An American Story

by Debra J. Dickerson

  Without having consciously chosen to, I felt ever more connected to those I’d left behind. I’d made it over the Berlin Wall, I’d ridden an inner tube to Miami; I felt more like an exile than a native, grateful and guilty for having escaped, cosmically deputized to be a living reminder of those still captive. Listening to the poor being insulted and dismissed was listening to my mama, my siblings, my childhood friends, being insulted and dismissed—how could I just go to the mall, just wash my new car? But then exactly what was I doing for them besides haranguing hapless office mates and making things worse by meddling in their affairs?

  I was devouring journals and nonfiction to understand the pass America had come to and toying with a vague, titillating notion of entering law and politics. The corporations had their congressional mouthpieces, the black bourgeoisie had theirs. Why didn’t poor blacks?

  I added the whole raft of political talk shows ( Meet the Press, Face the Nation, The McLaughlin Group, etc.) to my source list. So as to avoid commercials and superfluous TV, I taped all the shows and smoked watching them in the wee insomniac hours. God how they galled me with their glib dismissals and crocodile tears over the little people’s travails. No wonder I couldn’t sleep.

  As always, negative examples opened up whole new vistas of possibility for me. Through the papers, I’d follow the black political class openly selling out the black masses for greater access to power, or, worse, to assuage their own self-hatred. I’d gnash my teeth while white suburban representatives acted as marionettes for defense contractors and separatist, exclusionary white residents. Dairy farmers and international conglomerates on the public dole. Ethanol subsidies, money not to farm. Yet a poor kid can work hard, think she’s excelling, and graduate valedictorian of a ghetto high school without ever having performed a science experiment or written a footnoted paper. At the college she dreamed of while others sold crack, she finds out she’s laughably unprepared. It physically hurt to watch our elected representatives subvert the common good for the benefit of a few, already privileged reactionaries.

  How hard could it be, how much brains could it really take to do that? I’d fume and think. How hard could it be, how much brains could it really take to beat them, at the polls and in the halls of Congress? Just as with college and becoming an officer, or going for a graduate degree, the better I did in life, the closer my contact with elites, the more doable their accomplishments seemed.

  Who was fighting for the black poor? The black political class claimed to, then, once elected or appointed to high office, embraced affirmative action at Ivy League graduate schools as the best way to help blacks stuck in the neighborhoods. Fighting for busing instead of fixing neighborhood schools, or even starting schools of our own instead of constantly begging whites to associate with us. Fighting the eviction of troublemakers and criminals from public housing, defending murderers, stifling internal critiques. Policies that make a lot of sense when you’re drafting them in your office at Yale or the Longworth Building, but not when you’re listening to footsteps behind you as you scurry from your tenement apartment to the bus stop. Not when you hear from another elderly relative newly burglarized by a knucklehead much more likely to be represented for free by a black lawyer than she was. They couldn’t even keep patio furniture, landscaping, or a kiddie pool in their yards without some thug boldly making off with it, but black leaders couldn’t figure out how to fight that everyday battle simultaneously with the more nebulous one against white racism.

  Just as I’d needed the Air Force to fill my selfish need for a noble, meaningful mission in life and not just a job, I began thinking that working for the betterment of the working class would make me happy. The conspiracy against it was obvious, both because of my state of hyperpoliticization and because I was such a recent escapee. I hate bullies and the middle and upper classes steal the working class’s lunch money every goddamn day. It made me frantic. I scratched my TV screen flinging shoes at Reagan during his State of the Union address. Reading George Will and Joe Klein in Newsweek made me fume and, ultimately, cancel my subscription. The history books I devoured made me cry.

  Though I knew I was obsessed with race and economics, I had only the vaguest idea that it might, or should, lead me somewhere. How does one even “enter law and politics” anyway? Thinking I could do something about the plight of the black poor was like thinking I could cure cancer—noble but pretty egotistical. The notion embarrassed me in its grandiosity and messianism.

  Also, community-minded though I was becoming, I was still quite concerned with the direction of my own life. My future was bright, but far from solidified. The “Who am I? Why am I here?” questions still plagued me, though now in a positive, measuring way. I actually had hope, born of confidence and achievement, for my future. I’d always had desperation. Now I had calm cunning. All I needed was direction.

  I still believed then that the Air Force was the best place for me—constant challenges, upward mobility, travel, good benefits, lots of responsibility, little institutional racism. Nothing in civilian society could rival it. I felt strong and capable, and, most important, humble. But I was still frustrated by my distance from the everyday world of black folk. Socializing has never come naturally to me, and without my race consultant, I was at a loss as to how to proceed. San Antonio was a terrible place to decide to exercise my Négritude.

  A tiny percentage of the population, and a very quiescent one at that, blacks were actually difficult to find there. I refused to give up my hard-won spot in the middle class; that meant refusing to frequent ghetto bars. I already had a ghetto home back in St. Louis, I didn’t need another. I wasn’t going to seek out the hood just to prove something. I wanted what I’d earned—full access to all of American life and the cushy environs I could afford on my military salary and generous benefits.

