Damn!
Every time I use that particular explicative, there is a picture in my mind of a music video with this big Las Vegas like flashing light with the word DAMN in big all capital letters. Strangely, this will be a slight deviation from my query into the hearts and minds of white folk for a bit of self reflection. Recently I talked with one of my friends from way back in the day-- she's one of my sister friends/extended family part due to the fact that I have no biological siblings (that I know of at least). She hipped me to an alumni web site where I could re-connect with fellow NCCU eagles. On the surface it seems beguine. Beneath the surface, well lets just call it Pandora's box. I go on the site and see a former friend who suddenly is single. Just a little history:
He and I were at NCCU during our undergraduate years.
I attended his wedding.
I was there for an emergency medical procedure.
He was a groomsman at my wedding.
He made some cheesy remarks about my marriage... Particularly he said because I was a practicing Budhist/Baptist that my marriage would go straight to hell. (Specifically, he stated that God said my marriage would suffer an affair.)
Now up the present. He is divorced due to an emotional affair.
Now all this took place in the last two years; this of course lead to our immediate break in contact. In fact, when I did see him in 2006, I refused to tell him we were expecting our first child. Now to find out that he had some (you fill in the blank) happen to his marriage, and I wasn't there makes me feel kinda like a heal. I made a promise to myself when I saw him in the hospital coming out of emergency surgery that I would be his protector of sorts. Something tells me I may have blew it or either I set an impossible standard.
Self reflexivity is not too kind. In fact it can be like that big sign I was talking about earlier. --
This is the part I guess where I make an appointment to talk with my shrink (yes, black folks have shrinks as well as Jesus) or book the two of us on Dr. Phil. Maybe it’s a bit of guilt. A previous shrink stated that guilt is a useless discussion. There are some points that I agree with regarding that, however the majority of that I do find myself at the point of an internal conundrum. Maybe the guilt I am feeling is possibly an emotional prophylactic reflex (patent pending) that enables a long overdue healing to commence. (Now that is oprah speak/logic)
That said there is a part of me that also states that emotionally, I cannot allow myself to be bullied by the life of someone who has yet to come to terms with their transgressions towards me. Transgressions to transgress. That is an interesting philosophy, in the sense where one celebrates the ability to ackafool. The politics of foolishness within the context of impunity--all this in Russellspeak. Do we as a people, as a society, even as a race of people relish in the ability misbehave-- particularly in the presence of authority or is it the other way around? Do we use transgression as a vehicle of political, secular, gendered, and spiritual conditioning?
If we approach this question through the lens of race then I would say the answer is a thunderous affirmative. History provides us with a text and recorded incidents illustrating this fact. That said transgression does not operate singularly without a mechanism-or someone employing the Archimedean lever of power. One must have power to exercise transgression. That said, one can also make the claim that there also exists a counter transgression.
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