“If you don’t like me, that’s your problem. When I let it bother me, that’s my problem…. I got the sauce, you got the salt. What I care what you think about me, ‘Cause I don’t think about you at all. Real ones, they don’t talk about you they talk to you. When they can’t miss, yeah that’s when they take a shot for you. When they throw stones then you know they don’t rock with you. Don’t you ever let ‘em know that the talk got to you. I’m ‘bout my business. Father, my family, my hitters. Never paid my bills, so why pay attention?”
I’ve wanted to talk about this for a long time. Sometimes, when you find yourself stuck on what people have said to you in the past, it’s a little hard to keep moving on. I’ve considered talking openly to people about it, but what does that make me look like? Am I supposed to gossip about others in the same way that they have tried to tear me down in public? Could I even be sued for writing this thing?
“When they don’t know the story, they just make one up. Gossip, stop it, why you want to talk to me about it? Go tell he or she about it, that’s none of my business, leave me out of it. ‘Stead of subtweetin’ about it, don’t FB just be about it.”
February was a crazy month for me, and it’s still something I’d like to write about fully one day, but I just don’t think it’s time yet. Keep an eye out for my memoir at some point in the future for some of the more proper context of the images below. Here’s the basic premise: I was an African American Student Association President of a faith-based, still-considerably predominantly white institution (at least the people who make the rules are still white), and I became the target of an age-old struggle for racial reconciliation.
You’d think that you’d be supported by the people who look just like you at the school all of your family went to except for you. You’d think they’d be supportive of what you were trying to do. You’d think that they would read your message of truth and reconciliation, your call for unification against the problem. I could understand why they decided to react the way they did, but I would’ve loved if more of them just would have asked to have a productive conversation. Instead (Wow, I really don’t mean to sound so whiny, but I’m still really glad you’re here), I became the scapegoat, pulled in multiple directions.
“Start a protest! Call out your racist school! Force them to make an apology!” And if I wanted to help be a part of the solution? “Nah fam, you’re an Uncle Tom! Ain’t nobody got time for your ‘coonery’! You sold out for the White man. Your school’s apology wasn’t good enough. Don’t come to our campus with your nonsense...or else.” (Am I not good enough as a leader? Didn’t I lose sleep, skip class, and skip meals for a solid month in order to help everyone on all sides solve this crisis with strategic plans and efforts? I called leaders and pastors from all over this country who look like me, and they couldn’t even give me a call back? Instead, these pastors base their sermons on not going to my school, not being like me. It took a loving, listening, and mentoring White pastor at a PWI to stand up for me when my own people wouldn’t do it? GOD, WHAT HAVE YOU CALLED ME TO DO?)
“It’s us against the problem, not us against each other.” - Natalia Perez-Gonzalez
I mean, it’s true that my school has continuously had issues acknowledging its past. I once gave a particularly alarming example: If my school was over-a-century-old man in a nursing home, the administration acts as his nurses and doctors. The old man cannot speak for himself and cannot acknowledge all the hurt he has caused people over the century and a quarter. Since he cannot speak, you, as the administration, must. I’m extremely happy to say that they are pursuing ways to reconcile, and it’s coming straight from the top, as it should be.
I have all kinds of pictures from the past. White students in Blackface, the Confederate flag in the very same gymnasium where I created a multicultural performance night over fifty years later, and hurtful descriptions of different people groups in yearbooks.
I know the history of my school. There’s been times when a certain White, hateful, terrorist organization would monitor us. My school didn’t want to desegregate out of fear. My school was and is still known as the last White, conservative bastion. We were the school that Black students stayed very far away from, and such experiences have even continued into the twenty-first century. I knew all of this, and so did my family. Now, racism’s legacy on our campus is more apparent in the ignorant microaggressions, prejudices, fear, and actions from a minuscule group with a big mouth every Black History Month.
I knew, as SA President of such a place, that we would be attacked by a group of people or someone every February, because that was our reality, twice out of the four years I’ve been here. I had plans to defeat prejudice, fear, racial hatred, and more--I’m a big idealist. I worked with tons of people to make all of my plans happen. I came up with some ideas of celebratory banners and library media lists for the first time on our campus, even a video with our president to welcome in the month on campus. I was doing everything I could to prevent such a stupid tragedy, yet it happened anyway, and suddenly, my efforts weren’t enough. Suddenly, it was all my fault and every Black person at my school.
