I was led to Anthony Bradley’s post on shattered family dreams by P6’s post. I am not dealing with the exact same issues, but I’ve got to say that I’ve been dealing with similar ones, about my job, about my capacity to do for my family, and for ME, what I imagined I’d be doing. I’m at a crossroads and the next couple of years will likely tell the tale. As I noted over at P6 I used to believe that my condition would get better when I got tenure. I now believe that my condition is more or less the permanent state of reality.I’ve blogged about this privately–Wordpress 2.3 has that option–but haven’t done so publicly for obvious reasons.But Anthony (whom I don’t know), P6 (whom I do), and actually a conversation offline with Craig has made me rethink that. I’m not going to put my private stuff out there…although if you want to get a sense my wife’s blog is up and running.
But in the spirit of beginning a much needed dialogue I wanted to ask two questions, particularly for black male readers:
- Are you dealing with the same types of issues and pressures?
- What do you do about it?
I’m creating a new heading for this one…one that I’ve used for my private posts.
Retrograde.
1. Are you dealing with the same types of issues and pressures?
Indeed. These issues and pressures are key sources of feelings of anguish that I rarely discuss with others. I’ve found only temporary reprieves: reading and writing philosophy; reading and writing poetry and personal essays; and reading others’ fine literary art. And even though my shield (my combination of economic capital, social capital, and cultural capital) is and will probably be for the rest of my life stronger than the average U.S. born Black man, and even though my sword (my intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom) is and will be for the rest of my life stronger than the average man, I suspect my anguish is and will be for the rest of my life much stronger than average as well.
I wrote a little about some of the sources of my anguish in “Providence and the Cost of Quality-of-Life Insurance,” “The Key Ingredient of the Structural Poison,” and “A Great Dissertation and Three Esoteric Books.”
2. What do you do about it?
I strive to avoid being driven mad in a world that feels like a large cage on good days and a small prison cell on bad days. I work to strengthen my shield, my loved ones’ shields, and the shields of other Blacks in my sphere of influence. I write sword-sharpening poems like Titanic. And, I prepare to perform well on intelligence tests against which I have not yet tested my full strength.
What tests? Below is an excerpt from an unpublished response to Abiola Lapite’s “When IQ Is Everything and Nothing.”
yes. this is it. one way to look at this is through the lens of albert murray, who talks of “antagonistic cooperation.” the hero only becomes a hero when tested against the dragon. nothing else will do.
that salves (struggling against a worthwhile foe is better than struggling against an unworthy one). sometimes, that energizes.
sometimes.
i’ve got a few great books i’ve been meaning to get to. perhaps i’ll take a look at some short stories over the break….
Am I dealing with the same issues? How about, “I don’t know” as an answer?
Seriously.
I’ve been taking care of my daughter ever since I was 24, meaning I’ve been sacrificing me to make sure she has and/or will be on solid footing from childhood to early adult when she is then cut loose from my rope. I’m more worried about her NOW then in the past because at the ripe young age of 21, she’s making, in my opinion, some danged fooled decisions that I KNOW will retard her progress and as I have told her before, she has the capability to be much better than her dad IF she seizes the day.
As the sole bread earner I know I think more about money and finances and try to make sure we are saving for the future and I know we “MUST” move from where we are at into a bigger home and saving for that and looking around in this area and seeing that on my income alone, the size of home we “need” is going to be rough going. So, the wait or “get thee a job now woman!” thing goes back and forth in my mind UNTIL I see how well D.S. 2.0 is developing and I realize it’s all worth it.
My “employment” plan is to get self-employed “soon” and I have the business plan-lite underway. For me that means setting up the business but the biggest thing is setting up the contracts and a back up plan if that doesn’t work, but that means planning for failure and that can’t happen.
Then there is making sure D.S. 2.0 has college money set aside at the proper rate, which I know it isn’t and probably never will be unless schools realize they are pricing themselves out of the market, and saving for his grade school education, both using tax free schemes that the congress can revoke at anytime. And then there is the issue that I will resolve after doing taxes of continuing the standard 401(K), going all Roth 401(K), or a combination of 401(K) and Roth 401(K).
Then there is real planning that I’m doing to make sure that when the family expands because of extended family needs, that I can do it and keep on pushing.
