344 – 363 Pabst – Rockefeller - Schools (old book 218-233)
Vincents text
Norsk Ny dansk bog
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344 During my journey in the nation with more talk about upward mobility
than in any other, and with its seemingly unlimited opportunities, the
existence of a closed system was a recurrent paradox for me. I couldn’t
accept the explanation about blacks’ inherent inferiority, which all white
Americans carry in their innermost hearts. “Our ancestors came over dirt poor
and made it. Why can’t they?” A veil was, however, lifted for me when I got
close to two such “poor” immigrants: Lidy Manselles from Haiti and Mrs. Pabst from Russia. It’s not
at all a coincidence that Lidy became my first
black girlfriend. At first American-born black women seemed untouchable,
locked up behind an invisible barrier. Lidy clearly
belonged to another, freer world. Never did that strike me so much as one day
when we stood talking to an alcoholic on a doorstep in Harlem. All of a
sudden Lidy burst out with contempt: “Why don’t you
get a job?” Her insensitivity ended the conversation. Later she even said
something like, “I hate them. I hate these lazy animals.” I immediately felt
that this was a clash far deeper than between two nationalities: It was the
disdain of a free culture toward a slave culture. Lidy,
who was jet black and Catholic, represented better than anyone the “white
protestant work ethic.” And she was no exception among those blacks who’ve
arrived without chains. Through Lidy I gained
access to the tightly knit West Indian community in Brooklyn. Like earlier
immigrants, they worked fanatically hard, saved money, took pride in
education and owning their own homes, and universally spoke of the importance
of a strong family. With their sacrifice and fierce determination, they were
staunchly opposed to welfare in direct contrast to the surrounding black
communities, 40% of whose members are on welfare. Their neighborhoods are as
clean and racist toward native blacks as Italian and Irish neighborhoods. In
less than one generation, faster than most white immigrants, their income has
reached a staggering 94% of the average American family income, even
including the many poor still arriving. Since 1% of the American population
own or control more than 40% of the wealth, we may find that West Indian
immigrants are doing better than the majority of whites even though they come
from much poorer and less literate countries than most Europeans came from.
In contrast, native blacks make only 56% of white income. Under Kennedy and
Johnson, they were allowed a rate of progress that, perhaps in 500 years,
would have given them equality, but under the conservative policies of Nixon,
Reagan, and Bush, they are rapidly slipping backward. Until the 1960s 1/3 of
all black professionals were in fact immigrants. In many elite universities,
their descendants represent up to 85% of black students although they make up
only 6% of blacks in the United States. So why is it so hard for America’s own blacks to get into Harvard or
Yale? Whatever the reason, the fact that these low-income islands, with far
fewer blacks than the United States, can produce such a wealth of talent is
strong evidence of the impact of American racism. Their historical slavery
was basically as cruel as the American variety, and they descended from the
same tribes in Africa. So what makes black immigrants twice as successful as
native blacks? Why do travelers to post-slavery countries usually conclude
that West Indian and Latin American blacks seem “proud and fiercely
independent” in comparison with the “crushed,” “broken,” and “dependent”
blacks in the American underclass? Why are fear and hatred still the basic
ingredients of the relationship between blacks and whites in America, while lynchings, cross burnings, and race riots, as well as
organizations such as the NAACP and the Black Panthers, are totally unknown
in Brazil? My explanation is that whites disappeared from the West Indies after
slavery, after which blacks there were surrounded by black role models,
allowing them to rebuild the self-confidence that had been shattered by
slavery. But in the US, blacks continue to live in a majority-white society
where we have the power to define them and continue to crush their
self-esteem. Therefore, black American parents cannot convincingly, like the
West Indians and Jews, encourage their children with: “Yes, my child, it’s a
racist society, but you can still make it by working twice as hard as
others!” Only people who believe in themselves can do that. The initiative
and ingenuity of black immigrants aren’t crushed by our double-edged sword of
condescending liberal generosity and reactionary racist cruelty, which
defines effective slavery. Black immigrants are too proud to accept the first
and, for more than a century, haven’t been forced to deal with the second.
