LETTERS TO THE AFRO: Meaning of America on the Fourth, p. 4
Dublin Core
Title
LETTERS TO THE AFRO: Meaning of America on the Fourth, p. 4
Description
"Rahway, N.J.
Holidays are good for many things, among them reflections. This past Fourth of July allowed me to do just that: to ponder just what America means to me as a black man.
The night of the Fourth, a local television news station dragged out its annual filler for that day, by joining a parade and asking participants and spectators (all white) just what “America means to you”?
Usually I dismiss this inconsequential and switch channels, but this year I sat riveted, trying to understand, but to small avail. All the answers flowed back framed in cliches. “Apple pie, freedom of speech, rights for everyone,” were the most frequently heard. It forced me to consider the question honestly without flippancy or malice.
On one level America is to me a large unending ocean that I, as other black men, having been led to the mountain top, peer out at and only occasionally venture into, tentatively a foot, maybe a toe at a time, sometimes boldly submerging, but always with the notion that somehow, I don’t really belong - and that somewhere on that mountain top my soul remains.
Still, the real worry are the sharks who circle ominously, ignoring me when I’m passive or snapping threateningly when I create currents no matter how innocuous or innocent.
At times in the water, the mental pangs become worse than the threat of the sharks, knowing you can stay, maybe, but always in the shadow of the sharks. And the knowledge that the mountain is slipping further and further away and besides it is not as bountiful as the ocean.
Only one choice seems left, to attach myself to the sharks as some others have, parasitically sucking theirs craps, while surviving in a degraded existence.
Wondering like that can become tiresome, so in the end I can only deal with the question of America on a hard-headed realistic level. To me it is my wife and daughter, my family, the sweet smell of promade [sic] on freshly burnt hair in a childhood Sunday school class, the harsh struggle of day to day existence, the daily grind of a job, white television in color, white magazines in black and white, gospel, soul, the sigh of relief at the sight of an employment line when I’m not in it, the anger and embarrassment when I am - but mainly, it’s the honorable implausibility of still being invisible in 1980 and probably 1990 too!
Finally, all that’s left is emptiness at realizing that no matter what currents sweep me up to whatever success or undertow drags me to abymal [sic] failure. I’ll always feel like an expatriate in this land who no longer knows the way back to his own.
John Wesley Braswell"
Holidays are good for many things, among them reflections. This past Fourth of July allowed me to do just that: to ponder just what America means to me as a black man.
The night of the Fourth, a local television news station dragged out its annual filler for that day, by joining a parade and asking participants and spectators (all white) just what “America means to you”?
Usually I dismiss this inconsequential and switch channels, but this year I sat riveted, trying to understand, but to small avail. All the answers flowed back framed in cliches. “Apple pie, freedom of speech, rights for everyone,” were the most frequently heard. It forced me to consider the question honestly without flippancy or malice.
On one level America is to me a large unending ocean that I, as other black men, having been led to the mountain top, peer out at and only occasionally venture into, tentatively a foot, maybe a toe at a time, sometimes boldly submerging, but always with the notion that somehow, I don’t really belong - and that somewhere on that mountain top my soul remains.
Still, the real worry are the sharks who circle ominously, ignoring me when I’m passive or snapping threateningly when I create currents no matter how innocuous or innocent.
At times in the water, the mental pangs become worse than the threat of the sharks, knowing you can stay, maybe, but always in the shadow of the sharks. And the knowledge that the mountain is slipping further and further away and besides it is not as bountiful as the ocean.
Only one choice seems left, to attach myself to the sharks as some others have, parasitically sucking theirs craps, while surviving in a degraded existence.
Wondering like that can become tiresome, so in the end I can only deal with the question of America on a hard-headed realistic level. To me it is my wife and daughter, my family, the sweet smell of promade [sic] on freshly burnt hair in a childhood Sunday school class, the harsh struggle of day to day existence, the daily grind of a job, white television in color, white magazines in black and white, gospel, soul, the sigh of relief at the sight of an employment line when I’m not in it, the anger and embarrassment when I am - but mainly, it’s the honorable implausibility of still being invisible in 1980 and probably 1990 too!
Finally, all that’s left is emptiness at realizing that no matter what currents sweep me up to whatever success or undertow drags me to abymal [sic] failure. I’ll always feel like an expatriate in this land who no longer knows the way back to his own.
John Wesley Braswell"
Creator
John Braswell
Publisher
Baltimore Afro-American
Date
1980-7-26
Collection
Citation
John Braswell, “LETTERS TO THE AFRO: Meaning of America on the Fourth, p. 4,” African American Fourth of July, accessed April 29, 2024, https://africanamerican4th.omeka.net/items/show/269.