Day 5: One Story & a Wobble

One Story & a Wobble

Since my last blog post, I've sheathed quite a few arrows in the quiver: We are Makers, Memoir Writing, Murray Cards, Digital Project, Wobble/Wobbling, Writing in Unfamiliar Genres—the list goes on. Still: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s video entitled “The Danger of a Single Story,” and Nicole’s narrative from the “Wobble” reading were recent and therefore the freshest and most resonant to my soul as a writer and educator and speaker and Black man. Collectively, those gave me my most reflective pregnant pauses thus far.

It occurred to me that, quite possibly many of my students, and their parents, and perhaps a significant silent percentage of fellow educators, process me through any one of several One Stories. A short list: Black man, male English teacher, large bald Black guy wearing athletic gear; seemingly reticent man wearing a shalwar kameez, born and raised Detroiter—many of them dealing with my skin color and upbringing.

It occurred to me that, unintentionally (most times), just be showing up and dispelling pretexts, I am a wobbler wobbling those with a single story about Black men—else, why the shocked expression on faces when initial encounters with the aforementioned people. Their wobbling could be manifest in their subtle racially-tinged micro-aggressions: That’s what you get for voting for Obama (I didn’t); man, too bad about Mayor Cannon (didn’t vote for him); are you upset over Jay-Z’s fight with Beyonce’s sister (mathematically, it is possible to demonstrate quantitative that I really couldn’t care less about Jigga); Coach, can you show me where the gym is? (interrogative from person new to campus—and I had an ACADEMIC scholarship). When corrected, not with the witty, polished responses of Adichie, I witnessed wobbling from those assessing their One Story with The Current Edition.

I felt Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observations about the racial codification of an entire people based on a single story masquerading as the total picture. Again, once people know that I am a born and raised Detroiter, they wobble from the dissonant actuality of my present station to the pretextual One Stories about my home town: the Murder Capital, Devil’s Night, high schools deemed “drop-out factories,” statements about the plight of the auto industry as a former employee assumption, and the victim of violent crime assumption, and the single-parent section 8 assumption. And then the micro-aggression: You’re so articulate!

Sigh!

Single stories are assumptions fueled by presumptions lacking gumption. Sample of single stories: drug dealer, dead-beat dad, out-of-wedlock birth, dropout, dancer, rapist, athlete, poor, felon, juvy, and more. I’m guilty of this as well, though not as abundantly obvious in my own estimation. As with Nicole, I’m pretty dogged about my pedagogy, so when I’m confronted with the possibility that my instructional style, as sublime as it is in my mind but as reasonably effective in practice, subjects kids to a One Story—meth addict, Goth girl, kids from affluent homes or poor homes, kids of opposing religions—I am unreasonably defensive. I wobble in reflection.

I’m guilty of approximating a person's entire existence based on  One Story, too, and I don’t like it! And since I’m guilty, I wobble at my misplaced intermittent unintentional inerrancy concerning my charges. I wobble from having a tangential, ephemeral connection to Kipling’s “half Devil, half child” One Story about Africans. I rather connect with his "If."

Fortunately, whenever I wobble, I can always rely on the soothing, narcotizing caterwauling of V.I.C.’s song entitled “Wobble.”

I bet Adichie never saw that coming.

Sorry! The connection was as immediate as it is permanent. It is emotional amelioration through random utterances syncopated to heavy beats and vivid imagery. The irony of wobbling ceasing through a kinetic dance called the Wobble…as Vonnegut would say, “The mind reels.”

Wobblebabywobblebabywobblebaby—and then emerge better for the journey through tension.

Ey GranVille, make ‘em back it up, make ‘em back it up!

And make them see The Current Story--and let them know it's a chapter book, too.