Since their psychology isn’t shaped by racism, they resist and prosper in the
same way the Jews of Europe often did despite anti-Semitism. Not surprising
that my native black friends in Hartford, CT call the West Indians for “go
getters” or “black Jews.” Mrs. Pabst had arrived just like Lidy—broke
but not broken—with a background that sent her directly to the upper class. A
member of the old Russian aristocracy, she lost everything in the revolution
except the most important thing: her upper-class acculturation. She could
therefore marry into money (Pabst Brewing Company) like the rest of the 2/3
of the richest 1% who were born into their wealth. Today they own several
mansions around the world, and I vacationed with them on a $3 million farm in
California. I liked Mrs. Pabst, intensely interested as she was in art and
culture, and hoped she’d give me some money to buy more film. So I showed her
my photos, such as this little boy in the muddy ditch. His world is so
different from that of Mrs. Pabst’s granddaughter, whom the maid is serving,
that if it didn’t say Pabst on the beer cans we wouldn’t know that they
belong to the same world and that their lives are in some way connected with
each other. But when Mrs. Pabst saw these photos of people defeated by apathy
and alcoholism, she shouted, “I hate them! I hate these lazy animals! Why
don’t they want to work? Why don’t they take a job?” But where does Mrs.
Pabst actually get all that gold in her ears, and why do these “animals” not
work? Sing a song of sad young men, glasses full of rye. All the news is bad again kiss your dreams goodbye. All the sad young men sitting in the bars drinking up the night and missing all the stars. All the sad young men drifting through the town drinking up the night trying not to frown. All the sad young men, singing in the cold trying to forget that they are growing old. All the sad young men choking on their youth, trying to be gay running from the truth. Autumn turns the leaves to gold slowly dies the heart. Sad young men are growing old, that’s the cruelest part. Misbegotten moon shines for a sad young man, let your gentle light guide them all again. All the sad, sad, sad young men. 350 To explain this, I must briefly go back to my protests against the
Vietnam War (before I came to America). Morally outraged by the US’s use of
napalm bombs, which incinerated or wounded thousands of Vietnamese—including
children—I designed and printed a poster at my own expense; it read ESSO
makes napalm. (Esso is now known as Exxon.) I ran around pasting them up all
over Copenhagen, often with the police in hot pursuit. One cold December
night, I climbed a tall tree to avoid being captured by the police, who, as I
discovered, usually were also opposed to the Vietnam War. To toy with me, two
smiling cops parked their car beside the tree. “You can sit up there all
night and freeze while we relax in the warm car and drink coffee until you
come down.” Although I was freezing in my lofty haven, I was determined to
win over my tormentors. I didn’t come down and by morning they gave up. Every
day I could see how I was winning my moral war. Esso, for example, had to
hire a whole army of workers to go around and paint the Esso logo over with
black paint to stop the spreading boycott of their gas stations. Thus, the
power of advertising—this was my first advertisement—made me both hate and
love the Esso logo. In the process I built up overwhelmingly hostile images
of the monster behind Esso: the Rockefeller family. I also learned that
they’d been responsible for the deaths of 51 striking men, women, and
children in Colorado in 1914. With CIA help, they’d overthrown governments,
including Iran’s, and installed the murdering, torturing Shah to prevent Iran
from nationalizing its oil wells (this later led to the Islamic Revolution).
And so, experiencing déjà vu (my freezing night in a tree) and overcome with
righteous anger, I felt I was entitled to face the monster himself—and
knocked on the door. And what happened? The same thing that always happens when I move in
with the monsters in my head: A beautiful young woman opened the door. I
assumed it was one of many servants and asked, in the most natural way—I had
a right to be there after all—“May I see Mr. Rockefeller?” She said he wasn’t
home, but I could come in and wait for him. Although I myself looked like a
monster of sorts (a snow monster), she probably thought I was a student from
his university. She handed me towels to dry myself off and asked whether I
was hungry. If I was, she’d start cooking since she didn’t know when her
“husband” be home. Husband? I thought. All the hateful caricatures I’d seen
of “Rockefeller” had been of old men. Certainly this was the case after
Rockefeller’s massacre of prisoners in Attica, when they rioted to demand
prison reform. I’d been at the funeral and knew some of the widowed black
women (page 406). But Sharon Rockefeller was almost my own age and her
husband, Jay, only 10 years older. While she cooked for me, I started playing
with her adorable 3-year-old daughter, Valerie. Seeing how well we got along,
Sharon suggested that perhaps I could stay and take care of her; she was
going to Europe in a few days and hadn’t yet found a babysitter. A little
later a family friend dropped by, and while we were chatting, she whispered
that Valerie was named after Sharon’s twin sister, who’d been murdered.
