Diatribes by Joah

I'm Not an American Gangster, I'm an American Dreamer

I’ve been very inspired by Jay-Z’s American Gangster as you probably know from reading my recent diatribe. Just as he was inspired by seeing the film “American Gangster,” his vivid lyrics tell stories which have inspired me to share my story and experiences. This is titled, “I’m Not an American Gangster, I’m an American Dreamer,” not simply to play off of Jay-Z and the film, but to help you understand me.

In all honesty, you’ll only understand me by being around me (which some of you have done plenty), but these diatribes will do as much as possible to pave the way for understanding (and complementing your understanding of me) by sharing information about my upbringing, my values, my outlook on life, my ambition, and, most importantly, why I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and people still don’t like me (j/k).

Over the last year-plus, I’ve written about the most important days in my life, the most important people in my life, and what interests me. If you consider those diatribes the introduction, I’m about to give you the thesis. Some of my readers may be offended (like Crash viewers) by the 5,500-plus words they are about to read. I am open to any of your honesty and insight. Please do so in the comment section of this diatribe.

This diatribe is dedicated to my mother. She ran as hard as she could to pass the baton to her children and give us a chance to win life’s race.

*****

Diversity is something that people think they know a lot about. In reality, our own definitions or concepts of diversity are only as broad as the people we know and interact with. One can learn about diversity through workshops and training and TV and documentaries and reading books, but they may never understand it. Diversity is not about race or religion or education levels or where someone grew up or what someone does for a living or who someone votes for or what kind of music they like. Diversity is never A, B, C or D. It’s almost always all of the above.

I bring up diversity because the first thing someone thinks about when asked about diversity is race. That’s a fact of life in America. Don’t deny this truth or you will never be able to become a person who understands diversity. After race, a number of things come up…some of the things I mentioned above. But on down that list comes perspective. The best possible way to be about diversity is to be about perspective.

But how does one “be about perspective?” I have no fucking clue. I may have the racial, socio-economic, religious, musical, relationship and other types of understandings about diversity, but God help me if I’m not anywhere near the top of the perspective chain. Few people are. I know a few though. My best friend Colby didn’t grow up in a lot of the situations that I’m about to write about, but he sure as hell has perspective. Interestingly, he too is the son of a high-up officer in the American military. However, when you’re like him and you have perspective, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to understand how little you know. And it becomes easier to admit simple truths that society tries to make us deny.

Ashamedly, I’m only just now figuring this out and I’ve got a long way to go before I’m anywhere in Colby’s neighborhood as far as perspective goes. But I’m trying with all my might and energy because one of the most important things a person can have is perspective. That said, I want all of my readers - family, friends, colleagues, random people that like to read my random thoughts - to gain some perspective about me.

The thoughts shared here, today, are based on my life experiences and my interpretations of those around me. If I don’t use your name, then this isn’t about you directly. I can’t tell you how many times someone has freaked out over something I wrote that they thought was about them. It’s called Diatribes by Joah, not Diatribes about You. And people think I have ego!

Anyway, I make about a million assumptions in here and, just as is true with any of my diatribes, it will be imperative for you to realize that they are my assumptions in order to follow what I’m saying. Assumptions are not good, this we know. But don’t let people lead you to believe that they are bad either. They are not. We need assumptions. They save us time and energy and help us store information and ideas.

Crash writer-director Paul Haggis and other filmmakers, journalists, screen and song writers use assumptions to do this as well. Entertain, inform, engage, inspire. You need assumptions for those things. Assumptions help connect concepts that God has not given us the power to do without them. However, that does not mean that I make assumptions based on lies or falsities. It simply means that I take all the concepts and information I know to be factual or true or real and then, only when necessary, I use assumptions to link them. There are a lot of links in here and you’ll need to be able to step back from yourself and your own defense mechanisms, which in reading this may prove difficult, in order to understand my words.

Give me a moment to try and explain. Not reason, not justify, not rationalize. Just explain. If you hear me out, I think you’ll better understand why I do what I do and why I am the way I am. This is a lot of information to put out there, and I hope you do not misinterpret it as a rant or tirade based on my own defense mechanisms, but I feel it's necessary to share this information at this point because many of you have read my diatribes for months and probably feel you have a good idea of who I am. You probably do. But in order to truly understand me, you need to know this. Still, someone may be wondering what my intentions are with this and I’m going to go ahead and help that person by telling them: I want you to gain a more in-depth perspective about me. Some of this may be familiar to some of you already, but please read on.

I pride myself in being introspective and self-aware. But with self-awareness, comes blinders. I often struggle to see what others see from the outside. I’m working on this because it’s something that will be paramount to my success, personally and professionally. This diatribe, more than any other, has been my best way to try and break down that wall, let people inside and see if I can still be the person I intend to be. I don’t take criticism well and I’m working on that too by trying to break down these walls by moving further away from finding simple answers and closer to asking the right questions.

This diatribe is probably the most introspective thing I’ve ever written and I’m trusting my readers will read it for what it is: honest, open, and insightful. It’s honest not only because I’m not lying, but also because my assumptions are based in my personal beliefs and experiences. It’s open because I’m not holding back and I’m sharing tough things for me to write about that have shaped my life and who I am. It’s insightful because, for some of you, reading this is going to require you to grind your teeth, bite your tongue and digest it before you can really decide if I’m coming from an honest place and my previously stated intentions are true. Not right, but true. I believe the place I’m coming from allows my means to justify my ends, as Jay-Z would say.

