Hold On, We're Coming Home

Look and see, for everyone is coming home. Your sons are coming from distant lands; your little daughters will be carried on by the hip. Your eyes will shine and your hearts will thrill with joy. Isaiah 60:4

Last year, Drake released a hit song and video titled “Hold On, We’re Going Home”, which he rescues a woman from an angry mob of kidnappers while reassuring her that they would eventually be going home. The lyrics below underscore the significance of home:

                        I got my eyes on you

                        You’re everything that I see

                        I want you heart, love, and emotion endlessly

                        I can’t get over you

                        You left your mark on me

                        I want your heart, love, and emotion endlessly

                        ‘Cause you’re a good girl and you know it

                        You act so different around me

                        ‘Cause you’re a good girl and you know it

                        I know exactly who you could be

                        Just hold on we’re going home

                        Just hold on we’re going home

                        It’s hard to do these things alone

                        Just hold on, we’re going home (home)

About this time every year, we hear and retell the Christmas story and I’m sure you’ll hear it again sometime today, if not before Thursday. What I would like to focus on is Joseph’s homecoming to Bethlehem from his current home in Nazareth. In those days, Caesar Augustus imposed taxes based on where you (the husband, man of the house) were from, not where you currently live. Every man returned to his hometown upon decree to be counted in the census. Joseph brings a very pregnant Mary to Bethlehem for this reason (see Luke 2:1-4). To make it easier to understand, imagine me packing up my wife and driving back to Conway to be counted in that city’s census after being away for so long. Since I (technically) haven’t counted as a fulltime resident since the late 1990s, it would be tough to uproot my life simply to be counted in the city’s population. However, we are to give Caesar what he is due. [Sidebar: I was in Arkadelphia in 2000 and Benton for the 2010 US Census counts. Conway is just the town I grew up in and where my paternal lineage lies.] More so, try walking forty-eight miles from our neighborhood to Friendship with someone who could have very well been ready to give birth and definitely wanted off her tired feet. Joseph was also commissioned by God to undertake the arduous journey – certainly he didn’t know the child Mary was carrying would be our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. After a period of time of fulfilled obligations to Caesar in Bethlehem, they returned to Nazareth (2:39); no word about grandparents or how the in-laws took to Joseph and Mary’s extended stay. Since he was a carpenter, I’m sure he could always find work to provide for his family.

Strange parallel:  My father is a carpenter by trade and mother stayed at home with my brother and me throughout a significant part of my childhood. While we have heard Jesus had siblings, He and I are both firstborn boys.

Isaiah implored the Israelites in Chapter 60 to look around them and see that everyone is coming home. Today, we fly, drive, hop, skip, jump, sail, walk, roll, etc. to be home for Christmas just to be back in a native setting. As much as I try to tell myself that Bryant is home because we bought that plot of land and have established roots in the city, the holidays remind us that home is where the heart is. It’s why as a customer service manager who worked Christmas Eve in college I quickly sprinted to my white Mercury Topaz to enter Interstate 30 and embark on that two-hour trip home. It’s why we scurry to Big Mama’s house and church for ham, dressing, a feel-good message from the pastor, and our babies to give us the same joy their grandparents shared not that long ago.

One day, we are all going home. It’s hard to do these things along – just hold on, we’re going home.

I Can't Breathe, You Can't See

Preface: I know that the majority of law enforcement officers are honest, hardworking good people who are out to make a difference every day. To the great officers out there that I interact with – even occasionally – thank you for your service in making our world a better place than we found it. As a former teacher, I know what it is to have your chosen profession questioned daily and lumped into one band of stereotypes. However, we do have some rogue cops who for one reason or another think they are above the law or have an inferiority complex that has never been truly dealt with who do sully the profession. This post (as with all of my other blogs) are derived from my experiences, hopes, wishes, desires, and more toward a more authentic equality than a colorblind system that tends to avoid the pursuit of justice. If you don’t see color, then you certainly do not see a Henderson State-educated 36-year-old husband, friend, co-worker, neighbor, etc. as much more than another big black man with a deep voice.

