African American girls in American grow up singing jingles and playing hand-claps games. It’s like an unwritten rule. From the ghettoes to the suburbs, little brown girls in pony tails and bobby socks sing and chant as a way to communicate, play and have fun. This impulse is just a manifestation of any African based culture—the urge to be oral, to shout, sing, speak feelings and emotions. When I was a little girl growing up in the suburbs, we sang songs like “Miss Mary Mack’, but though we possessed some sort of privilege, we had no sense we were living better than other folks. Fact is, we were singing that jingle with every other black girl in America, and we took on a common identity with all our little black sisters, those in the projects, those in the hood. We all became, in a sense, ‘Miss Mack.’ We were proverbially dressed in black, with silver buttons down our backs. And that unity of identity can not be over-emphasized because we truly became Miss Mack collectively. And it was the oral game itself—the way we said ‘back, back, back’ and ‘black, black, black’—it was the repetition, the repeating and the rhyming that made the game so much fun. Do it was more than a story itself, but a beat and meter, and the way it sounded, that kept the game going. For while words are important, and the HOW of a word, the way it is spoken, phrased; it is the tone and flow that determines meaning and impact. This is how we talked-we rhymed, we stomped, we clapped. It’s natural how musical styles like rap and hip-hop could develop out of such practice of communication. Black folks have been doing that for years. But when we went to school, our teachers did not teach us jingles like “ Miss Mary Mack.” There were some simple songs with rhythms and melodies like ‘ABC’ and others. Our primary mode of communication and learning-oral with beat, rhythm and hand clapping, was ignored. Save that for the playground. We were taught in tradition, Euro, Western, Eurocentric (whatever you want to call it) style of learning. Individuality was the focus-a kind of abstract, spatial sort of learning with no rhythm to set things in place. We became these separate entities floating through space trying to catch hold of something. Community was not emphasized; if you were in a group, okay, but learning happened in a separate mind, being, soul. Gone was the sense of communal identity where we shared knowledge and being. Instead, we were encourage to compete against all those different little selves, our classmates. Mary Mack was torn apart.
It was is fact today that many children in urban settings do not prize academic progress. That seems very unsettling until we realized that the paradigm in which academic learning is conveyed runs antithetical to the modes of learning and communication many of these children are taught at home and in the community. Moreover, not only is the formal teaching vastly different from familiar styles of communication, but there is also an entrenched suspicion towards anything white, Euro-or belonging to the establishment, It is as if people suspect they will become brainwashed. They fear turning into a sell-out an ‘uncle tom’, to use an old term.
There is an underlying anger in our communities, an anger that is manifested in different ways and different time. This anger is directed towards a system and a society that has never really made restitution for its sins against African-Americans and continue everyday to perpetuate that very same evil, in a multiplicity of systematic ways, against their descendants. This anger passes down to their children, generation after generation.
What does it mean to speak the very language of the people and possess the very names of the people that enslaved, raped and destroyed your ancestors? What if the descendants of the Holocaust were expected to learn old Nazi handshakes and code words just to go to school or get a job? How does one erase the horror of the past while still living in it, when there is no past, only the traumatic continuation of the evil present? And if the present remains the same, and does not change for the better, what of the future? For there is no future unless we heal from the past. One young black inmate, while being interviewed, indicated this sentiment so clearly when he said “We were dead before our fathers were born.” Thos e of us who do ‘succeed’ try to manage the hypocrisy of living in the enemy’s territory and smiling in the master’s face. We get goodies-nice salaries and cars and stuff. We forgive. But are we called to forgive while we are still being raped or after the fact? When do we try to get the beast off our backs, knock him down, chain him, then forgive him? For when we play the game, are we not pseudo-slaves? Are we not co-opting? De we defeat progress when we work and strive to uplift and maintain the very foundation of a worldview and culture that destroyed our history, while continuing to cheapen the legacy we have managed to maintain? What is the price for integrity? How often do we co-opt the system every time an African-American man or woman is arrested and imprisoned for petty charges and trumped up offense, when they were only trying to survive? What are we doing to support those in the trenches, those who cry out with righteous indignation over the abuse of our people from jail cells and street corners? Do we hear their cries or have we become blinded by societal acceptance, however minimal? Does their suffering not affect us?
And what of those who weep, just like the biblical prophet Jeremiah, for the slain in our midst, while our leaders say “peace, peace, when there is no peace?’ America’s new war reminds us there was never peace. Only the lies of a few dedicated to quelling the outrage of many. In such a world as this, Jesus was executed because he bucked up against a system that denied the reality of his people. He spoke, though unpopular, in the rhythms of his native culture because he understood historical oppression and systematic abuse. He affirmed the legacy of his ancestors and refused to sell-out to the Romans because he refused to sanction the oppression of his people. Were those who sponsored his killing like us, the new Romans willing to sacrifice communal justice and integrity for limited security and freedom? While we struggle to defend and support this nation against terrorism and the ‘infidel’ will our inner communities continue to house black and brown babies dying of AIDS and suffering from want? Whom are we really defending and protecting? Who really wins and loses? As congress debates and leaders kill, Miss Mary Mack, along with all her sisters and brothers, weeps. |