*****

“Even to this day, I suppose, I can never really think of myself as a writer, because when you’re born into certain circumstances the world is not yours. You can’t go out there and say, ‘I will be this or I will be that’…the world sort of chooses you …so I write, and I’ve done three books, but there is no guarantee given how the world works that I’ll do anymore. When I was writing The Known World, I had been at the day job for 19 years and took five weeks of vacation off…two weeks into that they called me and said I didn’t have a job anymore. So I was very fortunate in that I had worked this thing out in my head for 10 years so I had a plan, I knew where I wanted to go. I think if I was the kind of writer who sits around thinking “what should come next?” and having to worry about getting a job I think it wouldn’t have worked for me. I don’t know what I would’ve done. But I did have a plan, I knew where I wanted to go…Right now I can live without having some sort of day job, but there’s no guarantee I can go on forever…I think in a way, there’s a kind of a class thing going on. I have a friend who was born essentially poor in Wales and she married a man, an American, who’s father had been a high-up officer in the American military so he was born into circumstances where he was rather privileged. And at one point my friend told him that she, she was a schoolteacher, that she was worried about getting a job or losing her job and he just said, “oh, well get another.” And I think what she realized and what I realized, since we come from the same sort of background, is that people like that sort of take everything for granted. They never have to worry. But people who are born into a different world, we have to worry, that’s our nature. We don’t have any sort of back-up system for us. The world is not waiting to catch us if we fall. There’s no one there for us. And that’s why I think that I’m a writer today, but in two weeks I could be asking, “do you want fries with that?”
- Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

*****

{Author’s Note: Throughout this diatribe I use the words ‘my peers,’ instead of friends, colleagues, etc. It better encapsulates both the personal and impersonal aspects of who I’m talking about. In other words, this is not pointed at a single person. At all.}

I've always been the type of person who older people looked at and said, "you're beyond your years." This is not to say that I am more mature than my peers. In fact, in many instances, my peers have far more maturity than I do because, unlike me, they do not actively seek it. They let it come to them. But not me; I have always sought out maturity and wisdom.

I learned from an early age that wisdom is knowledge plus experience or, as some would put it, wisdom is knowledge applied over time. I learned this by being in situations where I or others like me (people in disadvantaged situations) were affected by decisions made by immature or unwise people that set their lives on a course to be run on unsteady tracks. This isn’t racial, but it’s definitely socio-economical.

Some of my earliest memories are of things that I think no child should have to see or feel. Frustration. Disappointment. Abandonment. So from those memories, I was embedded with a strong desire to not become the type of person that would inflict those feelings on my children. I wanted to be beyond my years, so that later on in life I wasn't looking back and reflecting on mistakes made due to immaturity and a lack of wisdom. I wanted to be beyond my years because I didn't want excuses for why my children didn’t have what I wanted for myself.

You see, my grandmother had my mother when she was 17. She never married my grandfather. She had another child, my uncle, with another man whom she later married. But they divorced. My mom got pregnant during her senior year of high school. Some people may call her marriage to my dad a shotgun wedding. They wouldn’t be completely unjustified. Regardless, my mom and dad would go on to have my middle brother and then me. Somewhere in between having us, there were marital problems. Problems that better-financed or white people (as studies have shown) are far more likely to go to a therapist to discuss. But my parents weren't in the best financial predicament for that kind of thing, so I assume they worked it out in their own lackluster way and had us. Even with their boys to take care of, my dad wasn’t prepared or willing to be our father and my parents' marriage fell apart. Ultimately, my mom did what too many black moms have to do. She did it alone. Since I was three years old, I’ve been fatherless.

With only one (non-professional) parent, the socio-economic strife ensued. But now I know it was to be expected. My grandmother and her six brothers and sisters grew up poor and none went on to graduate from college. Same for my mom and uncle. Same for my brothers. It's not illogical to associate relationship failure, lack of college education, lack of family planning, and socio-economic strife. And it's not like these are things I didn’t notice until I was 18. These are things I've realized and thought about extensively since I was five or six years old. I don't think many of my peers can identify with or relate to this. Sympathize, definitely. Empathize, hardly.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think any of my peers had perfect childhoods either. Some lived in homes with struggling marriages or perhaps an alcoholic father or mentally-ill sibling. Even with those possibilities, many still had some assortment of familial foundation, two-parent households, medium-to-high family income, college-educated parents and/or siblings, and expectations to succeed. Some try to deny the fact that they grew up with certain guarantees, but if someone’s parents had a college degree or professional career, that person would be hard-pressed not to be expected to end up in the professional periphery. “When you’re born into certain circumstances the world is not yours. You can’t go out there and say, ‘I will be this or I will be that’…the world sort of chooses you…”

The best tradition in my family is rolling with the punches so to speak. Those punches were pretty rough if you ask me…getting my education in a handful of under-achieving and under-funded school systems, living without health insurance or care,  shopping for groceries on food stamps, living in a roach-infested apartment with both of my brothers sleeping within four feet of me, and not even having $90 to go on a school field trip that was planned months in advance (and that’s all before my 10th birthday). I'd be hard-pressed to find many peers who grew up in that. Going to college without any idea of what major to choose or graduating college without any idea of what they want to do in five or ten years. That’s what most of my peers consider rolling with the punches.

However, my expectations to succeed came from me, (although whole-heartedly and lovingly supported by my family and friends), so I don't pretend it was ever guaranteed to become what I have become from an education, financial, and intellectual standpoint. I started making more than my mom ever has the day I finished college. And if I rewind a little bit to high school, I can remember certain peers of mine saying I only got a near-full scholarship to college because, as they put it, “I’m black…and I’m smart.” As if to say my hard work was secondary. How’s that for high expectations! But, over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to low expectations and it’s taken me writing a book about older black professionals to realize that the experiences I have had with expectations are not mine alone. Just making it past 18 without having a child has made my brothers and I a success story in my family’s generational history. My brothers are two of the most talented and intelligent people I know, but one dreamed of being a basketball player and the other dreams of being a hip-hop producer. These aspirations greatly reduced their ability to succeed earlier in life because of the de-emphasis on educational success. My peers lack this experience so they will never have the maturity or wisdom required to come out of this kind of background.

