Classroom Catharsis

Then

The walls littered with academic social justice posters and historic reminders of disparity maintain a sort of welcome mat when I see them. I usually take a deep sigh to notice a teacher who has taken the time to put up a Malcolm X poster. Not Martin Luther King, not Booker T. Washington... just Malcolm. A strange quirk for me: It’s a sign said teacher fully grasps the difference between prejudice and systemic disparity. Her walls exhibit the such, and would have me attend her 6^th grade class for the entire week to lead a slam poetry workshop within the realms of Minnesota history. The history part works, as she’s laced the entire syllabus for the slam poetry workshop with equity, racial disparity, classism, and an all-around breadth of sociology.

Now

Egg white walls stretch as high and far as I care to see. The thing about art and design schools, for me, is the dead silence. Passing by several classes of capacity auditoriums and paint labs, while walking the 2^nd floor, you can hear the welcome desk person typing from the floor below. Dead. Silence.

I had been requested to step into an art and design college to speak about my process as an artist, touching on the themes of community and social responsibility. By now, having traveled the country for over a decade discussing racial prejudice and systemic disparity, I have no problem standing in front of a group of 20+ year old white students and telling them their privilege is one thing, however not communicating it through their art is a failed responsibility on all accounts.

So, here we are: Friday morning, 30 junior/senior students with emphasis from animation to film directing to sculpting, me, two poems, and an hour to kill before we all disperse into the weekend.

Then

For 5 days, 5 classes a day, I circle up with the tykes to discuss where they’re at with their slam poems and level of confidence in what they’ve written so far. Some display an unrivaled passion for academics I can see their parents have encouraged, and have pages upon pages sketched down of what they’ll present the final day of the workshop. Other students, who have taken animosity with school and disdain for authority, express a page or shorter of absolute brilliance. I can quickly see the disparity of house income, ethnicity, and perceived self-image from each student. It’s amazing how quickly their deepest insecurities can surface once given a space designated for expression.

Now

At what first felt like a time-killer, the first slam poem I delivered to the class brought about the elephant in the room: money and art. If your art is a piece of your soul, can it have a price tag? We barrel through that and a litany of other subjects regarding school, working with youth, and soon the dreaded… race and art.

So far, the class has been mild to luke warm on the subject matter we talk about, until I asked, “Do you feel the overwhelming presence of white people and whiteness in Minnesota affects your art?” The auditorium erupts in a collective of agreeing gasps, sighs, and laughs of “no shit”. The ball is rolling, and I’m going to make for damn sure I don’t push it too much, otherwise whatever precious momentum we have could be ruined.

Of the 30 students and faculty in the room, 4 to 6 were non-white. The room equally chips in to the discussion on whiteness, to my surprise, scaling a gamut of defining white art to whiteness in Minneapolis hip-hop. The conversation is jilting to the point several students begin to speak on the subject out of turn, overlapping one another.

Then

The 3^rd to last class, on the final day of the workshop, enters the classroom to present their slam poems. The class is daunting in size as our circle begins to creep into the other half of the room. Students deliver impassioned poetry from historic subjects as foreign to me as the great typhoid outbreak in St. Paul, and the not-so-foreign-to-me lynchings in Duluth. Some of the poetry is personal, some of it not. Uniform to all, their poetry is delivered with conviction.

Rounding the bend to the final portion of the circle, a shy student stood to speak his poem. Brown skin, Spanish accent, and standing no taller than 4-and-a-half feet in height, he began his piece with the softest voice yet. Hard to hear under the acoustics, I lean in from my chair, as does the majority of the class.