Thoughts? Be constructive, not trollish. pic.twitter.com/JAQCpAT616
— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) December 9, 2014

Order rooted and maintained by fear, intimidation, violence, brutality, and incarceration is both cruel and immoral. Justice is order’s intended soul mate yet serving justice is twice as hard as doling out fear. Black America knows this better than anyone else with our twice-as-hard spirit: the one of having to work twice as hard to even be considered, and often our reward is a menial prize that we still have to fight tooth-and-nail for. If we’re satisfied with just getting in the door, then we’ve lost our way. More so, having a few dollars, a house on the hill, and being seen on television nightly does not mean the race is over; instead, each can be considered a deterrent  thanks to the predatory nature of greed and power. While there is nothing wrong with being able to provide a better lifestyle than the ones we were afforded, do not let the titles and little bit of power fool you into thinking this is what equality is about. If that is the case, then we have lost our resolve to take the road less traveled a la Robert Frost and our complacency will cost us dearly.

The legal proceedings and maneuverings that have sparked protests in Ferguson, Sanford, New York, Cleveland, and throughout our nation all expose our monumental failures to build and protect the gains of our parents, grandparents, and countless relatives won during the civil rights era. We know that not all of the evidence presented in every case was legitimate, as are each grand jury’s members truthful or representative of the communities they were commissioned to serve. What price are we willing to pay for our children and next generation?

#wakethefuckupamerica pic.twitter.com/9dyeqCfjhE

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) December 9, 2014

Toward the end of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned a Poor People’s Campaign – a connection for the working-class with the African-American twice-as-hard spirit designed to defend civil-rights legislation from inevitable backlash. He visualized the poor, vulnerable; the downtrodden unifying to uproot the political seeds deigned to grow income inequality. Sadly, he was murdered before it came to fruition.

Unfortunately, we are unaware the People’s Campaign was Phase 2 of a four-step civil rights movement and further lost in the woods about Barry Goldwater’s emphasis of Law and Order being the bedrock of pushback toward civil rights.

Law and Order – the American political strategy of choice of the past fifty years – did not put Goldwater in the White House. Historians know that he got his ass handed to him by President Johnson, losing every state but Arizona, but his emphasis is what brought President Nixon to the Oval Office and former actor Ronald Reagan the California governorship in 1968. It also justified Nixon’s War on Drugs, harsh sentencing requirements (crack offenders were locked up twice as long as cocaine violators), the dehumanization of black offenders, the Mulford Act of 1968, and the preference of order rooted in fear and punishment. Law and Order also provided America’s mass incarceration. As a result, the ten years of progress have produced at least a handful of useful laws that have been thwarted by fifty years of legalized mass incarceration and inequality.

This is segregation by incarceration (SBI), pitting the police vs. the African-American community. No flyers, no press conferences for those who opposed the end of an American apartheid system in Jim Crow, none of that. Segregation was not about to lie down and concede defeat and pledge support for racial equality. Its newer and not-so-evil-looking strategy was to take down the blatant whites-only sign and trade them in for strategic enforcement of criminal laws that pack poor people behind bars and inevitably break up the traditional pathways to upward mobility.

SBI is much worse and corrosive than Jim Crow ever was. One unintended benefit of Jim Crow was it forced black people to build and rely on our own economic, educational, and social systems. SBI is like diabetes – a silent killer with no benefits. It extinguishes hope and in effect, litters society with a multitude of grown-up boys who become parasitic not only on the affected families but also the areas they live in. In short, segregation by incarceration has left African-Americans distrustful of law enforcement via decimating the black family structure and placing a cultural rot that prison culture and black culture are synonymous.

Once capitalism got into the incarceration business, lawmakers and states began racking up profits in untold dollars without mention of the lives damaged in the process. Most states have private prisons which are often run more shoddily than the worst state institutions in their heydays, and now even corporations have thrown their hats in the ring employing people in the most dangerous situations all in the name of saving money to have a cheap labor force! Where do people get picked up? On the block, that’s where. The drug war has constructed an environment conducive to prison life and the yards; think about the codes of silence imposed.

