Lessons I Picked from My Afro.
Ludacris, Lauryn Hill and a few other famous faces sent the afro back into style when I was in middle school. Being out-of-style is never in-style when you’re thirteen so I grew my hair out. If you’ve never been black with an afro I can tell you it requires a lot of maintenance. It is easily tangled, making it painful to comb. It can be very dry, making it not only unsightly but a heaven to static electricity. Heaven forbid you rest your fro on a wall or headrest and make it flat on one side. How embarrassing to be seen looking like a capital letter “D.” Products like “StaSofFro” help with upkeep but the tool of all tools in keeping your afro tight is an afro pick. I had combs and picks in every color including the well known metal toothed Black Power fist pick, which obviously only comes in black.
By my thirteenth year as an American citizen, including almost four years living in Germany I had learned several lessons in being black. I first found out I was black in kindergarten. Until then I had no reason to consider the fact that I wasn’t simply brown. I argued with my classmate who was frustrated because he, himself, didn’t understand why he knew I was black. This was just knowledge he was passing on from home and felt compelled to share. I stood my ground since I was a smart kid. My grandmother taught Pre-K, so I learned my colors very early. This poor peach child must have not had that luxury. It was my mother that afternoon who shattered my reality by fully explaining that I was brown but my race was black. I was already having a hard time with mail versus male. Suddenly I can be in a race and also be a race.
Another world quaking lesson came when I saw Alex Haley’s Roots for the first time. It was showing on television over the course of a few nights when I was about eight years old. My father was an officer in the army and was away at Ranger school. My mother sat close to me as I watched every night with wide eyes. I learned that timing is everything and the timing of my birth was a great factor in me not being someone’s property. What a groundless revelation for a child on a sofa.
I am thirteen. I am living in Jackson, Mississippi. I have an afro. I am on my way from the front door of my family’s mobile home to retrieve something from my family’s van which is parked in the driveway. My father, who is outside working in the yard doesn’t allow my fifth footstep to fall before he screams at me.
“Joseph! Take that comb out of your head!!!”
I had been doing some routine afro maintenance and left the comb stuck in my hair. If you’ve ever been black with an afro you know any comb stays quite firmly wherever you leave it. My father was always eager to teach a lesson and often upset with me so I didn’t react. This was just another one of his drills, and all I needed was to make it to the van and back. He ran at me with force.
“Either get back in the house or take that damn comb out your head!!!”
His whole arm, down to his fingertip, was pointed at the front door. It stayed suspended as he stared me down. I now knew this was not a drill so I removed the comb and went about my task. On my way back from the car, My Father, Airborne Ranger: Major Carl Lymous stood directly in my path. He came very close to me and explained in very staccato words that I was to never let anyone see me being less than I am. He admonished me that because I was a young black man leaving the house with a comb in my hair was unacceptable. In my mind he must have gone blind for a moment. This wasn’t my Black Power pick, this was a long turquoise comb with purple tipped teeth. This was me in our front yard.
Fortunately and unfortunately he hadn’t gone blind. This lesson was coming hard at my face. He warned me that if people, specifically white people, see me with a totem of my blackness that I will be treated differently. I’d be putting myself at higher risk to be arrested or even worst, killed. Carl Lymous is a man of many lessons that I would call hard, but this one which included the possibility of death stuck to my ribs.
It was that day in a trailer park in Mississippi under a canopy of pine trees that I began to see myself differently. My spine changed. My smile widened. I did everything I could to let white ladies know that I wasn’t going to rob them because I wasn’t one of those black boys. I spoke proper English and I was going to college.
Somewhere along the road to college in the midst of wide smiles and firm hand shakes I lost myself. I lost parts of my heart because I wasn’t allowed to have them. I was to protect the hearts of my white neighbor while telling mine to be still. Looking back, this is one of the saddest lessons I’ve learned, but it was absolutely necessary. It’s highly likely that you wouldn’t even be reading this if I had not learned this lesson. This brutal lesson has kept me from seeing myself and my black peers as the infinitely beautiful, passionate, and powerful people we are. Now, twenty years later I am thirty-three and looking deep within myself to find my voice as an artist, a lover, a friend, and a human being who can potentially change the world. I am shedding this lesson as a lesson and calling it what it is…. a memory.
Because of our current social and political climate Black history is now. I’m excited at the notion that I have the power to change what our children will know to be history. My first stop on this journey is to put in my thinking pick, throw on some Lauryn Hill and shed EVERY limiting lesson I’ve ever been taught.
_Photo by Lou Martinez @oathofobsidian
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