The Black American Dream

Ive been swamped and reading A LOT of James Baldwin lately. I remember walking into the bookstore in Berkeley and requesting James Baldwin and Stokely Carmichael. The womyn at the counter told me to look in the "radical" section. I quickly informed her that they should replace the word radical with the word LOGICAL.

These two men talk about liberation in it's most purest terms and they have helped me to make a clear distinction between free and captive thinking. I am on my way to being a free thinker - I feel it.

I have this friend. She is a phenomenal Jazz singer and I owe her a heap of money that I have yet to gain or deliver, but I have every intention of gaining and delivering to her no matter how tired I become paying my dues.

Paying my dues . . . it's the cost of a free mind: to oppose captivity no matter how tempting or more easily to obtain it shows itself . . . and I could still be a hostage . . . . I have been for so long. NOT a victim, but a hostage - hostages are NOT always victims, especially the ones who escape OR overthrow their capturers and I like to believe I am strong enough to do such things.

When I was married, I would like to say it was my husband who had the emotional knife to my throat and kept me there but it was not. My husband is just a man. No matter how ugly or beautiful, powerful or feeble I will and have painted him, put your complete trust in the truth I am tellin you now, he is just a man: Flesh, bones and silliness. Same as me. So he couldn't hold me anymore captive than I have been able to hold myself - and I cant speak for no one else, but I've lost myself a time or eight in this life. I've lost myself to the wishes of others, to the role society had lain out for me as a "woman" who (in order to truly be a woman) should lose herself in the wishes of others - and follow the map of - not womanhood - but black womanhood that has been lain out, and I'll tell you the difference between the two:
There is chivalry in womanhood and gentleness, and a fixed place for her in society - and by her I mean middle-class white women.
But for me, the black woman, yes there is some sort of chivalry - but our men work too hard surviving (mentally, emotionally, spiritually, ecomonically, racially, sexually) to have the Humphrey Bogart light in their step. And there are bills with mine and his name on em that he expects me to figure out for or with him. And there are white folks who come into our towns, wave they money and take over, and there are prisons who take our men and drugs that entice our children (that we don't have the authority to sanction or outlaw). There are things that were given to me to make my American dream such a black dream. And I don't mean black in an evil sense, I mean black in a Black American sense! In my mother's day, her American dream consisted of a kinda rundown house, three badass girls (me and my sisters) and a husband who had integrity and raised us right. I'm sure in that same day some nearby white woman's dream was the white picket fence, a dog named spot, a boy named Billy, and girl named Sue and a Nanny named Aunt Jo who raised em, with a CEO for a husband to pay for it all.

Well nowadays, my black American dream should not consist of me leaving America. It should not consist of me greeting the unknown and not caring what folk think or say or spread about me - I should be angry. I should be angry that some folks dont like me because I am a woman. I should be emotionally insecure and needy for the world's love. I shouldn't say "Fuck you back!" to people who scream it first - that's uncivilized (if there is such a thing as civility in America).

I should want the house and the white picket fence because times have changed and I dont have to "settle" for the same dream as my mother. I should want the kids, dog and nanny and the CEO husband - because it's OK for me to strive for the outdated American dream. The white woman who once dreamt of the house, kids and picket fence, well, her children are my age now and they dream of owning jet companies and oil and diamond mines and Greek Islands! So it's OK for me to strive to own a home in a white neighborhood, and marry a black engineer/preacher and have two kids and a dog and feel as though I am validated through those things because my mother never gained them - and so many black Americans DO feel validated with things! We dream this black ass American dream!

We swathe in Louis Vutton, and a bunch of other shit we can't spell and yell out names of designers that we're too afraid to fly and meet.

I am surrounded by so many captive folks that what I'm getting ready to do next week is amazing to them. Getting a ticket, shots, saving money and getting the hell out of this GOD FORSAKEN country is amazing to them . . . . and maybe it IS amazing, I just cant see it yet.

I cant see leaving an illusion as amazing.
I see it no different than drinking coffee to further awake from the dream I don't belong in.