Similarly, I will never have the maturity and wisdom attained from the situations they grew up in and live with. But ask me if I wanted to grow up with both of my parents, and that they both had college degrees, and were professional somethings, and we had a three or four-bedroom house, and took family vacations, and had two cars, and that the American Dream wasn’t just something I saw on Full House. Yes my mom did what she had to do alone and she did an amazing job at it, but so did I. This is not boastful, this is factual. Too often, people disregard the simple fact that it’s tough to come from close to nothing (socio-economically) and make something of yourself without a shit load of confidence. People try to call it ego, but in all reality, it’s just someone projecting their own lack of confidence in their journey and position onto someone else to bring them down a notch. Not that I don’t have a lot of ego, because I do. It’s been doubling as my “kick in the ass” for the last 15 or so years every time I get tired and want to give up and just settle for what my peers’ parents have. But then my ego kicks in and says, “hell no Joah, you have to catch up…you can still win this race.” And, people try to deny it, but the reality is that it’s not a race: it’s a relay. Each one of us had the baton passed to us by our parents and although my mother took it pretty damn far on her own, she could only take me so far.

I'm not angry about this though. The closest I get to angry is when people pretend they've been running this race as hard or as long as I have. I want to remind them that I had to grab the baton from my mom and now people try to deny the fact that I’m running three laps of the relay they still have a chance to win simply by running one. College was only the first lap for me while most of my peers’ parents ran that lap, and another, before handing over the baton.

Regardless, I've gone about my life in a manner that indicates I have learned (and been uplifted and motivated) from my upbringing and my surroundings in order to improve myself and my situation so that my children don't have to do it alone. Case in point, if you grew up in a household where your parents had a savings account or retirement funds, then you know a little bit about those things. If you didn’t grow up with those things, you’re like me and struggling to teach yourself on the fly. So I want my children to have those experiences and expectations and not just what others would call pipe dreams. Few of my peers have what I would call dreams because they can reach their goals simply by doing what is expected of them and a little better than what their parents did. If one of my peers’ dad went to Harvard and my peer wants to become a Senator, that’s a goal. If I want to become a Senator, people look at me like I’m on the Lincoln Memorial steps saying “I Have a Dream…”

True, I have some lofty goals. But, you should see how some of my peers react when they hear them. They look at me like I'm the most ambitious person to ever walk the Earth. I don’t think they’d look at me this way if I simply wanted to follow a more typical path through sports or music or some other path that hundreds of little black boys and girls have tried to follow, but when I start talking about my ambitions it becomes the equivalent to someone saying they want to walk on Mars.

They fail to realize that if all I wanted to do was be like them (although they’d never admit this) and do just a little bit better than my parents, that would mean either I was married and a good parent or I got a college education and had a good career, but probably not both. The Cosby Show was such a big hit, not in the black community but in the white community, because it made millions of people ignore the very fact that during the '80s there were 10 kids coming from what I came from for every one Theo Huxtable.

So no, I refuse to choose between personal and professional success, I want it all. And wanting it all isn't some bold thing. It's only bold to my peers that can't look past the fact that they grew up with at least two-thirds of the things I want for my children. It's the American Dream to want the things that I want. But for those who have grown up in a situation that represents much of what the American Dream is, they don't fully understand how I've gone about achieving it for myself and the children I'll have someday.

If I were a drug dealer, it would make sense to have a plan of action for rising to the top of the drug game. But for some reason it doesn't make sense in the legitimate world for a black man to have a plan of action, especially when the Kennedys and Bushes have proven they can get where they're going no matter how many times they veer off course through their first 25 years of life thanks to involved, educated, and well-to-do parents. People think I’ll get where I want to be without my plans, but they fail to realize what so many books, movies, research studies, and news reports have proven: what you come from is what you’ll be unless you do something drastic to alter that course. My “something drastic” is on a piece of paper that I wrote in 6th grade and have revised on a routine basis ever since. Sorry if its not as simple as making the NBA or being a rapper. And yes, I said it, I have revised it over the years. Planning doesn’t mean being inflexible, as too many mistakenly believe. At least not to me. Planning means knowing what to expect and identifying ways to overcome obstacles. And it’s not hard to say I’ve had plenty of them. I’m only doing for myself what Joe Kennedy did for his sons. But my friends are more JFK than Jay-Z so they pretend they could be just as well off without their own parental pathsetter. I’m more Jay-Z than JFK.

Poor me, dad was gone, finally got my dad back
Liver bad, he wouldn’t live long, then snatched my dad back
Guidance I never had that, streets was my second home
Welcomed me with open arms provided a place to crash at
A place to study math at, matter fact, I learned it all
Burnt in all this music is where I bury the ashes at
Flash back not having much, not having that
Had to get some hollerest you can holla back at
Holla that my Jewish lawyer do enjoy the fruit of my cash stack
Just in case a nigga got to use his rat-ta-ta-ta-tat
Own boss own ya’ll, masters, slave
The mentality I carry with me to this very day
F**k rich lets get wealthy who else gon' feed we
If I need it I’ma get it however God help me
- “No Hook”

I can relate to that Jay-Z lyric in ways that few of my peers could. Thankfully, I made a plan based on getting an education instead of one of the alternatives (like the one Jay-Z writes about) because rolling with the punches doesn't work where I'm from. Where I’m from, you end up with a high school diploma, if that, and selling phone service on the phone or driving a delivery truck, if that. You roll with them or you punch back. And even Muhammad Ali had to have a game plan to win the title.

There are no Cliff or Claire Huxtables in my family, no doctors, no lawyers, no professors, no scientists, no investment bankers, no politicians, not even nurses, military officers or teachers. And those last three are pretty much what black professionalism consisted of up until about 20 or 30 years ago. There is no safety career…no “I can fall back on what mom or dad did.”

