WEBVTT - The Two Names 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:10.000 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:15.240 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:17.720 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:27.440 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:32.120 is David Wright Falade, novelist, university professor, and author of 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:34.960 the recent essay in The New Yorker, The Truth About 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:39.200 My Father. David is a story of identity and belonging 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.400 and the extraordinary unfolding of a buried secret history. 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.520 My earliest memories are from Kansas City. I was born 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:52.680 in France, but we came here when I was around two, 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:55.720 So my earliest memories are from Kansas City, when I 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:59.080 was probably about four. My dad, Jack Wright, we called 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.400 him Dottie. My big sister Marriam and I were both 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:03.800 born in France, and it's just what we called him. 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.039 And it was only with age and I recognized that 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.160 what we were saying was daddy, but we'd learned to 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:11.160 pronounce it as little French kids. And so when we 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.720 were here, cousins with teesus and whatnot. But we lived 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:18.800 in a part of Kansas City in subsidized housing at 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:21.400 that time, sort of projects We called it the Gateway Apartments, 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:23.640 but it was a gateway to the West apartments, and 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:25.839 I learned later that the police called it the cancer 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:28.720 of Kansas City. It didn't feel I mean, you're a kid, 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.760 and you just you're there. We played outside and my 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:34.160 big sister and I were seventeen months apart and really close, 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:36.080 but that's the space we lived in, so I have 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:40.319 that first memory of there. And it was fairly tense 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:44.640 between Dottie and my mom, and they divorced right around then, 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:48.000 and we moved to Junction City, Kansas, where there was 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:50.840 a military base. My mom, she was a GI bride, 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.280 and another French GI bride that she knew, a woman 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:56.600 named Lilian who'd also married a Black GI, was stationed there, 0:01:56.960 --> 0:01:59.600 and so we moved there. We lived with them for 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.840 a brief time. That part of Kansas was you know 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:05.760 Kansas as you would imagine, light rolled in grasslands and 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:08.880 all that, and we eventually were able to have our 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:12.880 own little house, my Mom and Miriam and I. Dottie 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.959 wasn't always the most responsible person with child support. I 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:19.280 got the document. Now he was ordered to pay fifty 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:21.639 dollars a month or something like that, but he sent 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:26.880 it irregularly. Another thing that I understood with time my mom, 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.760 when she was raising us by herself, or when she 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:33.320 was married, first to Dottie and then to my stepfather, 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:37.280 she felt most safe. Is this woman, this French jew 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:40.760 who had survived the Nazi occupation of Paris. People had 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.680 been to Porto, She'd lost family, they'd been in hiding 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:45.880 in her youth, and she was old enough to have 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.840 memories of this. Also, with this understanding of sort of 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:52.799 racism in the United States, she felt most comfortable when 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:56.120 we were on or near military basis. This is loving 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:58.720 v Virginia as nineteen sixty seven. I was born in 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:03.200 sixty four, about nineteen sixty eight sixty nine. Interracial couples 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:06.160 were just really, really rare, to the extent that I 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:09.840 remember when we were little kids, Miriam and I and 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.160 my mom and we'd see in you know, a mixed 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.079 race family on the street. We would point them out, smiling. 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:17.640 It was just that rare we felt for us. It 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:19.720 was like a sort of joy. For my mom. I 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:23.800 think she felt vulnerable and unsafe, so we typically lived 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.440 on or near military basis. I think it was more 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:30.280 than anything race. So I'm born in sixty four and 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:32.239 Mirriam was born in sixty two. We were both born 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:35.480 in France the Badatti and Mom married in fifty seven 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:38.400 and at first they're stationed in New Jersey and then Colorado. 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:41.040 But at one point he gets stationed in Georgia, and 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.400 this is like fifty eight to fifty nine. She can't go, 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:46.080 you know, as his white wife, and so she's in 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:49.760 Kansas City with his family and she's probably the only 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:52.880 white person around and has a sort of difficult relationship 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:56.200 with his family, his mother. So my grandmother, Dotty's mother 0:03:57.000 --> 0:04:00.119 was shark with her, difficult with her. Maybe they had 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:03.280 just a difficult relationship. So I think she was just 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:07.640 fatally aware of a race more than anything. And also 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:09.840 it was just sort of the precarity, you know, the 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:13.960 danger of the sort of racial threat in the fifties 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:15.440 and sixties United States. 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:21.520 What sense did you have as a child growing up 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:27.920 of your mom's history as a child herself during the Holocaust. 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:32.600 I mean she was nine in France when she she. 