I don't know what to name this, pt. 1

Prelude

I, as the rest of you, creatively write. Some things just come to me, some things I take from someone's life (or my own) and expand it to the point of which you can't trace it back. For this one, I don't know...I don't know what to name it, so help me out.

As you read, you will come to find out that there is dialogue between one and a group of people, students. You will also find that there is flashback. The first character, and the one who does most of the talking, is seemingly a teacher lecturing students. Enjoy, and help me out! I am horrible with titles! Read:

I ate a slice of bread this afternoon.

That was my breakfast. I didn’t even have bottled water to go with it, so I drank out of the faucet.

I guzzled the last of the cranberry juice in the fridge this morning when the landlord came and told me I had until the end of the weekend to get out.

In case he wanted to have an in-depth conversation, I’d rather have cranberry juice on my breath than the smell of the morning.

This was life. Everything was fine at the beginning of the month. I was working at a steady rate, paying my bills on time—everything was carrying on the way it was supposed to.

And then I graduated. That’s when life started to smell like the piss and vomit that are the cologne and shower gel of the homeless.

I make that reference because I might be their roommates soon.

Everyone makes a big deal when you graduate—and I guess for some, it is a big deal. And it is a big deal—just in different ways.

The typical college student has a minimal amount of academic-related debt when they graduate. Their parents usually pay their way through school, and some might even pay their loans as a graduation gift.

The typical student is privileged—they are taught that they can have whatever they want, and their parents bring them up that way—privileged and spoiled.

They could fail out of school and still land a well-paying job, just because of the profile that daddy has, or the fact that mommy has connections.

More power to them—that’s fine.

But there’s problem when they don’t notice, as a whole—family and all—what they have. The fact that they’re privileged—they’re blind to it. The realization that they have a head start—a huge one, over us, is a myth to them. It’s just normal life to them.

Work hard, get rewarded—is that the way it goes? Sure…in theory. But in practice…not so much. Barriers, unspoken requirements, profiling, and the many other pounds of the locks and chains post-getting out of the locks and chains that were 200 years ago, are still prevalent.

And they’re the same ones to complain…about how their life sucks because they didn’t get the dog that they wanted, or they couldn’t find the hair gel or the eye makeup that they saw in the latest edition of Cosmo.

I oughta slap the shit out of you. How insulting could you be? But you don’t even do you? And your air-headed ass wonders why there’s still tension.

Look around you…really look—analyze, outside of your farm, outside of the mall, outside of the coupe—look.

It’s a different world out here, ladies and gents—and you need to take notice.

Mothafuckas will kill you—just to get that purse or that necklace, and sell it, so that they could get that loaf of bread. Some dude just last week on the corner of Plainfield and Liberty killed a dude for his wallet—the reason?

He needed diapers for his newborn son.

I remember sitting in the dining halls and eating nasty ass school lunch everyday, and the processed frozen food dinners every night in college, while some people had their gourmet meals—or a Wendy’s hamburger.

Everyday, I just wanted to slap their tray out of their hands, so that their food and drink would hit the floor—so I could pick it up…and eat it.

But I held on…I knew better days were coming for me—darkness before the dawn right? Sure, only for those who really want it…

The difference between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois is that Washington wanted us to conform to the system—to settle, to just do what our so-called masters told us to do, and eventually we would progress. Progression through conformity—that’s not taking charge.

On the other hand, Dubois wanted us to create our own shit. To support our own folk—and not conform, why make money for the same people who deprive us (I didn’t use the word ‘deprive’ in its past tense for a reason) of every single liberty that we are entitled to?

Instead, Dubois put his money on the Talented Tenth—the theory that one in 10 black men would become leaders of the world through continuing their education, writing and publishing books, and becoming directly involved in social change, which included establishing black institutions to train and lead black people.

That was the early 1900s—and we could still cling to his theory.

This isn’t a testament or a question of how far we have come through over a century, but a celebration of the fact that W.E.B. Dubois was so far ahead of his time, like Shakespeare was. But he’s painted as a villain who turned his back on country and fled.

Shit…if I had the money—I’d flee, too. Nonetheless, students, Dubois preached in layman’s terms, that in order to progress—you have to take it.

Grab progress by the horns, because as the rest of the bull’s body moves, the horns stay still.

Grab the horns, look it in the eye—and take it down—it’s like a social rodeo.

There will always be the elite—and we have to invest in our elite, and convince them to help us—to invest in us.

He later said that leadership could arise from any level and that social change should happen on every level, and we shouldn’t only depend on the elite.

Dual consciousness—and not that sociological bullshit that they try to teach you, about how it involves one person with two inconsistent trains of thought—is what needs to be really understood by every human on the planet.

We have to not only understand, but EMBRACE how we are seen by other people. How blacks are seen by whites, how whites are seen by blacks, how Latinos, Asians, and everyone else, are seen by each other. We have to read into it—we have to understand and embrace it—and act accordingly—or you won’t last long.

Now, of course there are exceptions—but let’s not get our heads too far up our own asses.