Black Healing in White Space
[Music]
i had an
unfair amount of spoiled brat rage
towards my parents
in my late teens it was because i felt
they had whitewashed my childhood
by constantly putting me in white spaces
and what i wasn’t
ready to deal with at that point was i
wasn’t mad at my parents for
providing me access to these spaces i
was mad at the kid i became
in those spaces and i don’t think my
parents fully understood that i was
struggling
because they didn’t grow up like i did
they grew up black in nashville
tennessee
during the peak of the civil rights
movement and they were already teenagers
by the time nashville started to
integrate schools
september 9th 1957
marked the first day that black and
white kids were able to go to school
together
the very next day on september 10th
one of those schools exploded thanks to
a hundred sticks of dynamite
and clearly a strong will to keep things
the same
i often think about the bravery and
foresight those parents had to have
enrolling their kids in those schools
because it was a choice
and they had already experienced the
threats of intimidation
just at the mere thought of putting
their black kids at those white schools
forget about the spitting and the
taunting and the rock throwing
they had to physically endure as they
walked into the building that first day
with their children
i’ve never properly honored my parents
for having a front row seat
to that level of indignity for most of
their childhood
so now as a parent and as an adult
i understand what they were trying to do
they were trying to give me and my
sister
the keys to all the doors that were
locked for them growing
up and places towns schools that are
often deemed high opportunity well
they’re
also often predominantly white and
sometimes always like all white and
adapting in those spaces isn’t a new
phenomenon for black folks
listen i code switch like i breathe code
switching is slipping
in and out of an alternate way of
speaking depending on your surroundings
and it’s a survival skill for black
folks
and w e b du bois spoke about that
double consciousness
all the way back in 1904 he spoke about
the american and the negro two souls
in one body and we speak about that
duality often in my home
i’ve been married for 21 years to a
black man who
never dims his light and blackness has
come
up and taken up a lot of space in our
lives
and the lives of our five children
and to deal with that we try to submerge
them in the art and the books and
the truth and the history of just who
they are which
as tragic as the stories are in this
country for black folks
they’re also so gloriously triumphant
and exposing my kids to those truths
have given them the black consciousness
that i was clearly lacking growing up
when i was 11 my mother let me know she
had enrolled me in this exclusive and
elite dance school
but what i heard is i was going to be
living my best famed dreams with leroy
and the gang
so we ran out and we got a blue leotard
it’s electric blue because it was the
late 80s and slinky earrings
and when i got there my mom coated me in
more baby oil because you know black
women don’t do ashy
and they pointed me in the direction of
my first class and my mother was off
so i was alone and when i opened the
doors
my heart fell she had enrolled me in a
classical
ballet school and there they all were
on time in white identical
in black leotard pale pink tights hair
pinned up perfectly in a bun
meanwhile i looked like a backup dancer
in a rick james video
and they made me take out my slinky
earrings and you know it’s like a
slow death taking out accessories you’re
not supposed to be wearing
and as i looked at a song in line with
my brown thighs glistening
in the mirror i heard that sesame street
song in my head
one of these things is not like the
other
one of these things doesn’t belong
and when i got in the car with my mother
i lost it
i had held it together for most of the
day but
i went on and on about how i couldn’t
believe she sent me there and
i was never going back and my mother’s
response stripped in the resilience that
black moms go everything in you’ll be
fine
i’ll get you what you need but you’re
going back
and you’re lucky to be there sasha
you’re lucky to be there i wore this
like a badge of honor
and white spaces for most of my
adolescence and it wasn’t as if i didn’t
know i was black or i wasn’t proud to be
black i love my family
but i was so proud to be this new and
improved version of black that
i thought was so refined that white
people couldn’t help but let me into
their spaces
and i hope by proximity to whiteness i
wouldn’t have to deal with all the
racial traumas
black folks have to endure every day
i was bugging and in those moments i
elevated white normalcy and white
supremacy as a kid
that’s what internalized racism looks
like
and the brief reward of feeling like i
belonged
was far outweighed by the damage i was
doing to my spirit
and by the time i got to college i
became sort of
a time traveler and a stay-at-home
historian
and i read everything i could from books
on slavery and slave rebellions and
jim crow era and civil rights movement
the black panthers
you name it i read it and reading hill
wounds
i didn’t know i had i started to feel
more like
a whole person and less like a
caricature
and i moved back to my hometown of
middletown to raise my family
and middletown’s a very progressive and
diverse college town
and we’re in the last phases of building
a state-of-the-art middle school to
replace the middle school i went to
which was woodrow wilson middle school
now
if you know his history he was a proud
racist
and died never seeing the error of his
ways so
it seemed like a no-brainer new school
new building
new name so i joined the naming
committee which is going to be a group
of
community members that were going to
explore some name options for the school
and i’m totally invested in this because
my only son is going to be
part of the first classes to attend the
school and
i want a name that’s worthy of him and
woodrow wilson middle ain’t it
now side note i’ve now graduated from
that
lucky to be here narrative to new and
improved
you’re lucky to have me mentality and it
doesn’t always translate well
i’m not gonna lie but this is where i am
i’m claiming my space
in honor of my parents and my children
and i’m coming as a whole person
no halfsies not divided one body