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:36.120 Was born in thirty one, so when the Nazis occupied Paris, yes, 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:38.480 she was nine years old. And so that period of 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.760 Nazi occupation from forty to forty four, she was nine 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:46.479 to thirteen. Mom's pagental thouts, so her my grandfather's family 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:50.000 were really wealthy. It was this great upple, but it 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:52.480 would have been the quivalent of my mother's grandfather. He 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:56.520 was the president of the Antiquarian Society of Europe. I mean, 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.880 he was an art collector and they had this antique shop. 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.800 They were very, very, very wealthy, and so my mom 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.520 grew up in this real ease and comfort. And then 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:09.719 when the occupation happened, that person and his wife, well 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:12.960 he killed himself. She was deported. My grandfather was able 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:17.240 to get papers that didn't claim they were not Jewish, 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:22.080 but it diminished their jewishness before the law. So you know, 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:24.640 had the occupation gone on longer, they could have been 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.880 deported too, but they just weren't high up on the list. 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:31.080 And in that time they enrolled my mom in Catholic school, 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:33.359 Catholic day school, so she grew up in this. Really 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:36.719 she just was really conflicted I think about her identity 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:38.880 as a Jew. They were secular Jews, so I don't 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:41.200 know that she really understood herself as a Jew, even 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.080 though all her family, the people that they socialized with 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:46.720 were Jewish and then suddenly she had to try to 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:49.680 navigate this world where she's in Catholic school, she takes 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.520 holding Communion. She had this memory of these twin girls 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:57.400 who lived nearby teasing her and calling her a derogatory 0:05:57.480 --> 0:05:59.440 name for Jewish, and she didn't quite understand what they 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:01.800 were saying. So I think it was very confusing for her, 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.000 and that contributed to the rebellion of the outrage that 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:05.680 she felt after the war. 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:16.400 David's mom stays with Dottie for about a decade before 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:20.400 they split up in nineteen sixty seven, shortly after she 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.640 meets a man named Ed Wheeler. Ed is about to 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.520 be sent to Vietnam. Just as the two fall in love, 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:32.400 they marry and Ed becomes David's stepfather. In turn, Dottie 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:34.960 now resides on the paternal periphery. 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.520 When Mom leaves, he's not very present, he's not sending 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:41.799 child support. And then when she starts dating at Wheeler, 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.320 but Dotty could be really funny. He would refer to 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:46.920 Ed Wheeler as Jesus Christ. Because my mom, I think, 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:51.000 just spoke up Ed Wheeler to anybody at the time, 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:55.080 and so he wasn't very present, but he was the 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.680 sort of person that people came to for help. His family, 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:00.520 my cousins and things like that, his brothers and sisters. 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:02.839 He was the person they would go to when they 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:06.600 needed anything, and he would always find it. And so again, 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.520 if we fast forward a little bit Ed Wheeler comes 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.320 back from Vietnam, we follow him to you, Arizona, where 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:15.080 he's stationed some Rencourt Air station out there. For some reason, 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:18.600 he has an army person is stationed there. And my 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:22.120 mom ended up getting pregnant and didn't want the child, 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:26.120 and Ed Wheeler and my mom got into a terrible fight, violent, 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:30.640 and she turns to Dottie. She calls Dottie. Dottie is 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:32.960 the one who sends us the money for bus tickets 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:37.080 from Yuma to LA, then sends you know, Wire's money 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:41.080 Western Union to LA, pays for the abortion, and then 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:43.080 wires it. So he's driving a cab at this time 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.040 he's not in the military. And then so the time 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:47.960 that he earns enough money, he then wires the money. 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.680 So we took a bus from Mom and Miriam and 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.800 I from LA to New York. And I remember that 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:56.680 parts of it we'd all sit right behind the bus driver. 0:07:56.720 --> 0:07:59.320 I remember one bus driver told a joke, you know, 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:01.400 I'm whatever I am at that time six He's like 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:02.840 was stretched with an ow and ends with an oh 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:04.680 and is high in the middle. And my little six 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:06.680 year old Ed can't figured out it was pretty obviously. 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:09.720 He's like, Ohio, and we're going through Ohio. But we 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.400 end up in New York and I remember being in JFK. 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:15.640 I remember wooden benches at that time, and Dotty wired 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:17.800 the money and we got a flight back to France, 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:19.800 where my mom wanted to be. She didn't want to 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:22.360 be in Kansas City. She couldn't be in Yuma. So 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:24.800 he was that person who when you needed him, he 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.680 was there, but if not. There was a period of 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.200 five years we kind of disappeared from Mirus in my life. 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:32.960 So he was a conflicted character. He was a difficult character, 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:34.960 but a big soul too. 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:38.000 There's a line in your Wonderful piece in the New 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:42.559 Yorker identity is rooted in place as well as in parentage. 