Soul Deep Bohemian

“What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalms 8:4 – Hebrew 2:6)

Today marks my fifty-third year on this earth. In the grand scheme of things, the sum total of the time of my existence is easily swallowed within the millennia going before and the ones to follow. Today I reflect on this, the fifty-third year since I took my first breath and ask myself what is man?

The question itself is older than me. From the moment my genitals were exposed to the world and the announcement made “It’s a boy”, my life has been framed by a continual pursuit of a definitive answer to question: what is man? Of course, the question I am asking is partial – it is not the whole question. As such, I have been pursuing a partial answer. This is important, because not only does a partial question produce a partial answer; it also produces a partial man. Even more importantly it produces a man who forgets that God is mindful of him and the God cares for him.

I, like many men (and women) spend the bulk of our lives seeking to be made whole. A man responds to the condition of his partiality by trying to make something of himself. He dreams big, fails miserably, and then settles for what is man in the world presently ordained. Man, in this partial state is vulnerable to half-thoughts and half-actions, because he is just half a man: he is not whole. This man does everything under the condition of his partial self and doing it all of his life he comes to think that being a partial man, is wholly right. A man that can only see half of his self loses sight of what it takes to be whole.

A partial man, this half man is always trying with his own strength to be made whole. He beds often, partially weds most often to a partial woman, sires children being a child himself, and chases masculinity (misogyny, machismo, homophobia, and mammon) all in the name of being called a man. This is the hood masculinity a man-hood and from behind this hood with vision obscured, he peers out onto the world always fearful of being found to be a fraud.

After fifty-three years in full pursuit of a partial answer to the question what is man and allowing myself to be raced, gendered, sexed, masculinized because of it; I am finally able to remove my man-hood. Now I can see the whole question, receive the Holy answer and be made whole. God is and has always been mindful of me. God has always completely cared for me, even when I cared only partially for God.

Race neither negates nor makes a man, sexuality neither negates nor makes a man, strength neither negates nor makes a man; mammon neither makes nor negates a man; and to pursue masculinity is folly. All of these things comprise the hood, the veil of performance that keeps a man from being mindful that God made man and purposed him; and that God cares about man and man’s purpose. (John 3:16)

Today marks my fifty-third year on this earth. I no longer ask a partial question, I no longer seek a partial answer. I am mindful that I am finally a man who God made, gave purpose and cares for. Now that I am a man I am ready to fulfill my purpose and live out my destiny. This is the greatest birthday present I have ever received. (Job 8:7)

During the last year of mother’s life on earth we had countless conversations. Most of those conversations ranged between her recollection of me as a young child, quite precocious in her eyes and conversations about her impending death. She often reminded me of where her important papers were laid and took the time to say things to me that she might not have another chance to say. On one of those occasions, between laughing at re-telling stories about my childish antics and experiencing first-hand the reality that her time in her now bruised and pained body was winding down, she told me that she wanted me to eulogize her. She did not ask me – she told me: it was quite matter of fact. As we both sat there in the family room, rocking in recliners across the room from one another, we both assessed the weightiness of her words. My mother was telling me she was going to die soon and asked, no required me to accept it, to say the last words over what would remain of her and to send her off on the wind placed in lungs formed in her womb. It was a painfully compelling moment for my mother to direct me to give voice to her final farewell. I broke what seemed to be a great protracted silence and responded saying, “Momma, I can do a lot of things for you, but I don’t think I can eulogize you…” She responded by calmly saying “You can do it baby…” I responded as a child, her baby, her little boy; she responded as a mother who understood the very essence of that soul poured into the fleshly body she had created. Needless to say that moment of her passing came and went. Needless to say I did not speak at her funeral and needless to say I have not forgotten that conversation we had that sunny day there at 100 N Duggins Drive, Kinston, North Carolina.

Of course I spent many days regretting that I did not do what I thought she asked. I thought I failed my mother. I thought I had denied her dying wish. Little did I know – not only about myself, but about what she was asking me to do. It was not the case that I would speak the last words over what remained of her there in that pink and green casket at the front of the tabernacle. She hadn’t asked me toss about stories of her exploits nor to shout an ode to a mother’s love over the endless sea of flowers that adorned her resting place at the foot of that alter where she prayed so many prayers for me. Eulogy meant not a last story, but a remembrance beyond last words. It was a call to speak the lasting words of her lessons, her works, her love, her faith. Eulogizing was not a lament, not words of sorrow, but words of joy, encouragement and strength. She placed the mantle of her words in my hands, made me a caretaker of her legacy.

