by Omar Tyree
“The Native Americans were sharing people, too,” Troy went on to say. “That’s why the White people started up that dumb shit, calling people ‘Indian givers.’ The Native Americans would give the White people tools or land to use, right. Then they would come back to reclaim it when they needed it. But White people wasn’t trying to learn how to share shit. All they had ever known is what is theirs and how to take it.”
Troy stopped, momentarily, to use the bathroom. Scooter sat, numbed by the great span of information Troy had learned from his anthropology course. Troy then returned to continue from where he left off.
“And see, Scooter, Mexicans do the same stupid shit that we do. They brag about the Aztecs, who were the craziest of all the tribes. I mean, they were thorough in science and war. But you know what, man? I’ve figured it out. The more so-called advanced that a people are, the more violent they will be.
“Aztecs gave human sacrifices, killed off other tribes, and they even got a sculpture in Mexico using the skulls of the people they warred against. Now is that somethin’ to be proud of? That shit is plain crazy, man. Them Aztecs cut people’s hearts the fuck out! And they had serfs and slaves and peasants, too. Nobody wants to be a slave or a peasant. That shit ain’t right. So why would the Mexicans brag about that? ’Cause the White people tricked us all into their psychology. That’s why!” Troy shouted.
Scooter began to laugh as Troy went on.
“We all complain about this shit we live in now, but we gon’ brag about when our people did the same thing. So check this out, Scooter. In this capitalistic system, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans are the peasants. Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese are the serfs. Then we add in all of that religious shit. And White people own everything, so they’re the high chiefs and the pharaohs. So, if we so happy about the Egyptians and the Aztecs, how come we complaining about how we live now?”
Scooter chuckled again, noticing that it was getting a bit late.
“Yo, cuz, I hate to end your lesson and all, but I got to get home before I get robbed or something, out here this late. I heard about these Summerville niggas,” Scooter said, walking up the steps.
Troy smiled and said something else. “Damn, man, we can’t even travel among our own people without fearing what would happen to us. And we’re all Black. Now try and tell some dude in the street that shit, and they’ll laugh at you, right before they kick your ass.”
After he had let his friend out, Troy thought about all of the information that he had expressed. Yet one thing Scooter had said had bothered him, “The encyclopedia says that the Egyptians were ‘brown Caucasians,’” Troy repeated. Brown Caucasians?
Troy was appreciative that Judy and Lance were allowing him to stay with them until school would resume. He eventually watched less television and started dedicating more of his free time to reading.
And he had become more interested in his family background.
Back home, the following week, Troy opened the familiar Potter front door. Ronald, his youngest uncle, and his aunt Cookie were there, sitting on the couch and smoking cigarettes. Troy had not seen his aunt Cookie in two years. He was pleasantly surprised.
“Is that my favorite nephew?” she asked (only because he was the oldest and the first nephew).
“You see me, don’t you?” Troy answered with a snide grin.
Ronald smiled, shook his nephew’s hand, and headed for the door. Troy wanted to stop him so they could talk, man to man, one to one. However, his aunt had leaped up and graciously hugged him before he could react to his quickly departing uncle.
Cookie led him to the couch. “Come on over here and sit down so I can talk to you, boy.” She looked him over as he strolled. “My, you’ve grown! And got real handsome, too. You don’t look nothing like your father, though.”
Cookie loved to talk. Troy was in for it. But he had some questions of his own, so he wouldn’t mind her babbling.
“Yeah, Aunt Cookie, was it hard dealing with White people when you went to college?” Cookie, the second eldest behind Troy’s mother, was the only Potter child that had received an opportunity to go to school. Charlotte could have gone, yet she remained at home to help her mother take care of her kin after their father had died.
“Hell yes!” Cookie answered Troy emphatically. “I came back home ashamed. I didn’t like my hair anymore. I wanted to be lighter. ’Cause you know I’m the darkest of all nine of us.” (She was the tallest, too, standing at six-one, a family hybrid.) “And I was even ashamed of where I came from,” she told him.
