Chapter Ten

THE QUESTION OF THE FUTURE

I INSIST THAT THE QUESTION OF THE FUTURE IS HOW BEST TO KEEP THESE MILLIONS FROM BROODING OVER THE WRONGS OF THE PAST AND THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE PRESENT, SO THAT ALL THEIR ENERGIES MAY BE BENT TO- WARD A CHEERFUL STRIVING AND CO-OPERATION WITH THEIR WHITE NEIGHBORS TOWARD A LARGER, JUSTER, AND FULLER FUTURE.

—“Of the Training of Black Men”

For one year, I was the face of first defense at the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard University. I answered phones, greeted students, professors, and guest lecturers, filed papers and evaluations, and sorted mail for the entire department. During my time there, I met and became good friends with an undergraduate student named Karen. With chocolate-colored skin and beautiful, shiny, bold eyes, Karen was always giving me trouble over my fashion sense: “Sweetie, I know you were raised by white people, but girl, those boots with that skirt?” She would tell me that I looked like some mixed, bohemian, free-loving black girl from the cast of A Different World, which was fine if that’s what I was going for, but “Dear God, girl,” she would say, “you know you need to put some oil in that hair.”

Also while a receptionist at the Afro-American Studies Department, I met and briefly dated a graduate student named Tom. Tom had green eyes, dark brown hair, and broad, gallant shoulders. He was completely white-looking. In fact, I assumed he was white—lots of white students were Afro-American Studies majors—until we started talking more, and he told me that his father, who had died when Tom was a child, was black, and that Tom also considered himself black. The more I got to know him, the more fascinated I became by this identity he had created for himself partly, it seemed, out of respect and reverence for and in memory of his father, and partly because he genuinely felt akin to a black cultural sensibility.

Karen was skeptical about him from the get-go. She thought he was too slick, too handsome, and spent too much damn time in the Afro-American Studies Department. One afternoon when Karen and I were chatting at my desk, Tom came through on his way to a class.

“I don’t trust him,” Karen said when he was safely out of earshot.

“Oh, come on. He’s smart and he’s fine. You know he is,” I argued.

“Yeah, girl, but you know what he isn’t.”

In Karen’s view, Tom could claim blackness all he wanted, and his father’s, too, for that matter, but that still wouldn’t make him black. The criteria was tacitly understood between us—tacitly understood, largely because it had first been tacitly imposed by most, if not all, of white America. There is something so acutely rational about this line of thinking. Why bother with the confusion of cultural idiosyncrasies when the skin color is right there like a tribal mark, a war scar. Seems it could be, and maybe should be, that simple.

Karen was protective about someone assuming an identity she felt she herself had hard-learned, but to what detriment? What was she missing by sustaining this limited perspective, and what was I missing by agreeing, even as I continued to grapple with my own “authenticity”? Would our harsh expectations lessen and our seemingly finite definitions broaden if we allowed for and encouraged an aesthetically different-looking “blackness” to exist in the future? The latter, indeed, is what Du Bois implied in the following statement from “Of the Training of Black Men”: “I insist that the question of the future is how best to keep these millions from brooding over the wrongs of the past and the difficulties of the present, so that all their energies may be bent toward a cheerful striving and co-operation with their white neighbors toward a larger, juster, and fuller future.”

Former New Jersey councilman Cory Booker, a light-skinned African American man who ran for mayor of Newark, New Jersey, in 2001 and who suffered repeated attacks suggesting that he was not “black enough,” has made the question of how best to keep the millions from brooding his main platform as a community leader and activist. And, like Du Bois, Booker believes that the answer to this question, so long overdue, will reveal itself in voices louder and less parochial than those we have heard thus far.

Cory Booker

I grew up with parents who were deeply rooted in where they came from, and so I had the sense growing up that I was the manifestation of that sense of rootedness. For me, the way to best honor that, and what I’ve always known I wanted to do, is to be part of the struggle, part of the fight. And I believe that we need everyone in order to fight that fight effectively.

There’s a great Du Bois quote in which he says, and I’m paraphrasing, “In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood, one can imagine the consequences of the absence of social amenities between estranged races, whose separation extends even to parks and streetcars.” In my work, a lot of what I do is about getting people to move beyond the separation.

