Chapter 15: Wuder

ADSS Presents Genesis

I have been influenced by the same systems I attempt to deconstruct in this book. For many years, I internalized the racist and stereotypical beliefs that I’ve grown to be more aware of. I wasn’t even sure of what that meant a few years ago. Times change. Sometimes fast.

It was a mind-boggling experience to I realized all the ways I had taken perceptions from the outside world, and unconsciously merged them with myself. I couldn’t tell the difference; I was a liquefied smorgasbord of everyone’s opinions, except my own. Those opinions resulted in patterns of behaviors that would manifest as a lack of faith in myself. Those behaviors led to stagnation. Rinse and repeat. It wasn’t all at once, it’s been a process, but my awareness of those behaviors has become clearer over time.

It reminds me of this joke by a writer, David Foster Wallace. Funny enough, the first time I heard it, fittingly, I didn’t understand it’s meaning. If you’re unfamiliar, here it is,

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

My awakening to the way I internalized beliefs was much like the fish who wonders what water is in the joke. I was just a fish swimming in water. I can’t pretend to be the most knowledgeable person, but the revelation shook me to my core.

Internalized racism felt like a blocker from knowing myself. Therefore, by extension, it also became a blocker to knowing or teaching my students well.

It started early. Being young and impressionable, I noticed by 4th or 5th grade, there was the social expectation to dress what like was seen on TV and the media. Rap was exploding on the scene as a cultural force to be reckoned with, and this provided examples of what black men looked like to me, separate from my father, with whom I didn’t have a strong relationship.

Rappers, athletes, politicians now and then, served the majority of roles I saw black men perform. The entertainers, the rappers and athletes, were also known to many of my classmates. This served as the foundation of what it meant to be “black”. Something visible to all of us. These were celebrities, so they must be good at what they do. So, they represent the best of the group you represent. It all made sense without being laid out.

This definition of black immediately caused confusion for me. Living in a middle class home, with both my parents, I felt disconnected by the main stream portrayal of blackness. One constantly in the mires of poverty. One that disrespects, and there is no punishment, only laughs. One that is popular, that attracts attention. I was not that.

My peers on the other hand, though they may not have had what I had at home, felt a deeper connection with what they saw on TV. It was nothing to dress like their favorite rappers or athletes. For, in them, they saw themselves. What I saw was strictly entertainment.

This isn’t to say it didn’t have an affect on me. It did. It made me unsure how to show up in the world.

I went on a trip, maybe it was for Boy Scouts or something similar, but it was warm out. We were at an amusement park. We had stopped for a bit, in front of the urinals, for a short bathroom break. Right outside, there was this small rectangular patch of turf. Me and the other boys began tossing a football around. I was proud because I could throw farther than them. I felt like an athlete.

I remember I was wearing quite the the outfit: a pair of blue and orange Syracuse University basketball shorts, a, backwards, royal blue NY Giants Jessie Armstead jersey (a famous football player, my first name is Armstead), and at least two headbands on my head. One gray. One black. I was trying to copy what I saw on TV that day.

To the other white kids, I was just doing what they saw other black kids do. To my dad, I looked like an idiot. To the white fathers, they probably thought-- Odd, but typical. And kept going about their day.

This constant negotiation with myself of what side I would align with, wasn’t something discussed in my family. If anything, my parents were disappointed I didn’t hang around with more black kids growing up. It was just a natural process of growing up, stuck between what I saw on TV, and what I was living.

While I admired the skill and artistry of the entertainers I loved, their style of dress wasn’t authentic to who I was. I began to notice it often had a negative connotation too. To be associated with that style, and what mainstream defined as black culture, was to group yourself into the notorious category of being a “thug”, for black boys.

Those that dressed similar to that, were seen as threats. Dangerous. Boys likely to cause fights. Not have attentive parents. Not focused on school. Rebellious, and not in the James Dean way. The intermingling of the media’s portrayal, alongside the stereotypes of who gets incarcerated, circled my mind. Who did I want to be?

These implicit messages began to create a fear of that form of blackness. It’s dangerous to get to that point, because it ends up profiling folks that are simply dressing that way to fit in.

As clothes began to signal to others, who you were, and things you were into, I noticed how I was dressing differently than my peers. And slowly, they did too. Being called an “oreo” or a “white-boy” were names I had sporadically heard about myself. I dreaded if anyone said it in public, as I didn’t ever have a rebuttal. At that time, I felt they were right. I just didn’t look or act like what we saw on the TV, and I had no defense.

This led to me not always associating with other African Americans in social spaces. It felt safer to be around those that were different from me. Early on, I understood that as more accepting. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned it was more from a lack of relational substance.

I would imagine, on the other end of the spectrum of self-hate, a different reflection, because it’s being refracted from a different color. One that is displayed as passionate wave for one’s heritage, though, it truly being a banner meant to obscure one’s own confusion and loss of direction, in a maddeningly contradictory world. Self- hate has different hues on its surface.

As I began to associate less with peers who looked like me, I began to, subconsciously, despise the aspects of myself that were different. I desired characteristics that would get me accepted by my non-black peers. One thing I particularly became proud of was my uniqueness. While my first name is Armstead, a very serious and respectable name to others, I chose to go by a nickname I picked form myself when I was young, Army. Maybe just to be more palatable. Maybe because I didn’t like my name because my father gave it to me. Who knows. I feared black classmates that seemed too street or tough. I assumed they wouldn’t like me. That they would call me white.

Around my non-black friends, I didn’t feel I had to change to be around them, but I did feel like I couldn’t express or connect with them with all my interests. My love of hip-hop, or general black pop culture, were outside of their wheelhouse. To be accepted, I had to forfeit aspects of myself. I was in the shallow end.

Entering the classroom I was unaware of all these factors impacting my worldview and choices as an educator. My biases had formed, largely unchecked. While posing an idealistic young black male teacher to the outside world, my insides projected distorted refractions of my own experiences.

How could I truly teach, understand my students, and embed myself with the larger school community, all of which were mainly black during my teaching career, when I had taught myself to disassociate from blackness?

I never became the teacher I aspired to be.

I drowned in my own internal seas.