Dreams of My Father - 2

Dreams from My Father – 2
cinops be gone Friday, October 17, 2008 P.M.

In 1960, though, my grandfather had not yet been tested; the disappointments would come later, and even then they would come slowly, without violence that might change him, for better or worse. In the back of his mind he had come to consider himself as something of a freethinker – bohemian, even. He wrote poetry on occasion, listened to jazz, counted a number of Jews he’d met in the furniture business as his closets friends. In his only skirmish into organized religion, he would enroll the family in the local Unitarian Universalist congregation: he liked the idea that Unitarians drew on the scriptures of all great religions (It’s like you get five religions in one,” he would say). 17

Hawaii! To my family, newly arrived in 1959, it must have seemed as if the earth itself, weary of stampeding armies and bitter civilizations, had forced up this chain of emerald rock where pioneers from across the globe could populate the land with children bronzed by the sun. The ugly conquest of native Hawaiians through aborted treaties and crippling disease brought by the missionaries; the carving up of rich volcanic soil by American companies for sugarcane and pineapple plantations; the indenturing system that kept Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino immigrants stooped sunup to sunset in these same fields; the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war – all this was recent history. And yet, by the time my family arrived, it had somehow vanished from collective memory, like morning mist and burned away… 23

My mother’s confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn’t possess, a faith that she would refuse of describe as religious, that, in fact, her experience told her was sacrilegious: a faith that rational, thoughtful people could shape their own destiny. In a land where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardships, where ultimate truths were kept separate from day-to-day realities, she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier of New Deal, Peace Corps, position paper liberalism. 50

What Frank called college? An advance degree in compromise. …
“And what’s that?” “Leaving your race at the door,” he said. “Leaving your people behind.” He studied me over the top of his reading glasses. “Understand something, boy. You’re not going to college to get educated. You’re going there to get trained. They’ train you to want what you don’t need. They’ll train you to manipulate words so they don’t mean anything anymore. They’ll you to forget what it is you already know. They’ll train you so good, you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit. They’ll give you a corner office and invite you to fancy dinners, and tell you you’re a credit to your race. Until you want to actually start running things, and then they’ll yank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.
“So what is it you’re telling me – that I shouldn’t be going to college?”
Frank’s shoulders slumped, and he fell back in his chair with a sigh. “No, I didn’t say that. You’ve got to go. I’m just telling you to keep your eyes open. Stay awake.” 97
George H. Kubeck