During the mayoral campaign, there were many things that were said, targeting my racial identity and allegiance, including the suggestion that I first needed to learn how to be an African American before I could be the mayor of Newark. For someone to question my background, especially when you look at someone like Du Bois, who was such a scholar, and to suggest that I’m not black enough based on whatever reasons is absurd. But there have always been black Americans who have been criticized by other black Americans for being what the latter might call “sellouts”—people who have won or sought the approval of the so-called mainstream, like Althea Gibson, Bayard Rustin, Ralph Bunche, even Sidney Poitier. I don’t especially mind the criticism, as long as I’m being true to myself, and in my heart know what I’m trying to do.

It’s always disheartening when black people turn against one another. It was disturbing to me, for example, when I heard Harry Belafonte’s recent criticism of Colin Powell, which was based solely on some sort of racial protocol. [In an October 2002 interview with talk show host Ted Leitner on the San Diego radio station KFMB-AM, Belafonte was quoted as saying, “There’s an old saying in the days of slavery. There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master.”] Belafonte could tear Colin Powell apart for some of his political beliefs, and I might join him in that criticism, but who is Harry Belafonte, as great as he is, to be a purveyor of blackness with regard to select individuals? To call somebody out for not being black enough—there’s just no time for that. We, as in the social fabric of America, have so many other issues to contend with.

I resist any notions that there is one way to be black, and I have defined myself and my life with that in mind, and as something that will evolve as I continue to grow and learn. What my “blackness” means to me—the blood quotient, the color of my skin—is an evolving, dynamic process. My grandfather, for example, who had a black mother and a white father, although he was not raised by his father, has had an extraordinary “black experience” in his lifetime. His trials, challenges, and his struggles growing up in Louisiana constitute a great “black” story. The fabric is threaded deep. So to say that there is some sort of hegemonic African American experience is to discount so many individual experiences we’ve all had.

Each black person has his or her own individual yearning; it is one that is and should be part of an important ideal for black culture, because this is a collective struggle, but it is also important in the struggle waged by humanity in general. I think it was Henry Louis Gates who said that he luxuriates in his blackness, but that in the end, his blackness is merely a portal into a deeper understanding of humanity. I agree, and so one of the gifts that my skin color allows for is a better appreciation of the texture of humanity and a deeper ability to feel compassion.

Celebrating and luxuriating in my blackness and gaining access to that portal, not only helps me to feel a powerful bond with other black people, other people of color, but also with humanity as a whole, people who have had different experiences than I have. My understanding of self allows me access to others, and what I think is most important is for us all to strive toward a sort of social justice where we create a sense of kinship with others who have had both similar and not so similar experiences.

One powerful aspect of this country as a whole is that when people strike out to be different, although they are often criticized in the beginning, they also often become some of our greatest leaders, because of the courage it took in order to beat their own drum. As the eighteenth-century English poet Edward Young said, “We’re all born originals—why is it that so many of us die copies?” It’s the original people, the ones who are not only original but also thinking originally, the ones who dare to imagine—those are the people we should look to and aspire toward.

I have no patience for people who exploit racial fear or insecurity for their own gain. And, frankly, I have no patience for people who try to foster their own sense of security by being part of a group and pushing a point of false solidarity. You know, I struggle in my own life with trying not to be concerned with what other people think—we all do—and when I meet or see people who have views that I find are so limiting not just to the black community but to the larger human community, I try to remember that while I may be able to do nothing about their feelings or ideas, I can live my life in a way that is whole.

Can it be a lonely path? Of course. But I think everybody feels lonely at one point or another. And, too, I think there’s an isolation that comes with being politically active. It’s easy to forget the ten compliments or expressions of appreciation that you might get on any given day, and then to go to sleep that night thinking only about the negative things you’ve heard. But that’s a very self-absorbed way to live your life.

My father used to say that there are two ways that you can go through life: as a thermometer or as a thermostat— someone, like a thermometer, who allows himself to be affected by the temperature of the environment, or someone, like a thermostat, who actually sets the temperature of the environment. I also try to remember the connection I have to a higher power. I’m a Christian, but I have a very broad conception of what that higher power is. Mainly, I think of it as an abundant and amazing source of energy and consciousness that connects us all in ways that we’re not even aware of, and I’m happy to be part of any mission with the goal of expanding that connection.

I think that while this generation may not necessarily be able to redefine what race means to us, we can at least see it as an evolving definition. I hope my children and the children of this generation have a different experience and outlook on race than we do and that those before us did. I’m a prisoner of hope, of change, and of optimism. The active belief in change is what makes it probable, and so I have no plans of giving up.