Failure 2.0

I just returned from a three-week field research excursion with my nephew. I really didn't know him when we got in the car. My objective on this journey was to get an idea of the man this kid had turned out to be. We had a lot of conversations, he and I on our 7000+ mi journey. At one point, he and I got into a discussion about something...I can hardly remember what at the moment....and my nephew made a sweeping, unflattering characterization about black people. Something along the lines of "all black people are lazy."

I told him in no uncertain terms that all black people are NOT lazy, that the same could be said of white people in general terms, and of him in particular, and, you know, that he sounded incredibly, undeniably, idiotic.

In his most incredulous voice, he said to me, "You act like I'm racist." He explained that in the neighborhood he had lived in in Louisville while he went to school--a neighborhood that was probably 50:50 black:white and probably a heavy on the poverty (it is a college area, after all)--that THOSE blacks were lazy and not trying to improve themselves. Clearly, this was meant to portray that he wasn't racist about ALL black people. In his mind, somehow, it was acceptable to be racist about those poor lazy black people in his neighborhood in Louisville.

I didn't point out (although I should have) that he was, in fact, a college dropout...that his life lacked any direction whatsoever...that despite being given an opportunity that most of the world would kill for...HE was the one who wasn't capitalizing on this incredible opportunity that his parents had made available to him. I didn't say that. But it was dancing on the end of my tongue.

I did explain to him that not everyone was able to attend college nor had the aptitude for it and some of THOSE people had to live in his neighborhood because their economic reality, so while he had to slum it for a bit to sacrifice for a college education (in an apartment that his mother was paying for and tuition that his father was paying for), there were others that had risen as far as they were likely to go and for them--this was a decent life. They were not lazy. They were not trying "not to improve themselves". They were living out an alternative life path that--even if it didn't live up to his standards--didn't mean they weren't trying. To call those people stupid and lazy was petty and irresponsible.

Now I am the first to admit that my nephew has some serious misconceptions about the world and is in rather deep denial about himself. When I informed him that the apartment he complained about (and that his mother bought for him) cost 3X the cost of my mortgage, he acted like I must be some sort of supreme failure. He has a fairly well developed sense of entitlement all right. More than I am used to seeing in any of my college students I complain so bitterly about.

But looking at the larger issues here, I can't understand what it is that makes us look white and black people in exactly the same circumstances and only see the negative in the black people? What is it that makes us blame black people for their plight? What is it that makes us look down on black people at the same time as we co-opt their language and sense of style? What is it that makes us look at poor black people and forget that their poverty might have more to do with keeping them down than a lack of ambition? What is it that makes us not see an angry Harvard professor, but a black man out of control in a high-class neighborhood?

When it comes to this, it isn't just my nephew. I think it is a white cultural thing. White people are conned into thinking (by everyone from television news to hip hop artists) the black community glorifies the gangster-slum culture.

If his status ain't hood, I ain't checkin' for him
Better be street if ya lookin' at me
I need a soldier
That ain't scared to stand up for me
Known to carry big things, if you know what I mean 
Destiny Child, 'Soldier'

Even in the younger generation where friendships are much more colorblind, they still see the general population "out there" as fitting those old stereotypes. And I just don't know how chipping away at one false premise at a time one person at a time is going to make any difference at all. It is important to me that my family do what it can to stop the perpetuation of white supremacy in this country. And I thought that in that one little bit of real estate that I might actually be able to effect change.

And that's what I was trying to do. Only I was trying to do so without tearing the kid to shreds. My nephew is trying. He just extraordinarily protected. And I'm not sure my message came across as well as I'd hoped. But while my nephew sat there, incredulous that I was calling his racism racism, I sat there wondering why the hell I didn't have a better grasp on how to tell a white person that their privilege was showing.

Diane Sawyer's Portrayal of Appalachia

A few Friday's ago, 20/20 aired Diane Sawyer's A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains. I missed the original airing, but my sister mentioned it during her visit so I went and had a look. I had to watch it in a series of 8 or 10 video's. I encourage you, if you have 50 minutes or so to spare, to give it a go. It's an illuminating portrait of a different America and it's something that fills my heart with an unusual mix of hometown pride and a unique pain.