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.760 So what rooted you and how did you think about 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.439 fatherhood as in your father during those years, how did 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:54.240 you think about paternity? Dottie was your father, Ed Wheeler 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:58.480 became your stepfather, there's so much that strikes me in 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:03.079 your story of these kinds of fractures that then aren't fractures, 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:06.400 or that are potentially confusing for a kid. I mean, 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:09.840 how did all that reside for you during those years? 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:12.840 This hole's really true when I think about that time, 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:17.239 even as an adult, but as a kid, my understanding 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:20.199 of family was my mom, Miriam and me, and Dottie 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:23.080 was important and present at a young age. But I 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.680 was so young. When they're fighting and they split up 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:29.439 and we end up indruction City and intruction City, it's 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.679 really just us. If Miriam was part of this conversation, 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:36.320 she would recount many of the same things, but have 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:39.720 a slightly different slant, by which I mean for Miriam. 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:42.280 I think it was more difficult for me. My family 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:45.200 was Mom and Miriam and me, and they were miriam 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.080 Is just as much as my mom took care of me. 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.719 As fathers came in, it was sometimes difficult. And I 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:53.800 think that that my understanding of race, of myself as 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:57.640 a black person, is tied to that. My mom always 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:00.319 felt like she felt like I needed a black man 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.600 in my life. I think she was drawn to black men, 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:04.600 but she also felt like if there was going to 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:06.680 be a man in our lives, it was going to 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:08.439 be a black man, and so she dated black men. 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:13.600 But for me until we move with Ed Wheeler, after 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.760 they get together, after the you My Arizona breakup, they 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.480 get back together eventually. Until then, family to me was 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:22.840 Mom and Miriam at the time that we lived in 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:25.320 the Gabway apartment, so it's you know, it's Dotty Miriam, 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.040 me and Mom. And my mom used to have like 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:30.040 what was called a vanity, you know, like that sort 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:32.520 of little bureau with a mirror, and that's where she'd 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:35.280 put on makeup at the beginning of the day. And 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:39.280 as she recasts this event, like I'm over her shoulder 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:41.960 watching or she's putting on makeup, and I'm really fixed 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:43.439 on her, you know, like I was just sort of 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:46.200 an adoration before my mother. And at a certain point 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:48.440 I turned her and I point to myself in the mirror, 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.440 and I go, who's that colored boy? Because I don't 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:55.640 think I understood, Like I think what I thought of myself. 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:58.280 I thought of myself as like my mom that so 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:00.800 I should therefore look like my mom, as this white person. 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:03.440 So I think that it was all kind of in 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:05.760 my little four year old head was kind of muddled 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:07.920 and in my mom I can't remember how she responded, 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:09.600 but like that's you and da da dah, and you know, 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:13.200 I think she's become very aware of helping me understand race. 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:15.800 But I think that that ties into how she felt 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.240 like Miriam and I both needed and maybe I especially 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:19.920 needed a black man in my life, and I think 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:22.600 it becomes associated with that. To me, it's it's more 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.160 like me, Miriam and my mom and then these men 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.360 who might be part of our lives that I might 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:28.560 more or less feel close to. 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:38.400 When David's mom and Ed Wheeler get back together, the 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:42.640 family follows him to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They spend three 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:46.440 years there. After Ed Wheeler retires from the Army, they 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.760 end up in Amarillo, Texas, when David is about eleven. 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.880 David and Miriam are two of four black students in 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:59.920 the entire middle school in Amarillo. Here, David encounters racism 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.800 for the first time, or at least this is his 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.800 first conscious experience of it. Some other boys pin him 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:10.000 down in the playground, hold him down, and give him 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:14.840 something called red belly. After the school treats this as 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:17.920 just a prank, not racism. 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:21.200 When we moved to Amarillo, we're in a space where 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:25.360 we are the no biracial families that I remember, and Amula, 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:27.560 there's a black Community's small, but there's one. But that's 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:29.079 not where we lived. We lived on the outside of 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:32.439 town at the Texas State Technical Institute, where my stepdad 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:35.200 to good job in security. And so, yeah, we're four 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:39.040 black kids. I'm the only black boy, and I remember 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:42.839 sort of the class clown in my class, funny kid, 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.040 but he was kind of also you know, western shirt, 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:49.720 big belt buckle, sort of stereotypical, and I'm aware enough 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.280 to be leery, but he was one of the boys 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:53.920 that jumped me on the playground and they hold me 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:55.839 down and just that feeling of power, I mean, the 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:57.920 red bellies when they hold you down and they expose 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:00.280 your stomach and then they just slap you know, stomach 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:02.559 with their open hand until your skin turns red. They 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:04.480 called a red belly. It hurts, I have to say, 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.640 but it was less the hurt than that, you know, 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:11.160 to be physically held down and restrained in that way, 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:16.720 vulnerable in that way, completely vulnerable, and it's these white boys. Yeah, 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.240 to me, it was a completely like racialized hazing, and 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:23.360 you know in the school again, the school is just like, ah, 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:25.880 these these are boys. They just sort of ride it off. 