  Also, it was a very interesting dynamic to be black in a city where Hispanics were a numerical majority, whites the power majority, and blacks so insignificant as to escape notice. The Hispanics were the niggers in San Antonio; white racism was directed at them. They’d be blamed for crime or depravity anywhere in the city. Occasionally, some white Air Force person expected me to help him insult them.

  An office mate’s wife complained about the theft of two wrought-iron porch chairs saying, “There were a couple of green-carders working down the block.”

  A white master sergeant gave me an inquisitive sideways glance before adding, “The problem is jail don’t mean nothing to those people. They have family reunions in there.” They waited for my reaction.

  This was a victory of sorts. My uniform, comportment, and officer’s rank had promoted me to a “daylight white”: almost, but not quite, one of them and therefore eligible to participate in the oppression of the lesser orders.

  “I’ve heard tell that white folks, on rare occasion, have been known to break the law. Some of those ‘green-carders’ might well have been in America for hundreds of years. When did your ancestors get here?”

  I refused to assimilate by joining in racist initiation rites. It’s a short trip from “beaner” to “nigger.”

  I joined the Tuskegee Airmen, a black officers’ community service and social group. It was named after the black flying outfit formed against much white opposition during World War II. They never lost a bomber they escorted.

  Quickly, it became apparent that it was more about a pecking order and the in crowd than anything else—my high school SOBI all over again (and also a preview of HLS’s Black Law Students’ Association). I went to a Tuskegee Airmen picnic early on. The men clumped importantly together while the women eyed me. No one spoke to me but the president. At the (admittedly only two) meetings I attended, I was horrified to hear agenda items tabled yet again that had been in limbo for months. Sign-up sheets for the various projects sailed round and round endlessly with few signing up to do the work. They never failed to list their membership on their résumés, though.

  The problem is careerism. Officers
are always looking for “OER fodder.” To be competitive, your Officer Effectiveness Report needed to show lots of additional duties, like military-related community service organizations. No one’s heart was in these things.

  Next, I tried simply networking at my base, Kelly, an HQ command with a few blacks. I tracked down every one I heard about and stopped every one I saw in the hall under the rank of lieutenant colonel (I couldn’t socialize with senior officers or enlisted). I’d expected we’d all be overjoyed to connect and create a haven away from our overwhelmingly white, albeit benevolent, world. I envisioned a lively circuit of weekend barbecues, card games, and to-the-beat dancing. I pictured involvement in the black community with substantive community service projects we really cared about and events we actually enjoyed. I was realizing how important it was just to be with other blacks and to not lose touch with, or become contemptuous of, the grass roots. I also looked forward to the careerist multiplier effect of all the inside info we could share with each other from our disparate perches in the intelligence community. Instead, I was surprised by how unfriendly they were. In fact, there was hostility.

  The military is an incredibly competitive place; the officer corps even more so. Impressions count for a lot in the service; the mere suggestion of seeing ourselves as black first, Air Force second, terrified them. Blacks who were succeeding at the system, I was learning, often did so by distancing themselves from other blacks. I actually saw fidgeting black majors look over their shoulder to see who was seeing them talk to me; they were terrified that they would be seen as somehow distancing themselves from the Air Force. Turnabout really is fair play—that’s exactly how I’d seen it when the Head Negro tried to involve me with other blacks at DLI. That was exactly how I’d felt to be one of only two or three at Skivvy Nine—white people would know I was different, better than those other blacks. I was a good black. I was like them—worthy of respect. I’m not suggesting that they were self-hating, just that their concern with their careers made them willing to separate themselves from other blacks so they could stand out. It was hard to get visibility in such a competitive environment; this was one cynical way to do so.

  Invariably, if a clump of three or more of us formed in a public place at Kelly, nervous jokes like “We better break this up cause we’re scaring the white folks,” or “No more than four in one spot, now. You know the rules,” were never slow to surface and provide cover for drifting off. Another part of the problem was the competition for black male officers, in critically short supply and therefore by definition desirable regardless of looks, temperament, or career. The men knew they were a hot commodity and often interpreted my overtures as amorous, the women as nefarious plots to get close to their men. Most of the black officers there were on “joint spouse” assignments which allow husbands and wives to be assigned to the same unit or at least the same base or city. Most of the couples at Kelly were joint spouse; otherwise, you’re assigned as an individual. There is a great deal of infidelity in the military—nobody trusted me and I can’t say I blame them. I wouldn’t have trusted my military spouse far from my sight either—temptation is built-in and unavoidable in uniform.

