Our lives are the bridge between the past and the future. For most of us, the daily trips across the bridge are so influenced by traditions and customs, that we take for granted the thoughtlessness of why we do what we do. We are comforted by the things most familiar and disquieted by the very presence of the future we claim to anxiously await. Any bold step we make is followed quickly (and intuitively) by the desire for the old familiarity and tradition. The very bridge we expect to lead us forward is always under construction. We add a new plank, and then tear down an entire section, in a strange ritual we have grown so dependent on that it is our only path forward. But with each progression, we regress to the point where we are collectively most comfortable. Even the most imaginative among us is forced to pay homage to the old order. As soon as we make the bold discovery that the earth is round, the flat earthers rise up with such force that it creates fear and disdain for what we now know is right and true. Slowly, we are forced to acknowledge and even embrace the flat earth theory once again.
I have always fancied myself a pioneer, unafraid to let my life take me to unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable places. Looking back, the reality of my life has always been (and remains) one step forward, followed by a struggle to adjust to my new footing, and inevitably a few steps back. In my effort to create a life unconstrained by the idea of racial boundaries, I have only managed an unbalanced stagger back and forth across an imaginary line that most Americans respect more than their religion. I was blessed to have a mother with an innate sense of where my challenges would be in trying to live an unmapped life. At times, when I have ventured into areas so uncomfortable that I felt lost, it was often my mother who provided a reassuring voice. Just as importantly, I have found friends with the intelligence to watch me struggle with the lack of books, maps, and guidelines for the life I have insisted on living. It has often been those friends who have held me up when I certainly would have surrendered, trapped between the future world I believed was around every corner and the certainty of our historic racial paradigm.
In 2nd grade, I figured out that the new reality of the integrated schools of Oklahoma City was not the simple and assured path to the future that a person my age would automatically assume, having never known another way. For a little brown boy, from a neighborhood of brown people, this was not good news. Looking back today, I am not even certain of the details that lead me to this discovery. Suddenly, I had somehow grasped the obvious and it almost destroyed me. I remember clearly, being so overwhelmed by my discovery that I hid in my closet, crying. I did not want to ruin the tranquility of those around me with the horrible news that we were "black" and some people did not want to go to school with or even be around "black". I was crying, in part, because I was saddened to have found my new reality. But mostly, I was crying because my life would be ending soon. I wasn't exactly certain when or how, but I knew with everything in me that I had turned my new problem over to the only entity powerful enough to handle the enormity of this issue. I had said my first long and tearful prayer, and in it, I asked not to have a lifelong battle with this issue. I had prayed for a quick and painless end and I was positive I would be in heaven soon. I had emphasized quick and painless, so I would probably not wake up from my sleep some day soon or something similar. Of course, I continued to wake up, day after day.
As I finished school the following week, still alive, I could not figure out how this could be. After a few more prayers and a few more tears, it was a friend (and neighbor) who advised me that my prayers would probably not be answered. Turns out, he explained, there are some very specific rules about the relationship between death and prayer and God that prohibited my prayer from being fulfilled. Also, not dying meant that God still had big plans for me, my friend reasoned. My purpose on earth must be something huge to have required such pain. Maybe I would be the world's greatest teacher, a preacher, or a doctor. Not just any doctor, but one who helped millions of people. This was the convoluted way that history reached out and pulled me back from the future I assumed was a foregone conclusion , pointing out in the process that I WILL live in the present. We all will!
Since it had taken me the better part of 3 years (from kindergarten to 2nd grade) to figure out that this integration thing was not some preordained right and that some people were unhappy about it, it seemed unlikely that I could make an impact on the situation from my current position. And so it went, in Oklahoma City, as in most of the country, we were already in the process of dismantling what had just been created under the direct orders of our highest authorities this side of The Bible. While no one disputed the correctness of what had been created, how, or why; our desires for the familiarity of the rules we had known up to that point forced the beginning of a slow atrophy of the very muscles that had just been flexed, using an awful word: integration.
Between kindergarten and college, I would only personally know two other guys living the unmapped life that I had chosen. One was a very good athlete, who happened to be best friends with the most popular kid in my high school. The other was a bigger-than-life personality, who was always the center of attention, regardless of the size of the group in which we found ourselves. Both were role models for me, from the day I met them, until our lives drifted apart as easily as they had come together. Both seemed to have figured out ways to effortlessly answer the very questions my mind could not resolve. Both gave me hope that the post racial path I was struggling to find could be obtained. Interestingly, neither has found (to this day) their satisfaction in traditional marriage and family relationships, which for me were the most important part of life. Maybe, things appeared more smooth and simple, from the outside, than they were on the inside.
Today, we (as a society) are vacillating back and forth between the solid ground that represents the post-racial world that very few of us has experienced, even for a short period, and the old world order, which is the only other solid ground we have known. On the one side, we step out an elect Barrack Obama, on the other side we struggle to adjust to the unfamiliar territory that is represented by having him as President. We are less than one year away from what appears to be the sure dismissal of Barrack. We ran full speed to the apex of our bridge, looked over and saw the future. We were immediately overcome by the uncomfortable sense of change. Feeling uncertainty, we (supporters and non-supporters) began clamoring for traditional positions to truncate the required thoughts and changes. Rather than chance change for the future, we are determined to find the comfort of our past, even as technology makes that all but impossible.
On a related note, props to J.C. Watts for his endorsement of Newt Gingrich today. For any who are considering Newt as the alternative to Obama, welcome aboard and help yourself to a plate of this food for thought. Newt (like Obama) is an academic who will scarcely settle for sweeping problems under rugs. Newt's heart, his head, and his ego will lead him to try to solve the same problems many progressives wish to vanquish. He has written endlessly about everything from charter schools to entitlement programs to yes, the future of race relations. Not only does he acknowledge the same problems, he WILL try to solve them. Furthermore, he won't wait for our bridge to the future to be completed. Without regard for the mental gymnastics, we need, to make ourselves comfortable with our incomplete bridge, Newt will dive valiantly into the water and attempt to bring us, kicking and screaming, to the future. Yes, he will talk the talk (racially) that reassures some fans of tradition, but he will also push people, left and right, beyond their comfort zones. For better or worse, Newt is a fan of high speed rail and we will all be along for the ride.