The documenary presents vignettes of three or four families, all living in extreme poverty in the hills of eastern Kentucky. I find it amusing the way Sawyer insists on calling them "mountains". I have always said that I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachians. Sawyer explores their lives and challenges, but mostly she is trying to make portray these families as the "forgotten people of Appalachia". It's all rather melodramataic. She has selected to follow families involved in the OxyContin epidemic (although they could have as easily discussed the meth problem there, too). And acknowledging the stereotype, she examines the toothless epidemic (blamed on a region-wide addiction to Mountain Dew). Personally, I've never liked the stuff. But the people they follow are true hillbillies. They are uneducated. They are coal miners. They are dirt poor. I grew up in eastern Kentucky. I have seen these images before. The places that Diane Sawyer visits--Inez, Paintsville, Columbia--all within a 30-40 minute drive from my home. I have driven down the country roads in Inez and marveled at the Joe Pye weed growing in ditches along the side of the road, and goldenrod, Queen Anne's lace and wicked twists of Kentucky bluegrass rising up from steep, rocky roadside hills. I ran in the Paintsville 10K race and enjoyed sorghum and wandered the trinket booths at the Paintsville Apple Festival. I have wondered at the disorganization of houses and trailers dotted on "family farms" in Columbia in a maze that obeys no road or discernible plan. I did not grow up dirt poor. I was lucky, but no one who grows up in that region is blinded to the poverty surrounding them.

I remember riding the school bus home in junior high school through some of the poorer sections of my town and seeing kids get off and go into houses with no windows or doors. Tar paper shacks with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. I'm sure they washed in tubs in the back and slept God knows where. We used to laugh about cars on blocks and toilets in the front yard with grass growing up around them. I'm sure these people had the best of intentions, but time or circumstances or lack of knowledge (or maybe the lack of pipes to the house) prevented them from making good on them. The relics on the front lawn were a testament to failure. I hated that part of the bus ride home. I wondered if the kids who lived there were embarassed to get off the bus.

I recall driving through the reservations of Arizona and coming upon poverty like I remember back home. I saw it on the outskirts of Belize City. I saw it in the faces of children picking pockets in Florence, Italy. I want to be clear with you all up front. I did not grow up like that. I grew up in an "urban" area of 27,000 people. We had municipal services, decent schools, relatively stable employment, and opportunities for people of all educational levels. Much like the town I live in now. You know, not doing great but living better than just scratching by. In fact, I think the town where I grew up may be doing a little better than the town I live in now. When kids dropped out of school in my town, it was a big deal and a private shame. It was not the status quo.

When I was in the tenth grade, my father told me to "go to college, get my education, and don't come back." I always found this interesting because my father had moved us to Pittsburgh when I was very little and moved us back because he had found a good job back in Kentucky. My father was the most stable man you ever wanted to meet. He wasn't swayed by popular opinion. I asked him how much of his money would he bet on a wager giving him a 90% chance of winning. He said, "nothing". My father had worked his way through college, while married, working full time, and raising four kids. I was about a year and a half old when my father graduated from college. Sure, it took him ten years, but he made it. That college education put his family in a whole different set of living conditions from some of the kids at my school. To say the least, I did not grow up like those people in Diane Sawyer's documentary. But I believe my father did. His father was an alcoholic. A house painter when he was sober. My mother told a story of how my father had to hunt down his father in some strange man's house and carry him home. She told of how he found my grandfather on the street, passed out and having pissed himself. Oh, he had sobered up by the time I was born. But my father didn't have some idyllic upbringing. And certainly had to grow up a lot faster than any of his children did. Both of my grandfathers wore full dentures for as long as I can remember. How they lost their teeth is a mystery to me. Both of them had that look of the women in the documentary who had lost their teeth. There is something about the chins of people with no teeth. It still makes me shudder.

My Dad's mother, my Gram, was a pinnacle of faith. Despite what anyone thought of her, she is a remarkably strong woman. I think, in many ways, that had she not had the determination she had to be there for her son, that I would not have enjoyed the opportunities that I have had in my life. She told me recently that if she were a young woman today, she probably would have gotten a divorce. But, as she says, things were different back then and you just put up with them--meaning the men who did you wrong. My grandfather drank away the paycheck many a week, I'm sure of it. She told me stories of having to put my father in a seat at the movie house and telling him to stay put, and then running to the grocery store. She recalled all these years later of coming back and finding him crying on the street in front of the cinema. He was about 3 years old. I'm sure the guilt nearly killed her. But her son graduated from college. I hope she doesn't lose any sleep over that even though it breaks my heart.