Motherhood is a no-fault relationship in as much as we who chose to come to her versus her choosing us. As a mother, a good mother, she takes what she gets – she works with it in a way that is oftentimes beyond reason. Yet, she grows to love us and we grow to love her. Imperfect as we are as children and she as a mother, both as humans, it is she that does not easily give up on us. However, we often give up on her – sometimes – some of us do.

Yet, when they leave – finally give up the ghost – they leave behind their best effort: the child, the children of her womb to continue on. It is up to us to accept it – her eulogy – and to speak of her best she left in us to others. We are left to build on what is best about her and advance it forward – to make it better (just as she did for us) for her grandchildren. This is what I learned from my mother. My mother loved me as her boy and had great faith in me as a man. So I remember my mother, I eulogize her this Mother’s Day as I do every day; lest I forget, the conversation between mother and son continues in heaven as it did on earth. I love you Diana, my dear mother.

The hoopla surrounding President Obama’s proof of birth is quite fascinating. No one pays much attention to their birth certificate. People normally take for granted the little things on it: time of birth, birth weight, length at birth and race. Ask the average “black” American what race is on their certificate and most might comment that they are “black” or “African American.” In my case I am neither. My birth certificate says I am the son of a Negro mother and a Negro father: it says I am a Negro.

I was born in Pitt County, North Carolina, August 18, 1958 at 4:55 a.m. I imagine that shortly after I emerged trembling and screaming from my mother’s womb, the first words spoken were “It’s a boy”: my first enduring label. I am sure the family rejoiced first at my live birth and that I was healthy with ten toes and twelve fingers (yes, a family trait)! I was weighed and measured – all 8lbs 101/2 ozs, 21in – of sweet smelling newborn and placed in sight of my beautiful mother. The Negro doctor who delivered me, Dr. Andrew Best had probably delivered countless numbers of Negro children before my birth. He probably shouted “It’s a boy” or “It is a girl” hundreds of times. He pronounced the first label, anointed many with their gender. However, I doubt very seriously that he ever uttered “It’s a Negro boy” or “It’s a Negro girl.” That would come soon enough – in days it would come. Right in that moment, we were all allowed, I was allowed to exist without the burden, the terror, the fear, the limitations of race. It was merely a time to rejoice. I became a Negro on August 25, 1958. On that day my Negroness was certified by Georgia V. Mills, M.D., Registrar in Greenville, NC.

Born a Negro boy in the south, in North Carolina, in 1958 means a lot – it meant a lot to my family. It meant my mother, father, grandparents, family and community had to raise me to understand my Divinity first, Negroness second and my boyishness third. They knew the world would never accept my Divinity so it was utterly important for my survival that I first knew God. They knew that that relationship would help me to survive in world that would always see me as a Negro boy first, last, and always. Sometimes I am still called a “boy” by older white folk and even if many don’t say it most of them think it! My family prepared me for that – my mother prepared me for that.

I traveled and lived across the country with my family. We even lived in France for a short while, but my mother always knew that we would be going back home. She always knew that I would need to know what it meant to be a Negro boy in North Carolina and America in the 1960s. She knew I could not afford to forget that I had been certified a Negro in this place, the “United States of America.” She wanted me to remember that it was one of the “United States” that certified me a Negro: one of these United States of America. I have never forgotten it and in some ways to do so would be to deny so much about her, my family, my community and my history. It would deny the joy and fear felt on that early August morning when I was born into a world that certified my life chances would travel a long and troubling road to manhood.

It’s been Fifty-Three years since that “august” moment of my birth and it seems being Negro is still something that remains certifiably troubling in 2011 in this country. My mother, grandparents, the house at 1200 Lincoln St, Kinston N.C., and even the community I was brought home to are all gone, but I have not forgone what they taught me. It’s a shame it would take President Obama’s birth certification to remind us of what we are all born into. We have somehow shamefully forgotten, the world we are born into has not changed: it is just hidden deep within the archives of the States that United to certify our otherness – our Negroness. We don’t need President Obama’s dilemma to remind of us that: just look at your own certification, remember your what your mother taught you and act like you know.

