Respectability, Malcolm X, and Dad

All of the conversation about respectability politics is nothing new particularly in light of a recent article by Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy.  It used to be called “being bourgie”.  And some of the same compelling and lame arguments on both sides of the debate were made back then.  It got me thinking about an episode from my teen years  and a lesson I learned from my dad.  In response to a request for feedback that Randall sent to the AALS minority law professor’s list serv I wrote the following recollection. 

During Black History Week (as it was called in 1970), several of us in my sophomore civics class were asked to deliver a Black History statement every afternoon on the public address system.  My school was a mostly black high school in the year of the Nixon Justice Department’s desegregation push nationwide, and a few white students, on their way out to the suburbs of Beaumont Texas, were in attendance temporarily, and our faculty was majority white because, well, better to have an inexperienced young white teacher than a seasoned experienced black teacher to lift us out of whatever we were supposed to be lifted out of. 

On the day I was supposed to give a brief biography of a black historical figure, I had cleared my bio of Malcolm X.  As I walked to the main office where the PA system was located, I pulled out my alternative bio that I had planned to give secretly knowing that it would not be cleared.  It was a biography of Black Panther Party leader Huey P. Newton.  I got to the office, pulled out my alternative bio, and delivered, in my best black nationalist cadence (a tradition kept alive today by Brother Michael Eric Dyson) and announced that “today’s Black History Week biography will focus on the life of Brother Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party!”  I could hear the cheers from the adjoining class rooms in the main office.  Buoyed, I delivered my bio, and returned to my classroom satisfied that I had delivered one for the revolution.  I got fives (no high fives in those days) from my classmates, and a staredown from my civics teacher.  Right when she was about to admonish my brazen statement of solidarity with the brothers and sisters in Oakland, the school secretary came over the PA system.  “Will Craig Jackson please come to the principal’s office immediately.” The class erupted in unison “ooh Craig, you in trouble.”  I got up gingerly and walked toward the office. 

 It should perhaps be noted at this point of my story that the principal was my father. 

Mrs. Collins, the school secretary asked me to take a seat, and I did.  I waited to see the principal for two hours, watching him walk out of his office to hand Mrs. Collins papers and instructions periodically.  Each time he looked at me and mouthed something like “we are going to talk.”  Dread hung over me. 

After the tortuous two hours, I was escorted to the principal’s office.  Dad did not get mad often, he was a gregarious guy who loved teaching and educating black kids.  It was his calling.  But when I entered the room his first words were “you little red Negro, what in the world were you thinking?”

A note of explanation is appropriate. Little red Negro was a term that he used both in exasperation with me and endearment from the time I was a toddler.  Dad was dark skinned and I am light skinned and it was one of those expressions not uncommon during that time that people just used.  The last time I saw him a month before he died in 1991, I was 35 and teaching law, and he said, “come here you little red Negro, gimme a hug boy.”  I would do anything to hear him say that today. 

Now back to the story. 

For a good 30 minutes he harangued me about admiring “those thug Black Panthers. They are criminals, not worth anything and” I interrupted, “they have a breakfast program Dad”

 “We have a breakfast program boy!” And it went on and on for another 30 minutes like that. At the end of the tirade, he said, “I learned that you were supposed to do the bio of Malcolm X. What happened to that?”

 “Well,” I said, “He did not represent black militancy and revolution.  The Panthers are revolutionary and we need a revolution in this country.”  I was 15. 

He asked if I had read the Autobiography of Malcolm X.  I had not.  “He wasn’t revolutionary? You need to read that book. He was more revolutionary than those damn Panthers. Why do you think he wasn’t revolutionary?”

 “Dad, he dressed in suits, wore a bow tie, kept his hair short.” 

 “That’s it?”

 “Yeah, I mean yessir.”

“He stood for more revolution than your guys, and he was well dressed and articulate and he even spoke at the Oxford Union.”

I did not know what to say.  None of it meant anything to me because the Panthers wore leather jackets, big Afros, and spoke about revolution.  To my know it all mind at 15 Malcolm was just another suit wearing old man from my father’s generation.  But Dad was getting to me, and I started to stifle a few tears, and then just broke out into uncontrolled crying.  Football playing inner city black male, as I thought of myself at the time, and I cannot stand up to this guy.  

Dad felt sorry for me and said,  “You need a job, lets go down to get your social security number.” It was a trip that we had planned for that day.  I said ok, and we went and took care of the business, me trying to hold back my frustrations and tears.  He let up on me, we went and got some burgers afterwards, talked about sports, and we became friends again for the next 21 years. 

Now, for the question of the day.  Was my father a practitioner of respectability politics?  He was a fan of perhaps the most revolutionary thinker of the times, and yes, he liked the suits and short hair and the calm demeanor and the articulate way Malcolm expressed his disgust at the American system.  It was a disgust my father shared as a veteran of World War II in a segregated army who escaped a lynch party in East Texas after the war comprised of Klansmen who identified him as “one of them smart assed niggers from the war.” They were right.  Just back from Europe where he spent a year killing Germans, he had jumped to the defense of a black woman who was being slapped by a white man and it took a sheriff’s intervention to save his life.  Today, at 60, I believe that my critiques of his fascination with decent behavior and presenting oneself well, were superficial meanderings of a kid, which they were.  And though I do believe that he was wrong about the Panthers, their statement was needed at the time and the leaders certainly were articulate spokesmen for the restlessness of black inner city youth of the times. But he did not believe in accommodation.  He cursed out the white school district superintendent a few years later for disrespecting him, and he did that in a suit.  And, though I never heard him curse, I am sure that he was articulate in his use of curse words.  

 – Professor Craig Jackson, Texas Southern Thurgood Marshall School of Law