I remember reading about Tom Brokaw remarking that had he been black he never would have been who he was. I became a big fan of Brokaw when I read that because it acknowledged what too few are willing to admit. Similarly, if many of my peers landed in jail for something, they'd be bailed out after a few hours or days. Even if I were innocent, I'd be sitting there behind bars waiting for a public defender unless I was willing to call in a favor from some non-family member that I would forever be indebted to. If many of my peers couldn't pay their rent for a month, guess what...they'd be okay. Mom and dad have savings. No doubt about it. I can't tell you how many of my peers have moved to some big city or traveled the world or gone to graduate school on their parents' dime. Or maybe they have loans, but even then their parents help them along the way because “I know it’s tough being a graduate student.” Hell, they should know…many of my peers’ parents have MBAs, law degrees and Ph.Ds too. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been in graduate school so I have no clue how hard it is. But I’d rather be going to graduate school on loans than ITT Tech on loans. I’d rather be working toward a career as a lawyer than one as a paralegal. I’d rather be clueless about what I’m going to be after college than after high school.

So my plans were mapped out from an early age. They were built on goals, but to others they are dreams. It’s very tough to make my peers realize this, but Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. created this perception that what poor black people have are dreams. So if you’re like me, you're still a generation or two from those dreams becoming what they are for many non-blacks: goals. Meanwhile, what my peers want - and let me be clear that my peers come from all races - is to be successful. But they don't have it planned out. Too many of my peers are clueless about why they majored in what they majored in or what they’re putting themselves in $100,000 worth of debt for. But few have to worry anyway. “People like that sort of take everything for granted. They never have to worry. But people who are born into a different world, we have to worry, that’s our nature. We don’t have any sort of back-up system for us. The world is not waiting to catch us if we fall. There’s no one there for us.”

Most of my peers will end up being successful professionals and parents because they already saw their parents do one or both of those things and they've been prepared to figure out how to do whatever they didn't already see growing up. They've had a lifetime to figure out how to be a good parent because being a college-educated professional was a given. Or vice versa. If they didn’t have Super Dad, they were super wealthy. Or if they didn’t have a dad like Danny Tanner, they had Uncle Joey and Uncle Jesse. Too many of my peers to count have what you would consider second families or Godparents or people that look out for them from childhood on up. I have a great family, but there were no college degrees to speak about, 401ks to extract from or vacation homes to stay in. My only family vacation was a four-hour drive to the beach in South Carolina for four days during my freshman year of high school. There are no photo albums to remember it either.

There was no positive example of what I was going to become or what path I would travel (or follow) or what career I would have or what marriage was like. Part of me says, I know I’ll be a great parent because of my amazing mother, but then that begs the question, “do I know how to be a good father?” There’s a pretty big gap between "my parents stayed together for the kids" and "I grew up in a single-parent home." Also, there's a difference between having a doctor for a dad and wanting to be a surgeon and having a janitor for a dad and wanting to become a surgeon. The only thing I was ever equipped with was a high regard for the person I did not want to be…that deadbeat dad or that janitor. That remains the foundation for the person I am and the person I will become.

Most of my peers were never challenged in ways I was from a young age. A lot of people talk about white privilege, but I think that’s a shortcut for someone to be prejudiced and close-minded because privilege is everywhere. Although my co-author and University of Texas at Austin African-American Studies professor, Dr. Louis Harrison, wrote me and said “Though class is a salient issue, I believe the issue of race is even more salient in today's society. One can mask their class or background with clothing and mannerisms, but, for most of us, our race speaks before we can open our mouths.” Still, I know plenty of black kids who grew up with both mom and dad, with college degrees on the bedroom wall, getting their first car for their 16th birthday, and some rich or successful relative to admire.

Going back to that race concept, the best way to put it is that not only have I had to run more laps than them, I've also had to jump hurdles along the way. So, yes, I've used words to help me jump them. You can’t run up to a hurdle and think you can jump it without any clue how to do it nor can you run as many laps as I have to run without having some endurance. Jay-Z did the same thing, only Def Jam called it a 10-album record deal and my peers are calling mine pipe dreams.

My words and plans help me navigate a world that is to my disadvantage not only because of what I didn’t have growing up, but because of what my peers try to pretend they didn’t. And not only because of what I will face every step of the way, but also due to what my peers may never face at all.

If I don’t set some goals and make a plan of action, I feel the alternative is tripping up on one of those hurdles or becoming too tired and never catching up in life's race. The prize being the American Dream. You have to make a plan when you’re running three laps because I’m not quite ready to give up on my chance to win instead of just finish. For some time now, I’ve known it's going to take a hell of a lot more race strategy, and planning, than my peers will ever need to win their races because I don't have a generation or two worth of years' head start like my peers.

Over the course of reading this, many of my peers may have thought “oh, I didn’t grow up with or have A.” That person may be 100 percent right. Someone else may not have grown up with B or C or D either, but like diversity, this isn’t about any single answer. It’s about all of the above or in my case, none of the above.

This, in my opinion, explains why I've striven to be "beyond my years."

I wish I could be like my peers, but it's too late. Dr. Harrison, Edward Jones, Paul Haggis and Jay-Z were all right about this country on many accounts. So now I have to focus on helping the children I will one day have to start their race just like their peers. Call it a pipe dream if you want.

“That’s why I think that I’m a writer today, but in two weeks I could be asking, “do you want fries with that?”

A letter between friends

Dear Joah:

I’m sure this letter comes to you as a surprise because it’s been so long, too long, since we last spoke. Half of that is my fault and I’m sorry. Anyway, I’m writing because I’m a bit confused. Well confused may not be the best word, but it’s the only one that comes to mind right now. Basically what I’m trying to say is that I’m not as certain as I’ve been in the last 13 or so years since we saw each other. And I’m hoping you can help me figure out if that’s a good or bad thing?

With regards,

Joah

*****

Joah,

It has been too long! What are you up? Are you doing all those things you and I used to talk about? How was high school? Did you end up going to the University of Texas? Are you living in D.C.? Have you written a book? So many questions…I bet you’re doing so well and making me so proud.

