4. Concentrating For Excellence
Ali licks the blueberry tart sauce from her lips and drinks down the last of the Oolong tea.
"Jane and I wanted to concentrate on our child rearing."
"Concentrate?"
"Concentrate our parental resources, time and effort to raise our child to be a superior member of his world. Our idea is, first, that having more children dissipates parents' efforts and harms the first-born who often gets ignored.
"Second, we limited ourselves to one child because our son John is mixed-race and we knew he would face obstacles. And the main one, we guessed, would not be about his acceptance as white or black. No, that we were prepared to arrange because John's physical appearance mainly comes from Jane's genes, which seem to be dominant there."
Ali interjects. "But you live in what is called Deep South, and as you told us at the motel, your wife - by great efforts that included plastic surgery - passes for a light Negro. Shouldn't everyone around you know your son is what they would call Negro, no matter his physical appearance?"
"Well, yes, if we allowed John to grow up just in the segregated south where he was born. But Jane and I had that all figured out so he spent summers and holidays in the north at her parents' in Massachusetts in order to not be imprinted with the idea he is merely a black boy. We wanted him to have a Caucasian liberal New England mentality."
"But isn't that a kind of disloyalty to the Negroes from which you come? Oh! Excuse me again if I am too personal."
"No, no!" Godfrey explains. "In USA, particularly Deep South the white strain is presumed to be the pure one. I mean by that, if a White makes a baby with a Negro, the baby is Negro." He pauses. "But the fact is that Whites in the Deep South have a proportion of Negro genes - originally from White Massa raping his female slaves and even continuing to the present, of cases where a White man sleeps with a Black woman and then arranges for the Caucasian-appearing offspring to be raised somewhere else as White."
Ali interrupts, "As you and your wife are doing with your John?"
"Yes, but one big difference. John is being brought up mixed race. Although he may pass for White in a society that despises persons of color, he knows and has respect for his origins - both the black and white side. Respect but not pride."
"Yeah!" chimes Ali "Pride! An't that what goes before you fall?"
"Exactly!" Godfrey chuckles in his characteristic way. Then he continues seriously. "You may hear or read from Black nationalists like Mr. Marcus Garvey the phrase Black is beautiful, which means an extolling of the Negro slave culture put upon us by White Massa, as I like to call the White European society here that rules. At risk of being vulgar I say that present Negro culture stinks; it is primitive, uneducated and ugly, with the small exception of what is called the Black Bourgeoisie led by Mr Du Bois and the poet Langston Hughes from Harlem. I refer to the soul food, the low class religiosity, the gutter music, the wailing, shrieking song style and the way of speaking English that marks an American Negro off as second class citizen. These are the things I do not want my son to be stamped with, which he would if we brought him up totally, mindlessly in the Deep South.
"Wow! I never heard this point of view, Mr Lovelace!" Ali switches from the familiar Godfrey because the subject has now got serious.
"Well, Miss Ali - by the way what is your surname?"
"Le Beau?" From the French Huguenots."
"Miss Le Beau. I think I stop now and let you sleep." He looks at watch. Nearly 1 AM. Filled your mind with enough for an evening."
"Enough for a lifetime. Thank you, dear sir."
Godfrey goes for a stroll in corridor allowing Ali to change. Then with a porter he returns using a discreet knock and the porter arranges the bunk beds for the night and pulls the curtains for Ali to sleep in privacy while Godfrey changes and gets into upper berth.
Continue next, click 13.5 How to Brilliantly Go to Sleep
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