“Murdered? How?” I asked in disbelief. I was used to murders in the
underclass, not among the wealthy. After Sharon, whose maiden name is Percy,
and Valerie had graduated from college, the family gathered in their lakefront
mansion in a Chicago suburb. Sharon went to Valerie’s bedroom to say
goodnight to her sister, and the next morning her identical twin was found
beaten and stabbed to death. The crime, which was never solved, left Sharon
traumatized, and cast over the family a dark shadow that never dissipated. At
the time I wasn’t surprised about Sharon’s babysitting remark since I was
used to people instantly trusting me, but over the years I’ve often reflected
on this remarkable woman. How many other women would, such a short time after
a beloved sister had been murdered by an intruder, have the guts to invite
into their homes a stranger who looked like Charles Manson? (Right after the
killing of another Sharon during the Tate-Labianca
murders.) How many would ask this stranger to babysit for her daughter (named
for the greatest loss of her life)? Sharon shared my own trusting outlook. When Jay Rockefeller finally came home, I completely lost my heart to
this warm-hearted family. Since I was immersed in conversation with his wife,
he assumed I was a friend of hers and never asked why I was there (just as I
myself had forgotten why I was there). If I’d expected to meet a monster, it
was my own projection since to my surprise and joy we had the same opinions
on almost everything. He was also opposed to the Vietnam War, later
criticizing war hero John McCain for dropping napalm bombs on Vietnamese
civilians. After college he’d traveled the same road as had I, working with
poor coal miners who lived in shacks as miserable as the ones I’d
photographed. Working to improve their conditions in the VISTA program,
started by John F. Kennedy, he lost his heart to these miners, stayed there,
and has been a powerful advocate for them ever since, first as their
governor, later as a senator in Washington. I felt right away that he was “my
man.” After we’d drunk quite a few bottles and he’d shown great interest in
my photos of shacks and poverty, I felt so uplifted that I told him I had in
vain tried to get support to buy a professional Nikon camera and film so I
could complete my job. I’ll never forget his answer: “Are you talking to me
as a person or to the foundation? Well, come up to my office tomorrow and
show me your grant proposal.” I could hardly sleep that night. For the first time
I had real hope of getting a little support for my photography (if only some
babysitter money). But when I looked over the application I always carried
with me, I saw a sentence about “the Rockefeller clan’s brutal slaughter of
41 prisoners in Attica.” I’d completely forgotten about it. I was so
embarrassed after having met with so much warmth, hospitality, and trust from
the Rockefellers that I couldn’t bring myself to knock on his door. Instead,
I turned around and continued my vagabonding with the slogan of the old
Rockefeller: neither “a dime for the bank nor a penny to spend.” Angry with
myself for my prejudice, I phrased my new insight: The underclass syndrome of
murder and alcoholism is just a mirror of the ruling class. Admittedly, the
alcoholism part of it referred to what I’d seen in other upper-class families
rather than to this family, who’d shown me, intruder though I was, so much
generosity. Two days later I stayed with this woman in a shack smack up
against an Exxon refinery. Apart from my love/hate affair with the Exxon
logo, I think there was another reason I ended up with her. During my first
year in America, President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act
to eliminate lead from gasoline. Leaded gasoline had been introduced by
Standard Oil (Exxon) for its “anti-knock effect,” and Exxon had fought
previous attempts to outlaw it. Just before breaking my “anti-knock” vagabond
principle in Jay and Sharon’s house—I always waited passively for people to
invite me home—I’d heard about new studies showing the destructive effects of
lead on children. I thought of all the lead that black children were exposed
to in ghetto homes, often build next to inner city highways. (Page 299). This
gave me the answer to why violence and murder had exploded about 20 years
after leaded gas became common. (This boy is showing me the blood from
someone in his family who’d just been murdered.) Lead also plays an important
role in the learning disabilities of many ghetto children and explains why
many whites, like Valerie, did better in school. 17 years later, after one of
my shows in Stanford, a white woman came up to me and asked whether we could
talk in private. She seemed a bit angry when she said, “I’m in your book.” I
was totally confused since there were hardly any whites in the book. When she
found the page, I realized she was Valerie Rockefeller. “Last year,” she
continued, “when my roommate came home after your show and told me you
portrayed my father as an alcoholic and mass murderer, I was very angry with
you. But now that I’ve seen the show myself, I have to give you a big hug.
And here’s my business card. If ever you need my help, just call me.” Wow.
Again I was struck by guilt because I hadn’t sufficiently distinguished in
the book between Exxon, a symbol of oppression, and the loving family who’d
once taken me in. I encountered exactly the same overwhelming reaction from
three other Rockefeller children at other universities. They even asked for
my advice on how they could best serve the poor. So I wasn’t surprised to see
Valerie, whose weighty baggage was both negative and positive, end up as a
special education teacher for adolescents with learning and emotional
disabilities in East Harlem. Somehow I saw a direct line going from our first
meeting in her house when she was a child to her social commitment as an
adult in Harlem. First and foremost, she was molded by the long social
commitment of her parents. Perhaps reinforced by the inherited trauma from her mother
(paralleling the inherited trauma among black children). In any case I was,
as with her father, astonished by how much we agreed on everything when we
last communicated in 2015. “I’m still hypercritically judgmental of people
with money!” she wrote to me. She’s also part of the Rockefeller family’s
effort to stop Exxon/Mobil’s climate denial. “As descendants, we have an
extra burden to fight climate change,” Valerie says.
