Race and Generational Pain

All right, Steve Barnes here. Just another edition of Life Writing Live. As always, if you enjoy these talks, this talk especially, be sure to like it. Share it that we know which ones are really touching people. I'm not quite as giddy today as I am sometime because the subject is a little bit more serious. So please bear with me. There's a quote in Musashi Miyamoto's book of Five Rings says, do not think dishonestly. So I'm going to try to be as honest as I possibly can about this. When I was about eight years old, my mother broke in total despair. Single, you know, divorced mother, raising two children. She stuck her head in the oven trying to commit suicide. I talked her out of it by insulting her enough to get her angry at me. I knew even then that anger was a way to mobilize fear. She was paralyzed with fear. Depression in that sense, is fear. With no one to fight and nowhere to run. And I gave her a target. She came after me in a fury. Just spanked the hell out of me. But even with the pain, it was better than watching my mom die. Yeah. No kid that age should have to think that clearly, that. Well, that deeply. It rips a hole in your heart. You never really completely recover from it. Somehow I knew what was true with that situation. I don't know how I knew. I just knew. Violence stems from anger. Anger is a mask over fear. And the greatest fears are the truths we dare not speak. Yesterday I was linked to an extensive post by a woman who descended from a mixed blood family. They hid their black blood by marrying any white people who'd have them. And then after generations tried to disguise broad noses and fuzzy hair by overreacting and associating with racists. Virulent, violent, horrible racists. And her own childhood memories are ravaged with the things that she and others did to obscure that truth, fear and shame of what they were. I told her in no uncertain terms that she was not alone, that she had a story to tell and that if she would share it, she could save lives and hearts. What was my mother's shame? Her fear, the thing that tore a hole in her heart. She was a child of rape, abuse, at the very least. I'll never know absolutely for sure. She never spoke of her father and my grandmother, we call Mommy Lula, flushed with shame and fear at the very mention of the subject. And it wasn't until after both died that my Uncle Willie, who lived with Lula, revealed that she'd been impregnated at the age of about 15 while working in the house of a white man who owned the land her family lived on. Years later, my niece Charlene traced down the probable landowner. As family mythology had whispered, he was of Scottish descent. Apparently he also had mulatto children all over Georgia. As my grandmother herself was about Obama's skin tone. Like most American blacks, it was clear she was a result of some similar sexual interactions. The power differential was so great between blacks and whites that even now the age difference, it's not possible to avoid the conclusion of rape. I can find no way to tell some happy Sally Heming story about this. I can remember the frozen mask of shame on Mommy Lula's face anytime I even approached the subject. That horribly abused girl was still alive inside her, even in the twilight of her life. A girl who had never spoken her story. I have very few pictures of my mother and have moved so many times in the last few years that those I have are buried in boxes out in the garage. But recently, my niece Charlene shared a picture with me and is one of the few that any of us have of my mother smiling. She was very, very light skinned, had been a fashion model, an Ebony magazine. It really hurt to look at those pictures. Look at that picture. See that? That thing inside her was the price of living in a world that forces you to lie or punishes you if you don't. Because that was the horrible matrix delusion that we lived in. She looked white, but one drop makes you whole. A contamination theory of race. She was black the way Wesley Snipes is white. In no sane world is someone with more than 50% X blood considered a Y. It doesn't make any sense, but my mother had a choice. Be the least of whites or be a princess. Light, bright and damn near white among blacks. And she chose the latter. Wouldn't you? She traded her light skin, her white genetics for a relationship with a brilliant, talented, dark skinned black man, Emory Barnes. They thought they'd rise to the top together. Dad was a singer, appearing in film, radio, television, in Vegas with Nat King Cole and Louis Prima. And I guess he was a pretty good bet, but he couldn't sleep in hotels where he performed. It was black success, not real success. And ultimately the system beat him and the resultant stress destroyed their marriage. Good bet that crapped out. House always wins. You know how that song goes. You can't win, you can't break even and you can't get out of the game. It's not totally true. You can kick the table over in any dysfunctional relationship. The first person to tell the truth ends the relationship and begins a new one after the divorce. My fair skinned. As opposed to what Foul. See how ugly the implications of language are once you see them. Anyway, my fair skinned mother was trapped with two dark skinned children in depressive moods. She ruminated on this, felt that having us had destroyed her life. Destroyed, in other words, we her potential to pass for white. You kids fucked my life up. She said one time. The only time I could ever remember her saying that word. Those five words devastated my sister. I think that they still echo in her mind. But somehow even then I knew that it was the pain speaking. The pain of never being able to scream. Her rage at the world. Being unable to simply say I am that