For the life of me, I can’t remember verbatim what his poem spoke, but he began with listing…

“I am Mexican. My family is Mexican. My people, are Mexican. We work the jobs you don’t want to. We roof your houses, we clean your dishes…”

Sweet Jesus on a Klondike, I think to myself at this moment. What was presumed to be another innocent declaration of one’s newfound interest in MN History, turned into a personal essay with a resounding emotional boom slowly working its way through everyone’s solar plexus. Tears well up in the young man’s eyes, his voice bubbles through the excess saliva choking him up, I quickly look about to the rest of the class- White students unknowingly spectating with their jaws dropped, while each Spanish speaking student began to tear up in unison with the young poet. He continues…

“How would you feel if… How would you feel if…”

He cracks. A part of him can no longer hold back his heart’s momentum. In his youthful mind, he hasn’t quite connected the dots that it’s perfectly ok to speak with conviction, cry, and be human all at the same time, so he turns his back and begins to release more tears, haulting the poem.

At this point, every brown student in the classroom is tearing up or fully crying. Another student, races from an arc of the circle to hold him. In solidarity, they hug, communicating “Hey, it’s ok. You can make it.” And over all gestures, the embrace says “What you have to say is important.”

With his back still turned, he reads on.

“How would you feel if your parents could be taken away from you at any moment and deported to another country”.

Annnnnnnd we lost it. Now the teacher, the teacher assistants, and myself are caught in a wash of tears, unbridled empathy, and a fervently shaken control to keep it all in.

Now

I wrap with my testimonial on my entrance into college at St. John’s, then to Hamline, then to drop out, and then to the University of Minnesota. Illustrating how I found my footing as an artist, and reconciling with Minnesota that I will forever be heavily viewed as an artist of color before anything else of my being or work is taken into account.

A white student raised his hand to ask, “As a white person, how can I touch on racial disparity in my art. I mean- how do you talk about that”.

I respond, “I don’t know, because I’m not white. I wanna know what you feel like though! When you walk into Spyhouse and see dozens of white people on expensive laptops typing & clicking into the day, meanwhile, an old homeless black guy is passed out in one of the chairs next to all of this- How the hell does that make you feel??? Privilege is invisible, so I want to know at what point is it unavoidable? We’re in Minnesota, where a white rapper can go an entire career without having to see one person of color in her or his audience, go without charitably donating one song to the fact that he’s a white artist participating in an art originated by an entirely different ethnicity and culture, go without having to acknowledge race for a fiber of a second- I wanna know how that makes you feel?”

Time’s up. The hour is away from us. We adjourn.

Students line up to the side of the stage bestowing thanks and questions to me they weren’t able to quite get to during the discussion. A brown woman stands waiting for 5+ minutes while I converse with a student on what exactly the air of the school is like when a student tries to bring race into their assignment or project. Our dialogue goes on longer than I expect. The brown woman stands diligently still. Wrapping up, she took a meager two steps to greet me.

“Hi” I introduced myself basically.

“Hi, I uh…” she stifled. “I- Ok, I was fine, but now it’s happening again.”

Tears surface to the bottom crescent of each her eyes, so thick they’re even noticeable behind her thick black-rimmed glasses.

“What’s up? You alright?”, I tip toed.

“Yeah, I’m fine. When you were talking about race up there. See, I'm from South America- I was born in South America, and I was adopted…”

She goes on to divulge her background of adversity with being presumed too white to be accepted by people of color, and too brown to be accepted by white people. The line is ugly, and I’ve lived it all my life. I can still remember Bridget from the 4^th grade screaming at me during recess, “Nigga I’ll slap the black outta you! (Laughs) If there’s any black in there (More laughter)”. I can tell her experience is filled with moments that have moved her as an artist, human being and potential activist. Continuing her story, “And, it’s when you try to talk about that (race) or present it (race) in your project, other students just harp on it so hard and dismiss it so quickly”

Again, I can’t recall what she said verbatim, but I can recall the way it made me feel. As the tears continue to surface, I ask her a question I don’t think I’ve ever asked anyone before. Almost tearing up myself, I ask, “Do you want a hug?”

Not even giving her a chance to answer, I take a half step toward her, stretch out my arms in tandem with her own, we hug it out for a quick few seconds. In that moment, I can recall just how many times I needed a hug like this in my earlier days. The days of cradling my head in my hands trying to figure out just why the f writing, performing and acting felt like skating uphill- felt like I was speaking to an audience that hadn’t a shred of empathy- felt like I was giving my best to Minnesota, and only receiving apathy in return. That hurt, that pain, that struggle is what has made me the artist I am today. Not fully, but definitely a fair part of me.