My parents were from Huntington, West Virginia. My grandmother was from West Virginia, and her husband from southern Ohio. When Appalachia gets in your blood, it's there for good. Most people never leave. You will find "hollers" with five or six houses in a row--all with the same surname on the mailboxes. You don't move away, you just move down the road. Maybe it was my Dad's insistence. I prefer to think that I always had wanderlust, but maybe he just planted a seed and I let it grow. All of us left, just like Dad had wanted. That place I knew so well growing up seems foreign and unnatural to me now. The people seem more backward and frustratingly uneducated. I get so angry. I want them to want more for themselves. I want them to do what I did. They either can't or won't. And so it remains the same.

No matter how long or how removed I am from "home", no one from eastern Kentucky escapes the stereotype. My sister told me the story of going to the doctor in Pennsylvania and having a nurse ask about her home. When told it was Kentucky, the woman shook her head and asked if she had shoes and things like that growing up. She was dead serious. I have had similar comments made to me by people who should know better. I've been asked if my parents are cousins. I've been asked if we burned coal for heat. I've been asked if my family tree forks. There seems to be a preoccupation with incest and people from eastern Kentucky. And Diane Sawyer does not disappoint. She highlights an allegation of incest in her documentary.

But Diane Sawyer did capture the people. I used to be embarrassed of them. Sometimes, I still am. I loved Kentucky, but I hate the way it is. Here I am, a child of Appalachia, pursuing a doctorate in botany. If I make it or I don't make it to graduation, I made it out of that place. I don't know if Appalachia made me stronger, or prouder, or more hard headed, but watching that documentary simply made me sad. Sad for all those who couldn't or wouldn't get out.

Christmas Coma

When I was a kid, Christmas involved waking up, realizing it was THE MORNING, and running to get my parents out of bed. There was, after all, no present unwrapping until everyone was downstairs. This was a real drag when my brothers got up into high school and didn't want to wake up early. At some point my parents gave up waiting on them and let my sister and me start opening our presents in defiance of their ONE RULE. Oh, of course, we got to open up one present on Christmas eve, but we never wanted it to be our BIG present, because then what would you have left on Christmas morning but socks and books and bad sweaters from Aunt Helen?

But as we've gotten older, Christmas begins later and later. We didn't even arrive at my mother's until 1. Dinner was at 4. About 5:30 we started to think about opening presents. Also at 5:30, D-brother called and that took another 15 minutes. Oh, we finally got back to the task at hand. There were a lot of presents under that tree for only 4 people.

So this wasn't the Christmas of my childhood. But it was a lot of fun visiting and eating and swapping cookies. But I'm getting ahead of myself. There are a lot of traditions in the D-family Christmas celebration. First the guests arrive. There's D-Gram.
And D-sister. D-sister's dog, Chance isn't happy when D-sister goes out to empty the car. And after everyone arrives, we have to take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

Jake dislikes having his picture taken, but he is, at first, a good sport. Here he is showing off his new walrus toy. I believe he may have been disappointed because there was no squeaker.

Then we ate. We had ham, sweet potatoes, corn casserole, green beans, rolls, red wine, and cushaw pie for dessert. (These are cushaw for those not from the south.) We had cookies. And more cookies. Sugar cookies in Christmas shapes with green and red sprinkles. Cheddar crisps. Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with walnuts. Ginger snaps. Peanut brittle. Peanut butter fudge. Chocolate fudge. Peanut butter truffles dipped in chocolate. Candy canes flavored like Life Savers. Fruit and shortbreads and nut mixes from Harry and David's. There was probably more, but I had to go to detox after all that candy.

But after we revived, we headed up to my Gram's to see her Christmas tree and visit there for a while. Isn't her tree grand? And the nativity set was purchased by my father when he was just a child as a present to his mother. She adores that nativity set, even though the baby Jesus is broken and one of the three kings sorta leans.

Our family is much smaller now. All the men are gone. D-nephew Lee spent the holiday with his father and is now heading to Pennsylvania for a visit with his high school friends. My aunt wasn't feeling up to it and didn't make it down. Nonetheless, I have really enjoyed my visit. It won't be easy heading back to the land of chemical ecology and lesson plans for spring.