Hi, I'm Token!

For a large part of my own life, I was either the only Black person in the group or one of a small number of faces like mine. From learning at an awkward age of how to navigate the world as seen by my paler friends and classmates through Cub Scouts, the rigors of the pre-AP life, and even the privilege of sorts that there were some things I can get away with things that otherwise would have landed me in detention – or worse, detained in the principal’s office or the back of an early ‘90s Caprice sedan, my tokenism has opened doors that certainly would have been shut  despite the advocacy of my own parents, the neighborhood, and even the larger community as a whole working together. To this day I can still find myself drifting off to the lyrics to “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt as easily as the reverberating bass notes from “No Diggity”, the seminal Blackstreet classic from the same time period; why neither 2Pac nor Biggie find themselves getting heavy airplay is beyond me save for how both artists’ songs are randomly selected on Spotify.

Up until a few months after my 28th birthday, I was the token Black friend.

Look for this and more this week from Hi, I'm Token on AD&AD. #token pic.twitter.com/2YglLA0bhq

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) June 15, 2020

You know, the one who always found himself in the group of white people, an outlier in a world that as eagerly as I was accepted (and welcomed into) I could be as swiftly ostracized as just one of those Black guys they saw on TV or a stereotype of their own insecurities. This is NOT an indictment of all of my relationships; the bros from high school and my tribe in college gladly saw me as more than just a checkmark to fill a quota box and as we navigated the journey together and separately, our bonds have defined us in ways invaluable to all parties involved. As a darkly humorous twist on my own employment situation for a certain nonprofit I spent a year with (and one that inevitably led me to a deep depression), I would joke around in staff meetings introducing myself as Token. It never happened around the students as I conditioned myself to minimize my own real blackness to present a perpetually smiling team player to my own detriment – and eventual breakdown. 

Down since Day One. Not pictured:  Jason, Mansul, Josh, V. Lo, Chad, Ben.

For a large number of Black readers and people who have known me since elementary school, these words are not really a surprise save for the depression. My words hopefully are a deeper insight of both the blatant and covert ways racism have made me the man I am today from being told I’ll never be Black enough for (fill-in-the-blank) to being followed around a Gap store where the sales associate was reluctant to let me try on a pair of standard fit jeans to how my own connection with God parallels in both Black and white spaces.

Growing up in Conway in the 1980s and 1990s, we seemingly were afforded a quality education due to all of us residing in the 72032 zip code; it was years later when I found that to not be entirely accurate from other classmates’ experiences in what should have been a similar thing across the board. Why is this so important to note? Simple:  Not everyone had a stable home life. Not everyone who I played basketball with during the summers at the Boys and Girls Club or McGee Center had the structure at home nor the village of responsible adults there to not only protect the young boys and girls but also the desire to encourage us into varying interests such as Scouts, band, or a chill day to read in the library away from the squeaks of sneakers and basketballs and the arguments that would have had us run out of the gyms for the particular day.

Yet the outward perception of a diverse community was only a mirage.

Ask me what happened when the other Cub Scouts in my den mysteriously quit midyear and I found myself a Bear Cub without a den, or when some parents began treating us as the exceptions to the rule sometimes calling us the affirmative action Cub Scouts. Thankfully, I landed with a group late that year and my final den (yes, I stopped after Webelos – I knew band among other activities, would conflict with becoming an Eagle Scout. Besides, I wanted to have some sense of regularity like everyone else) stuck it out for the Arrow of Light ceremony.

Even back home in the ‘hood, I knew I was always going to be an exception – for better or worse.

As I got older, I began to find myself in circles that I either did not know anyone aside from the previous summer of mowing lawns in their neighborhoods or purely based on my academic exploits as a gifted and talented student. Having a passing resemblance to Steve Urkel didn’t help my cause, but a Black male who wore glasses and spoke with a mainstream (read: spoken proper English) inflection automatically meant that I did not quite fit one world neatly, and this skin was fairly obvious to everyone else. I am not saying that I denied being Black, just that over everything else including the new nerd label, it was certainly a thing. I also recognized a bit of privilege that most of my counterparts did not possess:  While I (and most of my neighborhood) grew up in two-parent homes, my mom did not work full-time outside of the home until my brother’s senior year of high school when the national retail outfit opened a store in the southwest part of town and was looking for a department manager. As an aside, being more nerd and affable good guy who could toot a trumpet a little bit led to entry into extracurricular activities with which I became fairly involved and more comfortable in whiter spaces than the chocolate one called home got the proverbial ball rolling.

