High Price

above all else.
    All they valued was what mainstream America did. They thought that made them better than us. They sided with whites in the competition we all felt; they thought that this made them winners and us losers. While some of them might have also idolized sports heroes just as white people did, they certainly didn’t want those jocks dating their sisters. A star athlete, as I later became, might have been acceptable when scoring a touchdown on the field or for a quick high-five afterward to show that they knew cool people. But he wasn’t someone they’d consider a friend, let alone as a potential romantic partner for the females in their families. That’s one of the primary reasons kids who had been labeled a dork or sellout might have been picked on.
    By contrast, a kid who did well in school, who showed everyone respect, wouldn’t get bullied for “acting white.” Instead he’d get support, along with the good-natured ribbing any children—black or white—give someone who stands out in some way. Indeed, the thugs and roughnecks would often try to protect anyone who was doing well, whether in school or in sports, from danger or from problems with the police or other things that might destroy their future.
    In fact, it was just this sort of intervention and protection by people—some of whom ultimately wound up in prison, addicted to drugs, or murdered on the street—that saved me more than once and prevented me from doing some really stupid things. It wasn’t only athletes who got cheered on for having a path out. We wanted to see everyone that we liked do well, though, of course, as with all humans, there were the usual jealousies and rivalries, too.
    But woe betide the kid who thought getting As made him better than you, who didn’t give neighborhood kids their proper respect, whether through lack of social skills or true snobbery. That could bring misery. Though some of what we saw as snobbery might have been lack of social skills, we had little tolerance for it. We knew and followed the social code. We needed all the respect we could get. Further disdain from other black people was just too much to stomach.
    Our world required exquisite attention to facial expressions and body language, to unwritten rules about status and signs of disrespect. Reading these cues and responding appropriately could sometimes literally mean the difference between life and death. More often, however, it was “only” your whole social life that was on the line. For kids everywhere, matters involving social life feel like life and death, of course. But in the hood, that’s even more exaggerated because there are so few other available sources of status, dignity, and respect.
    My frequent moves between one relative’s house and another’s and my constant contact with cousins, siblings, aunts, and uncles helped me to understand quickly the ins and outs of our social code. My desire for status made me pay particularly close attention, sensitizing me to even the slightest signals about who was up and who was down and how that was determined. I observed all of this closely. And these social skills were crucial to my success.
    Smart black people tell their children that they have to be twice as good as whites to get half as far. While this is unfortunately still true for academic and business success, I think it’s equally if not more applicable to social skills. A white kid might get away with being a socially clueless snobby nerd—but a black child who acted that way would get ridiculed and demolished. Especially among the poor, social skills make a critical contribution to success, one that is often overlooked.
    Louie and I both paid heed to these unwritten rules, something that would ultimately cost him a great deal more than it did me. I liked hanging out with him, playing catch and climbing that sapodilla tree in Big Mama’s yard. But if our mothers and grandmothers had understood more about what education really meant, we might have also batted around math problems. We would have seen homework as practice—as necessary for school as we knew it was for athletics.
    Instead, the adults around us saw school as a quest for a certificate, a stamp of approval you could show around later in life. Rather than valuing the process of education itself and the essential critical thinking skills that can be gained from it, they saw school as a means to an end. Because their opportunities had been limited, because the