LET THE BABIES DANCE

The overall theme in this topic can apply to so many things in the Black community. However, it’s graduation season and like many people here in the states I have been attending graduations and watching snippets of them on social media. Before I go any further, I have to say I have a dislike for graduations but not for the reason most people think. I will share my dislike later in this blog. My middle daughter graduated High School this Saturday and I was overcome with joy. I actually cried real tears of happiness and jubilation in the stands of the Georgia State Convocation Center. My wife smiled and wiped my tears, and an estranged friend called me a punk, all welcomed in the moment because the occasion was just so special, and nothing could steal that from me. Watching my Babygirl blow kisses at the camera on the big screen brought so much joy to my heart. I couldn’t contain myself. I know what all came with getting her across that stage. Because education and a great environment was paramount to my ex-wife, so my daughter started her pre-school education at a Black Seventh-Day Adventist church in our home city of Montgomery, Alabama. My daughter then went on to her big girl classes at Vaughn Road Elementary School where both her parents and maternal grandmother were overly active helicopter presences at the school. She went on to earn a coveted spot at George Washington Carver Elementary Arts Magnet School. With her focus in dance and choir. During her time in the Montgomery Public Schools system, the administration and policies started to change, which her mother and I felt would decrease the quality of her education. So, after 5th grade we moved her and her big sister to a new state and what we felt was a better school system and environment for her enrichment and growth. New school, new friends, new teachers, assumed better education. But also, not home, a support system that only consisted of her mom, dad, and big sister. There were new challenges, and a whole different life that she had to grow accustom too. I’m going to skip some scenes here because I literally could write a whole book or two about what my Babygirl, her mom, grandmother, and I had to do for her to get across that stage. Which brings me to what I actually want to discuss.

My ex and I, for all of the challenges that presented themselves in the way of getting our girls educated, had resources, resilience, community, prayer, luck sometimes, favor, we ourselves are educated, and not mention our girls themselves being willing participants in the process; fought to get our babies to the next level. So, it presents a certain joy, pride if you will, on the observation end for our babies to get their diplomas. And that pride in me, manifested in this giant Black stoic man as a scream of my Babygirl’s name and warm strong tears rolling down my cheeks. And then I think about all of the young people who don’t have the resources or the parents or the environment, or the teachers, or whatever that my babies had and how much joy they want to release because they have reached a finish line that started for many of them at the age of 3 years old.

When I see the young men and women dancing and doing their little jigs after getting their diplomas it brings me so much happiness on the inside. I personally come from a place where graduating high school is a luxury in a lot of families. I really did graduate with a lot of first generation high-school diploma receivers. And while I can’t say I am a first-generation high school graduate myself. I am the first Swan Male in my family to walk across the stage in both high-school and college. And honestly, I was a victim of respectability politics, because saying out loud that I was the first male in my family to graduate high-school, the person I am today is screaming at the top of my lungs “Drek you broke a generational curse”, while I am doing a dance, twisting up my fingers, showing my golds, and thanking my God with all the breath in my lungs. However, I should have been allowed to do all of that in “Westside Flair” back in 2006 at the ASU stadium that we processed across. However, respectability politics not only stole my joy but the Black boy joy and Black girl magic of millions of our seedlings. I have heard every lame ass excuse in the books, “from time and place”, “this is a place of decorum”, “tradition should be upheld”, “it holds the program up”, “people can’t hear their kids name being called”, you name it; I heard it. And to all of them, my response is, “Keep that bullshit to yourself!”

QUICK DETOUR.

I have been in churches where people came in broken, dejected, depressed, dealing with heart-ache, wanting healing from abuse, praising God because they were liberated from a drug addiction, found love, found self-love, recovering from physical trauma and ailments, been sick for months, wanted prayer for a sick loved ones, looking for relief from grief of a loss loved one, just needing community and I can go on and go with this list. But they came in and the worship went bunkers. Screaming, yelling, running around, dancing, people passing out, laying around the alter long periods of time, sometimes hours. Pastors having to move their whole sermons to the next week because “God had his way.” As the old folks would say, the “Spirit was High” meaning God was moving and excitement and praise and chains and yolks were being broken. People were being healed, and the manifestation and transforming power of God was in the building.

BACK TO OUR REGULAR SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING.