Here I am asking a million questions and I didn’t even answer yours. What are you so confused about? Being certain is important, but not nearly as important as being right. I think I read that somewhere so I can’t take credit for it…

J

*****

Joah,

Well, that’s what I’m uncertain about, and why I’m writing you. All “those things you and I used to talk about.” What you said about being certain vs. being right is exactly what I’m trying to figure out. If being right is more important than being certain, how do I know if I’m right or not? Case in point, I’ve done almost everything we talked about…high school went about 95 percent as planned although I moved from South Carolina to Texas after sophomore year (I handled it ok)…I ended up getting a scholarship to Texas, so I graduated in 2005…I moved to DC a few weeks later and now I’ve been here for more than two years and I’m really enjoying it.

Long story short, I’m wondering if it was right for us to talk about all those things and plan it out the way we did. I mean, it’s worked so far and I can’t complain and I have not one regret about what’s happened since I last saw you, but what about the rest of what we talked about? Is it right for me to keep following the road map that you and I made all those years ago? What if something happens and I can’t do what we originally planned?

Joah

*****

Joah,

I don’t understand what you’re asking. I mean, by the sounds of it, everything we talked about is going perfectly and, you said yourself, there are no regrets, right? So what are you so confused about? Just keep following the plan we made and everything we be  just fine.

J

P.S. Since when are you so doubtful? Didn’t I tell you about being confident?

*****

J,

It’s not that simple. Sure, everything has gone as planned for the most part, but there’s no guarantee that’ll keep up. How am I supposed to react if something major happens that we didn’t talk about or plan for?

And no one said I’m not confident, I just am no longer so naïve to think that I have all the answers.

Joah

*****

Joah,

What do you mean, “if something major happens that we didn’t talk about or plan for?” Wasn’t that the whole point in planning…we talked about everything, there is nothing major left over to discuss.

Are you calling me naïve?

J

*****

Naïve wouldn’t be far from the truth. Listen to yourself…you think you’re so smart and know everything there is to know about the world??? You haven’t even gone through anything so how do you think you know if something major will happen or not that we didn’t plan for?

*****

Don’t you dare do that. Don’t act like I had a choice. You left me behind. If it was up to me, you’d be stuck as the 11-year-old Joah, and I’d be enjoying life and succeeding without any of these questions about being confused or certain or whatever the hell you’re talking about.

*****

Maybe you would succeed, but you’d never be the person we really intended to become when we wrote that plan out. That plan wasn’t about success. It was about a way of life that was based in fulfillment and purpose.

*****

Don’t tell me who I wouldn’t be, I’m certain I wouldn’t be writing you asking these inane questions that you should already know the answers to.

*****

You just don’t get it. It’s not as simple as following some piece of paper. Life happens and I’ve realized that you and I didn’t factor that in enough. Sure, the school and professional stuff has worked out so far, but you never learned anything about relationships or perspective or anything that makes life challenging or interesting.

*****

So you think you know more than me? Do you have a better plan than the one I gave you?

*****

Yeah. I do.

*****

You don’t sound that confused anymore.

Not bad for a 24-year-old.

Good luck Joah,

Joah

"In order to survive, gotta learn to live with regrets"

“I gotta live for the right now
Time waits for no man,
can’t turn back the hand once its too late
gotta learn to live with regrets.

This is the number one rule for your set,
in order to survive gotta learn to live with regrets.
On the rise to the top, many drop, don’t forget,
in order to survive gotta learn to live with regrets.

This is the number one rule for your set,
in order to survive gotta learn to live with regrets.
And through our travels we get separated, never forget,
in order to survive gotta learn to live with regrets.”

- “Regrets” - Jay-Z

Regret is a difficult word/concept/issue/topic to cover. I had trouble thinking about regret in a way that resonated with what I was feeling when I first thought about using this week’s diatribe to cover it. I wanted to find a way to share my thoughts about regret not as something I’m full of or even something I think about everyday, but how it plays a role in my decision-making and understanding those decisions later on in life. I went to my favorite Jay-Z song for inspiration.

Besides possibly my oldest brother, Kahron, I don’t know anyone who is a bigger Jay-Z fan than me. I’ve watched his career from his debut album Reasonable Doubt, which includes the song above, all the way to his recently-released set American Gangster, which you need to buy if you haven’t already. It’s the best hip-hop/rap album this year, which is saying a lot since Kanye and Common both put out premium albums. (R.I.P. Dr. Ronda West, Kanye’s mom.)

But this ‘tribe isn’t about the rapper Jay-Z, the drug dealer-turned-entertainment mogul anymore than its about regrets.

I don’t pretend to have a universal definition for what regret is. Webster says regrets means: to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment, etc.). I partially agree with that, but I also have problems with that narrow sense of the word because I don’t at all marry disappointment and regret. If something disappointments me or is disappointing to me, that doesn’t mean it’s because I regret it or because it roots in some type of fault.

Instead, when I think about regret, I think about two things: things I would do differently if given the opportunity and things I regret having to do or be a part of, but know they were necessary.

On "Say Hello," Jay-Z says:

"Can’t complain bout what they ain’t gon’ give ya
That ain’t gonna get you shit, might as well give up
Or get up, get out and get something, nigga
Get a job, my nigga, or get to dumping
Only God can judge him, only he without sin
Can tell me if my means can justify my ends."

As I’ve read and watched just about every Jay-Z interview and studied the lyrics of nearly every song, I’ve learned that he and I seem to share a definition of regret. "Only God can judge me" is a line Jay-Z says fairly often. But then on "Sweet" he acknowledges that he must still live with his decisions.

"Sweet, and still there's pain
If i would have grew up to be a doctor
my nephews would have grew up to do the same
But since I grew up through the game
and my influence is the same
and my therapy is music
They ask if you ashamed
and though I wish I could separate
The two things, I can not
so my answer to you remains
I can walk down the hall of mirrors in Versailles
and be so satisfied when I look at myself in the eyes."