Grandmom Bessie had had six girls and three boys. Judy was the fourth child and Kim was last. Troy’s two other aunts had relocated down south, “to get away from the crime-infested cities,” they claimed.
“Aw, hell, Troy, I hated coming back here!” Cookie continued. “It was terrible. It was an all-girls private school. There was a college full of White boys right down the street from us. And ta hell if I was goin’ to mess with them. So I didn’t have no kind of love life. Then I had this White roommate who used to sneak her boyfriend inside our dorm all the time. And he tried to come on to me once when she went to take a shower.
“Boy, it was terrible! All I did was study, ’cause it wasn’t anything else for Black people to do. But I stuck it through, though.”
Troy couldn’t believe it! College life had challenged his aunt just as it was challenging him. He was ashamed to realize that he was becoming attracted to females with skinny noses and small lips. He had played a favor game to his curly-headed cousin. He gave more credence to mixed girls with long hair. In fact, he and Blue, darker than Raheem and Scooter, had always dated redbones. Troy had to thinkhard to remember the last dark-skinned girl he had been with. He had been subconsciously seduced into hating Black features.
After finishing the discussion with his aunt, Troy crept up the stairs to talk to his grandmother. She stood in the middle of her ancient master bedroom, ironing her clothes for a family get-together later that evening. Bessie was a youthful and healthy woman. Blacks damn sure have that over Whites, Troy thought. We still look young with age.
He walked in and took a seat on the chair next to the dresser.
Bessie turned and looked him over with a proud smile. “How are ya’, grandson? Come give Grandma a hug.” Troy did as we was told.
She then looked down and gently swung her right foot. “Get away from here, you cat!” The multicolored, white, brown, and gray kitten was rubbing up against Troy’s leg, begging for food. His grandmother smiled. “These darn cats get to me sometimes. But we need them to kill these mice. ’Cause those darn traps are too much a hassle.”
Troy nodded and cut straight to the beef of his visit. “Hey, Grandmom, can you tell me a little somethin’ about our family history?”
Bessie got excited immediately. “Well, sure, what do you want to know?” Troy then realized that his grandmother actually wasn’t that old. Charlotte was born when Bessie was sixteen. Troy was born when Charlotte was eighteen. He was nearly nineteen, to date, making his grandmother somewhere around fifty-three years young. Some of his friends’ parents looked older than she did.
“Well, I wanted to know what kind of mixed blood we had in us,” he asked.
She nodded, thinking. “Well,my grandfather was a half-Spanish man from Costa Rica. He fell in love with my ugly grandmother, who was on a slave plantation in North Carolina. And he stole her from the plantation and ran north to Philadelphia,” she began. Troy chuckled instantaneously at his grandmother’s blunt style of storytelling.
“Troy, my grandmother wascrusty black! I don’t know what he saw in her. I had never seen her in person. She had died before I was born. But they showed me pictures of her, and she was dark, dark. But anyway, my mother turned out real, real light. I don’t know how that happened, from how black my grandmother was. You remember seeing my mother, don’t you? You were around seven then.”
Troy thought back to his childhood years, slowly shaking his head
. “Naw. I just remember that old White lady who used to come here on the weekends,” he said.
Bessie bowed over in laughter. “Boy, that wasn’t no old White lady, that was your great-grandmother!” she hollered. “But she lived in Jersey, and still does. You never got the chance to get close to her. You were always off, running around in the streets. She stopped visiting, though, a long while ago. Every once in a while I go to see her.”
Troy smiled. “Dag, I thought she was your teacher or something from when you were young. ’Cause she sure looked White to me.”
“Yeah, well she had married my father, who was part French from down New Orleans. He was traveling in one of those blues bands and ended up meeting and falling in love with my mother. And they had me. But he left her, though. She had to raise me by herself. And as soon as I got married, she moved off to New Jersey with the fella she lives with now.”
