I like this time of year.  I don’t celebrate any of the major holidays—no Christmas, no Hanukkah, no Kwanzaa, none of that, but I like the holiday season.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a very religious person and I have dedicated my life to God and to the doing of His will—but this time of year just really does something for me.  I don’t know if it’s the abbreviated work weeks, the Christmas bonus that some get, or the oodles and oodles of sales at any store you can imagine, but this time of year is my favorite part of the year.  You’d think it’d be summer because I’m free to spend it as I please.  Eight weeks of freedom, but nope.  It’s this time of year, more specifically,  the days surrounding Thanksgiving clear through February that get me so excited.

Unlike children around the world, I’m not anxiously awaiting presents, I’ll get no presents, and I’m okay with that.  I’m not waiting all year for two well prepared meals, as my waist line can attest, I eat well all year long.  I’m a big fan of family, which is why I make sure that we get together throughout the year, no need to pack in back to back visits in less than a month time span.  I’ve met some of you, if there are multiple people like you in your family, I’m sure you guys can benefit from buffer spaces between those visits.

What gets me going this time of year is the “Holiday music.” They kill me with the attempt to be politically correct by being all-inclusive with all religious groups and peoples during this time, but we all know, the “holidays” are really about Christmas.  Sure there is a Hanukkah song or two, but I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t know them.  And although I’ve been black all of my life, I know not one Kwanzaa song.  I’ve never even celebrated Christmas, but I know tons of Christmas songs.  Why you may ask? We all are force fed Christmas songs from midnight on Thanksgiving until the world rings in the new year.

Although I’m no fan of Christmas, I am a fan of the songs.  Well, not the songs per se, but the effects of the songs.  Christmas songs seem to have a profound effect on the temperament of people.  Walk into any store, and people who would have ignored your presence just days before are all too eager to speak to you.  People of various racial groups that usually ignore each other find themselves  proffering unsolicited help to solve various holiday issues, suggesting gift ideas, and making random small talk about nothing as they pretend to wait patiently in long lines, all while humming on a holiday ditty.

Holiday songs pumped through speakers of each store also will pump life into our nation’s dying economy.  It’s something about those songs that just make me and others want to spend spend spend.  With all of the mentions of snow, fire places, chest nuts, presents, winter scenes and jingling bells people just carelessly pick up item after item.  Think about it, companies pitch useless products during this time of year because they know that we will buy.  Why do we buy? Is it that we’ve just got so much money? Nope, it’s the music making us feel generous.  It’s the music that makes us see some useless item and want to purchase it for somebody we don’t even like.

Don’t get me started on New Year’s.  I can’t tell you the last time I stayed up for the countdown, it’s meaningless to me, but I do love going to work in the New Year season.  People that have walked past me all year long without speaking feel obligated to say “Happy New Year.”  I love to know where I stand with people, and clearly I’m on their “speak once a year” list, and once again like the no receiving of the gifts, I’m okay with that.  What does bewilder me, however, is just when does it stop? I’ve gotten a “Happy New Year,” like in February.  I thought the presence of a new holiday (Black History Month) would phase out the New Year well-wishes, but with some folks, you never can tell.  But, a greeting is a greeting.  You see me, and you want to acknowledge my presence.  I won’t knock it.

So, you needn’t celebrate the holidays to enjoy them.  It’s a win-win for everyone.  You get time off from work, unless you work at Waffle House, everything, and I do mean everything is on sale, and people are just so much nicer. Strangers speak.  People become human, and I blame it on the music.  That little Frosty…SMH

Fifty seven million—that’s  the number of “hits” that Google turned up for my search on the “State of Black America.”  In just 0.15 seconds, it pulled up 57million web pages and videos that address the state of black America.  Everybody’s talking about our situation.  They say “numbers don’t lie,” and now more than ever I wished they did. We are lagging behind in education—only 12% of our little black 4^th grade boys are reading on grade level, while the whites managed to get 38% of their 4^th grade boys to read on grade level.  Health wise, at birth, black women have a life expectancy that’s five years shorter than white women, and black men live at least 7 years less than the average white man.  We’re leading the pack when it comes to new cases of HIV, 1 out of 4 of every sexually active black girl currently has an STD.  Fifty three percent of our women are obese, and that’s just opening the door to diabetes, heart failure, high blood pressure and a host of other ugly conditions.  The black man is no better off than the black woman; it seems as if black men were put here so that prisons will have a steady supply of inmates.  Blacks roughly make up 12-14% of the nation, but 44% of the prison population.  The statistics of our shortcomings are daunting, and it seems that no one knows what to do about our “situation,”—they just keep predicting that in the near future, if no major changes are made, we will basically self destruct.

