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My father was ambitious. He worked hard and bought a ranch house in the town of  Westbury, Long Island. The house was right across from the public school I would eventually go to. The couple aspired to living out the American dream once thought of as being out of character among African Americans. My Dad  had the house, the wife and the car.  And now ready an' rarin' to go for a Junior. Then, rock solid Normality. I dropped a monkey ranch into that scheme.

Prided himself on secrecy...didn't owe it to me to tell me much...there was a pecking order in my family. As he told me, we are not equals. I am the father and you are the son. And I was his property, wanted or not; loved or otherwise. Neither had egos. They had facades. Both of them felt bad about themselves.

As wee, wee child, I thrilled to the infinity of smears that finger paints made, as if I could walk into them.

Growing up steeped in posturing, I grew to despise it. After that second grade, I became conscious that I wasn't 'at one' with African American culture. ..too much enforcement of speech patterns, points of view, even how to walk. And I thought it was mean. The SHAFT scores, snarky laughter, coded handshakes and kung fu fighting. When the Scott Joplin revival came, I thought “At last, there is black music I like.” I was not tough. Christ, I just wanted to say “Hello.” So I did, and caught hell for it, , from peers and even the white teachers that felt they were 'in the know'.
From my very start, I grew up, for better or worse (or bits of both), on the white/European cultures, whether they were drummed into me at school or...the way at home. 'Talking black' is not normal to me. I'll quit playing around and tell you I thought it was stupid.

I don't relate to being black or white. I've learned through hard knocks that I am straddling a fence. I am very much aware of the barbarism and atrocities of whites throughout history, and as I grow I learn more until my mind boggles. They have hurt my heart in ways untold. To expect whole 'acceptance' between us is to dream the Impossible Dream. Yet at times my own color has been wholly nasty to me. I feel unappreciated by my own race. I have no familial bosom to run to. “Family” means nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. I've had to raise myself. I am not conscious of having roots to anyone or anything. My family is of the people I manage to get along with.

In nursery school, we were supposed to sit cross legged on the floor…I had my own, physically impossible way of sitting comfortably; my crotch on the floor with knees bent on either side. It may have been disturbing to look at. My teachers and my mother discussed my dilemma of nonconformity, happily concluding that I was ‘special’, ‘advanced’, maybe a ‘genius’. I was given a lot of leeway and credit in this period. I was one of those ‘skilled in all subjects’ kids; I had special talents for drawing, vocabulary, and storytelling.

Lessons in art appreciation were a given at the time; My class was taken on a field trip to an op art exhibition  Me in my neat black outfit. The illusion probably would have less impact if I had been just a few years past four. I was so small, and the canvases so large. I was bedazzled. Once again, the illusion of depth on a flat surface. The whirls of lines and dots throbbed before me. I felt I could reach in. It was an exhilarating experience.

Then, back to the school. We were asked to do our own op art. That I couldn’t wrap my head around, so I did the usual four year old’s hyrogliphics  for man, house and trees, making an effort to distort it so that it could be perceived as an abstract. Encouraging photographers snapped pictures.

At home, late in the afternoon, the sun glowing duskily through the drapes, I came out of my room and heard Mommy squeal with delight. I entered the living room. She sat on the floor with the Newsday, our daily paper, on the coffee table. She held it to me. There I was, the center of an article called “From Op To Glop”; a picture at the easel, and one with my back to the camera my arms stretched out, tiny and made tinier by the humongous spiral of dots. I was front, center, and lauded. Exhilarating.

…Tinkertoys…

I consider it an unspeakable shame that my mother couldn’t have chosen a more suitable mate for herself and me. She leaned toward Bohemianism. She was curious. She was immersed in the culture of many nations. She watched Spanish speaking tv without knowing what they said. She had held an image of herself and my father in the future, sitting in the living room, each doing their own things while her LP set of “Rise Steven Sings Carmen” on the stereo. Mommy was always having inappropriate wishful images.

Before I was born, Daddy had made Mommy quit her college studies. The early years of being his property. He wanted to bind her feet. To keep her submissive and dependent..A stronger woman would have rebelled. Mommy was cowed. Manipulator and his manipulated.

I’m sensing that he went to work, learning her weaknesses and playing them. MEIN KAMPF. I’ve seen it as a characteristic of ‘conservatives’ ever since. They can’t build, so they take up a scorched earth policy, playing the personalities and fears of others’ minds so well  that the victims aren’t even conscious they’re being destroyed, so well that the victims, in all their ignorance, support their oppressor. Mommy was the ideal weakling.

The concept of  the right wing African American puzzles me. Do you want to side with those that would suppress and oppress you, and in many cases would see you dead if they could?

A characteristic of ‘conservatives’ I’ve come to recognize is a fetishism about property. They are deathly afraid of losing it. Their egos are wrapped up in it.  “They’re not gonna take my this-or-that away.” Their stuff is their identity. Such was the case of my father. He had toiled hard for his American Dream, so hard for a black man to achieve, and in the late fifties? I shudder to think of the challenges he faced. While my parents had been going through the process of moving into the house, some hooligans had flooded it. So he had earned what he had, and despised those who didn’t, or couldn’t get it too. He didn’t want to let the leeches suck away a pint.

I can actually understand such a fear, even as I disagree. ‘Conservatism’. The word means to keep the order the same. Conservatism in action has come to mean not only will I not give away…I’m going to take. Keep the weak defenseless, and consolidate your strength. This is where me and my father part. The practice of destroy.

My father was fearful of my mother having the power of additional knowledge and even a will of her own. And how do you keep the subject down? One way is violence. My father beat my mother when she got ‘out of line’. The other main way is ridicule.

After seeing these methods used so blatantly in the last decade, I can’t just laugh at the old blackfaced cotton mouthed cartoons without recognizing that they’re spawns of the Plot that has become so normalized internationally that the most well meaning aren’t conscious of it.

As I have noted, every word my father said had scorn behind it. He used his ‘wit’ to steadily demoralize his wife. Her interests, her ambitions, even her dependence were subjects for his insidious ridicule.

And what backed him up? His ownership. Mother was his property. Such a notion went unquestioned in that oblivious age. Any defense had to be earned on her own. And there was a time, after he had been abusive to her and me, she packed her bags, and there was my father in front of the door holding a hunting rifle. You and he are my property, and if you make a move, I’ll blast both of you.

My mother claimed that’s why she stayed, but I don’t completely buy it. If she had really wanted to leave, she would have found a way. She was petrified of losing the security of even a situation that lousy.