We chat a little longer, and draw comparisons to her final project and a show I did recently at the Bryant Lake Bowl. The entire lecture, the talks afterward… all of it humbling.

I never expect tears on such occasions, however when you designate a space to speak freely, express truthfully, and value your neighbors thoughts and ideas as much as your own, I can think of no better place to give someone a hug. 

Sociology At Night

The Kitty Cat Klub perches with deep velvet colored décor and vampiric lighting. It had been some time since I’d performed a show there, however it felt like home. The placement of lights in the dark- always the true mark of a well versed venue. It reminded me of the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, MI. Regardless of the time of day, it always felt like night. I feel that way about the Kitty Cat Klub.

Brock and I had texted a few times earlier that night to meet at a house party yonder. Collecting my cash, and gathering the merch, I hit the door for my car. Already wounded, leaking coolant from a tube near the manifold, Honda was running on 70 to 60%. The single-digit temperature saw to it the engine didn’t immediately overheat until 10 minutes into the drive. I hopped in and made my way to the house party Brock was already in attendance.

Stepping in, the apartment delivered a similar ambiance to the Kitty Cat Klub. Wax candles melted to their placeholders, tie dye patterned cloth draped along the wall, the look of a domain of holistic healing.

We sat and watched the television for what felt like 10 minutes, but in real-time clocked over an hour. Brock leaned back in a vintage cream-colored chair across the room, while Hannah and her friends lounged the couch producing multi-colored clouds hovering eye-level.

Time blurred to what felt like a slow crawl, but was creeping on 4am at this point. The ambiance and conversation (or lack thereof) almost put me to a slumber. Bordering on half-asleep, I recognized a sound persisting from the television. An annoying bright whine from its speakers beat into the air like an injured car alarm. Turning to the television set, I realized it was now the 3^rd Iggy Azalea music video Hannah had playlisted.

“Ahh, she’s so bad”, I said without filter. “She’s a musical genius” crooned Brock.

Hannah quickly pointed out the “genius” in Iggy reproducing the movie Clueless into one music video, and that this particular work of hers was brilliant.

I nearly gagged. I don’t smoke. I don’t smoke anything, not cigarettes, not weed, not crack, not anything. And I never have. But if there were ever a high I was experiencing, it had been at the moment, and was currently being ruined. Yes, my high was getting ruined, and I was going to defend myself to the highest degree.

“Are you serious, right now?” I asked Hannah. I continued, “Iggy is appropriation in a bottle. That’s not even the way she talks- it ain’t her voice. She has a song where she says “when the relay starts, I’m a runaway slave master”. The woman is ridiculous!”

Hannah retorted, “ She is the best white female rapper out there, right now”.

This portion of the debate could have been perceived as civil, and most definitely would have if I hadn’t held Ms. Azalea so near and dear to my heart. However, Brock began declaring that her business model is flawless.

“Her manager is T.I.! He’s a minstrel on a VH1 reality tv show where they exploit the fact that his wife can’t read. He’s on record saying people need to get over race!?!?” I slammed.

The tie dye’s on the walls began spinning counter clockwise, while the music from the television speakers seemed to climb in treble- daring my ears to bleed, whilst the resin in the carpet started swimming with the rest of the inanimate objects on the ground. This is what it must feel like to think you’re going crazy. Looking up, I’d realized what I just said and that no one was going to empathize with the term “minstrel” or “appropriation”. I was screwed, and I just did it to myself. The discussion could end there and we could go on speaking of our Top 5 rappers of all time and make a civil love-in of it… But hell no. Once a brown guy in a room full of white people brings up appropriation… he’s solidified his place as “that guy” and will be given no such leniency to be anyone else.