The integration of black and white school children was one of the most
significant results of the civil rights struggle. That many better-off
liberals didn’t allow their children to integrate helped sabotage integration
and create resentment among poor whites, who couldn’t afford private schools. Seeing the conditions of American schools was perhaps the most
shocking aspect of my journey. Never had I heard so many brainwashing
phrases, such as “Men treasure freedom above all else,” combined with an
almost total omission of black history. Today many schools even prohibit
books by blacks such as Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison. This totalitarian regimentation is like the “pledge of allegiance” to
“one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”. It
stands in glaring contrast to the state of slavery being hammered into black
children in these dilapidated plywood-windowed “ghetto schools.” I saw violent struggles in cities everywhere as blacks, desperate to
break free of segregation and to give their children a shot at an equal
education, bussing them to schools in white neighborhoods. When police and soldiers have to escort children on every bus and
furious stone-throwing whites have to be kept behind barricades to protect
black children, we teach them on their first day in the white world that the
Ku Klux Klan is at the heart of every white ... as I erroneously wrote back
then. In my work with the KKK since then, I learned that the children of the
KKK are often the only whites in all-black schools since they’re too poor to
move away from black neighborhoods. These are black schoolchildren in an American ghetto recorded on tape,
but the conversation could just as easily have been recorded today among
brown ghetto children in Europe: - We should be friends to white people, like Mary. She’s my friend and
she’s white. - Wait until you grow up and she’ll be out of this world! - How do you know she’ll be out of this world? - She won’t be out of the world, but out of this country. - Out of this country or out of this ghetto? - Out of this country, ghetto, or anything ... - She will still be my friend. - She might turn against you. They might brainwash her. - A white person is still a human being! - But why ... how come they treat a black person as if he an animal? - We must’ve done something wrong! When listening to such conversations, of 7- and 8-year-old children, I
could only conclude that many of them see not only their ghetto but even
their country as a closed system and—worse—blame themselves for it. When
asked “Where are you from?”, brown children born in Denmark will, for
example, say “Turkey.” Like blacks, they’ve internalized the message of our
divisive rhetoric: “You’re unwanted and not part of our values.” When they’re constantly told that they don’t belong, it’s not
surprising that many ghetto parents are opposed to integrated schooling
despite their knowledge that ghetto schools don’t work. Being deprived of a
good education in your own ghetto school is preferable to the illusion of
belonging to mainstream society with the deprivation you also must suffer here.
It’s a sad fact that even in integrated schools we kill the spirit and
motivation of the children we’ve marginalized. Everywhere in the world
teachers are creating pupils to fit the image and expectations they already
have of them. If you take a random sample of a class and tell the teachers
that these pupils are “potential academic spurters,”
these kids will, after a year or two, live up to that expectation thanks to
the special treatment the teacher unconsciously devotes to them. In a
master-slave society, the one expected to become the slave (useless) will
thus be given an inferior education, with black or white teachers,
segregation or integration making no great difference. This “innocent” discrimination has disastrous consequences wherever we
divide up pupils into “slow” and “bright” tracks, which are naturally a
reflection of class society outside. Just how damaging such discrimination is
to a child’s self-esteem was shown when a computer mistakenly put all the
so-called “slow” children into the “bright” class and vice versa. A year
later, when the mistake was discovered, educators found that the slow pupils
were behaving as though they were bright and the bright pupils were behaving
as though they were stupid—the beginning of ghettoization. I constantly met
teachers and even principals who referred to their ghetto pupils as
“animals.” To the point where I saw even young children thinking of
themselves as rats. In my own school, I learned firsthand that the image the teacher had
of a child became the image the child tried to live up to. I spoke a rural
dialect, which sounded “dumb” to the ears of teachers in the city, where they
spoke “correct” Danish. As a result, they unconsciously avoided me, and
little by little I became introverted with occasional explosions of “dumb”
behavior. I lost all desire for learning and consistently scored 30% to 50%
lower than the other pupils. Finally, I was forced to drop out, which
eventually made me into a streetwise vagabond. Had I, in addition to my ADHD,
been black or brown in a racist society, where we unconsciously try to keep
such “unteachables” out of sight till they became
“behavioral untouchables,” I could easily have ended up not only