Why did the gangs accelerate in growth in California in the 1970s and ‘80s? Why was gangsta rap born in Los Angeles?

Because Ronald Wilson Reagan planted that seed of Law and Order in California first.

Aside from Bernie Madoff, what happened to the white-collar thieves and corporate thugs whose greed nearly destroyed the national economy and put a standstill to the 2008 presidential campaign? Most of them have their jobs and some are lobbyists to the same lawmakers who turned a blind eye to their looting. Worse, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has made a link that loose cigarettes are worth more than a black man’s life – and this is what the Republican Party is trotting out for President in the next cycle? In an act of bipartisanship, even our original “first black president” Bill Clinton instituted draconian three strikes and mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines as a measure to get Southern whites on board with Law and Order. Look below and read the LBJ comment and tell me if this is accurate.

LBJ was right about enough Arkansas voters. Thank you for voting the way you did. pic.twitter.com/g96f65f4e7
— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) November 5, 2014

I can’t breathe, but you can’t see.

America is still a place where race trumps self-interest, where the middle-class and poor have more in common with each other than the one percenters we keep voting in. Just as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson does not speak for all black people, I would surely hope Rush Limbaugh and Tom Cotton are not representative of all white people. I’ll trade you Charles Barkley and Ben Carson for Phil Jackson and a pack of Ramen noodles (I jest), but you get the point. To maintain a perceived superiority, some people are willing to lie on the grenade of unfair justice in order to claim they are the chosen ones.

Why do you not see? Is it because your rose-colored glasses are tinted to a prescription that only limits to those inside of your immediate world? What about lumping all people unlike yourselves to a neat little box (ex. my black/white/gay/Asian/Hispanic/atheist/fill-in-the-blank friend)? Or does it not matter because it isn’t in your homogeneous villages?

Justice is not blind – history has proven that through the posthumous pardons and blank apologies. America is not.

Open your eyes.  

 

Making Forward Progress

When my wife and I moved into our house, we found a way to either work outside or inside to make changes to the home weekly for the first year we lived in it. Not long after I had mowed the grass one summer evening, our neighbor Tim walked across the grass and remarked that we were always doing something to make the property look better. Homeowners know where I am going with this one:  it is a combination of community pride and helping property values rise. Perhaps I was thinking about the New England Patriots’ training camp and ensuing preseason schedule when I replied, “man, we’re just making forward progress.”

As believers in Christ, we should never be satisfied to stay in one role thinking we have reached the pinnacle of spiritual success rather continue to “grow in the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Jesus does remind us in John 15:16 that we are chosen to go out and bear fruit. As a result of healthy growth, our spiritual fruit continues to grow throughout our lives. Our Lord is the vine, we are the branches. As long as we grow together, we will bear lots of good-tasting fruit.

In a move of forward progress to become more like God, we can be content that He who began a good work in us will continue it until it is completed upon His return.

The 2014 Thank-You Tour

At the beginning of the year, my sole resolution was to make one post to my blog per week, and for the most part that has been successful. Some topics have been fun while others were heart-wrenching, and they’ve even allowed for a Bible verse or sermon text and accompanying notes from my pastor. Thank you for reading, commenting, and otherwise keeping it mature; if I do not directly shout you out, it doesn’t mean any less of you. You’re all supremely wonderful souls!