Hannah held a calm face just as Brock and I hit a pause in our exchange. “Toussaint, it doesn’t have to be about race” she soothed. Ok, maybe she has a point. Maybe it can be the fact that our opinions just differ on the talent-level of Iggy Azalea and we can agree to disagree. “I just treat human beings as human beings. I don’t see a black person or a white person, I just treat people like people”.

If you stood close enough, you might’ve been able to see several atom bombs mushroom cloud in the reflection of my eyes. About my tired and sedated brain, a committed voice took over. There would be no helping anyone in this room to learn more about me, sociology, appropriation or hip-hop for that matter. It would be only one way, and that is mine. It was at this succinct moment in time that I knew I was going to say exactly what little to no people have told Hannah throughout her lifetime… and although it might mar her future for dialogue regarding race, I simple gave nil fucks at this juncture. I would be selfish, I would be fed up, and I would have none of what she just said.

“Oooohhh, I live in a post-racial world! I’m Jerry Garcia’s daughter, and I don’t have to see race because everything is fine and Disney” I sarcastically played about, and continued “Are you kidding me? Racial disparity in this city alone is top 3 in the country, and you’re going to sit here and refute a fact of socio-economics with me?”

… “You can leave” Hannah pierced with slight head jerk.

“Gladly” I responded immediately.

Once she claimed that she doesn’t see race (skin tone), I knew my response was going to be followed with an exit.

I grabbed my gloves and hit the road, carried the merch from the car to my house, and hit the bed.

… then it could have ended there, but for me it would not.

My stubborn, die hard, brick thoughted, (insert more here if you’d like), incredulous self, insisted on making a facebook post about the incident- because that’s what you do when you can’t have the moment any more, you look to the internet to revive the already dead corpse of the conversation. I thought nothing of it, until waking at the crack of noon, several hours later.

Checking my phone, I was notified there had been 15+ comments on said post. To my chagrin, I feared the commentary were to be barbs calling for my head, or worse yet, my social credibility. Alas, the comments referenced my use of the phrase “white privilege”… however after the 3^rd contribution, the commentary turned in on itself like a self-loathing Cerberus. A litany of verbal shots and slashes marked the post to a literary clash of clans. People were now calling each other out, passively exercising low-blows and cuts that strayed further and further away from the post’s initial intent.

I had created a monster.

I zoomed out from the facebook page, scrolled to my newly acquired Boom Beach app game and began to liberate islander slaves held captive by the Hammerman army. It was easy. I could turn away from the facebook commentary collision just like that and pretend it didn’t exist. I wouldn’t think about the commentary for the rest of the day... or until I had to deal with human beings again. Surely someone would stop me later to ask "Just what the hell was going on with that post you made yesterday/today?"

Regardless of the post, the discussion or experience of race is a life long dialogue for me. I once heard a man of color quoted "asking me not to deal with race is like asking me not to swim while I'm drowning."

Going back to Hannah’s apartment, Brock sitting across the room, the white women perched on the couch sedated and subject to a non-white guy clamoring of appropriation & white privilege… it must feel nice to tell him to leave the room soon as his words got under your skin- soon as he struck a personal nerve ending that wouldn’t be satisfied until he got the hell outta sight. The room could go back to its peace and not have to discuss a single article of race, let alone think of it. I wondered if it felt anything like zooming out of an online commentary and switching to the next app…

Deal Breaker: When Talking About Race With Your Significant Other Leads To Resentment

I recently wrote a song titled “Kolvoord Startburst”. In it, there is a short story I rap over a single verse. A few friends asked me about it, so I’d like to put it in prose. It’s been awhile… for me and prose, but I’m going to give it my best. And furthermore, hopefully bring you stories as frequently as I once did.

There was a time one of us would have said we were in love. And then there was a time where the other would’ve said we were in love. Our timing was often so off that it played like a game of love only while the other hates… now change roles.

It was a Minnesota Saturday, just like any other, we strolled about the Walker Sculpture Garden speaking of the future and places we’d love to visit. I’d always admired her for the stretch of her imagination beyond the small town-demeanor of the Midwest. Chicago is nice, but what about Ibiza- Segovia- Tokyo? Nothing was out of grasp, everything was attainable… it felt like sometimes, when you were with her.

