if i can't do
what I want to do
then my job is to not
do what I don't want
to do
it's not the same thing
but it's the best I can
do
if I can't have
what I want...then
my job is to want
what I've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want
since I can't go
where I need
to go...then I must...go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral
when I can't express
what I really feel
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry
Professor Nikki Giovanni
My good friend Dr Jill Segger recently shared this poem with me in her latest communication. I had previously written a letter to her in which I included a copy of the letter I wrote to Professor Giovanni on April 17 2007, after she had been featured on the Public Television program The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. The professor spoke at some length after an angry student had shot and killed 33 people (including himself) on campus.
In my letter to the professor, amongst other things I wrote that I felt she had given "eloquence and hope to the aftermath of utter violence and devastation", as I offered my heartfelt condolences. More on Professor Giovanni's poem and my letter to her later.
As usual, I plan to rely on the reader's intelligence to grasp the full meaning of my words on these pages and those unseen messages conveyed between the lines that I dare not write, but you know that I am thinking.
The main thrust of my letter to Professor Giovanni follows here:
Viewing American society for 28 years from a death row prison cell often allows me unusual clarity. I would like to share this thought.
As violence continues to rise on campuses, I have come to the conclusion that one of the best ways to reduce future violence (not just on campuses but in general in American society) is to start teaching children anger management. I mean that it should be taught in much the same way they are taught their ABCs in kindergarten.
Teachers need to teach anger management and how to constructively respond to each days', indeed life's, disappointments, betrayals, etc. The tragedy at Virginia Tech* and countless other places have made me certain that early and sustained instruction in anger management is, at the very least, as important as learning one's ABCs.
I also believe that violence in America is taught in both overt and subtle ways. Few will admit it, but the majority of Americans consciously and unconsciously give tacit approval to (and encourage) violence from the cradle to the grave.
For example, more than 57 years ago, when I was one of less than a handful of Blacks among as many as 354 White students at Lowell Longfellow School in Harvey, Illnois, I became both victim and, as a sad but necessary consequence, a perpetrator of violence. In classrooms, hallways and especially out on the playgrounds, groups of White boys would attack me repeatedly. During one of those attacks, Mr Fry, the school principal, pulled no less than five bullies off me. He had seen me being pummeled and kicked to a bloody pulp. I was clearly the victim.
Looking back I realize that it was silly of me to have thought that Mr Fry was saving me when he pulled those guys off me. You see, when he took me to his third floor office, he produced a wooden paddle that was about three feet long. He then explained that because I started the fight, I would be given 'four licks', despite my protests that I had not started anything at all. He gave me those four licks, immediately.
It goes without saying that you can rationally conclude that Mr Fry was both wrong and racist in his response to the situation, and I agree. However, I want this writing to be more about the instrinsic and varied nature of adolescent violence in America, than the racism that can so often support and perpetuate it.
The violence on the playground that day at Lowell Longfellow School was an integral part of Mr Fry's school administration program. That is to say that from the attack on the playground all the way up to the third floor paddling, violence permeated Mr Fry's school administration. His response to group violence was to administer more violence to the individual victim of said violence.
Most (we can be grateful not all) White people in America like to think of themselves as not being racist. Consequently they see no need to instruct their children in the art of accepting people who look and act in ways that are different.
Of course, by the time those children are started in school, they are not prepared to understand, let alone accept, people who do not look and act like them.
American society, by and large, teaches its members to not only reject but to also assail difference. In this fashion Mr Fry, and millions of parents in America, promote a kind of semi-subtle-violence, a nefarious violence that such parents can routinely pretend to be unaware of.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL:
If you do not consciously teach
ACCEPTANCE OF OTHERS to
your children, long before they start
school, YOU CONSCIOUSLY
TEACH VIOLENCE BY
DEFAULT.
Likewise, if we as a nation do not start teaching small children conflict resolution and self-control, we are encouraging the kind of violent loss of control that visits America so frequently.
Unfortunately when someone actually suggests that we pursue such thinking and teaching methods for Americans, that someone is usually met with the vociferous protests of angry parents/taxpayers who declare that a) the State has no business teaching their children what or how to think and/or b) even if they wanted to try it, there is no money for such liberal teaching concepts in the State or Federal budget.
Those vociferous and angry voices more often than not belong to the same people who support sending thousands of young men and women to war in Iraq, and elsewhere, along with billions and billions of tax dollars.
Last week I was reminded of Mr Fry's paddle as the use of corporal punishment occupied a slot in most evening news programs for two days. Those news programs inspired me to conduct my own survey here in G3 Cellblock, where 20 of the 23 men answered yes when I asked if they had been subjected to corporal punishment while they were in early primary school. One of the men recalled getting paddled, the first time while he was still in kindergarten.
Yes, I know that some readers will say corporal punishment was good for some. To those readers I must admit that is true, but only a minority.
As my fellow prisoner gave me details of the paddling he experienced in kindergarten, I wondered if the woman who paddled him had been at the core of his adult life's anger. I wondered if it was she he was trying to kill, instead of his late wife? I wonder, even now, how many of those 20 men in my Cellblock would be here if they had been given anger management instruction as frequently as they were given corporal punishment, in one form or another?
I am aware as I write this line that most, if not all, of the self-righteously 'vociferous' among us will discount and resent everything that is said on these pages because of who and where I am. That is a sad fact of American life, that few people listen to what prisoners have to say. I am very fortunate to have a friend like Dr Segger, who wrote the encouraging words below:
Dear Brandon,
I was very moved by your thoughts on anger management and how to prepare children for rejection and frustration and how this is essential to reducing violence. You are absolutely right and your life experience gives you a particular authority [in] speaking thus...
Thank you Dr Segger. Your words move me deeply. As you might have guessed Professor Giovanni did not answer the letter I wrote to her on April 17 2007. At least, she did not answer it in the direct traditional way. In an indirect way via her poem 'Choices' that you have shared with me in your letter, I choose to consider it in general, and one portion of it in particular, an answer that speaks to me on many personal levels.
...when I can't express
what I really feel
i practice feeling
what I can express
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry.
If the reader is a person who is of the opinion that all human beings should be heard, no matter their situation or location, feel free to drop me a line. Know that you are in good company with the likes of Professor Giovanni and Dr Segger. I hope to be able to share some things with all of you that are sure to surprise you. Things that come from the Heaven and Hell sides of this death row prison cell.
WRITE TO:
Brandon Astor Jones, G3-83
UNO#400574
Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison
P.O. Box 3877
Jackson, Georgia 30233
USA
No comments:
Post a Comment