What makes a hero is not who the person is as a man or woman, but what actions we feel warrants and justifies it in the public sphere. To me what becomes evident, at least in the context of the conversation surrounding Dr. Marable’s take on Malcolm X is what and whose knowledge is warranted and ultimately what justifies the truth of who Malcolm is to us versus how and whom he understood himself to be alongside those who were closest to him. Scholarship in this case is offering empirical evidence that does not undo the legacy of Malcolm X, but expands it: it is a paradigm shift. The larger and more complicated issue here is the exposure of a deep and rampant homophobia as the hallmark of black masculinity as it relates to certain patriarchal and misogynistic inclinations that limit femininity and all that which is assumed as feminine within the socio-cultural construction of black identity. To attack Malcolm is seen as an attack on black manhood, black families, black power and black history. If we choose to not know more (as some would suggest) about the sexuality of this Icon of Black manhood, we choose to maintain the status quo relative to what it means to be black and male and conservative relative to our collective male-oriented consciousness. Malcolm and Dr. Marable do not want us to forget that men and women who hustle, who live by their wits, by “any means necessary” sometimes use their bodies to stay alive. We cannot excuse Detroit Red or limit him, because it took that phase of his life to open the door to the next one which we love so dearly: Malcolm X. No one loved Detroit Red – not even Malcolm – but by sharing him with us he is saying he is willing to share the whole of that experience publicly. It may not be something that helps the homophobic, but it may help those who are affected by it. It might help someone having to survive “by any means necessary.” It might help the ex-felon, the many like Detroit Red, who after years of incarceration have found their desire for same sex interaction normal. Still others might have adjusted their tolerance and indulge in same-sex interaction because of what being institutionalized does to a man, mind-soul-and body. Still others fall under the speculative eye, because by chance and circumstance they have lived years behind bars where the desire for men by men “roams” everywhere. This is a liberating text for men who need to continually reinvent themselves in a world that limits manhood to a hard-to-attain, hard-to-keep cult of behavior that does little to really make black males men. I applaud Dr. Marable and decry the discourse that wants to put black male sexuality back into the closet of phallic hetero-domination in a world of sexual multiplicity. Unfortunately, El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz did not live long enough for anyone to know or love him fully or for him to share more of who he was or what his life meant: In fact Detroit Red has more life history than Malcolm X or Malik! So we have amended the life of Malcolm X, suspended his manhood in such a way as to hide our own softness and masculine ambiguity. Please know that I am not intentionally being dismissive of Malcolm’s legacy or his family. However, the unintended message is too deep to ignore. We have a chance here to talk about masculinity in a new way, which might help redefine not only the lives of our heroes, but who warrants becoming one.

In 2007 I accepted an invitation to be the keynote speaker for a King Day event in my home state of North Carolina. For most theologians it seems that speaking on King Day is a rite of passage of sorts. I had never before or after that keynote, partaken in a King Day celebration. It is not a slight of King’s life that keeps me away, but the perfunctory ways in which King is remembered. People will gather in churches, seminaries, and college halls to hear sundry preachers, politicians, academes, and laypersons reflect on a handful of variegated interpretations of the most popular of Dr. King’s mediated memories. Of course, somewhere in the midst of this will be comparisons\contrasts made between Dr. King and President Obama, as well as the perennial assessments of the state of “African Americans”. Last, we will hear King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in its entirety with debate soon to follow. Many will leave their western wear in the closet and don their colorful African garb. Ironically, yes, afrocentrism will rule the day! King was many things, but he was not afrocentric!

Most Americans – many African Americans – will go about this day without a pouring out of libations, the burning of incense or candle, taking the day off or making the pilgrimage to touch and circle round King’s holy sepulcher. We will not take the time to read Strength to Love, The Measure of a Man, Why We Can’t Wait, or Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community. I feel that for most people the reality of King’s legacy is that it has been reduced to something that is easy and convenient. King has become someone easy to remember, reduced to a perfunctory celebration that pays little attention to the dis-ease King caused the principalities and powers of the Western world. Even less attention is paid to the dis-ease he caused both the white and black church.  In the case of the latter irony comes full circle and the reason for the perfunctory reality of King’s remembrance self-evident.

