Would the same thing happen to me? Maybe Johnnie was right; maybe once you stripped away the rationalizations, it
always came down to a simple matter of escape. An escape from poverty or boredom or crime or the shackles of your
skin. Maybe, by going to law school, I’d be repeating a pattern that had been set in motion centuries before, the
moment white men, themselves spurred on by their own fears of inconsequence, had landed on Africa’s shores,
bringing with them their guns and blind hunger, to drag away the conquered in chains. That first encounter had redrawn
the map of black life, recentered its universe, created the very idea of escape-an idea that lived on in Frank and those
other old black men who had found refuge in Hawaii; in green-eyed Joyce back at Occidental, just wanting to be an
individual; in Auma, torn between Germany and Kenya; in Roy, finding out that he couldn’t start over. And here, in the
South Side, among members of Reverend Philips’s church, some of whom had probably marched alongside Dr. King,
believing then that they marched for a higher purpose, for rights and for principles and for all God’s children, but who
at some point had realized that power was unyielding and principles unstable, and that even after laws were passed and
lynchings ceased, the closest thing to freedom would still involve escape, emotional if not physical, away from
ourselves, away from what we knew, flight into the outer reaches of the white man’s empire-or closer into its bosom.
The analogies weren’t exactly right. The relationship between black and white, the meaning of escape, would never be
quite the same for me as it had been for Frank, or for the Old Man, or even for Roy. And as segregated as Chicago was,
as strained as race relations were, the success of the civil rights movement had at least created some overlap between
communities, more room to maneuver for people like me. I could work in the black community as an organizer or a
lawyer and still live in a high rise downtown. Or the other way around: I could work in a blue-chip law firm but live in
the South Side and buy a big house, drive a nice car, make my donations to the NAACP and Harold’s campaign, speak
at local high schools. A role model, they’d call me, an example of black male success.
Was there anything wrong with that? Johnnie obviously didn’t think so. He had smiled, I realized now, not because he
judged me but precisely because he didn’t; because he, like my leaders, didn’t see anything wrong with such success.
That was one of the lessons I’d learned these past two and a half years, wasn’t it?-that most black folks weren’t like the
father of my dreams, the man in my mother’s stories, full of high-blown ideals and quick to pass judgment. They were
more like my stepfather, Lolo, practical people who knew life was too hard to judge each other’s choices, too messy to
live according to abstract ideals. No one expected self-sacrifice from me-not Rafiq, who of late had been pestering me
about helping him raise money from white foundations for his latest scheme; not Reverend Smalls, who had decided to
run for the state senator’s seat and was anxious for our support. As far as they were concerned, my color had always
been a sufficient criterion for community membership, enough of a cross to bear.
Was that all that had brought me to Chicago, I wondered-the desire for such simple acceptance? That had been part of
it, certainly, one meaning to community. But there had been another meaning, too, a more demanding impulse. Sure,
you could be black and still not give a damn about what happened in Altgeld or Roseland. You didn’t have to care
about boys like Kyle, young mothers like Bernadette or Sadie. But to be right with yourself, to do right by others, to
lend meaning to a community’s suffering and take part in its healing-that required something more. It required the kind
of commitment that Dr. Collier made every day out in Altgeld. It required the kind of sacrifices a man like Asante had
been willing to make with his students.
barré
(Barré)
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