Buddha baby energy. Earth below, heaven above. No one in the world like me. That is what all children are supposed to be able to feel about themselves. That's the beginning of health and self respect and love. And when you don't have that, you have nothing. If you were to ask me the most important thing I've learned from almost a half century of practicing the martial arts is the knowledge that there is no pain like the denial of your own essence. No physical death as horrific as the death of your soul. You must be who you are or you become a Romero zombie, one of the walking dead. You'll reap the whirlwind. Racists have said to me many, many times. Oh man, it's so funny. You know, they warn me of the potential cost of poking the hornet's nest, you know. Watch out Steve. Oh, screw you, snowflake. What the hell do you think I've been reaping for all the 65 years of my life? But unfortunately for you, I've learned how to ride the storm. That's what shamans do. Didn't you know that only a commitment to speaking your truth, regardless of the cost, will save you from a waking grave? So we have two pale skinned women destroyed by the same lie. And that lie existing to protect social privilege. The right to harvest the labor and sexuality of dominated people and then blame them for the damage done. Like a hit and run driver who denies he was ever there. That damage ravaging their souls to the point that the joy was sucked away, leaving only pain. To the point that the lie was internalized half the time. My mother would say, black blood is the strongest in the world. One drop makes you whole. And of course in other moods, her head was in the oven. Dear God, when I look at the pain borne by innocent people for centuries, the soul Destroying devastation wrought by lies by the corrupt stories told to them with their mother's milk. Is there any wonder why I became a storyteller and a martial artist? Any wonder why I urge that the abused, the neglected, the oppressed speak their truth and recognize that if they speak it deeply and honestly enough, they can reach anyone who is honest enough to know that we have all been lied to and told lies just to survive, that they must have the courage to filter that truth through their own spirit. So that you're not asking others to bear their cross, but simultaneously you're sharing the elevated perspective gained from being raised up and nailed thereupon. The lady who made that post about hiding amongst the neo Nazis broke my heart, reminded me of what might have happened had my own mother found safe harbor among monsters. That if she can share her story, speak her truth, she can save other souls and help them shorten the time it takes them to awaken? That if my mother had read such a story as a girl, she might have lived a longer life, better life. I might still have my mom. You never know. I couldn't save her. I could damned well save her great grandchildren and their tribe of whatever race, sexual orientation or politics they hold. As long as they see the unity of mankind, I will protect them. I will teach them. I will share what I've learned in my life with them. Or I will die trying, so help me God. Communication is the key. Storytelling is the nervous system of the body. Human writers, stop trying to be clever. You can run out of clever, but you could never run out of the truth. And the truth will set you free. Why did I study martial arts? For the courage to speak that truth. Why writing? Because it is my means of sharing that truth with the world. Why teach? Because I could not otherwise honor my teachers. And I cannot do this alone. I believe that just a few thousand awakened storytellers can heal this weary world, free us from the lies that once protected us, like fortresses that have become prisons. Learning to speak truth in the form of entertainment is the reason Afrofuturism exists and why we teach it. It says we were here before the chains. We will be here after they are broken. We rise. Tananarive and I will repeat our message weekly until we've shared that message with a million people. And if you've not been with us or want to hear it again or know someone who should register for this Saturdays, send them to www.octaviatoblackbanther.com Every human being has chains. We've all been hurt. Yes, Some more than others. And it's important to factor that in, especially when the perpetrators laugh at how badly you limp. But if pain is part of our common humanity, so is joy. If society rejects us, we can find safe harbor within our own hearts, as I did. And if you find it, you can share what you found so that other lost wanderers can find their own shelter. How many of you found shelter in books and films if you could hear what I'm saying and proper for you to tell it. There's not a person listening to this who has no wounds, has not been lied to, and has not told lies to keep themselves safe. But you can step out of that shadow. After 30 years of teaching, I've come to the conclusion that in a single year it would take about a year to transmit about 80% of the root, the seed of what I've been learning. After almost 50 years of studying martial arts and writing. Structure, process, emotional control, for God's sake, focus and the power of speaking the truth in your life. And I can deliver it all for the profit, for the cost. You know what you get for selling a single story? That's the Life Writing year long program. Just, you know, a dollar for the first month and it's available at www.lifewritingpremium.com. i hope you'll give it a try. If my words touch you and if writing is in your heart, all you stand to lose is the lies. And what you stand to gain is the whole wide world. We need your truth Namaste expression. That means that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day.