I certainly have the best of intentions when it comes to keeping a regular blog, but somehow, it just doesn't seem to work out as I'd hoped. As with everything else in life, I can only acknowledge that it is sometimes tough to fulfill those well intended intentions, and attempt to do better.
Below is a little something I wrote this summer while on vacation. It is a thoughtful little piece, and this seems the appropriate spot to post and share it. I wrote it as a sort of postcard to the students in my African American Speculative Fiction course.
July 28, 2009
I am vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, staying in a funky little summer cottage owned by a paternal aunt and her husband. They are in their 80s, and the cottage suffers from deferred maintenance, as the dwellings of older folks who can no longer perform that maintenance themselves often do. Nevertheless, I am feeling relaxed and thoughtful, and am grateful for the miracle of computers and wi-fi so I have the opportunity to record my thoughts and share them with others.
Early this morning I did a little beachcombing along the Oak Bluffs public beach known as The Inkwell. Martha’s Vineyard has a long history of diversity. The island has many layers of race, class, and culture to peel back and explore. Oak Bluffs contains an African American enclave that has been well documented in Black literature, as well as whimsical Victorian-era gingerbreads and the country’s oldest carousel. Five miles south, Edgartown is tony and upscale (think Kennedys…Chappaquiddick, Teddy’s Waterloo, is a stone’s throw). Then there’s artsy, earthy Tisbury, where vegetable stands, yoga centers, and the homes of many year-round residents are located. This area has rural New England feel to it, with deep woods and rolling fields divided by stone walls.
At any rate, I took a stroll this morning along the Inkwell, thinking about race and Skip Gates and the history and legacies of this region. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wasn’t always a famous Harvard professor residing in Cambridge. He was once a young colored boy in the hills of West Virginia. He’s only a few years older than me, so we share recollections of an America in which African American literature was most certainly not a subject taught at Ivy League institutions, let alone a part of mainstream American arts and letters. We also share memories of pre-Civil Rights Act America, when being a Black man in the wrong place at the wrong time could mean not just harassment but death, especially in the South. It’s not a stretch for me to think that Skip Gates could have arrived home from a grueling trip with lowered physical and emotional immunity, feeling tired, under the weather, frustrated with a jammed door, and not at all his usually erudite and diplomatic self. And it’s not much of a stretch for me to think that no matter how well-trained or sensitive to racial issues a white police officer might be, he or she might not fully comprehend the deeply ingrained connections to history and our experiences of the world that have created this place where we people of color go ‘cause we honestly don’t know if race is a significant factor in a given situation. I would say from his remarks throughout the public airing of this incident that Barack Obama knows of this place, that he has been there himself. I know I’ve been there.
As I wandered along the shoreline considering all this, a smooth white object caught my eye. The beach is a little stony here, much more so than the sandy Atlantic South Beach that I’d hung out on the day before. Small rocks of all colors and composition, rounded by the waves, are strewn about the water’s edge here. I picked up the pale stone and turned it over in my hand. Probably quartz, not a rough edge to it any longer. I looked down and found another, and another, and soon I was walking ankle deep in the surf, searching out the smooth white stones. It wasn’t long before I had a handful. Intuitively, without thinking, I shifted my search to smooth black stones, and picked up a handful of them as well. I was then struck by the metaphor of the stones, worn smooth by the water and the passage of time. So it is with white folks and Black folks. Our sharp edges, our exteriors, are being worn away, slowly smoothed by time and contact, though we maintain our distinct compositions, our histories, our origins.
I’m gathering up the white and black stones on this Massachusetts beach where generations of Black folks have found respite from racism as mementos of this trip, and of the wearing down and wearing away of our rough histories. I’ll set them in a basket back home to remind me of our nation’s most recent “teachable moment” and my vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.
Enjoy your summer reading, and know that you are part of a larger story yet to be told!
Jocelyn
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