it seemed only spiderman could reach. Always in black. His tags stood out the best in the rain, letters bursting at the hips like one of my uncles old girlfriends he had met at the go-go. His girlfriends always had Venus Hottentot hips.

It’s funny, I wasn’t particularly a fan of Cool Disco Dan spraying himself all over town, on buildings, walls, trash cans, I mean, anything. But now, the little postcard with the familiar bold print reminds me of a totally different DC.

Of course, there were a lot of things about the 80s in DC that are worth forgetting, but there was a flavor and a heat about the city then that seems to be trickling away at an uncontrollable pace. The retail shops filling up old Chinatown. Humongous condos blocking the neighborhood’s perfect view of fireworks on the Mall from New York and New Jersey Avenue. Strange, the neighborhood once affectionately known as simply New York Avenue is now “Truxton Circle” and “Mt. Vernon” according to Historic Preservation. They’re preserving something, but nothing I remember. I miss the O Street Market. The numerous fireworks stands lining the major thoroughfares of DC at the crack of summer. The feelgood of the annual Black Family Reunion. It’s all different. Some change is good. Just some. But what can I say. Some of us are still here and will always remember that once upon a time in DC.
Thanks Cool Disco Dan for taking me back for a spell.

Based on the postcard, it seems Cool Disco Dan has grown up! Entrepreneur with a product to sell. Check him out at www.CoolDiscoDan.com.

Melanie Henderson, 4th generation native of Washington, DC, is a graduate of Howard University and an MFA candidate at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

Obama’s Speech on Unemployment

In October, I left my job or I was fired. My position was terminated. However you slice it my future was uncertain. Surprisingly, I was clear-sighted through it all. I remember it was the tail-end of October. The trees were shedding much like the big and small companies around the nation. I was grateful that payday was the following week so that November’s rent wouldn’t be a concern. As a child, I moved around often. Being jobless didn’t scare me as much as having to telephone my landlord and explain what I had hoped to be a private moment of shame.

As soon as I collected my things from my office to begin my new life as a twenty-five year old with more time on my hands than I ever had in a long time, several questions popped in my head. What will I do about health insurance? What if my five year old gets sick? What if I get sick? What if I didn’t find anything? Did I have the stamina to go through the whole process of applying for unemployment or worst, social services?

As President Obama gears up for his speech on unemployment, here are some items I’d like to see included in the discussion:

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Flashback Friday

Lately I’ve been working on a number of poems that deal with when I was a kid. Belive it or not, those are the most difficult poems to write. I just dusted off a poem that I started two years ago. Some folks liked when I read it a few times but inside I knew it wasn’t finished but I couldn’t figure out “what” exactly needed work. It turns out I hadn’t resolved a few things about growing up. And, I may never, really resolve some those things.

For instance, I really miss how religion or the institution of religion was central to my youth. Whether it was going to Church with my grandparents or selling Final Call newspapers as a junior FOI or taking my shahadah as a teenager. Those were some very formative and special times. But unfortunately, as I got a little older, I began to notice so many doubles that it became impossible for me to “belong” to any group who spends most of their time “seeming” righteous. I guess you could say, I’ve grown cynical. Yet, I consider myself a staunch “believer.”

I don’t know, I’m pretty sure there’s a happy medium. These days writing has almost taken the place of religion. It’s my opening to tap into the divine. So much of writing has to do with being a good person and growing and being courageous. (at least for me it does).

It’s difficult to be areligious, particularly when you have a uber-religious name as I do. At least once a week, I’m forced into a conversation about the middle east conflict or am I a practicing Muslim. Though, I love my name, I find it’s hard to put certain parts of my past behind when it has become so central to who I am. I’m reminded of the line from Erykah Badu’s song “Me” ,

Sometimes its hard to move you see

when you growing publicly

but if I have to choose between

I choose me.

I think the chief problem for me is that I can dismiss any of the things that gnaw at me or cause anxiety because I’m a sum of all of those things. I joked the other day that I can’t really be prejudiced towards anyone. I try not to participate in the “hate whitey” talks with my friends because my grandmother is of European descent, and my greatgrandmother is Jewish. And, though they didn’t raise my mom, I’m always curious about what if they did. Would that have mended some of the broken shelves inside this writer’s chest?

The poet Thomas Sayers Ellis once teased that I’m the Poet Laureate of family matters. Maybe I headed in that direction. I can’t be the only one with family issues.

Flashback Fridays with Tinesha Davis

This is the way it starts.

I’m writing a new book and like my last book (and probably the next book) it is set in the neighborhoods where I grew up.

This is how it begins. The reminiscing. The going back in the day, the urge to visit where I came from, the obsession to get it right.

This time my childhood friend, Tamika, is with me. I pick her up and the plan is to just hang out, but like all good hanging out we soon find ourselves laughing over the “old” days, the “way” it used to be. Over fried chicken liver and Texas Pete hot sauce at Pollard’s Chicken, we go over the people we knew. The people who lived in the same neighborhoods as us. 

            “He’s dead. He is too. He just got outta jail, and she – oh she works at the Wal-Mart over there.”