Jay-Z, admittedly, did not want to be a (successful) drug dealer. However, as he tries to explain to his mother on the song “No Hook,” he feels he had no other option.

"Stay out of trouble, momma said as momma sighs
Her fear her youngest son being victim of homicide
But I got to get you out of here momma or I’ma---die
Inside--and either way you lose me momma so let loose of me
I got the rain our direction will soon change
To live and die in N.Y. in the hustle game
Hustle cane, hustle clothes, or hustle music
But hustle hard in any hustle that you pick
Skinny nigga toothpick but, but I do lift
Weight like I’m using ‘roids Rolls Royce
Keep my movements smooth while maneuvering
Through all the manure in the sewers that I grew up in
Choices we make trying to escape."

And again on the song “American Dreamin.”

This is the shit you dream about with the homie steamin’ out
Back-back-backing them Beemer’s out
Seems as our plans to get a grant
Then go off to college, didn’t pan or even out
We need it now, we need a town
We need a place to pitch, we need a mound
For now, i’m just a lazy boy
Big dreaming in my La-Z-Boy
In the clouds of smoke, been playin’ this Marvin
Mama forgive me, should be thinkin’ bout Harvard
But that’s too far away, niggas are starving
Ain’t nothin’ wrong with aim, just gotta change the target."

These songs tell us Jay-Z’s story from a Brooklyn kid who only wanted out of the ghetto and he realized his best route was to master the ghetto’s industry: drugs. Through his mastery of the drug game, Jay-Z - who doubled as a highly-reputable MC in New York - was able to start Rocafella Records and become legitimate.

Today, he’s the President of Def Jam Recordings, the most legendary hip-hop label, one of the top-selling artist in the last decade, a pitchman for Hewlett-Packard and Budweiser, and co-owner of the NBA’s New Jersey Nets. Forbes says he’s worth something like $400 million (he made $83 million last year alone). And that’s only if you don’t listen to “Roc Boys” where he says, “take what Forbes figured then figure more, ‘cause they forgot to account what I did with the raw.” And he’s been with Beyonce, almost 12 years his junior, for like five years. I’m jealous.

In last Friday’s interview on Charlie Rose, Jay-Z said only the other hip-hop Sean, Diddy, is in his league when it comes to “mogulin” as he termed it. He’s got a pretty good argument. Some of the issues that Jay-Z brings up in interviews and his music talk about the kind of situations that forced him into a situation where even now, as a multi-millionaire executive, he still has regrets from a ruthless past not all that different from the real Frank Lucas.

But Jay-Z is at peace with the decisions he has made. He even acknowledges that he possibly could have been a popular rapper (possibly as good as the great Rakim) before Reasonable Doubt but he was too invested in the drug game, which would go on to help him write (well, Jay-Z doesn’t actually write his lyrics) songs from a real perspective.

On the single, “Blue Magic,” he says,

“This '87 state of mind that I’m in,
in my prime, so for that time, I’m Rakim.
If it wasn’t for the crime that I was in,
but I wouldn’t be the guy who's rhymes it is that I'm in.”

So even with those regrets, he seems to have a high degree of perspective and understanding that the decisions he made in the past, regardless of their nature, have helped put him in position to make better choices and decisions now and in the future. Again, on "No Hook," Jay-Z spits:

"Please don't categorize this as music
Please don't compare me to other rappers
Compare me to trappers,
I'm more Frank Lucas than Ludacris
And Luda's my dude, I ain't trying to diss
Like Frank Lucas is cool, but I ain't trying to snitch
I'ma follow the rules no matter how much time I'ma get
I'ma live and die with the decisions that I'ma pick."

In other words, although there are things Jay-Z would do differently if given the opportunity, he fully acknowledges that some of his decisions, at the time, were necessary to get him where he is today.

“I gotta live for the right now,
Time waits for no man,
can’t turn back the hand once its too late
gotta learn to live with regrets.”

While I don’t share Jay-Z’s drug-dealing past, I came up in a socio-economic situation that I’m sure - beyond the fact that he was in a city and I was in a small town - wasn’t all that different. Both of us were fully abandoned by our fathers at age 12, both of us spent our early years in neighborhoods you would consider “projects,” and both of us realized the importance of the “Almighty Dollar” as my grandmother calls it. He became a drug dealer, because that’s what you do in the city to make money, and luckily I was in a small town where raking leaves and mowing lawns was an option. I’m sure he made a good bit more money than me.

When I was talking to my work buddy, Will, about these concepts, he said: “Eventually you get to a point where you have to choose a path (illegal or legit).” Jay-Z chose rap and we’re all benefiting from that decision. I, thankfully, never had to make such a drastic life choice because God imbedded me with this high regard for education. I’ve always been legitimate.

Still, I can understand what Jay-Z is talking about, because I sometimes think about how different my life would be if I grew up in a place like Brooklyn or Compton. Would I have made the right choices and chose the legitimate path or would I be in crime, in jail or in a coffin. But where I grew up isn’t something I regret because it wasn’t a choice or decision for me to make, but just about every aspect of my life in the last six to twelve years of my life - depending on the aspect - is the result of a choice or decision I made.

What friends I made. What activities I got involved in. Where I went to go to college. Where I work. Who I voted for. Who I broke up with. Why I live in Washington. Why I’m writing a book. How I got here.

I bring this all up because now that I’m approaching the end of my first 25 years of my life, seemingly without many regrets, I wonder what the next 25 years will hold. I wonder if the 40-year-old Joah will identify with the 20-year-old Joah the way Jay-Z is identifying with his former self on American Gangster. 

I wonder if I will have his level of perspective and understanding about the necessary role my previous decisions played in making me the person I will become. Like Jay-Z, I understand the importance in being able to live with regret. I just hope my regrets aren’t the kind that would have me praying for a do-over. That said, I try to live each day with my favorite lyric of his in mind.

“On the rise to the top, don’t forget, in order to survive gotta learn to live with regrets.”