It is not the case that we do not want our collective conscience pricked, just not at the expense of actually having to do something with it. The prickly is not cool and we want to dance around the prickly memory of King.  By this, I mean we want to dance around the issues he raised and leave them untouched. Whether it was his perspective on war, poverty, racism, black power or the church, we continue to do the “old” soft shoe dance around the challenges he laid bare and the mantle he left for us to carry.

Dr. King says, “The self cannot be self without other selves. Self-concern without other-concern is like a tributary that has no outward flow to the ocean. Stagnant, still and stale, it lacks both life and freshness.” It seems that most King Day Celebrations are self-concerned: they lack an “other-concern” in as much they do not engender an outward flow of justice, which from celebration-to-celebration, from year-to-year makes a palpable difference in the lives of those for whom King was most concerned: poor people.

In 2011, I will not grace a lectern anywhere. I will not keynote any celebration. I will not be a part of a celebration. However, on his birthday I will be poor: that is a given. The few words I have written here are meant to disrupt the soft shoe dance of King’s remembrance. While we dance around on his birthday, we continue to lose sight of King’s dream;  people continue to  suffer and the community remains light on its feet on the hard issues facing the impoverished others that remain some forty years beyond his death. No more soft shoe dance: it is time we put on our work boots and replace the perfunctory with a revolutionary reality. I am doing away with the prefunctoreality – no more soft shoe remembrance. Today, I got on my boots! Happy birthday Dr. King!

I have spent a lifetime navigating what it means to be both black and male. Understanding this twoness has meant that I have gone through various processes of masculine initiation. I can honestly say that I failed more times than I have succeeded or so I thought. I understand now that it is not a matter of failure or success, but a matter of survival. Understanding that I am a survivor creates a different set of questions relative to who I am as a black male. For me, it boils down to a question of cost. What is the cost of black male discipleship?

Most black males know that survival is not cheap! As a black man, I have paid a hefty price for coming into this world and staying in this world. The price of the ticket I am paying (yes, my ticket is on lay-away) for being a proud black male in America has seemed ridiculously high. I say seemed only because I know black males for whom the price was paid with their lives: may they rest in peace. Yet, those of us who are left behind continue to bear the cross of hope and promise for all black manchildren:  those who are here and those yet to come.  We are charged with reducing the cost that comes with carrying black masculinity.

 There are many ideas of black masculinity and it is not for me to assess neither their value nor their validity. I see black masculinity as part of a larger more pervasive Cult of Hegemonic Masculinity. In other words, it is one of the ways of being masculine, but not the primary way: it is beholding to something larger and increasingly more dangerous. All of us see how black boys and men continue to die in great numbers – both physically and spiritually. In addition, black masculinity holds numerous expressions of black male discipleship, each with their own set of rites, rituals and connections to hegemonic masculinity, which demands a hefty toll.

Nationally black male unemployment is comparable to numbers seen during the First Great Depression (we are now in the Second Great Depression). Black fathers are indicted for their poverty, criminalized and targeted as deadbeats. We all have heard the statistics that say there are more black males in prison than in college. In the Age of Obama, the one thing we cannot forget – for as much as I love him – is that the cost of black male discipleship has not decreased: it has increased.  It is not his fault – that is just fact. So then, what is the cost?  What must be paid for navigating the shallow waters and narrow channels of black masculinity? How do you pay the ever-escalating price? In a valley of dry bones what do we do?

I ask these questions, but do not seek to offer any answers. Yes, talk is cheap, but being a black male is not: this is a foregone conclusion. However, I do have an observation. That I am able to survive as a black male in America is because of grace – the unmerited favor of the Spirit and the Ancestors. In other words, to be a black male is to be bestowed with a “costly grace”, the unmerited favor of the Spirit and the Ancestors. Yes, the cost is high, but grace is sufficient. To all of those disciples out there who find the cost seemingly to high to pay, remember the journey of black maleness is worth the price of the ticket!

What do I mean when I say the birth of the SDB?