It’s been eight months since all of this. I’m still trying to unload, but I’ve realized it isn’t the time to talk about the full story. I want to just let this out eventually. All of it. I want to tell the world what I really experienced on my team, in my institution, from the people who look like me who were outside and always looking in...but I’m silent...for now. What good sense would it make to toxically appeal to the “call-out” culture of instant gratification? If I don’t promote healing, then what is my purpose?
“Call Out Culture” - public denunciation of perceptions based on bigotry, racism, hate…or even fashion, mistakes, gossip, etc.
My best friend recently called me out, but he called me out as only a brother can: “Phil, if you’re not giving and caring for everyone, as you always have, then you feel depressed, bored, and angry, because it’s making you selfish.” Wow. I never thought about it. For a time, me, the kid who graduated from a 32-person academy in the middle of a desert and told he would never succeed, was elevated to the highest position possible at a school with over 3000 students, and I did absolutely everything I could to believe in everyone as they had believed in me--as I had never felt I was believed in. My life for a full year was caring about everyone all the time. I walked away thinking I cared too much. Maybe I’ve always cared too much. I almost wish I could finally let go of everything, and I especially don’t want to be bitter towards all people and end up caring for no one and nothing but myself. I think that might be what’s started to happen. I’m not being the person I’m supposed to be.
“When I’m a grumpy old man, I’ma love it. I say all the things I really wanna say without the repercussions. Some people push my buttons, say wild things in public. They like LeBron jumpin’, I’m just supposed to rise above it. I need strength to not act crazy, now please, Lord. It seem like everybody is a thug behind that keyboard. Until I find they IP addresses then hire a private investigator to find the place that they rest in. Show up at they front door, calm and collected. Just to test them to see if they bold as they was actin’ in my comment section.”
At the beginning of the summer, a woman decided to message me. She was bold. She, perhaps, thought she was doing the work of a “friend” or someone sent by God to tell me what was so wrong with me.
She missed my entire point. She missed everything. She didn’t know that sometimes I pulled away from the multitudes to take care of my failing health, or to get a quick bite to eat because I neglected my appetite and ate at crazy hours of the day, or none at all. She had no idea that I, for the majority of the year, was the sole communicator for a team or a massive event no one had ever seen before. She didn’t see how people I had counted on were giving up on me only weeks and days before my biggest event.
She didn’t understand that my event was to help my school community and its sister HBCU community realize that “More connects us than separates us.” I used stereotypes to help all people comprehend the extent of their actions sometimes. Ever automatically assumed that an Asian has to be from California, extremely gifted with mathematical and scientific abilities, and should not be able to rap? Ever automatically assumed that Latin Americans and Hispanic people have to look a certain “spicy” way, cannot be darker-skinned, cannot have curly hair, and have to have curves like J-Lo? I wanted people to understand that these stereotypes, shown through entertainment, are not meant to define who we all are… I wanted people to enjoy the pieces of popular culture I employed, yet walk away with new perspectives and insight.
I didn’t care solely about the job, but the foundation, the people, and I definitely fell in love with the potential of what we had.
“You acting like a F Boyardee, if it weren’t for God, I’d destroy your teeth...Watch for the people that’s hanging with you. Bad company be corrupting the good character. You supposed to own a company, instead you just sitting on your derriere in a pair of your boxers playing Warfare on your Xbox.”
I defended this individual in meetings. When she was a leader, I supported her and felt for her when things didn’t always go well for her. I had typed out a letter after her final event to tell her how much I appreciated her leadership, and she never knew. I never sent it. Seemingly out of nowhere, she harbored some kind of resentment towards me throughout my year, and she, among others, decided to spread untruths about my leadership style, my mission, my goals. I don’t have it within me to respond to her because I feel like it wouldn’t solve anything. Writing this right now? This is my way of telling you what leadership is like, and it’s not always the celebrating at the top of the stairs like Rocky Balboa. There are those mountaintop moments of success, but privately, these moments become valleys if you listen to every little snide comment that comes your way. I grow unhappy because I easily recall the horrible things people have said about me, and the majority and overwhelmingly positive comments are somehow always faded memories.
I don’t want to be this a part of a tragic hero trope where I give all I have and then meet a romantic death. I’m sure, in your own experience, you would rather not be that individual either. I’m angry that people will always continue to take me and my work out of context. The truth is, her words and the gut-wrenching pain of the semester nearly beat me. I’m working on forgiving people like this, but it’s still taking more time than I thought. I know there isn’t necessarily a proper time frame to forgive someone or a group of people. I’m upset that it’s still taking me this long to heal and move on, but I’m realizing at the end of the day... people’s opinions and judgment? It’s none of my business.
“...[The man who is actually in the arena]...who errs, who comes short again and again; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”