one black american soul so
when i get to that first meeting i go
directly to a table where
the committee was already uh sitting
down
and there were two women of color
already there before i could even
exchange
pleasantries with them from behind me
this voice like smacked me in the back
of the neck
this was supposed to be a diverse
committee
this isn’t a good representation of us
it was that loud and
that intentional so i was like wow okay
duly noted and behind me is a group of
older white men and women and it becomes
abundantly clear
not everybody’s excited about this name
change like i am
it was for a bunch of reasons one of the
main ones was that it would be
a racing history which was so ironic to
me
because black people’s contributions to
this country
have been crucial to our success yet
they often have gone
not written minimized hidden
and yes erased so you’re gonna miss me
with your racing history speech
so when i went home that night i was
livid and i posted publicly
about my experience at that first
meeting
and i know that doesn’t always go well
but
i couldn’t pretend to not hear and
feel what i felt that day and all those
years of it quietly ignoring
implicit and explicit biases like that
have made me who i am now and it wasn’t
that i didn’t feel like
of course they had the right to feel how
they felt
some of them were truly nostalgic
but was so confusing to me is they also
stood hand in hand
with those who cruelly mocked us for
just wanting better for our kids
and then somehow the burden falls on me
to figure out who’s who
when i’m seeing a oneness and a sameness
in this group
so anyway the post worked and people
reached out and
they wrote op-eds and they showed up for
public forums
pre-covert of course and in support of
this name change
it was great until it wasn’t and those
pro joe wilsoners demanded that i be
removed from the committee because i
didn’t like the
tone of my post which was absurd and
didn’t happen
so they took it a step further and they
contacted my employer
to let them know that i said all white
people were racist
they wanted to know if my company agreed
with that standpoint
they wanted to know if i had any white
clients because of course
they needed to be alerted and they
signed a concerned parent
they threatened my livelihood
over a lie because they were threatened
by me
and i haven’t mentioned that i’m a real
estate agent
and the homeownership gap between black
and white americans in this country
is larger now than it was in 1960
when it was actually legal to
discriminate against us so yeah
most of my clients are white people and
as that
concerned parent want to let me know i
need white people to like me
but not the expense of my truth or my
spirit because i’m not doing that
anymore
but i was scared i worked for a high-end
luxury brokerage that
for a second when i signed that contract
with them
i wondered if i was good enough to work
for them because
even in my mid-40s i i have to be
cognizant
of not internalizing those questions of
my worth
in spaces that don’t reflect me so when
my broker called me to let me know about
this email
i thought i was going to lose my job but
luckily for me
she stood in the pain in the rage of
that moment and she had my back
and she just missed that email
but after talking to my family we
realized this was just going to get
worse
and i decided it would be best if i
stepped off
stepped down from the committee
but about a week later an old classmate
reached out
and she was so excited because she was
going to be submitting
a name to the navy committee and she was
collaborating with a wesleyan professor
on this
i remember being crazy dismissive of her
during this call because i felt helpless
like what was i going to do
but i couldn’t unhear what she said that
day
and it echoed for days it was beam in
middle
and you’re all looking at me like who
the hell are the demons so
i’ll explain the demons are family of
black abolitionists
cesar beeman gained gained his freedom
by fighting in its master’s place in the
revolutionary war
they were actively involved in the
underground railroad
they moved to middletown they bought
land and
subdivided it and sold it off to other
freed slaves
i know i had to pivot
and i actually learned in the process
that it’s common council
who has final naming authority over all
city owned property
so they became my focus i worked with
friends in the community and even my
oldest daughter
to get people who had the same shared
vision for the town
that we had and i have to say the end
results were
the most diverse group of people ever
elected together
in city history and it included our
first
black councilwoman it was historic
and that day could only be topped by one
one thing for me
on august 3rd 2020 that common council
voted to name
our new middle school beeman middle
cesar beeman picked his own name instead
of keeping a slave name beeman
be a man this school
in a predominantly white town in
connecticut
is named after a former enslaved man
so intentional in claiming his humanity
that he picked a name to reflect that
desire
i felt like i won something like my
family had won something our
community had tapped into that shared
responsibility to
elevate and tell these stories of these
great black american heroes
and i mean with 2020 i needed this with
protests heard all over the world
and after the murder of george floyd
our mayor created an anti-racism task
force
and i’m proud to say that i was
appointed co-chair
and the work continues there’s so much
work to do
but the work we’re doing in middletown
will be transformative to the next
generation of kids
all kids i really feel like could be
done anywhere
and when i look at this now
viral image of president-elect
kamala harris walking into the white
house
in the shadows of a six-year-old ruby
bridges who was also a first
when she integrated schools in new
orleans in the 1960s
we are all in the shadows of those who
come before us
and we have a shared responsibility to
clear the path
for those that come after us and when i
think about my son
walking into beam and middle in the
shadows of the beeman family
i can’t tell you how excited that makes
me and when i sit with
all the sacrifices that were made so i
can be who i am now
which is unapologetically black in all
spaces
i have to say my mother was right
i am lucky to be here thank you