“streetwise,” but also a “criminal,” “addict,” “prostitute,” “welfare loafer”
or filled any of the other roles a society of disposable humans finds it
fitting to mold its undesirables into. To avoid the accusation of being the master-slave society’s whip-hand,
teachers often find new ways of putting the blame on their pupils. Liberals
insist the ghetto child’s “lack of motivation” and “impaired learning
ability” is due to being “culturally deprived” since they come from homes
with no more books than could be found in slave cabins (or in a Turkish or
Arab peasant’s home). Could it be that the teachers themselves have been
trapped in a closed system and have become excellent oppressors with their
“Our schools aren’t bad, but we get bad students” or “Poor little things,”
judgments crushing to children? If there’s any doubt left, it’s worth remembering that highly
motivated, politically and socially aware teachers in schools run by the
Black Panthers and black Muslims brought their ghetto kids up to national
(white) standards. Private Muslim schools in Denmark can do it in the same
way. In other words, by excelling academically, not solely through athletic
scholarships. This expectational deterrent to learning can also be seen in societies
permeated by oppressive thinking toward other vulnerable groups. American
women, for example, who attended girls’ schools, where they’re protected from
society’s sexism, do better after graduating than women who went to
integrated schools. If some of us find it difficult facing our own racism,
let’s not forget how few men 50 years ago saw themselves as sexists. Yet the fact that we crushed girls with our attitudes is revealed by
the statistics from those years, which show how many women we “forced” away
from higher education with emotional blocks that prevented them from becoming
doctors, lawyers, and scientists. When we see the 4th grade syndrome in our marginalized black and brown
children in both the US and Europe, we must conclude: Either we need help
processing our racism, or children of color must be protected from us in
non-integrated schools with highly committed and conscientious teachers,
“saving angels” who can restore the sense of self-worth and identity that we
so early on steal from them. Unfortunately, I find myself an active part of this racism. After
months of teaching in mostly white universities, for example, I’ve
internalized the students’ thinking. I frequently catch myself thinking in
racist terms about “blacks.” When I’m similarly isolated in Denmark, my
thinking about those whom Danes label “Muslims” becomes skewed in the same
way. With the racist’s reproachful and distancing perspective as well as his
penchant for finding fault with “the other,” I thus help our outcasts form a
defeatist hostile attitude—again, in the blindness of my white privilege. For
blindness it is when we outwardly demand integration, but in our inner
thinking “distance ourselves from,” fear, and consequently crush those we
should integrate with. In Los Angeles I saw a beautiful case of racial solidarity when West
Indian immigrant students formed an organization to motivate native blacks
not to drop out of high school and college—a sort of historical repetition of
the underground railroad, where free blacks helped people out of slavery. The extent to which we’re all victims of this oppression is shown in
this picture of a group of black teenagers. The girl was adopted as a baby by
blacks in the ghetto and has been brought up to be black: to behave black, to
think black, and to dress black. She has hardly anything in common with
whites; she can’t even speak “our language”. In white homes I see the
opposite. Black and white, Palestinian and Jew, native and immigrant, male
and female, heterosexual and gay suffer severe injury when parents early on
recreate the patterns of oppression they themselves received from their
parents. Both parties are eventually robbed of the ability, as well as the
desire, to treat the other side humanely. We give up deep down, deciding it’s
an absurd ethnic alchemy to try to integrate elements that repel each other
like oil and water. The frantic efforts of liberals to shake these two
elements so much that they fragment into smaller particles for a short time
is just a futile attempt to give oppression a human face—like voting for
Obama while trapped in the massive apartheid of black and white hearts. So is
there any hope at all? Yes,
I often hear even the worst racists say, “I wish we could adopt all black
children so they could become like us.” Although in typical racist fashion
they look for the fault in “the others,” it’s not an expression of racial
hatred. Just as Europeans rejoice when “Muslims” convert to Christianity,
forgetting that it’s the different culture to which they react negatively. I
see this awkward hope most clearly in white students in American universities
when they relate how, out of liberal guilt, they try to reach out to black
students. But all the time they’re held back by reactionary guilt: they
recall all the warnings of their parents in childhood; usually not verbally,
but in their eyes or in the clicks of the car door locks when they drove too
close to a black neighborhood. This cocktail
of white guilt and fear creates the anger and hostility of internalized
racism among blacks, which in turn creates more white fear and guilt, etc.
