Miseducated

by Brandon P. Fleming

  In the end, I did not choose Furman. It was also likely that Furman would not have chosen me, due to my transcript. My overall high school GPA was low and I scored in the lower percentile of the SAT. My best chance for playing Division I basketball was to find a school with more forgiving academic requirements. I chose Liberty.

  I’d first heard about Liberty’s basketball program from my high school coach, who had been a player there decades before. He pitched me to Coach Dunton and the coaching staff, and we’d courted each other for a few years. I’d visited the campus to meet the coaching staff and team and enjoyed the five-star treatment. Given this, I was puzzled when I was invited to a recruitment camp but there was no official offer. I soon discovered that Coach Dunton had moved on and a new coach was on his way from another university with a fleet of his own high school recruits. Among them was Seth Curry, younger brother of Steph Curry, the future NBA Hall of Famer. We were both guards, which dramatically reduced my chances for a scholarship. Staff members who’d previously worked for Coach Dunton, however, kept advocating for me. And that’s why I got a chance to compete for a position at recruitment camp.

  I arrived at camp determined to prove myself. I was not intimidated. I had already committed to Liberty for the fall semester, confident that I would earn my position on the team. My performance at camp would ascertain a scholarship. This was my plan.

  Training camp started in early August a few weeks before classes. I signed up for courses only if they were compatible with the basketball team’s practice schedule, never doubting that I would be on the team. My aunt drove me four hours from Greenville to Lynchburg, Virginia, for the week-long camp. I was ready. And I carried a chip on my shoulder knowing that this coach did not want me as much as the former coach did.

  I planned to challenge Seth the first chance I got. But guarding him was a lot more difficult than it looked. He could shoot from just a few steps beyond half-court. And if you decided to play him close, he could blow by you with one jab step or hesitation.

  Then the time came to show them what I could do. I had just plucked the ball from my opponent and was charging toward the goal on a fast break. No one was in my path. It was just me and the goal, a perfect opportunity to showcase my high-flying ability. All eyes were centered on me as I exploded toward the basket. But as I gathered my feet and powered up to take flight, I felt an excruciating tear in my left knee and went crashing to the floor. It was supposed to be a slam dunk. But it turned out to be the end of my career.

  “You can try again next year,” one of the coaches said. I limped out of the gym to be carried back home. I was damaged goods. And with no scholarship offer, I was expendable. My aunt tried to comfort me, but I was a stone wall. I stared out the window in silence as we made the four-hour drive back home. My future was derailed and I had reached a dead end. Doctors said surgery was not necessary and my knee would heal on its own. But time proved otherwise: my tendon eventually ripped so severely that my kneecap was dislodged, requiring emergency surgery. After ten years of thriving on the court, it was all over. I lost my passion. I lost my purpose. I lost my identity. I had nothing left but school.

  That I was in college was a miracle itself. But I was eighteen years old and had stepped into a world I knew nothing about. I had not learned a thing since middle school, or before. I had never read an entire book. I did not know how to write essays. I knew nothing about thesis statements or citing sources. My SAT scores were so low that I was put into remedial, 100-level English and math courses. Even those were hard for me.

  Here’s the irony: I was a thuggish young man attending the largest ultra-conservative evangelical Christian university in the world. I was clearly an outsider stuck in what felt like a religious dystopia. Worse than the academic requirements were the social ones, also known as “The Liberty Way.” At most colleges, the list of offenses that will get you kicked out is relatively short: don’t plagiarize, don’t harm people, don’t harm yourself—more or less. But not at Liberty. Here, the code of conduct banned everything from alcohol to tobacco and premarital sex—both on campus and off. So if I happened to be a twenty-one-year-old senior and school leadership discovered that I enjoyed a cigarette, beer, or sex with my girlfriend ten miles away from campus, I would still face reprimands, fines, and the possibility of expulsion. Girls and boys could not visit each other’s dorms. Grown-ass students were not allowed to use profanity, watch R-rated movies, or even play M-rated video games. Curfew required us to be in our dorms by 10 p.m. If we wanted to leave for the night, we had to sign out and tell our resident assistant exactly where we were going and provide a contact to confirm. If that was not enough to ensure that we stayed on the straight and narrow, chapel attendance was mandatory every other day. I wondered to myself whether doing all this would get GOOD CHRISTIAN stamped on our diplomas when we graduated.

  The one positive thing that happened to me that semester was no positive thing at all. I was introduced to politics, which was good. The circumstances, however, were not. Years of sleeping in government class left me clueless about what it meant to be a citizen. I knew only four things about politics: a white man’s presidential term was ending, a Black man was running, I ain’t know shit about him, but I planned to vote for that nigga.

  Even those of us who cared nothing about Barack Obama wanted him to win. I did not know what policies he stood for. I did not know his voting record in the Illinois Senate. I knew he was a Democrat, but all I knew about Democrats was that they seemed less racist than Republicans. Many of us approached Election Day with such hope, eager to tell our descendants that we watched America elect its first Black president. I only regret that we were at Liberty University when it happened, because the atmosphere was full of tension.

