I don’t think it matters what my skin colour or gender or religion is to take a stand and say…it’s perfectly natural for all of us to want the best for our family and friends. It is often seen that the very best people in life help each other especially when they feel they have a lot to give. It is only the stingy of heart who do not practice charity and kindness. I don’t give a fuck how much money you have or what colour you think your skin is. Being a cool person and being a hero doesn’t cost a cent…or the skin off your back for that matter.

My father was one of seven children and the first person of his family to attend college. He earned his BS, then earned his masters, then became a college professor. At the time I was born, he was working as a professor at a HBCU and working on his PhD at the most prestigious white public university in the state. He was on track to become the first black man to earn a PhD from this institution. Just inches from the finish line, he abandoned the effort, divorced my mother, and moved to DC where he became an alcoholic mechanic at his brother’s gas station. My mother said he always had a hard time abandoned the down-to-earth (not her term) friends of the sort he grew up with and accepting the well-off, well educated people with whom a college professor was expected to associate.

My mother was adopted by my grandparents. Her birth mother gave her up because she was white and she conceived my mother with a black man, and that was unacceptable to my mother’s mother’s parents in the old South at the time. My mother’s adopted parents (my grandparents) were both college educated; a teacher and a principal/businessman. To them, upward mobility was a natural goal and they instilled that belief in my mother, while also imparting the skill of utilizing multiple personalities. Knowing them as well as I do, it’s crystal clear to me that my mother and father could never have remained happy together because their beliefs in how one should adapt one’s persona to fit different situations were so different.

I’ve done a pretty good job utilizing shifting personae to fit whatever job I might have at the time. I’ve even used different names for different types of jobs; using my first name for “professional” gigs and my middle name for other jobs. I’ve worked as a Marketing Manager where I flew the country and had an expense account, and I’ve worked in a warehouse shipping packages.

Here’s the rub: I don’t think the act of chasing “mobility and range” by reinventing how one wants to be perceived is limited to minorities. The novel THE GREAT GATSBY focused on a man reinventing himself in his pursuit of mobility and range. It happens among all people of all strata. And, I would guess that all the people who are left behind by the newly-mobile person hold conflicting feelings about his/her “success”. On the one hand, they feel proud that someone with their background made good; On the other hand they feel abandoned, especially if the escaper doesn’t lower the ladder and dissiminate directions on following his path.

I’d agree that that duality may be stronger among the African-American culture, but I’m not sure. I see a lot of Latino immigrants who house newly-arrived immigrants in their homes for as long as it takes to get on their feet. I’ve read stories of Jewish immigrants who, as much as they could, shopped only at Jewish stores to keep the money in the “family.”

I think the difference may be that blacks have sometimes felt cautious about passing down the ladder for fear their new collegues will view them as holding open the door for more blacks. That, I have found, is a real fear. Many times, I have been the only black man at a company. Many times, when a new position opens and a black man is qualified, I’ve seen him bypassed.

Personally, I don’t begrudge anyone for not trying to help others reach their level of success. It’s a nice gesture if they do, but it’s certainly not a required effort to prove their history/culture. I think the difference is that people in power view it differently if a white person from a small town recommends a friend from that town for hire than if a black person recommends a black friend for hire. In some instances, that different feeling is very different. In some instances, it may be less different. But in most cases I’ve seen, the difference exists.

That it exists may explain why some blacks don’t work as hard to lower the ladder, and it may explain why they don’t work as hard at maintaining ties to who they once were. Some achievers do, but many don’t. I understand why each does what they do. And I understand (if not agree with) why those left behind often bitterly accuse the achievers of “acting white.”; because those left behind equate success with white people, but they also expect their friends who succeed to be “better” than white and not act as if they (the achievers) are better than those they left behind.

I could type a thesis on this topic, but I’ll end here before I branch off into other themes.

Cheers,