“So that’s Frenchand Spanish blood?” Troy asked, keeping count.
“More than that,” she told him. “Your grandfather—my late husband, Calvin—was part Dutch and Scottish.” She shook her head and grinned. “Them White folks always talkin’ ‘bout how they got a melting pot in America, but we Blacks are the most melted things in this country.
“Back when me and your grandfather got married, black was the worst thing you could be. If you were real dark, you tried to get anything light that you could find. People ran out after Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Japanese, anything that was light-colored. It was terrible being black in the nineteen forties. But now, I hear people running around talkin’ ’bout they ‘proud to be Black.’ I couldn’t believe my ears after all of the things we had done to stay light. Folks used bleachin’ creams and whatnot. It was terrible.”
Bessie stopped and giggled before continuing. Troy said nothing. He listened and smiled to himself, enjoying it.
“Your father had a whole lot of Indian blood in his family,” she said. “His mother had real long, wavy hair and was just a beautiful woman. His father looked like an Indian, too. He had these tiny black eyes, the same type that the Mexicans be having. He looked like he was either drunk or high.”
Troy laughed again and continued listening. He wouldn’t dare to correct his grandmother about using the term “Indian” (although it was on his mind). It was just a respect-for-your-elders thing.
Troy received lots of new information after a few hours of conversing with his grandmother,. He had gained more knowledge than he expected. He questioned the validity of the American rule that said you were Black if you had any drop of African blood, and he began to despise it.
The American rule was too limited. Black families ranged in all colors from light to dark. Many had even passed for White. However, Troy’s thoughts on racial identity were quickly disregarded. Black he was. He accepted it.
He stayed and watched more television in his mother’s room, awaiting her return from paying the utility bills. On the five o’clock news, it was reported that the Japanese ambassador had commented that the Blacks and Hispanics brought down the United States’ educational system; they spent too much money on credit cards and general consumerism.
Troy agreed. He knew many Blacks who struggled eagerly to live beyond their means. He had come to the same conclusion weeks ago. Nevertheless, the politically astute Blacks of the United States demanded an apology. Troy suspected that the demand had come, most likely, from those upper-middle-class Blacks who politely ignored the American dilemma of race. They chose to view issues through their own economic and integrationist fantasies. They’d rather protect their claims of minority success stories than address the multifaceted problems that plagued the Black community.
Troy also found distaste in the continuous television ads for aid to starving Ethiopian and South American children. Black American kids would then create harmful slurs based upon what they saw but failed to understand.
Tired of waiting for his mother to return, Troy decided to visit Scooter’s. It was fast approaching six o’clock.
Troy dashed across the street, let himself in, said “Hi” to Scooter’s silent, gray-haired grandmother, and headed straight for the basement.
“Yo, Scoot, it’s me,” Troy hollered down the basement stairs.
“Ay’, what’s up, man? You had me laughing hard as hell that night I was at your aunt’s crib, cuz. And yo, my grandmother don’t like Black people either. She said they’re loud and disrespectful. But you don’t like Blacks for real, though, cuz?” Scooter quizzed, vividly remembering their discussion.
Troy fell into the three-person couch to the right. “I don’t know who or what I like anymore. I wish I had never gone to that college. I mean, I didn’t give a fuck before I went up there. But now, all I think about is racial shit.”
“I know, ’cause I thought I was the only one that hated Blacks. But since you’ve been back, you helped me to get out a lot of my anger. Matter of fact, all we ever talk about is race when I’m with you,” Scooter mentioned. “I mean, Black people ain’t shit, though, for real. They cool to hang out with and all, but when it comes to gettin’ money, I’m gon’ get with a Jewish dude. They know how to get paid, cuz. Straight up!”
They sat and watched TV before either said anything.
“Man, I even hate watching some of these movies now. I leave the theater embarrassed as hell when White people put us in their movies.”