But how did we get here? How did things go so wrong so quickly? Slavery ended in the 1850’s, with newly freed slaves setting out to stake their claim and assert their rights as citizens.  They quickly acquired land, opened schools and launched businesses.  Things were looking up.  A hundred years later, they were still united and strong, fighting for a bigger piece of that American pie, and this time it wasn’t the elders of society leading the way; it was the younger generation, the teens and those in their early 20s and 30s.  With the 70s came disco, house parties, afro sheen and black pride.  The 80s and 90s seem to be a blur, but one thing stands out for certain—hip hop was here, and it was here to stay.  With the emergence of hip hop came this sub culture of separation and isolation of youths from adults.  The new millennium came in, we all managed to survive Y2K, and so did rap, birthing a new level of materialistically lavish video representation.

I’ve come to hate music videos. They seem to just broadcast our level of ignorance to the world.  I don’t even really watch them anymore.  I’ve tired of the packed club scenes with bottles of champagne worth hundreds of dollars popping and girls grinding on girls with plastered smiles of amusement as they degrade themselves.  Rappers boast of multi-million dollar jewelry purchases and having wealth in an excess garnered from their humble street beginnings that were made possible by the drug trade.    The message they send is loud and clear: “sell enough drugs, do enough dirt, and you can get what I got.”

But are rap music and its videos really the root of our problems? Nah, not really, I just had to put them out there because I really don’t like what they do to us, but it’s not the music, it’s not the videos, it’s not the schools, it’s not the job market, it’s not even the infamous “man” holding us down—our problem is us.  We mess ourselves up.  Were we dealt an unfair hand? Sure.  Slavery, Jim Crow, the struggle for Civil Rights, the infiltration of crack cocaine into our neighborhoods all stacked the cards against us, but we truly are our biggest and worst enemy.

We don’t have any self control.  Don’t believe me?  We get mad, we gotta fight right then in there.  Doesn’t really matter where we are—school, the mall, church, the street, I’m mad, I’m going to show you just how mad I am RIGHT now.  We seem to have a lack of self control when it comes to our sexual desires—feeling horny? Why wait? Kids today are having sex in the hallways, under the bleachers, in the backs of cars, on the baseball field, they want it, and they do it.  Doesn’t matter if you’re in a committed relationship or not, doesn’t really even matter if you even like that person or not, I crave sex, I want sex, so I’m having sex.

We are under performing in school.  We have no discipline.  Children are not learning to sit still and read.  I don’t want to sit still, so I won’t.  Those black boys that failed to read as well as their white 4^th grade counterparts probably really can read, but just might lack the self discipline and control that it takes to sit and actually read the passages and answer the questions.   Daily, I hear students complain “This test is boring,” so they don’t take it seriously.  They lack the self control that it takes to force yourself to do something you don’t want to do to get something you want to get.

What’s up with these home invasions? You got something I want, so I’m just going to take it.  I don’t want  to work for it, I don’t want to educate myself to get my skills up so that I can earn it, I see it, I want it, and I’m going to take it.  I want some fast money, I want a lot of it, and I don’t want to work hard for it—so I’m going to sell drugs.  I’ve got problems, but I don’t want to do what it takes to fix my problems, so I’m going to take drugs to escape my problems.

LACK OF SELFCONTROL.  It’s mind over matter.  Will yourself to do what’s right.  It’s not that we don’t know what to do, or how to do it, we just don’t want to.  We’re not doing better because we really don’t want to.

“Good people can do bad things.”  That’s what DJ, former graduate of the high school where I teach, said Sunday as we all gathered around the goal post of our school’s football/soccer field.  We’d gathered together, as students and members of the faculty and staff to commiserate over our shared loss.  Thursday of the prior week, one of our students had been gunned down by who, we didn’t know.  What we did know, as much as we were able to piece together from a mass amount of text messages and Facebook postings is that one of our own had been gunned down, stuffed in a trunk, and his car set ablaze.  That much we did know, but what we didn’t know was why someone would do such a thing to such a lovable person, and just who on earth could be so malicious as to actually carry out such a heinous act.  With the passage of time came more details, and later arrests were made.  Then our jaws dropped.  The “evil wicked” unknown perpetrators turned out to not be faceless nameless monsters.  Instead they were actually students that we knew, people that we’d seen daily, they were a part of our school.  That little nugget of truth shifted it from a black and white issue to some sketchy shade of gray—did we know monsters? These guys that we knew, these guys that we’d laughed with, kids that I and other teachers had actually taught—were monsters? I know murderers? Seriously?

