I Am An Institution. An opulent structure sufficiently endowed with a keen appreciation for self-worth, fortified in the convictions of dignity, justice, respect and integrity—compelled by the duty of righting wrongs for the constituencies I serve. I am a uniquely well-organized body of knowledge for which I am abundantly equipped to serve for generations untold. I am mindful of the power of my scribe—for it is an awesome responsibility to nurture, shape and grow the minds of others who trust me to speak truth to power and not always as written, but also as lived.
I silence, Silence. I give voice to the voiceless and faces to the faceless. As a self-governing body of evolving theories, I am empowered with the spirit of self-determination free to regulate and invent; to contemplate socializations of language used to create imagined cultural identities over time and space. My fiat is to cultivate emerging epistemological theories that seek to deconstruct the discourse of cultural realities controlled by the hegemonic, androcractic others. Through language and imagery, I use the same tools of communications they used: words; and not always my own.
It may be theoretically accurate to believe words are “purely arbitrary…maintained by convention only” (Barry, 2009, p. 40) but in praxis, not so much for is it not our lived experiences that inform us? Words matter; words have always mattered. My lived experiences serve as a constant reminder of some truths, most of which are inconvenient for some and irreconcilable for others.
There is no one, singular event that brought me to where I am. I suppose I could trace my interests in the tension of socialized racism back to my love of history and the books that did not love me back. Trying to contextualize the authors’ interpretations of my ancestors without a counternarrative was glaring even for an uninformed third-grader whose greatest social challenge was getting to the swing set first during recess.
Maybe my awakening was the time I visited an all-white church and after I gave my ‘thanks for inviting us’ remarks, an older white gentleman walked up to me, patted me on the head while saying that he thought I made a fine speech. As he was standing there brimming from ear to ear with great satisfaction of integrating his church for the day, my mother leaned down and very politely whispered in my ear, “don’t you ever let anybody pat you on the head like you are a dog.” He must have heard her because he quickly walked away. Already radicalized, I knew her anybody really meant white. I understood the dog metaphor because I understood the acrimonious nature of race relations from my readings outside of my classroom textbooks.
It might have also been the time my mother stared down the cashier at the local grocery store who would not put my change in my hand, placing it on the counter instead. My mother sternly instructed me not to pick up the change. On the outside, I followed her instructions just as cool as a cucumber but on the inside, I panicked, thinking that I was going to have to leave my money when we left the store! My mother’s eye-to-eye combat won out; the cashier picked up my change and handed it to me. She told me, afterward, that I should never allow anyone to put my change on the counter if I hand money to him or her because this was the racist attitude she experienced growing up in the Deep South. I understood this within the context of social norms that forbade African Americans from walking on sidewalks simultaneously with whites or looking a white person directly in their eyes.
Perhaps it was the first time I voted in a presidential election. My mother and I walked to the polling place (the garage of family friends) and as we walked to the polling place, she said, “The privilege of voting is to put the ballot in the box…don’t let anyone put the ballot in the box for you. That’s your right.” After making my selections, I proceeded towards the box with my paper ballot when the woman behind the box stopped me by placing one hand atop of the slot and raised her other hand to collect my ballot. I pulled my hand back and told her, “No, thank you, I’ll put it in the box.” She quickly restated her demand with her one hand still open, and the other still covering the slot on the ballot box saying, “It’s okay, I can do it for you.” From the corner of my eye, I saw my mother watching. Saying nothing and making no movements towards me, but I was not focused on my mother as much as I was focused on the woman whom I had never seen before in my community, but refused to respect my self-determined wishes, indeed my right to place the ballot in the box. She was unknowing that I understood the legal and social history of voter intimidation in the United States perhaps that is why she was shocked when I told her in no uncertain terms, “No…I will put it in the box.” She relented and I dropped the ballot in the slot. My mother met me in the driveway of our friend’s house and as we walked home, we laughed about the incident because she knew I was angry. I also knew she was proud of me, maybe even a little relieved that I would stand up for myself whenever the need arose.
My reader should not confuse the stories I share with my mother as evidence of how my worldviews took shape. Quite the contrary, the purpose of telling these stories is to demonstrate the generational trauma associated with incidents in the life of an Institution that were shaped for me. Others before me sought buy-in from their counterparts: Martin shared his dream; Frederick saluted patriotism; Langston showed us Rivers and Sojourner questioned chivalry. These are all perfectly acceptable choices given the time in which they lived. However, my truths are not from the standpoint of buy-in or approval which should not be misconstrued as deafness to hearing the truth because that would make me no better than the others. There is no question—I am better, unapologetically better.
I am who I have always been—born for this moment and I know it and because I know it, I own it. That is what Institutions do, and ain’t I a Institution, too?