Then there is retirement planning because I need to make sure I depend on me instead of the government or my kids. Although my daughter OWES ME! 🙂
Plus, I want that luxury car, the Lexus or BMW 750i. I want that boat. I want real legacy wealth that I can pass down or say, “The fundamentals for your life have been provided for you, so I’m going to provide for others. Love you!”
But I rate my mental health as good. After all, I’m worrying about things that must be worried about as a responsible adult in his early 4th decade.
Damn. Are you having a mid-life crisis?
Get a sports car! 🙂
even before I get started, let me say “more later”. cause I gotta come back to this pending deeper reflection and in greater detail
that said – I’m struggling harder with less of a safety net than ever before in my life. everything I’ve got and get goes to the chirren and to the business…, the wifey has gotten into exactly the same groove – and we laugh and joke about it all the time.
I’ve never been happier and more contented in my entire life. I don’t think I could have ever anticipated this strange turn of identity events, but I hope it persists for a while. the fundamental element in all this is that my wife is on the same page and fully supportive of what we’re trying to do. without that, I can easily see how the struggle would be an unhappy one, given her uncompromising support, I straight whistle while I work.
the fundamental element in all this is that my wife is on the same page and fully supportive of what we’re trying to do. without that, I can easily see how the struggle would be an unhappy one, given her uncompromising support, I straight whistle while I work.I feel you on that point.
me too. things go a LOT smoother when the family and the career are combined somehow. singular purpose. singular mind.
I could describe how unhappy it would be from personal experience.
stretch that continuum just a little bit further…, let it reach out and encompass an enlarged sphere of folks – and voila!
please don’t mistake this prescription for a platitude, it’s not. the life-changing event for me began when I became involved with the learning center. simply being a part of an organic enclave of folks who get together for no other purpose than to serve the interests and needs of children in the community – helped me escape from “me”.
third-line work.
1. work for god,
2. work for self
3. work for the work….,
I honestly believe that a pervasive lack of third-line work is what’s kicking many of us in the ass. I’ll try to illustrate.
yesterday I spent the morning working on a project with some of my younger confederates from the learning center. one of the principals of the center has a thriving engineering consultancy and I have been working with his daughter and her team on some projects to use technology to improve communications and security in the community. she came up with this killer idea for an emergency notification linking families caring for an alzheimer’s afflicted elder who in the event of wandering off, could be used to call up the posse in real time to canvas the neighborhood and find and rescue the elder. (same for children, kind of a community focused amber alert with extra features and benefits)
anyway, in the afternoon, they had a christmas party where I met the brother who originally founded the consultancy. we talked for a while and he described to me the apprenticeship model he implemented beginning in the late 1950’s to make 4-6 young Black engineers. (this brother was the first Black engineering graduate from the University of Nebraska – if I remember correctly)
In the room were three generations of civil and mechanical engineers who were all brought up and brought together by this one old cat – simply because he could. The continuity of working for the work had produced this large thriving extended “family” as it were of folks who in turn, “work for the work”.
I gotta go feed some chirrens, but please bear with me, there’s more to this story and I’ll get back to it a little later…,
so last night, we have to attend the major Black tie affair in the metroplex. I’m not a big fan of these types of “galas” because I’ve never in my life had the type of gregarious personality that enabled me to “work a room”, “meet and greet”, and all-a-dat happy horseshit.
This function had about 600 attendees, we were invited as guests of a physician and member of the sponsoring organization whose wife is friendly with my wife. We’re by no means buddy buddy with this couple. As it turns out, nobody at their table really was – and not because they’re making introductions and networking other folk, hooking up people unacquainted with one another, rather, because they genuinely didn’t have enough shiny Black couple friends to round out a quorum of 6 invited couples.
So this type of function, while social, can easily be one of the loneliest places to be in the entire city – yet you’re in the middle of a large crowd. Simple reason, though the group that throws the affair exists for “networking” purposes – they don’t network to DO anything constructive. Like I said, it’s all about the see and be seen – and the level of iciness from within the ranks of the organizing enclave is really kind of depressing.
I mean zero, zip, nada, this bunch doesn’t even try to pretend to be philanthropic. They exist so that wealthy Black professionals, more doctors, lawyers, and corporate middle managers than you can shake a stick at, can get together from time to time to see and be seen – to play dress up, show off, and get their eat and drink on. Economically and professionally, this is the set whose pictures are gonna turn up in Ebony magazine. Socially and interpersonally though, this facebook really needs to be featured in a mausoleum.
