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BLACK HISTORY
Walking down the dim, fluorescent lit hallway, staring down at the dingy hunter and white marble fake tile, I passed ten or fifteen signs marking the occasion. Scholastic fishnets, with “I have a dream…” essays hung sporadically, stretched across the walls. I heard some punk say something about dreaming they’d all go back to Africa. This was black history month at my junior high school and I was on my way to World Civilizations.
This was my eighth grade year and I had been given the toughest of the three history teachers at our school. Head of the county chapter of the NAACP, he was a skinny black man, about six feet tall, ever dressed like the 1960’s civil rights leaders – skinny, black tie, white button down, black slacks and shoes. He taught all the eighth grade G.T. classes. G.T. (gifted and talented) was an eccentric classification for students who met some mysterious set of criteria, criteria that I had somehow met and was therefore afforded a parent and community pleasing designation as a “G.T. kid”. And so I trod.
I walked through the door and took my seat on the far left side of the room, third seat from the rear. I tried not to breathe too deeply the warm, stagnant, crayon and sweaty sock stink that seemed to stick to your face the way a cobweb does. It was there in that room, in that stink, that I learned all about black history.
Only a year before, at the high school I would later attend, a racial fight broke out which consumed the better part of a week. According to my older sister, a close friend of three guys involved, the whole thing was spurred by pointed comments regarding retribution for heinous acts committed by whites against blacks. Allegedly, the black guy making the comments had a reputation for being a bully. He threatened to split the lips of a white guy nearby if he didn’t buy his lunch that day. He said the white guy owed him that much. The nightmare ensued from there.
Over the next three days, skirmishes broke out between classes. People were suspended. Police were called to roam the hallways. On the fourth day rumors had spread about a “race war” that was supposed to happen after school. School officials eventually notified the police and a vehicle search was conducted in the student parking lot. The rumors were apparently well founded. Various reports concurred that weapons were confiscated including (but not limited to) numb chucks, knives, a sawed-off shot gun, a few pistols, brass knuckles, and a collection of Louisville Sluggers from students obviously not on the baseball team. As fast as memory, virtually undetectably, perhaps in my spine or at the base of my skull, I felt the impact as another tick went down on the timeline.
A few weeks after World Civilizations had returned to its original curriculum, I discovered that I had an admirer. She came up to me one morning between classes. She was definitely cute; she had this big mischievous smile, beautiful deep brown eyes. She was the type of girl that could have turned up in the lint trap of your dryer and still been more than pleasant to look at. She asked me out. I was shocked…then amused. I said no. Noticeably hurt, she said, “Why? ‘Cause I’m black?”
“Yes,” I said. I tried to explain that it was merely a matter of preference. It was the same reason that I chose a navy blue back pack over a red one. She found my explanation lacking. From then on, to her, I was a racist.
And somewhere, the universe saw the signal go out. Receptors received; processors processed. In the void, the infinite scorekeeper hit the symbol on the keyboard of his mainframe, sending the signal back. Crashing through centuries, shoving aside wars and great migrations, the signal honed in upon my timeline. From the edge of the universe another tick came screaming, and I almost heard it click.
Ten years later, questions still wander through the dark hallways of my mind. Am I evil? My father, from time to time, has spoken about how racial identification is unnecessary. I’ve heard this thinking referred to as colorblindness. I’ve wondered if it isn’t merely a convenient lie, through which we screen our thoughts or words so that they may be more acceptable to others. How can an honest man be colorblind if he is not really? Each year, black Americans are reminded of their past, no doubt a stark contrast to the lives they live now. While black civil rights heroes’ images are paraded through schools and across TV screens, on the news another white cop beats a black suspect with his nightstick. Can a white man be proud of who he is? His legacy, it seems each January, is one of irrational brutality and evil. He is not a hero or something to be followed, admired, or imitated. He is a living memory of a stain that seems to be taking a very long time to wash out. His is a black history.
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For the next four days, World Civilizations became Black History 101. It didn’t start where I thought it would. Our lesson began shortly after the Civil War, when the Ku Klux Klan really began to gain steam. I watched simulated lynchings and heard atrocious stories about how the whites mistreated the blacks. I saw picture after picture of bodies hanging in trees, some drug behind horses and later cars or trucks. I saw a short docu-drama on the story of Emmit Till. I watched video footage of police brutality and the new KKK; I watched as Malcolm X called for “any means necessary” and saw the birth of the Black Panthers. I also saw the Watts Riots and the assorted speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. As I sat, images and words bombarding my soul, a subtle sense was forming. Time had stretched, spanning years and eras, to form a time line. Embedded therein was my… black history.
Someone’s truck got keyed and people began running off at the mouth. About seventeen people gathered at a place called “the circle” after school, a place where disputes were settled hand to hand, and up until this point, had rarely been a place where weapons were used. Various reports floated between friends and siblings, but all agreed: five guys were hospitalized following their session at the circle; injuries ranged from blunt trauma to the head to stab wounds and shattered jawbones. 