  By far, though, beyond romantic concerns, nobody wanted to abet the competition; there was value in being the only one in a unit. Blacks bemoan the “one nigger” syndrome in American life wherein one black per institution or career is allowed to achieve greatness and that’s supposed to be enough for the rest of us. In the military, perversely, blacks often tried to enforce the “one nigger” rule. Too often, a black who was doing well wanted to be the only one in his office, command, or even career field. (I saw this with women, to a lesser degree, as well.) If they couldn’t be, they could at least freeze you out and try not to be in the same place at the same time with you. I was competition. Blacks continually lament the coldness and cronyism that typifies whites’ way of doing things, but we’re no different when we get the reins in our own hands.

  I was appalled by how careerist they were; I never believed that a checkmark in someone else’s column was a minus in mine. There’s room for everyone to succeed and talent will out. Besides, all-white groups weren’t seen as suspicious—why should all-black ones be? They wouldn’t, I believed, if we’d just stand our ground, but we never did. Frequently, I heard insignificant events analyzed through the prism of cutthroat competition. For instance, I’d be chatting with some black officer about a party or a community event and they’d dismiss it saying, “I don’t see how that’s going to help me get promoted.” I was all about getting promoted too, but not to that degree. Nobody can argue that blacks don’t make the most of the military, and I was proud of us—but there were other things in life.

  I gave up on plugging into a community of black officers—if there is such a thing, I probably fenced myself off from it with my head-on attempts to gain entry. Even so, ever the daughter of Eddie and Johnnie, I tried one more brave but naive thing before giving up on prying my way into a black community.

  I went alone to bars. The very few women I knew were all Air Force, all married, not interested in nightlife. I had no choice but to go alone or stay home with Mama.

  I girded myself with feminist reasoning to stifle Daddy’s voice telling me I was a harlot, and spent a few nights trying to find some black middle-class nightlife. Looking back on it, I can’t figure out how I summoned the fortitude to go out alone more than once; perhaps the difficulties made me stubborn. But I wouldn’t do it again, not in the prim heartland. If a woman insists on acting like a man (i.e., moving about at night without a male escort) she is a presumptive whore and deserving of the male violence she is all too likely to receive.

  I’d park under lights and very close to the entrance, even if I had to drive around till someone left. Even so, men, who for some reason like to congregate around their cars in parking lots, yelled terrible names, threw things, or taunted me with rape threats (“You know you want it”) as I made my way unescorted. Their comments made it clear that my being out alone at night where the fertile congregate meant I wanted sex. I may have been out of GI Korea and that prostitute-rich environment, yet as long as I was without a man or a group of women, I was undeserving of respect.

  I refused to scurry. I refused to look away. I refused to respond in kind. I did, however, put a baseball bat in my trunk and a switchblade in my purse. I was tired of taking abuse, tired of being afraid, and tired of waiting passively for my next victimization.

  In Korea once, a white GI followed me as I left the Stereo alone at 2 A.M. With no help in sight, I angled my path gradually, and when he’d followed me to the middle of the deserted street, I whirled to face him. Taken aback, he stammered something about wanting to tell me I had a great ass. I just stared at him, waiting to see what he’d decide to do. He scurried off.

  In Maryland, there was a spate of rapes at the nearby mall area I frequented for its movies. I cowered at home for a few weekends, as the local authorities and Bobby recommended. Then, furious at my purdah, I resumed my outings while openly brandishing a tire iron and making evil eye contact with every passing male. I knew I looked insane. I was hoping I looked insane because I was ready to hurt the next person who tried to stop me from going about my business simply because I have a vagina.

  San Antonio was no different. During his first visit, Bobby, of course, found the happening black dance club immediately. While I waited at the bar for him to finish a seduction attempt, a man sidled up and asked to buy me a drink. I declined, knowing that Bobby would return and start trouble. To atone for not having protected us as teenagers, he now tries to kill any man who talks to his sisters. In a club environment, where men are particularly stupid, I knew a confrontation would likely get ugly. For the entire time Bobby was gone, that man stood six inches away calling me vile names and threatening me since “I thought I was too good.” Knowing that Bobby would kill any man he saw me struggling or arguing with, I never said a word. I never broke eye contact, but I never said a wor
d. Bobby came back and the man vanished into the crowd like a wisp of smoke.

  I was tired of taking abuse, tired of being afraid, and tired of waiting passively for my next victimization.

  I didn’t know how to use the switchblade I carried, but I did know that cowards would crumble if I stood tall. (Also, I knew that many whites think all blacks are street savvy and familiar with weapons—they’d assume I could handle such a ghetto tool and back down.) If they didn’t, what could I do but go down fighting. Paw Paw used to tell us how to fight our way out of a crowd: “Just grab one of em. Any one. Beat that one plumb to death no matter how many licks the others give you. The one you’re whipping will make the others back off.” That was my plan—to leave scars and go down with my eyes open. The very thought of cowering at home like I had no right to move about my own country made me sizzle. I was afraid, I’m still afraid, of men and their violence, but I’m just not going to let it keep me home.