            We leave the restaurant known for its gizzards and buttery puffs and without Tamika knowing it I take her on the drive that I usually make alone. The same drive my character Dominique takes in my novel Holler at the Moon.

            “Mika, is The Scotsman still there?” I ask fully planning to stop and purchase something from the store housed with slightly irregular clothing. Back in the day, I got many-a-ill-fitting-outfit there. I planned to buy something in tribute.

            “Nah, but they have one in Janaf.” I nod my head. Another Scotsman won’t do. I grew up with the one in the Southern Shopping center.

            At Northside Park we share memories of walking the mile from our homes in Ocean Air Apartments to stand in a line that at times wrapped around the pool building. Once inside, we’d swim thirty allotted-minutes before the whistle blew signaling our time was up and it was a new batch of kids turn to frolic.

            We drive some more and share more memories that others would find depressing and dark. To us, they’re merely our childhood.

            “When they put these gates up in Hallmark?”

            “Its not Hallmark its Hallmart, I used to live here. Have no idea why they called it Hallmart though.”

            “That was the apartments’ name.”

            “Well damn, why didn’t they put up a sign?”

            “They did. They tore it down.”

            “Who tore it down?”

            “Mike, Shawn and ‘em.”

            As for the gates, I tell her they went up around ’91. The cops got tired of the drug boys, also known as the guys we grew up with, running through them and escaping. So they sealed off all escape routes. I remember. I remember Jamal got shot and killed when those cats from that other neighborhood were chasing him. Those gates stopped him from escaping them too.

            And I remember Ocean Air, now the face-lifted Mariners Watch. We point out the courts we used to live in. Me in the front, her towards the back. We point out the old candy store we used to frequent. In my novel I named it Sunny’s. Tamika reminds me its name was Crows.

            “That’s right.”

            “Girl, why didn’t you call me? I could’ve helped you with the details.”

            I look at her and for a second I am amazed.  I met this woman somewhere between the fifth and the sixth grade while trudging through the swampy land of “the creek” We were looking for an escape from our Ocean Air lives. We excelled at playing adventure. This woman who has witnessed it all up close and personal from back alley drug transactions where everything was traded but cash, to crap game stick-ups where shots were blasted before the robber realized the “kids” were playing with imagination and not money. She witnessed it all, from drug busts to murders to Russian-Roulette suicides (RIP Linwood).

Knowing what I know about our lives, I am amazed because Tamika should be hard. She should be damaged and mean and broken but she’s not. Instead, she sits beside me laughing and offering me her help. She has a sharp mind filled with the details of the neighborhoods I write about. This woman, my friend, Tamika has light in her voice and shine in her eyes and she reminds me why I am astounded by girls like us who grew up in neighborhoods like ours and still manage to come out hopeful.

Tinesha Davis is the author of All Black Girls Ain’t Got Rhythm, a collection of poetry and a debut novel Holler at the Moon. You can visit Tinesha at www.TineshaDavis.com

Catching My Breath

It feels like a week since I’ve had time to post.  But there’s good reason, I’ve been busy. I started a new gig with Split This Rock working with Sarah Browning & company (Melissa, Katherine, Jaime, Alicia, and Reggie), activist-poets based here in Washington. Here’s a short interview I did with Sarah on a previous blog, Poetic Notes, some years back.

Aside from all of the enthusiasm associated with landing a new gig, I’ve been reading a lot. I must have five or six different books spread across my bed. There’s Carolyn Forche’s Country Between Us which is growing on me. I’m not sure if I’ve encountered a narrative poet with this kind of force and beauty and high drama in my reading life.

There’s also Michael Harper’s Dear John, Dear Coltrane. His poems are sexy, not all cerebral like so many “name” poets. I found his poems about the death of his son especially touching. For some reason, I’m drawn to poems written by male poets, especially black male poets, that we often don’t read or hear about. I like those vulnerable poems that we once thought was the exclusive soverign of female writing. Also, there are new and fresh subject positions that Harper creates for this voice. This is also important. So many poets are writing from their own voices and not necessarily creating voices in the traditional way.

Oh, and I finally read for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. Shange has an awesome ear and command of the language. Yet I found it a chore reading the text. The idea of this choreopoem is exquisite and it gave me some ideas for my own dramatic writing. I’d like to see this staged. Plays are truly meant to be seen up on stage. And since there are so few stage directions, the director has free reign in producing this work. It’ll be interesting to see what Tyler Perry does (or doesn’t do) with this play.

I also read most of Best African American Essays 2009. I found the collection to be satisfying, particularly the essay written by Walter Mosley about his mother, Gray Shawl; and I thoroughly enjoyed James McBride’s Hip Hop Planet.

 My reading gets scattered and all over the place but this is how it is when I’m not writing. I need to draw every source that comes my way. When I browse the shelves of my neighborhood library, I grab what catches my eye. And usually I strike oil between the pages.

I just started reading Tara Bett’s Arc & Hue and plan to post something in the next few days about the book as Ms. Betts will be in town soon. I’ve also solicited things from a few friends so stay tuned. If you’d like to write for Words Matter, drop me a line. The numbers have been really good. My only regret is that I don’t have more time to ensure more regular posts.

Thanks for your patience as I catch my breath.