To say I was shocked is an understatement.  I had no idea that there were kids that I saw daily that were doing such dangerous things.  I knew that our students were rambunctious; I knew they fought, I knew that many of them had less than stellar criminal records; but you could not pay me to fathom that I would know somebody that would bring such pain to others.  But I do, and they did, so that’s that.

The day I was dreading came faster than I knew what to do with it—Monday morning came, and off to work I went.  I had no answers for the thousands of questions my kids would hit me with but what worried me more is that I didn’t have any answers for myself.  There were thousands of questions that were racking my brain, but the ones that were the most unsettling were “What do I do to not become desensitized  to the trauma that is plaguing our student body, and how do I fight off the impending bitterness and lackluster jaded attitude that so many teachers seem to have accumulated along the years? As I learned more about what transpired in the “incident,” I felt more and more stupid.  Thinking of the events that have transpired through the years, I regretfully admitted to myself that not only did I know individuals that were capable of doing these heinous acts, but I also have taught students that have apparently sold drugs, done drugs, robbed banks, kidnapped, committed armed robbery, and participated in home invasions.

The students are grieving, the parents are grieving, but seldom do folks think about the fact that in situations like this, there’s a group of teachers that are grieving too. Losing a student hurts.  Losing multiple students (these kids always seem to do things in groups) hurts more.  And it’s in times like this that all the talks, all the extra that you put into a kid, all the effort put into not playing into stereotypes seems to have set you up for the biggest let down you think you can face or ever handle.  You chose to care for someone that apparently didn’t care for himself, and basically you “played yaself” as my kids say when you play such a large role in your downfall.  It’s times like this when I hate to meet eyes with some of the jaded teachers that seem so happy to say “I told you so.”  How could I reasonably be expected to find the strength or power to put the extra into yet another kid?  I looked into the eyes of a teary-eyed teacher today as I listened to her say she’s going to back out of the program she’d organized with some students as an extracurricular project.  She said it just wasn’t in her.  She didn’t have it left to give.  Although I’d been voted “Most Inspirational”  teacher  by my peers, as I looked at her standing there with pleading eyes begging me to tell her why she should still care—I had nothing.  How could I convince her of something that I wasn’t sure of myself?

I, myself, needed to be reassured.  I needed for someone to tell me why I should still give to the thankless, and I couldn’t think of anyone that could give me the boost that I needed.  But then I thought back to why I became a teacher, and of the teacher that made me realize just how cool teaching could be.  I called Mr. Calvin Leaks, my 11^th grade Pre-Calculus teacher and hoped that he could make me believe in the need to give.

I won’t rehash the entire conversation, but I’ll let you know this—I am a “born again” believer! He said to me what I’d hated to hear, “You can’t save anybody, that’s not even your job.” I keep getting that in my personal life, and now here’s that same cold ugly truth rearing its head in my professional life.  Then he said the thing I needed to hear, “Your job is to make a difference—even if it’s the difference between that child doing five to ten versus a life sentence in prison.”  He needed to say no more.  He need not convince of its truth, he need not tell me how to apply it.  I knew exactly what he was saying, and I knew exactly what it meant for me and my situation.

Some of my students are on a track that will have consequences that they cannot escape. I will continue to have days like I had yesterday, days filled with pain and grief, after all it’s the cost of doing business, it’s the nature of the beast.  But I’ll have more days like I had today—days when I can rest assured knowing that I shifted the thinking of at least one kid.  I put out a tad bit more wisdom into their teenage stratosphere and just maybe when one of my kids is faced with a dilemma and finds himself fighting the urge to give into the traps of his environment he might just remember something that I said.  Who’s to say that some of the other kids that I taught that didn’t make my heart ache didn’t do so because of something that I’d said? It’s a risk that I’m going to have to take.  If I’m going to keep teaching—really teach and do it right, I can’t do half heartedly.  You can’t give someone something with your fist closed, and you for doggone sure can’t reach these kids and teach these kids with your heart closed.  For every kid on which it seems like my love was wasted, there are two more on which it wasn’t.  Teach and love should be synonyms.  You can’t do one without the other.

