Dreams from My Father

I spoke with in the neighborhood seemed to take such talk very seriously. As it was, many had already given up the hope that politics could actually improve their lives, much less make demands on them; to them, a ballot, if cast at all, was simply a ticket to a good show. Blacks had no real power to act on the occasional slips into anti-Semitism or Asian-bashing, people would tell me; and anyway, black folks needed a chance to let off a little steam every once in a while—man, what do you think those folks say about us behind our backs?
    Just talk. Yet what concerned me wasn’t just the damage loose talk caused efforts at coalition building, or the emotional pain it caused others. It was the distance between our talk and our action, the effect it was having on us as individuals and as a people. That gap corrupted both language and thought; it made us forgetful and encouraged fabrication; it eventually eroded our ability to hold either ourselves or each other accountable. And while none of this was unique to black politicians or to black nationalists—Ronald Reagan was doing quite well with his brand of verbal legerdemain, and white America seemed ever willing to spend vast sums of money on suburban parcels and private security forces to deny the indissoluble link between black and white—it was blacks who could least afford such make-believe. Black survival in this country had always been premised on a minimum of delusions; it was such an absence of delusions that continued to operate in the daily lives of most black people I met. Instead of adopting such unwavering honesty in our public business, we seemed to be loosening our grip, letting our collective psyche go where it pleased, even as we sank into further despair.
    The continuing struggle to align word and action, our heartfelt desires with a workable plan—didn’t self-esteem finally depend on just this? It was that belief which had led me into organizing, and it was that belief which would lead me to conclude, perhaps for the final time, that notions of purity—of race or of culture—could no more serve as the basis for the typical black American’s self-esteem than it could for mine. Our sense of wholeness would have to arise from something more fine than the bloodlines we’d inherited. It would have to find root in Mrs. Crenshaw’s story and Mr. Marshall’s story, in Ruby’s story and Rafiq’s; in all the messy, contradictory details of our experience.
             
    I went away for two weeks to visit my family. When I returned, I called Ruby and told her I needed her to come to a meeting that Saturday night.
    A long pause. “What about?”
    “You’ll see. Be ready by six…we’ll grab a bite to eat first.”
    Our destination was a full hour away from Ruby’s apartment, in one of the north-side neighborhoods where jazz and blues had migrated in search of a paying audience. We found a Vietnamese restaurant, and over a plate of noodles and shrimp we talked about her boss at work, the problems she was having with her back. The conversation seemed forced, though, without pause or reflection; as we spoke, we kept skirting each other’s gaze.
    By the time we’d paid the restaurant bill and walked next door, the theater was already full. An usher showed us to our seats, which turned out to be in front of a group of black teenage girls out on a field trip. Some of the girls diligently thumbed through their programs, taking their cue from the older woman—a teacher, I assumed—who sat beside them. Most of the girls, though, were too excited to sit still; they whispered and giggled about the play’s lengthy title and asked questions of their chaperone, who showed an admirable patience throughout.
    The room was suddenly blanketed in darkness, and the girls fell quiet. Then the lights rose, a dim blue now, and seven black women appeared on the stage dressed in flowing skirts and scarves, their bodies frozen in awkward contortions. One of them, a big woman dressed in brown, began to cry out:
             
    …half-notes scattered
    without rhythm / no tune
    distraught laughter fallin’
    over a black girl’s shoulder
    it’s funny / it’s hysterical
    the melody-less-ness of her dance
    don’t tell a soul
    she’s dancing on beer cans and shingles…
             
    As she spoke, the other women slowly came to life, a chorus of many shades and shapes, mahogany and cream, round and slender, young and not so young, stretching their