I was so used to being the only Black face around (or one of a few) that the microaggressions that I recollect in the rearview were those that never truly offended me because I wasn’t around them:  Obviously, some things that occurred in suburban schools that would not have existed in darker spaces such as a somewhat blind eye to white students using the N-word and visible Confederate flags in the hallways yet those eyes became eaglelike when it came to the sagging jeans and Malcolm X t-shirts. I guess being fully assimilated into the mainstream was supposed to be my protectorate from being needled into time-wasting beefs. (Due to my normally calm demeanor, I never threw hands on-campus, and the one time I did put up my dukes – on the basketball court in the ‘hood mind you, led to the only whooping I really took.)

To open my own eyes to a world much bigger than the books I studied and shed a bit of the nerdy image from childhood, I found myself intentionally seeking out black friends since I needed the sense of community in college. Let us say it did not quite work out as I had envisioned:  My doppelganger who became an eventual good friend was a visible member of the school’s largest white fraternity, eventually becoming chapter president. Like my years back home, other black students looked upon me with first disdain and distrust only to grudgingly accept me likely because of who my mentor and roommate are. I was perceived as the whitest black guy in the room; at that level, I found myself slinking away from the community to the tribe of friends that have been my closest peers for the past twenty-two years and counting; ask “where da bird at?” and they would likely say that question is the blackest thing they ever heard me say.

If you knew me in high school - or even, the college years before I pledged. Hell, I even heard it a couple of years ago. pic.twitter.com/MvzNuPeOhB

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) April 27, 2020

As with all things and rising levels of education, employment statuses, housing situations, and so forth, the need to assuage white people’s fears slowly began to grate on me. Why, me? Having to make them comfortable with my very presence as more than just the guy who they could check off on their quota box of having a black friend was a crappy feeling – and much of it came to a head February 2007.

A number of you know the story, and for those who do not:  Avon Mountain is one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in New England on dry days, and doubly so on snowy ones. Not seeing the sign that said, “no right on red”, I made a right turn at the red light; immediately, two of Avon’s finest pulled me over and hell broke loose. From my own prior interactions with law enforcement back home, I knew to roll my tinted driver’s window down and show them my empty hands. Since my administrator was a native of the nearby town and in the backseat, she had me drop her window first for them to see I had passengers. I presented both officers my driver’s license, registration, and insurance; despite that, I was told to exit the car. Come on, this Black man is taking over Avon, Connecticut in a red Hyundai Santa Fe with Arkansas plates, specifically those of my alma mater and fraternity bracket. Be real. That was the longest twenty minutes of my life, and when I was finally released without a traffic ticket or warning, I was so shaken that I was ready to quit the teaching gig and move back home. That – and other incidents – led to a depression that set for most of that year long after I had moved back.

Lesson learned:  Being token did not exempt me from being Black in America. All it did was cloud my mind into thinking I was exceptional when the majority of this nation saw my skin first before anything else, and so-called liberal New Englanders were as hateful as their conservative Southern brethren can be – and have been toward Black people.

When it came to my dating life, I tell people all the time my wife is the reason why I came back to Black women. Sure, we had met freshman year at the U and I am certain she knew how I felt about her, but 1) we were young; and 2) she was the only sister I felt genuinely cared about me. Also, I was deep in the OJ life:  If the woman was not white, she was not getting a second look from me. Even as I lived with dry D, I still had the audacity to exclude a large segment of women who may have wanted to throw the cookie at me solely because they were not what I typically interacted with and/or desired. As accurately as the fact that black females did not give a damn about me beyond the dollar bill (and that General Chemistry textbook that was required at the freshman level), I treated those dismissals as reason enough to expect that my babies would be tan instead of chocolate. Like I said, I simply did not travel very well in Black spaces, and to the women reading this, I profusely apologize. Even the perception of denying familial dignity was simultaneously wrong and contrary to how I was reared – with as strong a woman as my mother is and the implication that my girlfriends could not come home if they couldn’t use my comb, I still did it.

