Blogging During Troubling Times

Jules Heartly | Juneteenth (June 19^th 2020)

“Where is my writing pen? Has anybody seen it?” I asked.  At the time, I had one of those retractable four-color ballpoint pens, which I used mostly to do my homework, and I had a black ink pen I used mainly for writing either poems or song lyrics.  

Somehow it was easier to get inspired to write with my single ink pen, while the multi-color was perhaps fun to use to make “life” at the time of school homework easier or at least more cheerful, let’s say.

As I have been quiet with my blog for way too many days, a friend asked me “With so much happening right now, why there isn’t a new blog post from you?”.  And I asked myself again, like at that time in my childhood, “where is my writing pen?”.  

On this time in the XXI century, my writing pen is really any circumstance that keeps nagging me long enough to make me write about it.  Some activity or observation that questions me as to urge finding the writing pen and forcing my hand to start typing on my keyboard.  But with so many of those happening now, and most of them being frustrating/disappointing ones, I’ve writing yes, but I haven’t posted any of them in my blog.   That is until today, of course! 😉

Why? Because tonight during the JuneTeenth NY celebration, my girlfriend mentioned something about the upcoming solar eclipse in this summer solstice, and the image of a high school classmate, came to my mind. He was a bright kid, perhaps too brilliant for the rest of our class to understand him. He studied physics and astronomy and everything else in between.  During a solar eclipse at the time, he came with its own self-made “filter” to be able to watch the eclipse.  I used to listen to his talks in silence and just answer back with head nods.  We talked about the books he read, but in general he was just shy and off to himself, and the other classmates barely talk to him and when they did they sort of laughed of him or bullied him.  He was a smart teenager and the only black kid in the class.  

At the time I thought he wasn’t well accepted or let’s say close to the rest of the class because, well, he had too much knowledge and perhaps the rest of the class felt intimated to chat with him. But perhaps I was wrong and there was more to it.  

 See, I grew up in a home where we as kids were told to focus on education, and we were almost forbidden to talk to other kids, but not because of who their families were or what color of their skin was, but because they didn’t seem interested enough in studying or because they wanted to play outside at a given hour when we needed it to concentrate in our school homework or house chores.  So, I didn’t think much of what was happening in the social classroom at the time except to feel sorry for my classmate.  After all, for most of my childhood and until my first two years of college, my parents owned a private school, and I as one of their children, had not only to show great manners but to exceed in school performance.  Although I didn’t attend their school except for kindergarten and 2^nd grade, I helped there for a little while in high school and then and throughout my early life, I saw my parents work every day, preparing classes, grading exams and coaching students to always give their very best regardless of who they were.

When I was in college, I did teach at my parents’ private school.  And one day, during the registration period, an odd thing happened.

A very well-mannered hard-working guy, with strong callous hands, arrived to the school office in a horse driven carriage/cart. Yes! In a two-million people modern city, he just showed up in an old beat up horse cart.  He came up with his young son.  An eight-year-old.  I remember his son’s name: Domingo (in English: Sunday). 

The guy came in and after introducing himself, told us he wanted his son to be well educated. His dream was for him to graduate from college. He had heard about our school and he wanted Domingo to attend it.   Since he didn’t have a car and there were no public buses from his house to our school, he would bring his son in his horse carriage early in the morning before heading to work and would pick him up in the afternoon.  He wanted to know if we could allow Domingo to arrive to school early every day.

He didn’t have a steady income, but he wanted to make the effort to invest in Domingo’s education.  Domingo started school with us. Sometimes he had to stay longer after school to wait for his dad to pick him up.  During that time, we chatted with him and learned a bit about his family. He had more siblings and after school he had to work with his dad, reason why in the morning Domingo was often tired.

The following month, Domingo missed a few days of school because his father didn’t have enough money to pay tuition.  When my mother found out, she awarded him a scholarship.  Domingo never ended his school year. Something went wrong with the horse carriage; his house was too far and he couldn’t attend school anymore.  I was sad, but at the time we couldn’t do much else to help this black family.

Even then, I didn’t think much about any of that being a consequence of them having a black skin or in other words being black. I thought of it as a result of being poor. I didn’t think much of discrimination, after all I had friends of all skin colors, different nationalities, and some of them were college students as I was.

After I graduated from college, and I got ready to come to NY to study my masters, my English teacher, a tall blond, blue-eyed Californian guy, joked with me.” I don’t know,” he said, “ Are you sure you want to attend school there? They may make you sit at the back of the classroom, if they let you sit at all, my dear “Brownie”” he chuckled.  We had become friends, and he nicknamed me “brownie” due to my tan-skin color 😉.

I laughed. I didn’t take it seriously, not even for a moment.  Fast forward many years later, I was hired by one of the big six consulting firms to work on an assignment in the South.  During the orientation week, one of the persons I met was a blond blue-eye loud-spoken lady. We got along well and shared stories about our previous work experience. It was so similar! It was striking!  Striking too was to find out her salary was literally double than mine.  

When the opportunity  arose(performance review time you may call it), I did bring up the subject to my boss.  I asked him to approve a salary raise and bonus to compensate.  His answer? “How could you compare yourself with her? She is white, blond, and well.. you are not! “

“We perform the same job, we have the same position.  My performance is good!” I said, still trying to digest his words.  “Yes..” he said, “but she is promotable… you may not be…”.

As shocked as I was to hear this, I knew there was not much I could do about it and in any case, I had a family to support and I was doing a job I loved, so I let it go.  

And skipping many stories, enough to write a novel series, there we are, in today’s world, where yes, things may have improved a little for women, but not for all people.  

And as I find myself in a moment, where I see many mostly non-white Americans(men and women)  and many other people in the world immersed in a world of not only drugs, but gang and criminal activity, etc.  and them and/or others clinging to government assistance with a minimum rate of success getting off of it…. I asked myself, why would they do that? Why would these people do that when that behavior, that attitude only recreates the stigma?

And then the answer was clear. Because that is the purpose: to deny them opportunities and equality so much and often enough so they feel discouraged.  So, they lose interest and desire to move out of the world they have been buried in for generations.

I see it now, and with my recently found writing pen, I write to invite you all to see it too, and to take action, to make that first step towards seeing each person as what we are, a human being, an equal human being, regardless of nationality or skin color.

I invite you to open your heart and be kind to others, to all others, and when the opportunity rises, be the light to guide those in need to break the Catch 22-circle they have been wrongly put in.

Do it for Domingo and his black family, and for all the other families in the US and in the world that may have gone and continue to go through a lot of extraordinary struggle and more.   

When you can give the chance to a person of color to forge its own future, support it.  Do it, but not only because “it is the law”, but because now you know and see it in your heart to do so.  Help out those who want to be a better person and make this world a better one for all.

Because well being is for all!  #BlackLivesMatters!

Thank you for reading my blog!

And many thanks for leaving comments or emailing me on the subject.

I would love to hear from you!

Remember to follow me on twitter and Instagram @JBRadiant