Thread by @BlanksSlate, This Black History Month, I want to tell a story--small part confession, [...]

This Black History Month, I want to tell a story--small part confession, mostly biography and reflection--about how BHM started me on the path to be the person and writer I am today. 1/??

I went to high school in the early 1990s; the racial demographics of the school were roughly, not accounting for relatively small numbers of Hispanic and Asian students, 50/50 Black to white students with Black students heading toward majority as white flight was well underway

From kindergarten through 3rd grade, I had attended a magnet school in the city's major school district. It was a pilot program that skewed heavily toward gifted & talented and diversity--though I don't think the term had become so dominant yet--was the norm.

In 2nd grade, we moved from our downtown home to southeast part of town. I didn't realize it at the time but my mother and I were tasked with finding our new home, in part, because she was white (and I appear to be) whereas my father was Black.

The following year--85-86--when I was still enrolled in the magnet school, the school district held a referendum on a desegregation plan. My father was determined to vote in that election. Born in 1928, he was 37 when the Voting Rights Act was passed so voting was a big f'n deal.

aside: He had also gone to the "colored" high school in my hometown. He was a basketball star, but college wasn't in his future in 1946, so he joined the Coast Guard and then became a cop. Unsuccessfully ran for sheriff in '80; his brother Jim was 1st Black county councilman

When they told my father he couldn't vote in that referendum...I can only imagine the fit he threw. But it was legit. Though our new home was much closer to my school, we had moved out of the school district.

I was allowed to finish the year, but was kicked out for eligibility

My new school (4th grade) was plurality Black, but I didn't really have any idea what race was yet. It began to dawn on me as kids kept bringing it up. One time someone said "You're the smartest kid in the school. And you're Black!"

I remembered that moment for different reasons in the years immediately following than I do now. As my grades plummetted in middle school, and kids thought that reflected declining intelligence, I wistfully remembered when kids thought I was smart.

In hindsight, of course, I realize it was something more disturbing: that even though the principal was a Black woman and Black kids were if not the majority, a large percentage of the population, some had already internalized inferiority.

And when I was put in the gifted and talented track in my new school, those lessons were far whiter than the rest of the school.

There were plenty of other Black kids who would have thrived in that track, but didn't get the opportunity. Sigh.

My parents' marriage started to fall apart--I don't know how happy it ever was, but as I got older I saw more of the stress and the anger and the fighting. Most of that is for another time, but this on top of the growing white-Black divide at my school messed me up pretty good.

Middle school is miserable for everyone, as far as I can tell, but my whole life was coming undone and people kept demanding I tell them if I was Black or white and I had no idea how to answer. I sat alone at an 8-kid table in the cafeteria. I hated everything.

I began to write to escape. Some fiction. Some journaling. Eventually, I got into reading about politics. My dad was a Republican but he never talked politics. Mom discussed it more, but she wasn't a hardcore conservative.

I became one though.

I was looking for a worldview that made the world make sense. And I was resentful of pretty much everything and so when I found Rush Limbaugh (shudder), it fit perfectly with my personality. Sarcasm, arrogance, bluster.

But I hadn't gone full boot-licker. Like, when the Rodney King tape hit, I was furious. Rush was like "see the beginning of the tape they don't show you on the news!" And I watched it, and thought "NOPE. STILL NOT OKAY."

Happily, I got over my Rush phase pretty quickly, but unfortunately myopia, sarcasm, and resentment were still dominant.

I started reading WF Buckley and PJ O'Rourke. This smarter, more libertarian conservatism was more my jam. All the condescension but with better vocabulary.

Junior year of high school, I'm one of the editors of my school paper, and I'm just looking to start shit. I spend many of my columns criticizing President Clinton, but nobody really cares (save the art teacher, who I hear complains about me a lot in the teacher's lounge.)

"Black History Month? What kind of nonsense is this? Why don't we have Native American History Month? I should write a column about this."

Oh to be 16 and know everything again.

I wrote the most awful, sarcastic piece against BHM I could muster. Both the newspaper advisor and my graphic arts teacher asked me, "Are you sure you want to do this?" I was emphatically pleased with myself and told them "Yes. I mean every word of it."

The paper was due to be out on Monday, but the powers that be rushed the print job because they thought giving folks the weekend to process the bombshell within was a better idea.

Last class period of the day, paper is delivered. My heartrate jumps.

We had a substitute history teacher that day and so instruction was minimal. She passed out the paper and I just waited.

Several loud "WHAT?!?"s came in short succession. A heated discussion ensued, but I wasn't really worried about my classmates.

I knew that there was a psych class with several senior members of the football team just across the hall. And a girl that had been in my history class 1st semester had transferred there. They knew where I was.

Because the bell system was automated, we all had our watches set to know precisely when the bell was going to ring. I already had a seat close to the door so as soon as that bell rang I took off like a shot. I may have been a fat kid, but I was hauling ass.

The last thing I heard as I hit the double doors before heading down to the locker pit was our star running back yelling "WHO THE F*** IS JON BLANKS?!?"

With that piece, I had become notorious. The school fielded angry phone calls. On Monday had a sit down with the asst principal, a Black woman who subtly let me know how she felt about it--"I didn't think very much [highly] of it"--but told me to come to her if I had any trouble

I don’t remember if it was some or all of my classes on Monday that were basically suspended to let students talk it out. I remember one guy saying to me, only half-jokingly, “You have your right to free speech, but you know you’re gonna get your ass kicked, right?”

I didn’t get my ass kicked, though. I started getting invited to parties with the “cool” white kids. I had (white) teachers pull me aside and tell me how much they loved what I wrote. (Unsurprisingly, several of them turned out to be Trumpers decades later)

Writing that piece set me on a path of writing for a living. It was exhilarating. I didn’t get paid in money, I got paid in attention and I ate it up. I found my calling.

So how did that kid become the writer I am today? How did the guy who openly and proudly mocked Black History Month become someone who writes about racial injustice one of the pillars of his work?

In college, one often has to take classes completely unrelated to one's major. At IU, one of the requirements was “culture credit.” A lot of kids take “human sexuality,” but I took a survey on Black history.

As a history “buff,” should be an easy A, right? In that 100 level course, though, I learned so much about what I hadn’t been told or taught to that point that I was furious. And ashamed.

I ended up minoring in African-American and African Diaspora Studies. Having a better understanding of my country changed my views. It changed me.

I learned that The Struggle has been long and complicated. There was never unanimity, there has always been conflict within as well as outside of any “movement” to increase freedom in our country.

There was nothing—and is nothing—new or bold about the arguments I was making. What seems “heterodox” to some is just re-worn, flawed, and tired arguments we’ve had for centuries.

And when I see certain Black folks today get put on pedestals and rewarded for saying what white people are too afraid to say, I know they can genuinely believe it, but they’re almost always missing context.

So every BHM, I have this weird feeling remembering who I was and how that put me on the path I am currently on. I appreciate how much I’ve changed, but lament how much people don’t know about their own history. Not just Black folks, but Americans generally.

So now my life is about providing context for a very broad audience: How we got here as a nation. Why our institutions look they way do. Why this or that idea is unlikely to work. Why I both love and fear my country.

And when people ask about an argument made by folks who sound like I used to, I sometimes say, "I don't think much of it."

Happy Black History Month, y'all.

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