A week’s worth of worries unsettled

There has been a lot going on this week. The commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on… There has been a lot going on this week. The commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, the confirmation hearings for Condoleeza Rice and the Inauguration of President George W. Bush came all too quickly, one after the other, for me to process. What am I to make of all this?

Well, I am a firm believer in things happening for a reason, whether I understand them or not. I don’t know why this nation commemorates Dr. King instead of Malcolm X or Nat Turner. (Well, I do, but that is another column that may or may not ever be written.) I don’t understand why black people aren’t parading in the streets because the first black, female secretary of state will soon be confirmed. I don’t fully comprehend why I’ve got to live through four more years of foreshadowing of the apocalypse. I don’t get it, and that bothers me. Somehow, my mind cannot be at peace until I attempt to make sense of this past week.

So, I’m taking it back to Birmingham in 1963. King was delivering a eulogy for three of the four girls killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. The youngest victim of that heinous incident had a friend — a young Condoleeza Rice.

In a Washington Post Magazine profile that appeared the Sunday before Sept. 11, 2001, Rice said she is not so much the product of the movement to end segregation (that would be the Civil Rights Movement, Condi) as she is a product of her family’s ability to prepare her for what joys freedom would bring once freedom did ring.

Many black people in America can sing the same song.

Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, says of Rice, “She’s a great American story about the power of education and the progress we’ve made.”

Although her story is one of inspiration for anyone who has ever been told, “Your kind doesn’t belong here,” or, “You’ll never make it out of where you are,” it’s no different than Abraham Lincoln’s or Hellen Keller’s. It’s just another version or re-telling of the American dream.

Well, this is where I’ve got to ask if there isn’t more to being black in America than succeeding. And if success is all we need, what is that success? Is it getting the corner office or a degree or the house with the most rooms on the block? What are we fighting for? Better yet, are we even fighting?

There has been rhetoric this week about fighting and dreaming. There have been debates about what freedom is and how to attain it. These are things I think are at the very heart of black Americans’ history. That is why, in this age of global terror, the national security adviser and designated secretary of state is a survivor of what she has called “the home-grown terrorism of the 1960s.”

Whether or not Rice wants to admit that the movement shaped her, I contend that it shapes us all. I wasn’t even alive to hear King speak, to march with my head held high while being jeered and spit at. I won’t even lie and say that, if given the chance, I would have shown up to a rally at my local church. But I am shaped by it because when I look for role models outside those in my family who are black, I find myself looking back — way back. I’m talking back to Madia Springer, Mary McCleod-Bethune and the “un-bossed” Shirley Chisolm. Why am I not naturally inclined to look at Condoleeza Rice?

One of the best professors I’ve ever had was a history professor who said that studying history was about asking questions. He went on to explain that if we think critically enough, one question would lead to another question. I’ve spent this week consuming media more consciously and listening to debates and speeches more intently. I’ve become a bit more skeptical of what people say into the microphones or how people act when they think the whole world is watching. This has really been one heck of a week, and now that it’s come to an end, I can’t say I feel the peace I was searching for, but I’m ready to ask some more questions of myself and my world.

Maria Nicole Smith would like to thank anyone who has ever answered one of her questions, from Brentin Mock to professor George Reid Andrews. She will find peace at the bar this weekend — no questions asked!