COVER -> DAY ONE
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Whenever I go up and visit them, I have to reflect on how that's kind of a little miracle all of its own. Like most folks here in America, I know at least one person with a teen-age daughter already got a baby of her own, at least one person with a son in prison or on parole, at least one person whose kids are hell to be around --- and so make you avoid a life-long friend rather than get into a fight with them because their rugrats are outtah control and on the highway to Hell.
And when I might happen to be listening to a car radio, or overhear some snatch of a television blurb where some political figure is smarming on about our American "family values" again, I start grinding down the enamel on my back molars 'cause I know what a damned lie that is!
I love the phrase that our publisher, Rod, has used often, "America eats her young" because it's word-up. Most folks don't give a shit about they kids or anyone else's. I know lots of folks --- like the cranks out here in California who passed Proposition 13 back in the day --- who would do anything not to have to make a contribution to public education. So now we pay for it with lottery tickets, if we can.
We ain't had no problem building prisons, though. That's where we send a lot of our kids nowadays, especially if they be Black or Brown.
White kids we send to the mall. They can buy the latest Eminem CD there and pretend that they are Black.
I still get kind of a strange feeling when I get on a city bus and hear two white kids coming on behind me saying, "Whassup, my niggah?"
So when I visit Aziz and his kids, I get a chance to see that havin' a strong family, and really WORKING at it, does still make a difference in the lives of regular working folks. Aziz goes out of his way to explain to his kids that having $120 tennis shoes or an Oakland Raiders jacket ain't as important as knowing who you are inside and what you stand for.
I know for a fact that he got a lot whining and complainin' about that when they was younger, but now his kids are starting to snap to the lesson. They have started looking around them and seein' that there is a long distance between what is bein' pumped at them on the television screen and what most real folks lives are actually about. I consider that a good thing.
Part of what the TV does, after all, is indoctrinate you on what this country looks like and what it means to be part of it. And them kids are starting to see that the America on TV don't look nothing like they neighborhood and what the lives of them and most of their friends are like. IF ANYTHING it makes them feel less-than-human for being Black, for not having tons of money, and for not living in the picture-perfect world that the TV projects.
Even the shows that are supposed to be about "us" --- like on the WB network --- have pop stars like Brandy with perfect hair and perfect skin, the very rich Wayans brothers, and people like Martin Lawrence living lives wrapped up around their relationships and hanging out rather than with their jobs and their bills. Caricatures of non-existent Black folks...
And, listening to them talk over a meal, I hear that Aziz's kids have started to snap to this, they see how FALSE what they are being presented really is. And that's a good thing.
What that means is that my little nephew, for example, might choose *not* to be another "Yo Boy" tryin' to prove his manhood by how tough and listless he can be, but by getting himself an education and a good job. That means my little nieces might become doctors and programmers, instead of welfare moms or crack whores. And Aziz and Yolanda, his wife, would be able to take full credit for that.
I would like to believe that institutions, like the church or the government or the schools, would be making a larger contribution to this kind of thing. But they let us down long ago. They are bought and sold by the commercial, corporate interests who want to make every family buy and buy and buy in order to form their identities. But identity ain't got much to do with character if it don't have a basis in something. That's where your family ties come in.
At the end of the day, it don't matter what Vice-President Gore, Governor Bush, Dennis Rodman or Queen Latifa have to say about life. They don't know you.... But your Mama does...