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344 Sing a song of sad young men, glasses full of rye. All the news is bad again kiss your dreams goodbye. All the sad young men sitting in the bars drinking up the night and missing all the stars. All the sad young men drifting through the town drinking up the night trying not to frown. All the sad young men, singing in the cold trying to forget that they are growing old. All the sad young men choking on their youth, trying to be gay running from the truth. Autumn turns the leaves to gold slowly dies the heart. Sad young men are growing old, that’s the cruelest part. Misbegotten moon shines for a sad young man, let your gentle light guide them all again. All the sad, sad, sad young men. For at uddybe dette må jeg kort vende
tilbage til mine protester mod Vietnam-krigen (før jeg kom til Amerika).
Moralsk forarget over USA's brug af napalmbomber, som brændte eller sårede
tusindvis af vietnamesere - herunder børn - designede og trykte jeg for egen
regning en plakat, hvorpå der stod: ESSO laver napalm. (Esso er nu kendt som
Exxon.) Jeg løb rundt og klistrede dem op i hele København, ofte med politiet
i hælene. En kold december aften klatrede jeg op i et højt træ for at undgå
at blive fanget af politiet, der, som jeg opdagede, som regel også var imod
Vietnam-krigen. For at drille mig parkerede to smilende betjente deres bil
ved siden af træet. "Du kan sidde deroppe hele natten og fryse, mens vi
slapper af i den varme bil og drikker kaffe, indtil du kommer ned." Selv
om jeg frøs i mit høje tilflugtssted, var jeg fast besluttet på at vinde over
mine plageånder. Jeg kom ikke ned, og om morgenen gav de op. Hver dag kunne
jeg se, hvordan jeg var ved at vinde min moralske krig. For Esso måtte hyre
en hel hær af arbejdere til at gå rundt og male Esso-logoet over med sort
maling for at stoppe den voksende boykot af deres tankstationer. Reklamens
magt – og dette var min første reklame - fik mig altså til både at hade og
elske Esso-logoet. Undervejs opbyggede jeg et overvældende fjendtligt billede
af monsteret bag Esso: Rockefeller-familien. Jeg fik også at vide, at de
havde været ansvarlige for 51 strejkende mænd, kvinder og børns død i
Colorado i 1914. Med CIA's hjælp havde de væltet regeringer, herunder Irans,
og indsat den morderiske, torturerende Shah for at forhindre Iran i at
nationalisere sine oliekilder (hvilket senere førte til den islamiske
revolution). Så da jeg nu oplevede et sandt déjà vu
(min frysende nat i træet) og blev overvældet af retfærdig vrede, følte jeg,
at jeg havde ret til at stå over for selve monstret - og bankede på døren. 352 Da Jay Rockefeller endelig kom hjem, tabte
jeg fuldstændig mit hjerte til denne varmhjertede familie. Da jeg var
fordybet i en samtale med hans kone, antog han, at jeg var en af hendes
venner, og han spurgte aldrig, hvorfor jeg var der (ligesom jeg selv havde
glemt, hvorfor jeg var der). Hvis jeg havde forventet at møde et monster, var
det min egen projektion, da vi til min overraskelse og glæde havde de samme
holdninger til næsten alting. Han var også modstander af Vietnam-krigen og
kritiserede senere krigshelten John McCain for at smide napalmbomber på
civile vietnamesere. Efter college var han rejst den samme vej som jeg den
dag for at arbejde med fattige kulminearbejdere, der boede i hytter, der var
lige så elendige som dem, jeg havde fotograferet. Han arbejdede for at
forbedre deres forhold i VISTA-programmet, som John F. Kennedy startede, og
han tabte sit hjerte til disse minearbejdere, blev der og har været en
magtfuld talsmand for dem lige siden, først som deres guvernør og senere som
senator i Washington. Jeg følte med det samme, at han var "min
mand". Efter at vi havde drukket en del flasker, og han havde vist stor
interesse for mine billeder af shacks og fattigdom, følte jeg mig så
opløftet, at jeg fortalte ham, at jeg forgæves havde forsøgt at få støtte til
at købe et professionelt Nikon-kamera og film, så jeg kunne fuldføre mit
arbejde. Jeg vil aldrig glemme hans svar: "Taler du til mig som person
eller til fonden? Så kom op på mit kontor i morgen og vis mig din ansøgning
om støtte". Jeg kunne næsten ikke sove den nat. For første gang havde
jeg et reelt håb om at få lidt støtte til min fotografering (om ikke andet så
nogle babysitterpenge). Men da jeg kiggede på den ansøgning, som jeg altid
havde med mig, så jeg en sætning om "Rockefeller-klanens brutale massakre
på 41 fanger i Attica". Det havde jeg fuldstændig glemt. Jeg var så flov
efter at have mødt så meget varme, gæstfrihed og tillid fra Rockefellerne, at
jeg ikke kunne få mig selv til at banke på hans dør. I stedet vendte jeg om
og fortsatte min vagabondering med den gamle Rockefellers slogan:
"hverken en dime til banken eller en penny til
at bruge". Rasende på mine fordomme formulerede jeg min nye indsigt:
Underklassesyndromet med mord og alkoholisme er blot et spejlbillede af den
herskende klasse. Indrømmet, alkoholisme-delen henviste mere til det, jeg
havde set i andre overklassefamilier, end til denne familie, som havde vist
mig så megen generøsitet, selv om jeg var en ubudne gæst. To dage senere
boede jeg hos denne kvinde i en hytte, der lå lige ved et Exxon-raffinaderi.
