The family trap - prejudices learned at home

THE FAMILY TRAP

Every time I hear African-Americans speak horrid, broken English or I see a flash of gold teeth, public displays of Jheri-Curl caps, genital-holding, or big, gold door-knocker earrings, I cringe. The hairs literally stand up on the back of my neck. I am fully aware that indulging in such obvious feelings of elitism is regressive and borders on identification with "the oppressor." I understand that, historically, politically and culturally, this system is designed for certain people to win and for others to lose. I acknowledge that my education - private schools and an Ivy League college - have placed me in a very privileged, winning position. But I can't help the way I feel. I got my better-than-thou attitudes from my pretty much down-to-earth, Black nationalistic parents.

We inherit our attitudes from our parents; they feed us their prejudices through an emotional and cognitive umbilical cord. Parent-child relationships are the way in which the most life-affirming traditions in our community are preserved and perpetuated, but they are also the primary channel for our unresolved conflicts. The simple truth is that no matter how progressive, hip and "culturally correct" we become, we are susceptible to the psychological baggage our parents hand down to us. And because of racism, we stand to inherit a lot of baggage. Whether we admit it or not, the attitudes our parents pass down to us affect everything from our self-image to our intimate relationships, and they are often in conflict with our personal politics. "What parents believe about human life and human fulfillment govern their ways of raising their children. Parenting forms children's core beliefs about themselves," observes John Bradshaw in The Family: A Revolutionary Way of Self-Discovery (Health Communications). My experiences tell me that he's right.

I grew up in the South Bronx. For most of my childhood and adolescence, my parents were solidly working-class. They sacrificed everything, from new shoes to warm clothes, to pay the thousands of dollars in tuition required to give my brother and me a private-school education. True to their early Garveyite beliefs, they always reminded us that our opportunities were not for us but for our race. They expected us to come back and do for our people who were "less fortunate."

But there were also conflicting messages. It didn't take much for the less fortunate to become shining examples of what we were not supposed to become. If we walked into a housing project that was particularly dirty, we would hear: "Black folks can't take care of nothing.... You want your property destroyed, give it to some niggas." If we were on the street talking or playing our music loud or, God forbid, dancing, we were reminded quick fast in a hurry that we "did not come from that." We were expected to be "above that type of thing." Our parents taught us that we came from a strong, proud people with a rich cultural past. Yet we attended white schools, and our success was measured by our ability to attain what white people had. My friends tell me that my experience was not unique. Here are some of their "family trap" stories.

Amy grew up with a mother who sacrificed her present to guarantee her daughter's future. A single mother with two children and two jobs as a domestic, she worked to make sure Amy had everything that money could buy, from the finest clothes to European trips. In return she expected good grades, ladylike conduct and absolutely no back talk - ever. Amy's mother's primary mode of communication was top-decibel screaming and vicious words. Needless to say, hers was the only voice allowed. Any attempt Amy made to communicate with her mother was met with an instant tongue-lashing. Even though Amy made a solemn promise to herself not to, she has inherited her mother's tendency to scream and to use hurtful words when she's angry.

"I don't mean to give the impression that I spend my days just going off on people for no good reason, but I'm capable of saying some pretty cruel things in the heat of an argument," Amy says. "I'm always sorry as soon as the words have left my lips, but I usually can't stop myself. The worst part is that my victims are always the people closest to met. Put me in a confrontational situation with an authority figure and I just clam up, probably because I can still hear my mother telling me that good children are seen and not heard."

Amy is a victim of what John Bradshaw calls "the poisonous pedagogy," a family system in which parental teachings cannot be challenged. "Children naturally idealize their parents out of survival needs," he says. "What emerges are adult children who carry their parents' rules to the next generation."

Bradshaw says Amy's tendency to be verbally abusive was probably developed in early infancy. "If parts of us are rejected - when we have a temper tantrum or cry too loud - then those parts get split off," he explains. "These rejected parts of self (most often our sexuality, anger and aggressiveness) operate underground. They continue to grow outside our consciouness and have a life and power of their own. Anger, for example, can explode on us without warning."

Jesse has a hair thing. If I hadn't heard her when she slipped and said she was sure she and Alex would have pretty babies "because Alex has that good hair," I would have never believed it. I'd known Jesse for 20 years. She was not the type who calls straight hair good. Jesse believes in our culture - African dance class on Saturdays, Kwanzaa every December, a short natural. If she had problems with Black hair, clearly I was missing something: That something turned out to be her mother.

"I always felt that my hair was a major disappointment to my mother," Jesse says. "I know she didn't mean to make me feel that way, but I could not help thinking my hair must be bad because it put her through so many changes."

Jesse's mom is an unlikely candidate for the unhappy-nappy syndrome. A single mother since Jesse's birth, she put herself through law school and went to great lengths to instill strongly Afrocentric values in her daughter and her daughter's friends. How could Jesse's proud Black mama be the source of her shame about our hair? It didn't make any sense until I remembered Jesse's bi-monthly affair with Revlon. Jesse's hair has always been thick and kinky; her mother left Jesse, from age 5, at the mercy of hair relaxers.

It was a relationship that lasted 14 years, and Jesse hated every minute of it. But whenever she would complain about the chemicals, the blow dryers, the more than occasional burning, she would meet the same response: "Don't blame me, you got that head of hair from your father. Lord, child, you better not marry no nappy-headed man 'cause I can't deal with no Brillo-headed grandbabies."

HEALING OURSELVES

According to Dr. Bobbye Troutt, a clinical psychologist, children learn to love themselves, all parts, from their parents. "The most important factor in parenting is our ability to have self-love and our ability to pass on love," she says. "Without the ability to care about ourselves in a real and loving way, not only our efforts at parenting but also the development of a truly Afrocentric identity are bound to be thwarted. We must begin with healing ourselves. The ultimate key to self-love is self-acceptance."

Nobody, no matter what her race, can live completely free of emotional baggage. But we can deal with our inherited attitudes in a healthier way. The first, and perhaps the most important, step is acknowledging the conflict. Honest self-examination is often a painful but empowering process. "Identifying the components of our personalities that cause us anxiety enables us to make decisions and to develop a possible course of action," says Troutt.

The next step is to stop blaming ourselves. "As African-Americans living in this society, we do have white aspects. It's the part of us that loves Black people but also loves long, wavy hair. These are messages that the larger society and our parents have inundated us with. We must let go of the shame," she says.

It is equally important not to blame our parents. Doing so forces us to look at the picture from an extremely limited historical perspective. "Young Blacks today," states Troutt, "have the good fortune to exist in a society where being Black is okay. This was not the case for many of our parents."

Jesse should work on making peace with her preference for wavy hair, says Troutt. "Isn't it infinitely more important for Jesse to feel good about being a successful lawyer with a genuine love for many aspects of her culture than for her to spend her life beating herself up?" she adds. "Perhaps, in time, we can learn to love those parts of ourselves too."

For Amy, learning where her anger comes from and why she reacts the way she does (which she seems to have figured out, at least partially) will help her deal with things in a more positive way. As for me, I'm struggling to overcome some of my elitist attitudes. Dealing with the origins has been somewhat comforting. I may have to shoulder the blame for perpetuating these preconceptions, but I don't have to beat myself up for their existence. They were given to me with love.

Joan Morgan is a writer who is trying to escape from her family's trap.

COPYRIGHT 1990 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group