When I come to these graduations, I see individuals that have brought all of their and their family’s histories with them. Young people that had to go to school to get a quality meal because the only food they have at home are off-brand Ramon noodles. A young lady that was molested by her uncle since she was 6 and now that she is 18, she is old enough to get way from her abuser. A young man that has been being recruited by his neighborhood gang but his basic training deployment date for the day after graduation is what is going to save his life. A young man that’s whole family has been in and out off of prison and he has never met his dad, but he got an acceptance letter from UC-Berkeley which will change the trajectory of his whole lineage. A young lady whose mother has six kids all under the age of 13 and her going to nursing school will keep her from being a handmaid. A young person that is not quite sure what he believes in because he has watched his Bishop father beat the sonic coins out of his mother every night when he comes home drunk, so he wants to go to seminary to really understand God. I see a people that were enslaved in a foreign land in 1619. Stripped of their heritage, religion, cultural, language, names, and any semblance of self. Emancipated in 1863 and the last of them set free on June 19th, 1865. Tricked into sharecropping. After failed Reconstruction, ensnared by the Jim Crow laws of 1870 that lasted until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Victimized by Redlining, Gerrymandering, lack of access to the GI Bill. Survivors of Tulsa, Rosewood, and Ocoee. The descendants of chemical warfare waged by the CIA with crack cocaine in all of the metropolitan areas where we live. I see resilience. I see long nights of studying. I see kids having dealt with being bullied because they were smart or didn’t wear the newest fashion. I see a young lady that regardless of her getting pregnant not letting herself forget what her goals are. I see hope.  I see students that despite a system that was designed for them to failed, they beat the odds.

USING THE DETOUR TO MAKE MY POINT.

Where people see kids being vulgar, secular, uncouth, not being decent, forgetting order and tradition, I see where it is the perfect time and place for them to show they ass. These kids have been in school since they were 3 years old, for 9-10 months at a time for 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Learning, studying, preparing, testing, and repeating for years and you stiff neck jokers can’t give them 30 seconds to take in the mountain top? “WHEW!” But we Christians, come to a place that many of us attend 3 times a week with the same people for hours on end are allowed every time we are in the Lord’s house to exclaim our pains, joys, happiness, prayers, and everything else in between. I don’t think it’s fair. I think if the spirit is allowed to be high in a church on any Sunday, then the spirit should be allowed to go high at a graduation which is essentially for most people a one-time life event. I, like many of these kids graduated from a “BLACK” space. Where they should be safe and allowed to express their BLACK selves, in the safe confines of their BLACK elders who know the plight of these children. As I type this, I am officially 19 years removed from my graduation and I still remember what it meant, what it felt like, to have that fire shut up in my bones, to see the pride on my mother and granny’s face. My sister who had just graduated from her high-school a few days prior in Jacksonville, Florida was there with my dad and other family members. I got through my graduation and the very next day I was on a bus to Fort Jackson in South Carolina for Basic Combat Training in the United Stated Army. My graduation party was schedule for the day after my graduation, and I couldn’t even attend. And because of respectability politics I wasn’t even allowed to enjoy the moment that I reached the mountain top the day of my actual graduation. “Who climbs Mount Everest and not yell into the wind with their arms raised in triumph while taking in the scene?” I personally believe it is spiritual and honoring to God and the ancestors to allow those children in both our high-schools and HBCUs to live a second of their success. We as the adult bear the burden of making sure the cords are tapped down properly, the screens don’t get broken, and each kid has their moment. BUT each kid needs to be allowed the release. Ok, I am off of my soap box, now to get to what I dislike about graduations.

I have a disdain for how long graduations last. LAUGH OUT LOUD. Yep, I hate a long graduation. But my disdain is for all of the “distinguished and honored” speakers and guest that need to get up on stage and speak for 10-30 minutes a piece. I can do without all of that and I’m sure most of the kids feel that way as well. We as the family, friends, and community came to see our babies. So, the long-winded speeches are unnecessary. I actually want to see the Rollin 60s Criminal Justice major C-walk across the stage, because I know he is about to go on to be an impressive lawyer and advocate for our community. I actually want to see the Que hop and Nupe shimmy down the stairs after they just completed their MBA because they are going to the same Big 4 firm next month and pull a Prometheus. I came to see the Baritone player with the hot temper dap up his favorite school counselor as he walks across the stage because the counselor gave him tools to be levelheaded. I am here for the young lady making it rain money off the stage because she completed her MD, and it signifies that once she finishes her residency she is about to swimming in the big money. I want to see that creativity and then some. So, honestly, I will sit in a graduation for 2 or 3 hours if I get to actually watch the graduates celebrate and live in the spirit and not to hear the guest speakers running their mouths forever, like we came to see them. Let the babies dance!