Ud over mit had/kærlighedsforhold til Exxon-logoet tror jeg, at der var en
anden grund til, at jeg endte hos hende. I løbet af mit første år i Amerika
underskrev præsident Nixon den nationale miljølov om at fjerne bly fra
benzin. Blyholdig benzin var blevet introduceret af Standard Oil (Exxon) for
dets ”anti-knock effect,” og Exxon havde bekæmpet tidligere forsøg på
at forbyde det. Lige før jeg brød mit "anti-knock"-vagabondprincip
i Jay og Sharons hus – for jeg ventede altid passivt på, at folk inviterede
mig hjem - havde jeg hørt om nye undersøgelser, der viste blyets ødelæggende
virkninger på børn. Jeg tænkte på alt det bly, som sorte børn blev udsat for
i ghettohjem, der ofte var bygget ved siden af motorveje i den indre by.
(Side 299). Dette gav mig svaret på, hvorfor vold og mord var eksploderet ca.
20 år efter, at blyholdig gas blev almindelig. (Denne dreng viser mig blodet
fra en i hans familie, som lige var blevet myrdet). Bly spiller også en
vigtig rolle i mange ghettobørns indlæringsvanskeligheder og forklarer,
hvorfor mange hvide, som Valerie, klarede sig bedre i skolen. 17 år senere,
efter et af mine shows i Stanford, kom en hvid kvinde hen til mig og spurgte,
om vi kunne tale under fire øjne. Hun virkede lidt vred, da hun sagde:
"Jeg er med i din bog". Jeg var helt forvirret, da der næsten ikke
var nogen hvide i bogen. Da hun fandt siden, gik det op for mig, at hun var
Valerie Rockefeller. "Sidste år," fortsatte hun, "da min
værelseskammerat kom hjem efter dit show og fortalte mig, at du portrætterede
min far som alkoholiker og massemorder, blev jeg meget vred på dig. Men nu,
hvor jeg selv har set showet, må jeg give dig et stort knus. Og her er mit
visitkort. Hvis du nogensinde får brug for min hjælp, så ring til mig."
Wow. Igen blev jeg ramt af skyldfølelse, fordi jeg i bogen ikke havde skelnet
tilstrækkeligt mellem Exxon, et symbol på undertrykkelse, og den kærlige
familie, som engang havde taget mig til sig. Jeg mødte præcis den samme
overvældende reaktion fra tre andre Rockefeller-børn på andre universiteter.
De bad endda om mit råd om, hvordan de bedst kunne tjene de fattige. Så jeg
var ikke overrasket over at se Valerie, hvis tunge bagage var både negativ og
positiv, ende som lærer for unge med indlærings- og emotionelle problemer i
Harlem. På en eller anden måde så jeg en direkte linje fra vores første møde
i hendes hjem, da hun var barn, til hendes sociale engagement som voksen i
Harlem. Først og fremmest blev hun formet af hendes forældres lange sociale
engagement. Måske forstærket af hendes mors nedarvede
traumer (parallelt med de nedarvede traumer blandt sorte børn). Under alle
omstændigheder var jeg, ligesom med hendes far, forbavset over, hvor enige vi
var om alting, da vi sidst kommunikerede i 2015. "Jeg er stadig hyper
kritisk fordømmende over for folk med penge!" skrev hun til mig. Hun er
også aktiv i Rockefeller-familiens indsats for at stoppe Exxon/Mobils
klimafornægtelse. "Som efterkommere har vi en ekstra byrde i forhold til
at bekæmpe klimaforandringer," siger Valerie.