What is pretty safe to say is that I get invited into conversations of race, and depending on the friend, I can either go into depth or speak in generalities to the group. I would prefer to share in detail but for those people who still see me as the guy in the quota box “he’s my Black (friend/neighbor/coworker/whatever convenient reason necessary to excuse my racist comment on Facebook”), please refrain from viewing me in that context. If we have not gone out for beers in the last few years or conversed via text or phone call, then keep my name out of your mouths.

For the friend whose father asked me my connection to her then-husband (several years ago), I am used to answering it the way I did as if he forgot I was in her first wedding. It was not a big deal except I guess coming from that part of the state, having a close Black friend is unheard of.

This guy:  co-conspirator of shenanigans of all shapes and sizes since freshman year and a damn good dude

Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America of the week:  We know why. Everyone who really knows me at least acknowledges the role that the Black Baptist church has had in my life from lower elementary school to the present day in the diaconate, but what if I told I briefly attended Congregational services for the year I resided in Colebrook before I found Mount Calvary Baptist thirty-one miles away in Hartford? Nothing against the fifteen-minute sermon with hot coffee and still-warm Dunkin’ Donuts following the service, but I kind of felt like I was more of an exotic entity than a human. I won’t lie and say the brevity of worship was not a draw so I could go home and watch the Patriots during the afternoons yet the expectations of mainline churches is assimilation – and in some locales, maintaining the status quo in learned (and preached) coded language.

Hate is not only taught at home, but it is also justified in the church:  It has been for at least the past 400 years through slavery, Jim Crow, and the mental gymnastics employed to this date to defend the imagery of a blonde haired, blue-eyed Caucasian Jesus, which is dispelled in Revelation 1:14-15. Below is the text:

His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire.

And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. – Revelation 1:14-15

I told you that does not sound like the image passed on from one generation to the next but remember, the slaves were not allowed to learn to read – death was their punishment for that level of comprehension as their masters only viewed them as property. Also, their tomes were only preselected to keep them childlike in perpetual servitude. With that bit of knowledge, why do we still remain ignorant of our Creator?

For a better explanation, read 1 John 4:20

It is in part why I have felt a bit uneasy about unity services given that so many of my so-called Christian brothers and sisters huddled around their skin folk more closely than their spiritual kinfolk during the last presidential election despite all of us knowing what the current occupant symbolized to a nation of immigrants both voluntarily and stolen. As a consequence, they revealed that their god is white supremacy. These days it seems to be a more stilted effort in emulating what the Church looks and feels like – one group is giving it their all in advancing the conversation and developing the relationship as more than an odd connection while the other merely views it as entertainment.

Lemme keep it a buck for the people in the back:  I am constantly grateful with the genuine white friends I grew up with, and I hope they have learned as much from me that I have from them over the years, and for each passing day, we all can continue to advance the world one moment at a time. Is it all groupthink? No. I would like to think of my friends as more of the panel on the Jim Lehrer hour on PBS than the cast of Fox News.

Another graphic preview of "Hi, I'm Token" coming to AD&AD #token pic.twitter.com/cRYaaoRfMR

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) June 15, 2020

I will NEVER turn my back on Black America, not even when it may be financially beneficial (see Candace Owens). NEVER. PERIOD. You will still bump Roddy Rich and Lil’ Wayne or Cardi B, enjoy watching Dave Chappelle and his comedic roast sessions, and revere Razorbacks athletes as long as they don the crimson and white, but will you be willing to ride for us when it is less than convenient?

When the dust settles, I wonder if we will change – or did I waste my time trying to bust through stone walls?

Wanna see something? Come back in a few days to read "Hi, I'm Token!" from AD&AD! #token pic.twitter.com/YG0Rh3mD4x

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) June 16, 2020