Unfortunately, it has been my experience to witness this type of shit in every city I’ve ever lived in. Well, it’s been a few years since I was a corporate goon, and consequently I’ve pretty much fallen out of the loop. We haven’t been to one of these affairs since my first year of being out on my own business-wise – so that’s going on 3.5 years.
I describe all this to compare and contrast it with the intergenerational warmth and intimacy of the day’s prior holiday gatherings with my peers and friends from the learning center. All Black folks, all day long, entirely different cultures within the same small city, said cultures as starkly in contrast with one another as day and night.
I said up top, I’ve never had a talent for being gregarious and working a room, a room full of strangers to me at the beginning of a party, is likely to be a roomful of strangers to me at the end of the party. Now here’s the thing that was shockingly different from previous years. As it turned out, for the first time ever in my years of going to things like this I knew a whole buncha people at this affair.
I didn’t even have to try to work the room, because not 5 minutes after we showed up, the room began working us. It was the most amazing thing to me and frankly it shocked the hell out of my wife. In the course of learning center and business development work, I’ve wound up meeting hundreds of people I never knew or met before. I’ve become a node on a far richer and more complex real world social network than I ever imagined I would ever be – without any exceptional effort on my part to actually do so.
1. Are you dealing with the same types of issues and pressures?
2. What do you do about it?
Curiously, as it turns out, I’ve now verified that the giving my time, attention and effort in interpersonal communion (with others – for others) paradigm actually works.
I say you carve out 10-15 hours a week that you currently have for yourself and you give that time to others strictly for the benefit of the others. Working with kids is extremely easy because kids have a boundless appetite for positive adult attention. That you do this work with other adults leads inevitably to increasing interpersonal communion with those other adults, both male and female and new friendships. That these friendships turn up in the most unexpected places and in the most unexpected ways is a fringe benefit on the backside of your “works”
I just now looked at the thread on Anthony Bradley’s blog and I’ve been following it at P6. The factor that I see missing in both discussion threads is the factor of selflessly giving yourselves to others. Doesn’t have to be painful, make it something you enjoy and that you do well, but whatever it is, you do it strictly for the benefit of others. It pays huge dividends.
Toward the end of the thread, I see there’s something about intentional communities. But the commentor is talking about religious intentional community. I’m just talking about project oriented, let’s DO something community in which you wind up rubbing up against a plethora of people from all walks of life.
See, after last night, I realized that if I up and died tomorrow, a whole buncha people might actually bother to come to my funeral. The fact that I now know and am known to so many more people after a few years of community service than I ever was after 7 years of purely selfish professional service – was astonishing to me. Lastly, it was really, really nice for my wife to witness this manifestation of effortless shininess. I think more wives need to see more husbands be effortlessly shiny in a large social context, it’s very validating.
Sorry if this is disjointed brothers, I hope you get the gist of what I’m saying.
The journey begin with one step. the intellectuals are able to re-assess their progress or lack thereof, Doc start adding the pluses and you will find they out number the minuses.”without struggle there is no progress”,Go get it.
I recently sent an email to many of my friends asking why we never just meet up to talk about these issues. I think with a generation of young black men with myths although somewhat different about their future, how can we mentor, lead or direct if we haven’t sorted out our own shit.
So what am i gonna do about it. Gonna holla at a couple of bruthas and over a malt/beer/coolaid see where we can take it.
Good to know that even over here in the cold UK I am not the only one concerned about our communal health on these issues.
Ahh. Now I see the other dimensions from which this item at P6 was coming.
On Craig’s party tip, I am absolutely right there. It’s rather a kind of astonishing dynamic. I last experienced it at the Cass Tech reunion for my wife a couple years back, but it was in an interesting form.
What I think – without getting too deep into it, is that a lot of blackfolks ‘regress’ into a safe kind of behavior which negates the reality of other blackfolks when they see a kind of phonyness. This creates an artificial gap that’s a bit tough to bridge. I think the ‘bourgie’ vs ‘country’ dynamic is so thick in African America because of this. And I think that our common sense understanding of mental health comes from home training paradigms. I believe that there’s real dissonance here – that ‘bourgie’ folks do not have a sense of awe or propriety about ‘big mama’ and that country folks have no reason to believe that ‘uncle clarence’ is for real. And so our approximation of those archtypes are met with extraordinary skepticism.