In case you were hiding under a rock Friday, December 25, 2009 there seems to have been a terroristic attack aboard Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.  After watching what felt like hours of news broadcasts from both the local to national levels, I think I’m going to take a stab at recounting the story.  There was a guy on a plane.  There was a guy on a plane that departed from Amsterdam that was intended to land in Detroit. There was a guy on a plane that departed from Amsterdam that was headed to Detroit that supposedly should have gone through the TSA security checkpoints.  There was a guy on a plane that supposedly should’ve gone through the TSA checkpoints that managed to get explosives on the plane.  Not only did he manage to get these explosives on the plane, he managed to set them off and burn himself.

Now before you go through your mental Rolodex of possible terrorists’ profiles, let me tell you he is not of Middle Eastern descent.  He’s not of the mid-west farm militia mind frame.  Oh no boys and girls, we’ve got us a new type of terrorist.  Friday’s terrorist it seems is a Nigerian national that is based out of London.  Raise your hand if you saw that one coming.  I sure didn’t see it coming.  But just as sure as rain is wet, this Nigerian national is claiming, from his hospital bed, that he has deep ties to the Al-Qaeda regime.  His nationalistic origin as well as his plan of attack has me baffled.

It was not until Flight 253 was about to land in Detroit that this Nigerian national terrorist decided to employ his explosive devices.  I’m no terrorist, nor do I claim to have read the “Terrorist Handbook for Dummies,” but it seems to me that you’re supposed to deploy your devices mid-flight.  He waited until the end of the flight.  Did he fall asleep? Seriously? I’d hate to be in the room with the crew leader for this terroristic attack.  Somewhere somebody is mad as all get out.  I can see it now: “He did what? How many did he injure? What? He burned himself?”

From what I can tell, not only did he delay in deploying his devices, injuring himself in the process, he also seems to be quite talkative with the authorities.   Once again, I don’t claim to be the authority on terroristic attacks, but, if I’m not mistaken, usually these are suicide missions.  So, not only did he fail to meet that requirement, the other requirement of secrecy he seems to not be meeting as well.  Our Nigerian national seems to be quite the “Chatty Cathy.”  He’s already boasted of his extremist Islamic views as well as his ties to the Al-Qaeda network.  (I have no idea why Al-Qaeda is in my spell check.)  He has shown the authorities maps of future attacks.  He’s even told him the location of his London apartment.  This guy is like a leaky refrigerator! He can’t keep anything! You’re not supposed to tell.  Aren’t captives supposed to be willing to die with their secrets?  Aren’t governments prepared to use torture techniques to eke out valuable secrets?  I want to know who picked this guy?

Okay, so with all of that being said, it’s obvious that the security measures taken at the airports are going to be more stringent.  Already we have limited our amounts of liquids.  We’ve removed our nail kits from our carry-on bags. I travel beltless so that’s one less thing I have to remove. I have even trained myself to be okay with taking of my shoes and standing barefoot on the dirty airport floor as I place my valuables in the plastic bins and slide them across the metal counters.   I walk cautiously through the x-ray machine and hope that I’ve not forgotten to remove something that may set it off.  I’m as surprised as the examiner is when I make it through with the right number of beeps.  And I do it without complaining.  That’s more than can be said for many travelers who grumble as they throw their things in the plastic bins frantically checking their watches complaining that they’re in danger of missing their flight.

People calm down.  You picked the time of your flight, which means that you were in control of what time you needed to be at the airport. You chose to travel with the people you’re traveling with and you know their limitations.  Stop complaining about the lines, stop complaining about how it’s taking too long—after all, Friday, December 25, 2009 a Nigerian national boarded Flight 253 with explosives.  Next time, and there will be a next time, they’ll send someone better equipped and he might not only burn himself.

Tonight a record was broken.  My mother and I went to the movies.  She hasn’t been to the movies in what like seems forever.  What broke her 15 year movie drought? It could be one man, and one man only–Michael Jackson.  Yup, all credit and praise to MJ, because she sure wasn’t breaking her hiatus for anyone else.  Good ‘ol MJ.