The Most Important Days of My Life (Sorta Kinda)

It’s hard to believe it’s already November…seems like just yesterday when I was sitting down for a glass of lemonade on a warm mid-July afternoon…

For those of you not familiar, July 15 was the day I met Althea. Also, for those of you not familiar, I pretty much fell in love with Althea that same day.

The funny thing about July 15, 2007, though, is how insignificant that day was supposed to be. The only thing on my calendar for that day was a reminder to watch LeBron James and Jimmy Kimmel co-host the ESPY Awards on ESPN.

Fast forward to November 6 and I know exactly how significant July 15 is (at least as far as 2007 is concerned). Thinking about that very idea has me thinking about all the other significant days in my 24-plus years on this earth.

If I could pick just one day from each year, between 1983 and 2007, which would be the most significant?

But before I begin, I want everyone to know that this list is not comprehensive. There are certainly other important and meaningful days in my life, but I tried to pick the ones with the most “weight” on the person I am today. In other words, by looking at these days, I hope you can get a feel for the kind of person I am even if you don’t know me. Also, the factuality of this ‘tribe is by my determination only…some people may dispute the facts/dates here, but this is what I remember and believe whole-heartedly.

Open, honest and insightful … I promise.

April 22, 1983 - The day the remnants of the Big Bang Theory collided with Adam and Eve’s genes in the form of an 8-lb, 12-oz. baby boy. Personally, I think this should be marked as a significant day in your life as well. (Did he really just say that?!?)

September 20, 1984 - The Cosby Show debuts. Although I obviously was too young to remember this day or the show’s pilot episode, the show would go on to become the first show starring Black characters to be the top-rated program on TV. Although I have some quarrels with the show’s content, I honestly believe it’s timing helped race relations in America.

November 19 & 20, 1985 - On the 19th, the Cold War took a major turn for the better when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met for the first time. On the following day Microsoft released Windows. WWIII was temporarily averted and you’re reading my diatribe thanks to some Windows-based software.

October 9, 1986 - News Corp. launches Fox Broadcasting Company. Perhaps the first non-cable network that made a conscience effort to reach young and Black viewers alike. Shows like The Simpsons, In Living Color, Beverly Hills 90210 and New York Undercover were cutting-edge and either gave their competitors a run for their money (see Saturday Night Live) or paved the way for entire segments of popular TV today (see Laguna Beach). Fox’s programs are indicative of our generation…we play by our own rules, we make others conform to us, and we’re diverse.

August 31, 1987 - Although Thriller came out five years earlier and remains the highest-selling album of Michael Jackson’s career (and of all-time), Bad was the first album that coincided with my childhood memories of listening to records and watching music videos. Both “Bad” and “Smooth Criminal” remain two of the best videos ever made. Michael Jackson is one of the reasons I’m such an avid music fan today.

August 31, 1988 - I’m not sure on the exact day, but I figure Labor Day-ish is around when I made my debut in the public school system that would foster my education and help me get where I am today and where I’ll be in the future.

February 25, 1989 - That was the day Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys. He fired a legendary coach (Tom Landry), hired an unproved college coach (Jimmy Johnson), drafted QB Troy Aikman, traded a workhorse running back in Herschel Walker, and picked up all-time leading rusher Emmitt Smith in the process. Funny thing is, it was Landry’s leftover and final draft pick, wide receiver Michael Irvin, who would end up being the heart and soul of America’s Team during their run of three Super Bowl wins in four years (before the Patriots). Needless to say, I’ve been an avid Cowboys and sports fan ever since.

July 23, 1990 - The day my mom packed up my brothers and I and moved from Texas to South Carolina. I often think about how much different my life would be had we never loaded up that U-Haul truck and made that drive. And then I think about how much fun those 20-plus hours were with my family and crossing the Mississippi River for the first time in my life while listening to MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” and Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice, Baby.” I’ve made the ride (not flight, ride) between Texas and South Carolina at least a dozen times since then and driving East on I-20 remains one of my favorite times to think about all the good and bad times in my life.

June 12, 1991 - Michael Jordan leads the Chicago Bulls to the NBA title over the Los Angeles Lakers. The 4-to-1 series win not only ended the Lakers’ reign as the NBA’s most successful team in the last decade, but it also started an era for the Bulls as Jordan would go on to lead them to six championships in eight seasons. I was never the biggest Michael Jordan fan growing up, but I can vividly remember thinking that I wanted to be as good at what I did as MJ was at basketball. I can honestly say that Michael Jordan was my first celebrity role model because he seemed to be in control of his own destiny and that’s what I wanted for myself.

November 3, 1992 - Again, I obviously couldn’t vote in 1992 and as a nine-year old I didn’t fully understand the importance of Bill Clinton winning the presidency, but now I understand how his win set in motion a number of things in the U.S. that have resulted in both our advancement as a nation as our decline as an international citizen (i.e. Hotel Rwanda). I could possibly make the argument that his victory virtually assured his wife would one day run for the presidency herself, since it’s now become widely known that she’s equally ambitious and would go on to use the First Lady post as a launching pad to her Senate bid.

December 17 & 23,1993 - Here’s a list of the top 10 grossing movies of 1993: Jurassic Park, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Fugitive, Schindler's List, The Firm, Indecent Proposal, Cliffhanger, Sleepless in Seattle, Philadelphia, and The Pelican Brief. This is without a doubt the best list of movies to come out in the same year during my lifetime; only 1985 comes close. Two of my favorite movies of all-time, both of which just happen to star Denzel Washington, just happened to be the two that came out at the end of the year. I’m pretty sure most of you know I’m a big movie fan and 1993 is just about the year when I really started understanding what makes a good film.

November 8, 1994 - Like the same day (Election Day) two years earlier, this day’s significance wasn’t fully understood at this precise time in my life, but looking back it continues to make waves in my life, particularly my political makeup. I loved the idea of a “Contract with America.” As someone that believes anyone getting paid with taxpayer dollars from the trash man to the President should think of themselves as public servants, I liked the notion that Congress should sign a contractual obligation to taxpayers to fulfill its promises. Fittingly, Bush was elected Governor of Texas that same day. I guess that Contract was figurative.

