Are you occupied?

A three-hour Friday night class for a minor in political science may be one of the least likely places to be introduced to a weighty topic such as assimilation. But that is the beauty of college, there are always learning opportunities if one is willing to explore them.

Our professor asked whether it was more desirable to subtly blend, or assimilate, into the American political culture like an A. Philip Randolph, or fight against it like Marcus Garvey did.

Six years after that “Blacks in the Political Process” course, I still lack a concrete answer for either position.

This was not one of those rhetorical questions that thrown out there to keep people from walking out of class to enjoy their weekend. We were expected to provide nuanced answers that added historical and current perspective with our position.

It’s been something I have masticated on for the past two months after reading up on Texas history.

Apparently it’s worth celebrating that a band of people who were invited to live on land, with minimal or no taxes, and thought they were morally superior to the state could revolt and start their own republic. Despite running up huge debts, they wanted to be bailed out — or annexed, if we are going to be historically accurate — by an emerging superpower, whose beliefs and morality were in closer proximity to theirs. (Keep in mind all that startling history occurred in just 25 years.)

Texas is not unique. American anthropologist W.W. Newcomb argued:

“The same sequence of events has occurred repeatedly in man’s history; in invader with superior cultural equipment supplants and replaces a technologically inferior group. If the inferior culture survives it frequently does so in marginal areas not coveted by the invader.”

The “superior cultural equipment” of this century is money, and more specifically access to it. Thousands of people protesting the actions and perceived greed of banks over the past month is proof that point.

There have always “haves” and “have-nots.” In the past it was easier to blame -isms and phobias for the segregation. Racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia still exist but the moneyed class is smart enough not to spew venom toward those groups publically, or in a forum that might become public.

For generations people have come to America seeking new opportunities because their easel was empty, so to speak, and they could color it anyway they chose.

But as we become a country that looks down on those with less money than us — and let’s be honest, as individuals, our words whisper compassion while our actions scream self-absorbed—we are segregating ourselves from those who simply want to take in the complexities of a culture, understand it and eventually succeed in it.

I made the connection between that conversation about Randolph and Garvey and today’s greed because both Randolph and Garvey had considered self-sustainment a foundation their political theory. That 2005 discussion also led me to ask: are people trying to emulate and assimilate into the corporate culture, or is there a genuine want to fight the greed that has been inherent for centuries?

It’s my belief that too many in the moneyed class want to curb access to education, so people cannot create successful businesses, no matter how small, to compete with them.

If we really want to occupy Wall Street and the corporate culture, we have to look at our consumption habits. Or as one Facebook friend put it: “If you really want to occupy Wall Street do your holiday shopping at a small independent merchant.”

Bank of America and Wells Fargo are likely apathetic to picketers. However, if those same protestors switched their banking to credit unions and smaller, more localized banks, the corporate offices in Charlotte and San Francisco might not be as dismissive.

The same rings true for retailers. Yes, it is likely more convenient to purchase a product online, or at a mega retailer. Yet, statistics have proven that when money is spent at local and independent retailers it circulates throughout the local economy, and stimulates local or regional growth, as opposed to New York stock prices.

Considering the banks and business lobbies pay billions to advocate in Congress and Legislatures across the country, it’s not a stretch to believe that if people spoke with their wallets instead of their mouths, things might be different.

Or as Mandela would say: “rhetoric is not important. Actions are.” The question now, is which actions will we take?

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

The college of love and charity

Growing up my parents shared a 1985 Volvo 740 GLE. No matter how much they bickered about other things, one thing was always constant during my childhood — the orange and green license plate on the back of that maroon Volvo.

That simple plate celebrating the centennial of Florida A&M University was my introduction to a school and a history that is as much a part of me as my parents.

Florida A&M is not the best school, or the most perfect school, but it is my school. To this day there is a misnomer that the school only accepts blacks. Of course the truth is that only one of Florida’s three public universities founded in the 19th century has never excluded anyone because of race or gender — Florida A&M.

My dad went to the school so long ago it some people called it FAMCEE, because it was Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College. It didn’t become a university until 1953, the year my dad graduated.

Eventually, I found my way to the school which was once a slave plantation. Florida’s first territorial governor Robert DuVal owned the property. Until the 1940s there was a massive oak tree adjacent to where the current library sits that bore the blood of beaten slaves.

Traditions at so many colleges are being whitewashed by those who choose to only remember the good ol’ days when the sky was apparently bluer.

It would ruin a good story to know that Paul William Bryant and Wayne Woodrow Hayes frequently visited Tallahassee, Florida to get insight from a coaching wizard— Alonzo Smith Gaither.

Even when they were nothing but Jazzbirds playing on a combination of grass and dust, Saturday’s in the fall were always about an experience for Famuans. The smell of all sorts of unhealthy concoctions waft in the air prior to kickoff, some unfortunate opponent is pummeled for 30 minutes and then the world’s best marching band takes center stage.

The experience is what fathers tell sons and why mothers want their daughters to return to Tallahassee. It’s what has become a part of the lore of a school that is largely ignored or forgotten — even by its local newspaper.

Time may have grayed and thinned my dad’s hair, but the bushy mustache he had as a sophomore in 1950 remains. Pictures hidden away in archives only tell so much.

Older generations serve as modern-day griots, the ones who remind future Famuans that Foote-Hilyer was once the only hospital for black people in Tallahassee or how every building on campus tells the story of a person who was critical to the school’s mission of educating African-Americans.

Without those stories, we would not know the student union building, which was once a hotel, was named after an interim president, in H. Manning Efferson, who rarely gets credit for being the bridge between one of the university’s more unpopular presidents (William H. Gray Jr.) to one who became president emeritus upon retirement in George W. Gore.

It was a warm February afternoon, one where the sun prevented icy thoughts of the night to enter the consciousness. After hours canvassing North Florida talking to football players, I idled at a Kentucky Friend Chicken to write about what I witnessed that day.

While waiting to see just how bastardized Harland Sanders’ Southern delicacy had become, a group of people were talking about one of the boys I recently interviewed.

They started talking about his future and how his choice of college would be the perfect fit for him because of its proximity to home, the family atmosphere within the football program and the hospitality of the campus crowd.

They were talking about Florida A&M.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb