Expectations: Dreams Are Made Of This

Mike was a “nigger” and because of this would never amount to much. He knew this because his father often told him so.

Greg was a white boy and though he faced daunting obstacles, he could realize his dreams if he just worked hard. He, too, was told this by his father.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Mike drifted through life in the company of pimps, whores, thieves and drug dealers and was blinded in a barroom shooting in 1974.

Nor will it surprise you to hear that Greg became a teacher and a lawyer, earned a Ph.D. and is now dean of a law school.

What may surprise you is that they are brothers, born of the same parents. Their mother was white, their father mixed. And mixed up, torn by the destructive passions of a light-skinned black man passing for white. Perhaps it was that self-loathing that caused him to encourage one son and revile the other, though both his boys looked about as “black” as Heather Locklear.

The Williams’ story is told in “Life on the Color Line,” a memoir by Gregory Howard Williams, the son who grew up to be dean of the Ohio State University College of Law.

I bring up the Williams brothers in order to discuss the power of expectation.

People often challenge me to explain the dysfunction that cripples many young black men. I reply that it takes no great insight to discern that a psychology of victimhood has crept into them, sapping their dignity and strength.

But here’s a corollary truth that is rarely spoken: No one expects much more. No one does them that honor. Not even themselves.

A black boy learns early and in myriad ways how little we expect of him. He learns it from the mother who tells him he’s going to be just like his worthless daddy. From the shopkeepers and police who regard him as a suspect in waiting. From the homeboys who say acting smart is “acting white.” From the media who know his name only when he’s done wrong. From the teachers who subconsciously anticipate his failure. From the father who calls him “nigger.”

There is no mystery here. We are all shaped by the expectations of others, our spirits molded so that we live up - or down - to what they believe us to be. But too frequently, what others think of us becomes more crucial than what we think of ourselves.

That’s the problem. I wish I could make you know how deep is the wound when I see those men - my young brothers - flame out and fail because that’s how someone perceived them. In the instant they buy that damnable lie, they lose the chance to be who they really are. They suck defeat into their lungs like poison.

The tragedy is: It doesn’t have to be this way. They don’t have to fall heir to the worst this nation has to offer. Nor do you need an act of Congress or presidential proclamation to save them.

Those boys need what we all need. Someone to believe in them. Not some distant “role model” saying the right things while selling athletic shoes on television. Not some harried teacher trying to balance the demands of 40 children.

They need someone close. Someone who is in their lives early and always. Someone who loves them and pushes them and teaches them. Someone who expects greatness of them - and is not surprised when it comes because all along, they believed with a fervor in the wondrousness of this one child.

Someone, before it is too late. Because young black men are at ground zero of a social meltdown that threatens us all.

Which is why you can’t love a black manchild without fear and worry. And you mustn’t love him without hope.

Every day, I send two black boys out of the house and into an uncertain world: Bryan, who is sweet and dreamy and shy, aspires to direct movies. Marlon, who is cocky and charming and quick, wants to be president of the United States.

And their father watches them and worries for them and knows that the world is not always kind to little black boys with lofty dreams. It doesn’t always know what to make of them or where to place them in its preconceptions.

But I shoo them toward their future anyway and dream a day when I join one at the Oscars and the other at his inauguration.

I will beam and cheer as my boys ascend to the light. I will not be surprised.

xxxx