September 2-4, 1995 - While all of my friends and brothers were busy enjoying their long Labor Day weekend, I was raking leaves for an old woman who lived in the neighborhood up the street. This is what I did for money from ages 9 - 14, raked leaves in the fall and winter, cut grass in the spring and summer. I don’t know if it was her old age, and she thought it was the 1940s, or it was her old ways and she thought it was the 1880s, but she only paid me $7 for more than 15 hours of work. Long story short, I went home in tears and my mom, upon hearing what happened, took me back to that old lady’s house and stood in her doorstep until she pulled out two twenties. I forgot to mention that my mom is the coolest.

August 2, 1996 - This is the last day I spoke to my dad. Granted, he was in and (mostly) out of my life for the first13 years, but since that day I’ve found no reason for him to be in the last thirteen either.

March 15-20, 1997 - I’m not 100 percent on the dates, but I know it was Spring Break of ’97 when I made my first trip to Washington, D.C. with the Beta Club. This week was significant for two reasons: first because it ended my near eight-year crush on Jenny (she refused to kiss me), and second because it re-enforced my post-education plans of moving to D.C. to pursue a career in and/or around government.

October 23, 1998 - This is pretty much the day I started dating my first-ever girlfriend, Krystal. It was a football game Friday and we were in band together (I played baritone, she played clarinet) and my friend Blair (now Colin) hinted that she was eyeing me. I didn’t have much of a clue who she was (she was a freshman) or that she liked me, but once I saw her (“man, she’s hot!” I thought) I was hooked. Then unhooked. And back and forth a few more times in the years since.

August 7, 1999 - My mom got re-married and I moved back to Killeen, Texas, on August 7th and although I hated the idea of moving away from South Carolina, and leaving all my friends in the middle of high school, I look back at the move as a benefit to my personal development. I met my best friend Colby two weeks later on the first day of cross country practice and that alone was worth the agony I felt throughout my junior year when I missed my old friends. 

May 30, 2000 - I had just recently gotten my driver’s license and Colby had just recently graduated and was preparing for college (he was a year ahead of me). Being the good friend he is, he let me drive his parents’ BMW, which was the first car I’d officially driven as a licensed driver. I remember thinking this was a day I’d always remember, not because anything monumental happened (see next year), but because I felt like that day was the end of my childhood and the beginning of my quest to adulthood.

September 11, 2001 - I can’t pretend as if 9/11 means more to me than anyone else in this country that was alive on that day. And I’ll never pretend to think it had any more of an impact on me than any of the victims’ families or friends or coworkers. But I can honestly say that not a single day has gone by without me seeing or thinking about that day and what it meant. I had just started at Texas two weeks earlier and was just talking to my friend about how sad it was that Aaliyah died in a plane crash when my brother Kahron called me and said, “a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center…” Then I watched, on a TV in Gregory Gym, as the second plane hit…

January 7, 2002 - After months of pestering, phone calls, emails and sheer annoyance, I was able to get a job in the Texas Longhorns’ athletic department. Being a public relations major, I ended up in the media relations office. I can say, with all honesty, that that job was and will always be the foundation for any professional success I have. Scott McConnell, my boss, was the best working mentor I’ve ever had and I’m forever indebted to him for the four invaluable years of counsel and mentoring. Oh, and I got to see T.J. Ford lead the Longhorns to the Final Four, Vince Young deliver Texas a Rose Bowl win, and meet a half dozen Olympians as a result of the job.

2003 (Any Day) - I can’t pick out any single day, but 2003 was a great year in my life, maybe the most meaningful year so far in terms of making me the person I am today. Other highlights: Interning for Southwest Airlines’ PR department, reading 27 books in three months, running 70 miles a week for a full year, going without TV for two months, Texas basketball making the Final Four. But it wasn’t the “highlights” that made ’03 such a special year…it was mostly my best friend Stephanie (yes, I have two) who tolerated my personal highs and lows for an entire year.

September 17-19, 2004 - I’d gone to plenty of great concerts before (Green Day in ’95 and Outkast in ’01 just to name a couple), but Austin City Limits Festival in 2004 takes the cake. Not only did I get to hear Wilco for the first time, but I got to see the band with Jeff Tweedy no further than 20 feet from Colby and I. It’s also important to mention that I signify these dates at the beginning of the end of a relationship with my first live-in girlfriend. I believe everything happens for a reason and I’m glad to know that the reasons have worked themselves out for the best.

May 21, 2005 - Earned a near-full scholarship and became only the second person in my immediate family (one second cousin) to graduate from college. A lot of people talk about how college can be a life-changing experience or how it “broadens your horizons.” I can see how this would be true for some, but honestly I always knew exactly what college would be: a place to learn about life from and through people, places and perspectives. That’s exactly what I got out of it.

August 24, 2006 - Not even a full year after Hurricane Katrina, which is the main reason I was intrigued by working for FEMA, I realized that the agency was not the right place for me and being a speechwriter was not the right job for me. Somehow my tenure there was nestled right in between Michael Brown and the recent press conference blunder, so I’d like to think the political idiocy was greatly reduced when I was in the room. This day triggered a haphazard year-end for me in which I moved away from DC then moved back, quit a job to be an entrepreneur only to get a job, and ended a relationship and nearly started a new one…

April 24, 2007 - The day I signed the book contract for Real Role Models with Texas Press, making it the first book I am ever officially commissioned to write and be paid for. The first of many, I hope.

So that’s my list. The most significant days, if limited to one per year, in my life thus far.

Well, I actually have to revise this because I would be remissed if I didn’t refer back to July 15th and say that hasn’t been my most significant day in 2007…

Because the ESPY Awards were pretty damn good.