• Obviously, thank God for keeping me around here for this long. He’s not done with me yet and in His will, 2015 will be greater.
• Chastity for putting up with the nights when those creative juices go wild and I just have to write. Thank you for being such a great wife, friend, compatriot, and (future) mother. I love you in words unspoken and actions beyond my comprehension.
  • News sources for pushing many of my prompts. You would think ABC, CNN, CBS, NBC, Fox, Al-Jazeera, etc. would be the sole sources; special shout outs to Facebook and Twitter for showing an up-to-the-moment insight of reality that tends to be unheard even if it isn’t what we are accustomed to.
  • My family for reading – and sometime critiquing my work. I’ll try not to make it so obvious next time, but living among you is a bonus.
• The Mount Zion Baptist Church family for some of the activism posts in mission-fulfilling work. Sunday after Sunday (and Wednesdays and Vacation Bible School), it’s both an honor and privilege to be a part of the community – and not holding my Bryant residency against me.
• Thanks to Noel, Rickey, and Sylvia for reading everything and bringing the competitive banter that makes AD&AD better. When I get paid, it’s on like Donkey Kong!
• Thank you Rineco for the time to think, pray, write, and being my bread and butter. Many nights all I have are sports-crazed co-workers and eccentric supervisors to deal with, but all 300+ of you are appreciated. What was originally going to be a six-week situation has become 2 ½ years of relationships and continuing opportunities, so thanks for keeping income toward my house.
• Thanks to all of my neighbors for making our block such a great place to call home. I owe each of you barbecue, so come on out anytime – not just when the blue tent is open.
  • Thank you to the friends I have gained and lost, for everything has a season. To all I missed on the shout-out column, thank you anyway for being you.

That should do it. God bless, I’m out.

Unpaid Overtime

No one likes working for free, even if they are salaried employees who just happen to love their jobs. For 36 years, I’ve worked for free.

Entitlement is a privilege and a handicap I KNOW nothing about it. I work twice as hard to be considered...
— Cari Champion (@CariChampion) December 4, 2014

Before you dismiss this post as another “woe is me” rant, ask yourself:
-          Do you know it is like to be followed in a store?
(I do. Any Dillards and the Gap in Avon. Hell, anywhere on Route 44 between Winsted and West Hartford. )
-          Do you know what it is like to be mistaken for the help?
(Again, I do. Years of retail and tech tend to do that. I guess I look like a Gap employee who happens to be your favorite tech support guy. Damn the fact I taught English for eight years.)
-          Do you know what it is like to be petted like a dog because of your hair?
(That I have not. The women in my family and friends have not been so fortunate, particularly if they are natural.)
-          Do you know what it is like to have your ideas initially cast aside as the black guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, only to be implemented without receiving any credit for your efforts?
(All the time. I’ve even been called a liability in some team-building exercises.)
-          Do you know what it is like to be told to “get over” slavery after #neverforget Pearl Harbor, September 11, the Holocaust, etc.?
(I do.)
-          Do you know what it is like to travel and worry about finding a “safe” place to eat, purchase gas, or even after a long day’s drive?
(I have. See the Dairy Queen in Anderson, MO and its deafening silence, any Chili’s restaurant, and the proliferation of Confederate flags near my destination.)

So have millions of other black Americans. Rich, poor, and middle-class. Uneducated, and those with Ph.Ds. and JDs. Famous and anonymous. Even POTUS has endured the trials in his policies and setting an agenda.

I’m tired. I can’t breathe. Tell Fabolous I can’t breathe with the weight of the world on my shoulders and neck because NYPD has it in a chokehold or Darren Wilson shot it six times or George Zimmerman was scared.

#WhyImTired The American political/justice system does not care for us unless it is emptying out our pockets.

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) December 9, 2014

How can I lead the way if society emasculates, humiliates, ignores, profiles, chokes, drags, shoots, or hangs us daily?

I’m tired of your bullshit apologies, press conferences, detached presidential speeches, reluctant diversity sessions, the gone-too-soon funerals and a legal system that is stacked against me and mine.

I tell ya, I’ve been working a lot of unpaid overtime for the past 36 years. From having to be twice as qualified for half the respect and a fraction of the pay. (I’ve gotten in a lot of trouble for saying that line with a certain former employer, who is embroiled in racism allegations. In a way, serves ‘em right.) From my body of work, I think I should have a greater role in how we evolve as a people. Disagree? My ancestors, in large part, built this nation for free. Think about it – and without the advantages of receiving western land at the turn of the century, learning how to farm and manage it via land-grant colleges, in addition to being shut out of low-interest loans.

To understand the plight of unpaid overtime, view this Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sermon on economic injustice and see how it moves you.