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The Ethics of Making It Without a Father.Feb 22 '07 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Personal thoughts after seeing Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness.
In 1980, my father lost a landscaping contract in a traumatic fashion, as well as a great deal of his business because of restrictions on affirmative action (which took a many of the contracts that he had). At the time his landscaping company netted him 250,000 dollars a year, which is roughly about 750,000 dollars a year today. He also had a two story home and a loving family. He could have downgraded his business, took a break, saved some of his money, played his position as a veteran of the landscaping business and waited for a new contract to come along. Or yet, he could have competed for the jobs that he once had. But instead he got into drugs and alcohol. 5 years later, my father was a derelict. During those years, he went through his money, severely abused my mother and moved into the housing projects on 23rd and L in the hilltop area of Tacoma, Washington. At the time he moved there, that neighborhood was ground zero for crip activity right when hilltop was becoming one of the most dangerous places to live in America. I cannot say he was a totally awful man: when sober he was capable of tremendous sensitivity. He loved poetry, reading, playing golf, and could be funny. He also tried to straighten out his life a couple of times. But to sum up my father at his worst, let me just say that if I dropped a dime on him to a local gang member about what he was doing to us, the banger would have killed him and gotten away with it. My father ended up homeless and died of complications of spiral meningitis and diabetes on November 3, 2000. His last words to me were “ f*ck you n****r: give me the money”, said in relation to the numerous suits he had against the government, the chief of police, and my mother for conspiring against him and ruining his life, suits that at the time were going on only in his head. By that time, I was in and out of mental hospitals, trying to make sense of my own life and trying to undo what he did to me. I had a severe case of post traumatic stress disorder and a schitzo affective disorder, and had been hospitalized for suicide attempts several times. None of that should be blamed on my mother: she is superwoman who raised two kids by herself, worked off my father’s 30,000 dollar debt, and raised us up from section 8 into a house in a good neighborhood. However, she couldn’t do it all, and she couldn’t undo what my father had done. When my father died, my grandfather (in everything but blood) decided to take on the role of being the central male figure in my life. My grandfather, Vollie Johnson, served in two wars, and helped my father in his landscaping business. He also took a great deal of abuse from my father and watched as he threw her down her front porch the week before she died. His feat-to overlook the misery that his stepson had caused in his life to try and heal my own-is proof in my eyes that there is a god. And although I have health issues and the road with me is sometimes still a bumpy one-ask anyone who knows me or has corresponded with me, I am no day at the beach- I am a student at Western Washington University and my GPA is a 3.0(a 3.8 since I went back to school.I hope, if health permits, to graduate this fall).I am trying to be the man my grandfather is, and if you read me, sometimes I fail. However, I must say that I have come a long ways since he took me in and I know where I need to go as well as how to get there. I thought of my grandfather when I saw Will Smith portray Chris Gardner in Pursuit of Happyness, for in this film, Smith captures the sophisticated art of being a good black man. Henry James once said that a writer’s job is to observe perpetually, and the more you observe a good black man the more you get from him, because they show you instead of tell you how good they are. My grandfather showed me, and is still showing me how to be a good man. My grandfather, like Smith’s portrayal of businessman Chris Gardner, is all about nuance: doing and not saying, exposition through action, and taking care of what needs to be taken care without pretense or bombast. Good brothers know how to navigate a situation without telling or signifying on someone about how good or how bad they got it.This lack of surface emotion can be seen as being hard, but in reality it is a form of poetic emotional understatement, a realization that there is dignity in carrying the weight of being a responsible black man without dumping it on someone else's shoulders. The job of the 7 out of 10 young brothers who don’t have a father in the home is to carry that weight. To latch on to a brother that is doing right, and if he doesn’t want to help you, he isn’t doing right enough. To not put that weight on your loved one because 7 out 10 sisters have to carry the weight of a black man not being there, a weight just as traumatic and just as difficult in it’s own way. We didn’t start this pain, but we have to end it, and our future as a people just might depend on us doing so. In cinematic form, Will Smith not only gave the performance of his career, he also showed a priceless example of how one can achieve that task.  |
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