Today is a Holiday...
Even if you have to work today, like me, please remember that today is a holiday. Even if it isn't celebrated on the 15th of January, it's still a holiday. It's unfortunate that most of us forget about this holiday. Primarily because a lot of us still have to go to work. My son's school was closed today, so his God Sister had to watch him. If she didn't, then I wouldn't be at work either. Don't think of today as a nuisance or that you may have to go out of your way because folks got the day off. Some of us have to work and remember. While others can sit and home and remember....
My mother taught me about civil rights. Yes, my mother, a white woman from England. She told me that in the past, whites didn't like blacks and that if we lived back then that I would have to sit at the back of the bus. While whites would sit in the front. A wide-eyed 6 year old then pondered that question and asked my mother, but Mommy, where would you sit? She said, in the back of course, I would never let you sit alone. She explained it as best as she could. And while some would say that it isn't an accurate description, it was the best she knew. See, where my mother was from, everyone was poor. There wasn't a such thing as blacks and whites. Everybody was poor. If you were poor, then you lived together. She explained that one day, her brother brought a Jamaican boy home from school and that he lived there ever since. Even after my uncle moved out, that young man stayed with my grandmother and helped out around the house. As many kids as my grandmother had, she welcomed another one. I don't think there's a racist bone in my mothers body.
Being mixed, I never went through what a lot of mixed kids go through. I always considered myself black. I didn't realize that my family was different until I went to school. My Dominican heritage as well as my Native American heritage prevented me from looking like the normal mixed child. I had very dark features. Dark eyes, dark hair, and a light brown complexion. To this day, a lot of people know that I'm mixed, but white isn't their first choice. A lot of people think I'm hispanic. Actually, I have more white in me then anything. My father has white in him, because of my great grandfather.
Eventhough I have all these different races in my blood, I always identified with the black culture. All my life, I grew up in all black neighborhoods, went to all black schools, and then went to a historically black college. I feel sorry for those mixed kids who grew up and never knew one half of their culture. I've seen white culture and experienced it in limited capacity. Needless to say, I'm not too comfortable with it. It seems foreign to me. Just like it would seem foreign to any black person. It's just different from what I'm use to. Not better, worst, just different. I think I have an open mind to a certain extent. I'm willing to learn and appreciate. See most of our lives, we've been thrown the white culture. You learn about American history in School, not Black American History. You learned that the decent of every thing we know are Romans, not Egyptians. So learning about the importance of Africans in World History was enlightening to me. For all these years I had been taught Black History one month out of the year. What???????
Martin Luther King was a great man, but what about Malcolm. Malcolm played no important part in American History? Didn't learn to much about Malcolm in text books. Learned about Malcolm on my own in elementary school. Read a book about him that my teacher provided. She provided a lot of books on Black Americans, I read every one of them. If it wasn't for my thurst of knowledge, I probably wouldn't have known a lot of things. The public school system wasn't that good of an educator. No wonder our children are in a state of turmoil. If it wasn't for the countless books my mother had or my father passing down his do it yourself attitude, I probably would have wound up like a lot of my peers. On drugs, in jail, on welfare and not working, or dead. I thank God for my parents everyday. Without them, there would be no me, nor would there be EVOCATIVE!
Peace,
The Black Butterfly