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:28.960 But in my family, we understand like this is a problem. 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:32.080 And so Miram and I actually went back to Lawton 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.520 where Fort Sill was and lived with my mom's friend 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:36.920 for a while so that we wouldn't be in that school. 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:39.520 And then when we came back to Amberillo, one of 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.920 our neighbors taught at a school in town that was 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:47.400 more racially mixed, and my mom found somebody's address and 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:49.400 used the address that we could enroll in that school, 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.240 and we ended up going to that school. The hazing 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:55.520 actually continued in weird ways for both of us. Merriam 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:57.679 and I met a little bit less so, but you know, 0:13:57.720 --> 0:13:59.440 it was a very it was a mixed school that 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:01.520 there was a black population. It wasn't huge, but it 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:05.080 was notable. It was a very big a Mexican American population, 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:07.800 and probably a white population about the same size as 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.600 the black population. But in that mixedness it was it 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:13.160 could be kind of a rough school. And I remember Miriam, 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:15.200 I didn't notice what had happened, but she told me 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:18.840 afterwards like she had been being hazed by black girls 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:22.080 because she's like complected and she's you know, pretty, and 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:24.720 these black girls were threatening Miriam and she ended up 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:28.520 taking a steak knife to school to defend herself. Emerl 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:29.680 wasn't great for us. 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:47.280 We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:52.560 In David's personal history piece in The New Yorker, he writes, 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:57.840 indignation simmered within me, a rising fury at the sweep 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:01.480 and scope of the horrors that we African Americans had 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:05.800 born since our very beginnings. That feeling is also coupled 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:08.320 with a tinge of shame that comes from a long 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:12.160 history of oppression. Then one evening, David and his family 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:16.440 watched the Alex Haley television series Roots, a cultural sensation 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:20.960 when it came out in nineteen seventy seven, And so like. 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:23.560 We are watching Roots together and I don't know why. 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:27.360 It wasn't conscious, it was subconscious, but I just I 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:29.080 just I just didn't want to do it. I just 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:30.480 was like, I don't want to see that we all 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:31.680 have to do it. Part of it like being a 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:34.000 eleven to twelve year old resisting what her parents want 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:36.960 to do, but in retrospect, part of me understands, or 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:39.800 I think I understand that there was something deeper going on. 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:42.040 My mom made me sit there, so I sat there 0:15:42.080 --> 0:15:45.760 and watch and completely getting grossed from the beginning. And 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:48.880 as I'm watching sort of you know Punti Quinte's experiences 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:50.400 first in Africa and then you know he's in the 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:53.080 United States, and we're watching this as a family, My mom, 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:55.640 my stepdad, my little sister, shaw Tala is born at 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:57.920 that point. She's way too young to know what she's watching, 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.000 but she's sitting in my mom's lap. And over the 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.440 course of having that experience felt to sort of racial 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:05.120 awakening where there's a certain pride. J are you're feeling 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.280 this moments? I mean, it just was a moving experience 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:10.440 for me. And this again is when we're at Ambrillo, 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:12.320 so that hazing experience that happened, Ream and I at 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:14.560 this point are in the school in town. So there's 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:18.200 this feeling of black pride but also at anger. So 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:21.280 pride and anger that this is what we, as black 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.280 people we were subjected to, but also a little bit 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:28.160 of a tinge of shame that we are also associated 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:32.440 with these people who were constantly diminished and depressed and whatever. 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:35.120 So it was a really complex feeling, Like I feel 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.960 like the resistance that I didn't probably have words for 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:40.080 that made me a little averse to what I was 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:43.240 about to watch had something to do with that when 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:45.400 I watch it. When I watched this series over the 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:47.160 course of that week, you know that it comes on 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.920 or whatever. You know, I feel this pride and this 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:52.760 anger and a rebelliousness that I'm trying and hear it 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:54.360 from my mother on some level, but it's beginning to 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:57.080 find voice. But there was also a little hint of 0:16:57.120 --> 0:16:59.840 shame that was mixed in there too that I have 0:16:59.920 --> 0:17:03.600 to acknowledge. 