Denne totalitære ensretning er som “troskabseden” til “én
nation, under Gud, udelelig, med frihed og retfærdighed for alle”. Den står i
skærende kontrast til den slaveriets tilstand, der hamres ind i de sorte børn
i disse forfaldne “ghettoskoler” med krydsfinervinduer. I teorien giver vi
med glæde frihed og retfærdighed til Robert, som her ses sværge troskab i
Washington, NC, for bagefter at gå hjem til sin shack med flere rotter end
bøger. I det mindste hjælper det at dække vinduerne med “stars and stribes”
for at holde kulden - og hans amerikanske drøm - ude.
Når politi og soldater skal eskortere børn i hver eneste bus, og
rasende stenkastende hvide skal holdes bag barrikader for at beskytte sorte
børn, lærer vi dem på deres første dag i den hvide verden, at Ku Klux Klan er
i hjertet af enhver hvid ... som jeg fejlagtigt skrev engang. For
siden har jeg i mit arbejde med KKK lært, at klanens børn ofte er de eneste
hvide i helt sorte skoler, da de er for fattige til at flytte væk fra sorte
skoler og kvarterer.
– Vi burde være venner med de hvide ligesom Avis. Hun er min ven
og hun er hvid. – Vent bare til hun bliver voksen, så vil hun være ude af denne
verden. – Hvordan ved du, at hun vil være ude af denne verden? - Hun vender sig måske imod dig. De vil
måske hjernevaske hende. – Men en hvid er stadigvæk et menneske! – Men hvorfor... hvorfor behandler de så et sort menneske, som
var det et dyr? – Vi må have gjort et eller andet galt! Når jeg lyttede til sådanne samtaler med 7-
og 8-årige børn, kunne jeg kun konkludere, at mange af dem ikke kun ser deres
ghetto, men også deres land som et lukket system og - værre endnu - bebrejder
sig selv for det. På spørgsmålet "Hvor kommer du fra?" vil brune
børn født i Danmark f.eks. svare "Tyrkiet". Ligesom sorte har de
internaliseret budskabet i vores splittelsesretorik: "Du er uønsket og
ikke en del af vores værdier."
I min egen skole lærte jeg på egen hånd, at
det billede, læreren havde af et barn, bliver det billede, som barnet antager
og forsøger at leve op til. 360 Hvis der er nogen tvivl tilbage, er det
værd at huske på, at meget motiverede, politisk og socialt bevidste lærere på
skoler, der blev ledet af de sorte pantere og sorte muslimer, bragte deres
ghettobørn op på nationalt (hvidt) niveau. Private muslimske skoler i Danmark
kan gøre det på samme måde. Med andre ord ved at udmærke sig akademisk og
ikke kun gennem sportslegater. En sådan præventiv forventningsbaseret
indlæring kan også ses i samfund, der er gennemsyret af undertrykkende
tænkning over for andre sårbare grupper. Når vi ser 4. klasses syndromet hos vores marginaliserede sorte og
brune børn i både USA og Europa, må vi konkludere: Enten har vi brug for
hjælp til at bearbejde vores racisme, eller også skal farvede børn beskyttes
mod os i ikke-integrerede skoler med højt engagerede og bevidste
lærere, "frelsende
engle", der kan genoprette den følelse af selvværd og identitet, som vi
så tidligt stjæler fra dem.
I hvor høj grad vi alle er ofre for denne
undertrykkelse, viser dette billede af en gruppe sorte teenagere. Pigen blev
som baby adopteret af sorte i ghettoen og er blevet opdraget til at være
sort: til at opføre sig sort, til at tænke sort og til at klæde sig sort. Hun
har næsten intet til fælles med de hvide; hun kan ikke engang tale
"vores sprog". I hvide hjem ser jeg det modsatte. Sorte og hvide,
palæstinensere og jøder, indfødte og indvandrere, mænd og kvinder,
heteroseksuelle og homoseksuelle lider alvorlig skade, når forældre tidligt
genskaber de undertrykkelsesmønstre, som de selv har modtaget fra deres
forældre.
Denne cocktail af hvid skyld og frygt
skaber vrede og fjendtlighed som følge af internaliseret racisme blandt
sorte, hvilket igen skaber mere hvid frygt og skyld osv. Den værste racisme i
dag er således ikke skabt af had, men af kærlighed - et ønske om at beskytte
vores børn mod det, vi selv blev lært at frygte. Når jeg tager hvide med til
sorte fester i USA eller til brune fester i Danmark, ser jeg ofte, at de
bryder ud i gråd af skyldfølelse: efter at de så længe ubevidst har
dæmoniseret dem, oplever de pludselig "de andre" som rigtige
mennesker. Vores tårer afslører, at vi alle er ulykkelige ofre for racismen. |