Scooter laughed before he responded. “I don’t like when Blacks are on TV. They don’t even know how to talk, most of the time.”
They started to giggle at their pronouncements.
“ ‘Black is beautiful,’” Scooter said. “That shit is crazy. I don’t know who thought of some shit as wild as that. You know?”
Troy nodded. “Yup. Girls out here be wearin’ contact lenses and getting their hair dyed blond, but yet, ‘Black is beautiful.’”
Scooter laughed. “White people made contacts for us. They knew niggas wanted to be like them. So they said, ‘Yeah, we can make lots of money off the niggers,’”
“And that messed it up for the Blacks who have natural light eyes,” Troy added.
Scooter shook his head. “Man, White people get paid off of all the shit we do. Like, if they just make any stupid movie about us, we’ll go see that shit.”
“Yeah, cuz, remember that movie,Planet of theApes ? That could have been about us. ’Cause they had the light-colored apes, who were supposedly closest to humans, like you light-skinned Blacks are closest to Whites. And they were smart and nonviolent, just like White people think you are,” Troy said.
“Oh, my God!” Scooter yelled. “And then they had them black apes that couldn’t even talk right. And they was always ready to kill somebody.
“I knew it was some reason why I didn’t like that movie. And Black people watched it like fools. Oh my God, cuz!We nuts! ” Scooter shouted. He got excited and took over from Troy.
“In one of them movies they came over in cages. And the White people were laughing at ’em, just like they did us. Damn, Troy, you right, cuz! Then they had them in-between monkeys always trying to make peace, like a Martin Luther King type.”
Troy laughed as Scooter’s imagination went wild.
“Yup, Troy. Some ingenious White man was sitting around one day and said to his boy, ‘Hey, Joe, what if we made a movie about the niggers taking over the world? Jesus, Joe! This could be the hit of the century. But we can’t put real niggers in it. They’ll fuck up the movie with their protests and all. So let’s make them into apes. ‘Cause that’s all they really are, a bunch of stupid apes. We could get rich off this movie and they would never know.’
“Oh my God, cuz! I don’t believe how stupid we are!” Scooter hollered as Troy giggled.
“AndKing Kong could be about us, too,” Troy added with a grin. “You know how they think we crazy about their women. So they set it up where the giant ape symbolizes our biggest, strongest Black man. And you notice that they went to some African jungle to find him, right. Then he goe
s crazy and chases this White bitch all over New York.”
“Oh my God, cuz! I hate black people!We stupid as shit, Troy. Aaaahhhh we dumb, and we watched all that shit, too!” Scooter shouted.
“Why you keep hollering about some God?” Troy asked. “It ain’t no God, cuz. Only poor and stupid people believe in that. White people tricked us on that, too. They made that shit up to calm people down, then they could take over the world without a fight.
“The first thing White people do is send their religious missionaries in to soften up the people. Then the armies come in to take over. I mean, us Blacks are the holiest people in the fuckin’ world, thinking we gon’ go to heaven and shit. That’s the White man’s greatest magic trick. And that’s why we won’t ever get nowhere.
“All Blacks do is get on TV and thank the Lord, whenever they accomplish something great. And that’s tellin’ White people we don’t have any confidence in ourselves. We tellin’ them that we need this supernatural shit to achieve something. What, we can’t do shit with our own hard work? Is that what we believe? And people always run to that religious shit when they’re weak, scared, or in some kind of jam. There ain’t no God, Scooter. We’ve all been fooled.”
Scooter changed his tune. “Yo, cuz, is you crazy? You better stop talkin’ like that. I think you lost it in this racial stuff to talk about God like that, man. You better take that shit back.”
“Aw see, they got you too. And I ain’t never seen you go to church. So how you gon’ believe in God?”
Scooter hunched his shoulders. “Cuz, I’on know, but there is a God. I think I’m gon’ ask him to help you, ’cause you goin’ crazy,” he responded, chuckling to himself.