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.000 After Amarillo, David and his family follow ed Wheeler again, 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:11.119 this time to Borger, Oklahoma. This feels like a whole 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:14.920 new world, described by David as the epitome of late 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:21.960 seventies Bible Belt, socially conservative Christian symbolism everywhere proselytizing in 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:25.000 this landscape, David begins to learn code switching as he 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.760 continues to question and develop his identity. He's always been 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:31.880 a self described mama's boy, but now that his mom 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:34.640 is made sure her son has yet another male presence 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:38.719 in his life, David's leaning more toward traditional male behaviors 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:43.520 and activities. For instance, he joins the football team. This 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.200 is also when he really begins to clock and navigate 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:49.399 the racial nuances around him. 0:17:50.760 --> 0:17:53.840 When we first moved to Borger, there's still a Black 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:55.320 You Center and a White Youth Center, at least that's 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:57.919 what they call them. The White You Center everybody can 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:00.720 go to, but mostly black folks didn't. That's where the 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:03.680 pool was, and the Black You Center only black folks 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:06.480 went to. You know, it wasn't sort of hardline segregation 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:09.080 like it had probably been ten years before, but the 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:11.400 remnants were still there. As a kid, you don't quite 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:13.880 know what you're seeing, but that was how it was. 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.919 But even though that stuff was there, people were just 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:21.320 kind of friendly. You're driving down the street and people 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:23.159 hank at you in wave and like aftertime you're like, 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:25.199 I don't know who that is. But it was friendly 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:30.040 in that way. And I think also I was maturing 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:32.960 as a racial being, sort of learning to coachwitch and 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:36.760 navigate these spaces and all that. One of my first 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:39.440 best friends was a Mexican American kid named Lord Gardunio 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:42.560 Jerry Paul Smith down the street with his white kid 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:46.320 But then from school, Leroy Horton, who to this day 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:48.520 is still one of my best friends, was a black 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:50.480 kid from the other side of town. So I just 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:53.440 had just a more diverse experience and generally people were 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:57.280 more friendly, and even though the racism was there, it wasn't. 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.000 It could be on the surface, but it wasn't necessarily 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:03.040 on the surface. And the other difference was that my 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:06.280 stepdad was hired by the sheriff to be a deputy sheriff, 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.199 and he was the first black deputy sheriff in the county. 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.080 There was another a black man named Greg Belton who 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:15.200 was an engineer and he was active, like on the 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:18.200 school board. But aside from that that, we were kind 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.360 of the black bourgeoisie of Borger to the degree which 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.400 serves a black bourgeoisie and Borger and it is bourgeois, 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:26.359 so we had the different sort of class and caste 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:29.440 experience too in that way. I mean, I probably had 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.480 some inclusive code switching before then, but it really is 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:35.560 something that I'm very consciously doing at that point when 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:37.520 we moved to Borger in seventh eighth grade. 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:46.320 Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's also a huge church culture in Borger. 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:51.040 In the pervasive tension between being both insider and outsider. 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:55.240 David starts to attend. It's not like he is committed, 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.800 but he is curious. But then one day, all of 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:02.560 a sudden, he finds himself being saved. 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:07.520 My friend Jerry Paul, he went to that church, and 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:09.800 my football coach was at the church, and he taught 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.600 our Sunday school class, and it was very social to me. 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:15.560 It was like guys from the team and my friends, 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:17.320 and I mean these are the kids that like, at night, 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:19.760 we're sneaking out of the house and were like, you know, 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.720 vandalizing stuff, and we called it being roguish. I mean, 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.440 there was nothing Christian about my friendship with these boys, 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:28.399 but on Sunday we would get together at church and 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:30.680 the youth minister and my coach and then eventually the 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:33.600 preacher were like, have you thought about being saved? Have 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:36.280 you felt christ in your life? And then one day 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:38.800 it just sort of kind of happened bigger than me, 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:41.280 and I just was like, yeah, you know, I felt 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:43.760 really good about it, like in this way, like I 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:45.359 don't know that it was the I mean, I'm sure 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:47.879 on some level was the Christian part of it. You know, 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:51.120 I'd sort of been receiving all these messages about heaven 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:54.480 and Hell again it's fire and Brimstone Church, Heaven and Hell. 0:20:54.640 --> 0:20:57.320 And all my other friends Lee Roy across town. I'd 0:20:57.359 --> 0:20:59.480 go to church with him sometimes because his mother was 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:02.439 very religon just I mean, Christianity was just part of 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:05.640 the culture. And so when I get saved, I think, 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:09.000 I'm I think I'm understanding myself as as being Christian. 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:14.119 I don't think I fully understand how that might have 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:16.480