Category — Ablacknophobia

The "White" Wiz (source: San Franciso Sentinel)

A few weekends ago when I had run out of activities for the girls and I to partake in together, I passed the local high school on the way home from swimming lessons. The drama department was putting on a production of The Wiz. The Babies must have seen the movie starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Nipsy Russell about 30 times with their mom. Not the greatest movie but hey, they love it. (I saw the Broadway musical for my fifth birthday and I still remember how awesome it was.) Now I don’t keep a running tally of their cinematic viewings. These numbers are more guesses gauged from how well The Babies know the theme songs of movies and how often they sing them in the car or the bathtub. The only thing in heaver rotation than “He’s The Wizard!” right now is “It’s A Hard Knocked Life” from the Annie movie. Maybe they’ve seen Annie 40 times.

After seeing the sign for the play, I thought beautiful! I had mentally killed another few hours of entertaining the girls. I would just take them to see The Wiz. When I excitedly shouted to the girls, “Who wants to see The Wiz at the high school?”, C-Thunda predictably says, “Meeeeeeeee!!” But then T-One party-poopingly says, “Dad, you can’t take us. Mom is going to take us next week.” I must have given out a sigh of disappointment or something because C-Thunda immediately consoled me by letting me know I could take them both to see the “white” Wiz instead.

“The ‘white’ Wiz? Baby, what’s the ‘white’ Wiz?”

“You know. The one with the white people in it.”

“Ahhhhh.”  [Read more →]

Attorney General Eric Holder issued a challenge to all Americans when he said we are a nation of cowards when it comes to discussing the issue of race. Stephen Colbert took on that challenge by facing his ablacknophobia and he conquered it. Well, almost. Hey, at least he attempted. If only we were all so brave. At least we are off to a good start at BPC.

Flickr by 77krc

So daughter number one (Thing One or T-One) complained to me the other day that she had to do yet another paper on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She then went on to explain how she’ll have to do a paper a year all the way up through middle school. Still being of single digit age, I doubt my daughter has any real understanding of King’s significance, especially in the Obama era.

I asked her what was wrong with writing a paper a year on King. She responded that she was running out of things to say. Mind you, each paper so far has been a one paragraph essay. She went on to explain, “All he did was help end segregation!” (As if that’s some small feat.)

My mother (The Duchess), who was in earshot, gasped. “All he did?” My mother grew up in the segregated south, participated in sit-ins and marched on Washington in ’63. So to her saying that s all King did was, well, a little disappointing. But my mom wasn’t so disappointed in my daughter. She was disappointed in me. Somehow I had dropped the ball in making my daughter aware of her history. Where we had been as people of color in this country and how far we had come.

“That little girl needs to know!”  [Read more →]