As couples do during talks of the future, they get the talking about themselves. The dialogue can go one of several thousand ways- civil, resentful, futile, simple, basic, etc. How the conversation turned into what it was- well, I’ll never quite remember how it got there, but I can tell you about the surge of blood and serotonin that occurred as a result. I can tell you about the realizations that color your brain as the words pierce deeper into your pride & principles as a man. And sadly, I can tell you about the denial that you’ll blanket over the wound as the quickest means to healing- healing in the sense of duct tape over a severe laceration. It covers the injury now, but gives no means for long term rehabilitation.

I believe one should ask themselves everyday “How did we get here?”… as well as couples. The question is fair, and therefore the answer will be fair as well. “Fair” does not mean kind or nice, it simply means it will balance what there is that needs balancing, and if there is something completely out of whack, the answer will bring about some clarity.

After discussing visitable cities across the globe, we turned to our jobs. She had previously visited my job as a youth worker at the West 7^Th Community Center in St. Paul. And after watching a litany of bi-racial youth, from a low income neighborhood, jump about the outdoor festival we had thrown, we- obviously- began talking about ourselves. Her curiosity and intrigue from the West 7^Th visit spun her to monologue a streamline of consciousness...

“I mean, it must be so confusing for them [bi-racial children]. Who do they ascribe to? Are they white- are they black? Do black children accept them or do the white kids?”

I interrupted briefly, “Well, my sister wrote a paper about this when she was in high school, because her and I are-"

“I mean, I can’t imagine how tough that must be, and the picture of a family like that”, her consciousness continued vocally.

The tone turned from intrigue to pity for bi-racial youth. Unto this day, I can’t say verbatim how the conversation went from there, but I can tell you standing in the eye of someone you love while they question your existence as a person of color- there is no better way to break a heart.  

I held my breath… because holding your breath isn’t half as painful as biting your tongue.

She continued on as if I wasn’t there. Although she knew I was there, she didn’t know she was speaking to a bi-racial man that came from the exact family picture she held in question.

Yes, it’s now appropriate to ask yourself, “How the fuck did we get here?”

I was, in every sense of the word, defeated. I shamed myself felt most of all because I couldn’t find the words or timing to explain to her that what she said had hurt more than any deliberate attack of racially charged chutzpah. So, there we were. A blonde gal and a brown guy slowly disintegrating amidst the fertilizer in Walker Sculpture Garden.

Later on, I’d try to drive home all the sociological points I knew to be true, but she would have none of them. The simple nature of speaking against her misinformation was insulting for her… And it was then, I realized I could not have children with this woman. As awesome and kind hearted she could be, there was no way in this universe that I’d allow it. Because if it happened to happen, I might one day have to sit a bi-racial kid down and explain to her (or him) why mommy just said some over the top racially charged phrasing. If you can avoid that conversation, do it.

Then came the shame. Questions of “You’ve been with her over a year, how did I not know she felt like this about people of color?”, “How have we not had this conversation yet?”, and “Was the West 7^th Community Center relative to Fear Of A Black Planet?!?!?!” My psychi tumbled until I made it stop. I told myself it was a fluke. We went on for 6 more months and then broke up. I resented everything from that point on, and will say not a shred of it was worth it beyond the sculpture garden. Sometimes you have to find out, to understand what’s at stake for you in the future… that’s my hope.

 

Furthermore, beyond her and I, much of the city- much of hip-hop in Minneapolis withheld the same misinformation as her. And so, I was to continue into a community of artists and people that I’d have to manage to have the same conversation with. Some hold it better than others- some are willing to remove personal insult from it and take the reality for what it is (that we don’t live in a post-racial society), and some have been able to sit down, have a beer, and hold a civil exchange. What I learned that day in the Walker Sculpture Garden, is that she might never have to have the conversation again, and lord willing I hope not. But, that conversation- whether with friends, cops, significant others, or even family- will be inescapable for me for the rest of my life… and I wouldn’t have it any other way.