  On November 4, 2008, we gathered in Vines Center to watch the election results stream on the Jumbotron. Many of us did not feel safe. Some even feared for their lives as the campus erupted in civil unrest.

  Barack Obama’s election struck deep chords everywhere in the United States, of course, but it resonated with us in a particular way. In a 2007 article in The Nation magazine, a reporter writes about Jerry Falwell Sr., Liberty University’s founder, crusading against civil rights and publicly denouncing the Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregation in public schools. The article quotes Falwell preaching to his congregation and declaring from the pulpit, “The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.” That line, of course, was the color line. “The true Negro,” he continued, “does not want integration.… He realizes that his potential is far better among his own race.”

  It is also said that the Baptist minister wanted Black people nowhere near his new segregation academy in 1967. Although this might seem an inherently un-Christian stance, Falwell used scripture to bolster his prejudices. Falwell founded the Moral Majority, a prominent American right-wing political organization devoted to upholding Christian values in government while skipping the part about all of us being born equal as children of God. Many racist Christians who share this belief trace their defense of segregation to the tenth chapter of Genesis. The sons of Noah, in their view, were the progenitors of distinct ancestries. They believe that Europeans are the descendants of Japheth, who are God’s chosen people, and that Africans are descendants of Ham, whose lineage was cursed by Noah and given black skin as punishment.

  In fairness, it is also said that Falwell eventually disavowed these racist beliefs. But it’s hard to imagine that any institution with those origins could ever truly purge itself of a prejudice that is cultural, codified, and systemic. While reformation is possible with new management, new policies, new practices, it seemed that the seeds of racism were dormant in the soil of that institution. And in due time at Liberty, those seeds began to sprout like weeds through a manicured ground cover of superficial tolerance. Those weeds pushed their way into view on election night.

  Black students h
eld Obama signs. White peers snatched and ripped them to shreds.

  Black students cheered with joy. White students protested with rage.

  Black students taunted whites. White students slung slurs in response.

  Black McCain supporters hid. White Obama supporters hid, too.

  A white guy reportedly prowled the campus with a chain saw, yelling, “Run, nigger, run!”

  A friend said she and a girlfriend were followed through town by white men chanting, “Niggers get lynched in Lynchburg.”

  Black students were beaten.

  White students were assaulted.

  Black. White. That night, that’s all we were.

  The night felt like The Purge. It was a public display of moral abandonment—at the largest evangelical Christian university in the entire world. One of my former professors describes the election result as having “divided our campus in the same way the O.J. Simpson verdict once divided our nation.”

  The air was thick the next day. It was as quiet as a ghost town. Some students wore all black to symbolize the death of America. Chalk inscriptions on the sidewalks read, “Obama’s America… we’re NOT gonna take it!” People called Obama the Antichrist. Classrooms and cafeterias were so somber that it felt like someone had died. Most classes continued. But some classes were canceled by professors who were stricken with Republican grief. I heard about one math teacher who tried to press past her tears but dismissed class after a few minutes because the weight of Obama’s win was simply too devastating to bear. The color divide was wider than the Red Sea, and it would take a miracle of biblical proportion to part.

  I was displaced at a predominantly white institution. Growing up, all I knew was Black people, basketball, and real nigga shit. I did not know anything about the academics they were teaching or the politics I was experiencing at this school. All I knew was that my heart hurt. We were not even allowed to hang Obama posters on the walls, yet the hallways were adorned with Republican propaganda. I could not understand why they hated this man so much. Was he that evil? Were his policies that threatening? Or was he just Black?

  It all confirmed what I had already known: college was no place for me. At the end of it all, I said, Fuck this lame-ass school shit. Especially since I could no longer play ball. I accepted the withdrawals and Fs on my transcript. I packed my belongings and went back to Greenville. I was relieved at the thought that I would never have to suffer through school again.

  “I love you,” Aunt Carolyn said, “but if you ain’t in school, you can’t stay here.” I understood. Plus, the house was crowded with her own grown children and little grandchildren. There was certainly no room for me. So I found other couches to sleep on. I migrated from house to house until my friends’ parents tossed me out the front door like Jazz in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I was on my own, adapting to life as a college dropout and struggling to make a living. Pyramid schemes made me a fraud. A call-center job lasted only a few weeks. Then the temp agency placed me on an assembly line at the vitamin factory where my life became an endless cycle of monotony and despair.

  I lost hope. I needed help. I was losing my mind and using unhealthy ways to cope. I turned back to drugs after being clean for nearly two years. I was lower than I had ever been. It felt like my face was mashed against the asphalt. I prayed the mantras of my cousins and brother and told myself to get my bitch ass up. But I couldn’t.

  When I dropped out of college, I had lost my golden ticket, the only path to a better life. When I walked off the vitamin factory job, I could see no future at all for myself. I stared down into a dark abyss of depression, and instead of reaching for a steadying hand, I reached for the pills that promised relief. I was ready to die.

  When I woke up in the hospital, I could not tell my mom what I had done. I was too ashamed. Aunt Carolyn broke the news to her, and when she called, I did not want to answer. I wanted to avoid the break in her voice and the silence after she asked, “Are you okay?” I said yes. But I was not.