Speaking for myself, I take characters like Richard Pryor’s ‘Mudbone’ with a grain of salt. It never really occurred to me that anyone like Mudbone would or could be a respectable patriarch. So I would perceive dysfunction where others would get comfort. Similarly, the very concept of ‘Da Mayor’ from Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” or the three cornermen resonated only comically with me. Whereas several black men with 4 inch afros on a dais wearing beige three piece suits and wide ties would get my immediate recognition and respect.
When I consider the bourgie party, I also recognize another dynamic through which I’ve passed. The stereotype is ‘the oldest man in the club’ and it’s about brothers who are finally getting a game on that we played long ago. There’s a grudging recognition that yeah, that was once me. But also what Craig says, man are you still dancing in suits?
There’s a kind of interesting extra critical dynamic at work here. Are we accurate in our criticism? Have we purged the guilt out of our observations as African Americans?
PTCruiser put his finger exactly on the breach…,
But I cannot “remember” a time when that wasn’t the case. I’m going to see if I can dig out the speech W.E.B. Dubois gave to the Boule….
MF and E.C. was scribing up on the Boule at the Assault – you might start there if you haven’t peeped it in a minute.
My overarching point Les, had less to do with what other folks aren’t doing, and more to do with the value of doing as the working subculture elects to do. In answer to your questions concerning how to sublimate pressures, frustrations, and disappointments, it’s to put them aside and simply do for others. Mother Teresa or St. Lester them joints by the wayside. As difficult and counterintuitive as that may seem from a prescriptive perspective, my experience suggests to me that it brings benefits – as Baba Dixon might say – through indirection.
i saw the mf and ec row… i’d be surprised if michael fisher (or anyone who subscribes to the cokely school) had read the speech. it’d really put to rest the notion that the boule was in practice anything more than an exclusive group of people who wanted to hang out with other exclusive people (usually to the exclusion of work). i’d be less surprised if ec had come across it…but surprised nonetheless. i know where the speech is…it’s in the gates/west book called THE FUTURE OF THE RACE. i just don’t have it in front of me right now.
and craig i think your central point is a powerful one, something that you’ve been pushing (correctly) for a while now. i was just suggesting that among the black professional class this isn’t a new thing (brought on perhaps by integration).
Things are going to get a lot worse.
Maybe it is just me, but I increasingly run into black men with degrees up their kazoos who can’t find a way to make a living commensurate with their education or no living at all. Though most of ’em are still trying to put up appearances.
I’ve started a policy of insisting on paying for lunch meetings even if the meetings have been requested by the black men I’m meeting with, because I find that increasingly they are embarrassed cause they at the very least need to split the check, even if the check is only $30. And they.
It ain’t their fault.
It’s by design.
Those of us over 50 have seen it before. Lots of us are prepared for it mentally. I have random conversations with brothers of that age range about this stuff everywhere. Just had another one a few days ago while I got my car serviced. We see it coming down the pipeline and most of us shake our graying heads at the fact that the young ones don’t.
So it is going to be much worse than ever because the young ones have not been trained to either recognize and/or handle an age-old situation and system. Plenty of young “professional” black men just dream on that it is an individual matter and refuse to connect the dots of the system that puts them under this constraint.
Things are gonna come down on each individual black man like a ton of bricks.
And them brick ain’t gonna just “fall” they are going to be thrown with great deliberation and aim.
Ya’ll better keep your eyes open and get prepared for this shyt.
just came back from home. one foreclosure on the block…probably a few more but i didn’t really look around. one of my boys came to visit, lives in a decent neighborhood has two sitting right next to him. a couple got a job in pennsylvania so they had to move from detroit. their house is in the fourth best neighborhood in the city and they basically had to dump it. no takers in 8 or 9 months.
like i said, this is permanent.
A foreclosure home is about 10 doors down the street. The realtor has it listed for $15K more than the home was purchased for, according to the tax records. Another home just sold and was listed at $25K less than the home in foreclosure. It’s an older home built by another builder. I hope it isn’t the benchmark for homes in my development but it may be.