So there I sat with my mama in the dark, at our local theater eagerly awaiting for MJ to do it for us one last time, after all “This Is It.”  As I sat watching, dancing and singing from my seat I realized Michael Jackson’s songs were more than groovy beats, shiny jackets and pelvic thrusts.  Each one of his songs actually taught a lesson.

Michael’s ”Human Nature” –that’s a song with a point.

If They Say -
Why, Why, Tell ‘Em That Is Human Nature
Why, Why, Does He Do Me That Way
If They Say -
Why, Why, Tell ‘Em That Is Human Nature
Why, Why, Does He Do Me That Way

You ever wondered why folks talk about you behind your back? Ever wondered why your friends aren’t happy about your new success? Wonder why you tend to attract haters?  In six simple words Mike provided the explanation for every unanswered question–”Tell ‘em that it’s human nature.” Six words that say it all– folks do what they do because it’s human nature.  As humans, our actions are driven by our insecurities.  What we crave and wish for that we deem unattainable, we despise in others.  What we hate most about ourselves, through our paranoia, we imagine that the whole world has zoned in on our points of shame.  Lil’ Duval, a comedian that isn’t known for dropping awe-inspiring depths of knowledge had something profound to say on his Twitter feed the other day “People care much less than you think they do.”  I cleaned it up a bit, he’s got a “potty-mouth,” but you get the point.  What Michael calls “Human Nature,” is the explanation for all that we can’t explain.

It’s our nature to back-bite, down play, degrade and tear down what we don’t understand.  Sure, we’d all like to say “I’m not like that,” but sure you are.  We’ve all had our “he/she ain’t all that” moments as we give the once over to someone that’s shown us up in some way.  You may not verbalize it as much as some well-spoken haters, but you’ve thought it.

It’s in you, shoot, it’s in all of us. Look how the whole world did Michael.  He became the butt of more than a few jokes.  You couldn’t even mention his name without parents jokingly looking around to check the safety of their kids.  And just as easily as we turned our back on the star that we all grew up with, we praised and made him larger than life when he died.    Why?  C’mon MJ already told you back in ’83–”it’s human nature.”    Don’t like it? Hey– “It is what it is….”

Just let that sit and marinate for a bit. Most things that make you unhappy you actually have the power to change. But when it becomes obvious that you can’t change it, all is not lost, because you have the power to change you. That’s the extent of your power. That’s the first thing I suggest we all stop and recognize: we have limited amounts of power in this world. In any given situation, there is a limit to what you as an individual can do. Your power is always going to be limited —except when dealing with yourself. When you are dealing with you, your power is limitless.

Almost everything you dislike about yourself, you have the power to change. And with those things you can’t change, you have the power to change your attitude and your perception. You and only you can change them from being problems to being assets.
Think your life would be better off if you were thinner? Go on a diet, lose the weight. Ladies, don’t like your hair? Think that the new style of the celebrity of your choice would add to your appearance? Either cut yours, grow some, or go buy some— but stop complaining about what your hair won’t do– change it. Don’t like where you live? Think your city is either too large or too small? That’s an easy one—move! Tired of feeling like you are in a dead-end job? Get more training and get a better job.

I know I made it seem easier than it really is, but maybe that’s how you have to look at it. Let’s stop looking at everything as being the most complicated or hardest thing you have had to do, because that’ll give you a case of the “can’ts” and once you catch the “cant’s” you might as well say: “I’m fat because I want to be.” “I have this low end job because I want to stay where I am.”

Let me illustrate this for you. Imagine you are in a room and you want to rearrange the furniture. So you start moving what you can move. Lamps, chairs and other small things are easy to move. You move those several times. Does the lamp look better over here? Or over there? Can’t decide? Let’s try it out in both places. Then there’s the heavier furniture. With a little bit more effort, you slide the sofa from against the wall to face the television. The sofa’s not as easy to move as the lamp is, but you put your back into it, and it slides across the floor. Now it’s time to move the entertainment center. You push; it doesn’t budge. You push harder, still nothing. Now you’ve got choices: 1) go and get some help, thus adding more power to the situation, or 2) realize that the entertainment center looks just great where it is!

Life is basically like rearranging furniture. Some things can be easily changed—moving of lamps, plants, and small furniture. Generally, those are cosmetic things. Some other things may take a bit more power–OR it may be one of those things that you have come to grips with–kind of like that entertainment center–”It is what it is–and it’s going to stay that way!”

Yessirrr!

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