  I wanted to hide from her preachy platitudes about going to church and getting right with God. He could not fix her. So how could he fix me?

  I dreaded the soft and coddling voice she would use because she thought her usual no-nonsense tone would fracture my fragile spirit. “I’m not crazy,” I told her—the same way I told the nurse during the in-patient psychiatric assessment.

  I did not want my mom’s compassion. I did not want her religion. I just wanted to die, because dying seemed so much easier than living.

  “Come back home,” she said. She felt so sorry for me that she was willing to break her rule against housing her grown-ass children. Mom was back in the DMV, adjusting to life as a veteran and struggling to manage Ben. For years, he’d paid attention and absorbed all the real nigga shit that my cousins taught me. He was a real nigga of his own, and my mother was defeated by the continuation of a family cycle.

  “I can’t, Mom,” I said. “There’s not even enough room for me there with you and Ben.” I could not let my mother take care of me. The pinch of pride that I had left would not allow it. She had retired from the army, she didn’t have a job, and she was taking care of herself and Ben in a tiny two-bedroom apartment. There was no honor in living on my mother’s couch. I would sponge off friends again before doing that.

  I told her that I was fine, but she knew otherwise. Her failures and my own were tangled together like a nest of snakes. For years, she had beaten herself up, wrestling with her past decisions and the lasting consequences for her children. A part of me resented her. Why couldn’t she have done better for me? Why couldn’t she have done better for us? I looked at former basketball teammates who were now thriving in college because their parents had given them stable homes and family dinners and expectations of good grades and allowance and an inheritance and a good fucking credit score. Look at me now, I thought, because Mom didn’t give us any of that shit. It seemed like all I had inherited was trauma from the toxic people that she’d put around me. She knew this, too. And though she could not change the past, she made a sacrifice that would change the trajectory of my future.

  “I want you to go back to school,” Mom said.

  “Mom, you know I can’t go back to school,” I replied, annoyed at the suggestion.

  I did not just drop out; my transcript was decorated with Fs and Ws. This meant no financial aid for me. No one in my family could afford tuition. And even if they could, my track record did not make me a promising investment. Going back to school would take a miracle. A miracle that suddenly appeared.

  “I want you to use my GI Bill,” Mom said.

  “Your what?” I asked.

  She explained that the GI Bill enables veterans to receive a free education after discharge or retirement. Like my mother, many veterans struggle to find jobs—and this benefit makes it possible for them to earn a degree and start a new life after the military. Alternatively, they can choose to transfer these benefits to their children. I could not believe what Mom was saying. She was willing to give up her second chance so that I might have one.

  “No, Mom, I can’t do that,” I said, knowing that Mom had no path after retirement. She had no passions, limited skills, and needed an education to find work. The GI Bill was her only chance at a better life. It was her golden ticket.

  “You are my son,” she said. “I need you to take this, please.”

  Tears welled in my eyes. I did not want to do it. It did not feel right. But I remembered regaining consciousness in that hospital bed, bristling with tubes and wires, gazing at the ceiling half-blinded by tears, making a promise to myself and to God. I knew I’d broken promises to God before: in the high school bathroom stall, encounters with the police, and many times thereafter. But this time I was desperate. I promised God that if I was ever given another opportunity, I would take it. I would run faster than I had ever run before. On that hospital bed, I’d prayed for a miracle. The miracle had happened. She was on the other end of the phone, waiting for me to
say yes. After all that we had been through, my mother was my miracle. She became my golden ticket.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  RENAISSANCE IN ME

  I returned to college with far more ambition than agency. I had a newfound sense of self and a passion to succeed, but the academic knowledge of a middle schooler. I was a convalescent suicide survivor, grappling with mental instability. I did not know where to begin. But I was eager.

  Liberty was all I had known. And after slaving on a factory assembly line, reading books, writing essays—abiding by “The Liberty Way” didn’t sound so bad. I was simply grateful that they’d taken me back. When I met with my academic advisor, he fingered through my transcript with a look of concern. “You have a semester full of Fs and Ws,” he said. I explained that I’d withdrawn from school and dropped out a few years back. He scrolled through my record on the screen. I hardly had a GPA, and my status read “Academic Warning,” meaning I could not afford any more failed grades or withdrawals.

  This was my second time around and I had to start over as a freshman. “We’ll have to put you in CLST and 100-level courses,” he said. The College Learning Strategies course was designed for students needing academic intervention.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  He answered, “For remediation.”

  “Remediation?” I yelped, rearing back in disbelief. I felt disrespected. In my high school days, that was a curse word. My teammates and I bullied the nerdy, bookish kids by calling them “remedial.” We’d give them wedgies, stuff them in trash cans, trip them in the hallway and yell, “Get your remedial ass up!” The joke was on me, apparently. It dawned on me that I had no clue what the word actually meant. I thought remedial described someone that was lame or corny or a bitch ass nigga. Now I was being called remedial by a Steve Urkel–looking white man, the archetype for the nerds I had once tormented out of ignorance. I could do nothing but shake my head and stare at the floor, amused at how the tables turn.