Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes
Try to make it real
I borrowed the title of this week's column from a song called "Compared to What?" that was written by Eugene McDaniels and sung and
made famous by Les McCann. I used to play the tune at full volume before leaving my New York City apartment in the late 1960s wearing a
dashiki, conflicting bell-bottom pants and sporting a respectably-sized Afro. I used to confront New York City police officers in those days.
Not a particularly smart thing to do for those who had interest in continuing to breathe. I became a police officer in the city of Madison quite
a few years later. I suppose there's some sort of strange balance in that equation. The line that's so powerfully repeated in the song goes
"Try to make it real compared to what?" You can spend a lifetime trying to figure out what that particular sentence means and there is no
right or wrong answer. Making it real or being true or authentic depends on who we perceive ourselves to be. My best guess is that the
comparison, talked about in the song, refers to the environment we spend most of our time in. For some the environment can be as small
as one city block. For others it can be considerably bigger. One mildly interesting fact is that each of us is likely to make assumptions
about places or environments other than where we are. Another interesting fact is that many of these assumptions are likely to be wrong.
How could they not be when we, for the most part, fail to fully experience ourselves or the places we live?
I've had varying success but I've tried, reasonably consistently, to make it real. What came as a huge surprise to me was the damage
that misconceptions can cause. Assumptions gone awry. People who behave other than how we think they should behave. Interesting.
Like the children's fairy tale — "The Princess and the Pea" — in which the princess is very aware of the tiny pea even though it is buried
underneath several fat mattresses. The moral of that story is, I think, that most of us are unaware of the pea. We wouldn't feel it if it were
placed underneath one thin sheet unless its presence happened to fit in with the "truth" we had manufactured to serve some purpose or
other. Here's an example. Would you like to read a little story? Of course you would. You see, I'm not free from making assumptions either.
I started working for Dane County in November of 1993. Part of my job was to provide staff support to one of the then fifty-plus county
boards, commissions, committees and councils. The Dane County Affordable Housing Council was the name of the body that I was
assigned to work with. I was new to county government at the time and I didn't have any personal knowledge of the people who made up
the council. Some were housing aficionados. Others were county board supervisors. Some had encyclopedic knowledge of housing and
housing-related matters. Some were about as crisp as a saltine cracker left out in the rain. Several were just people who were interested
in various parts of the housing puzzle and saw the huge question of housing from a variety of angles depending, of course, on the
environments they lived in and environments they knew or thought they knew.
I wasn't sure what I was getting into, but it seemed reasonable to me to try to make the experience real. Meaningful. To put on the
table my varied experiences living in intense urban settings as well as intense rural places. I've seen kids die from heroin overdoses in
Spanish Harlem, New York and I've freed elm logs from ice and snow to split and wedge into a wood stove in a very rural Wisconsin
home. I had a bunch to say about housing. Urban people stacked on top of people housing and rural, holes in the roof, wood heat and
missing steps housing. I didn't know too many Black men, or men of any color, who could talk, with authority born of personal experience,
about heroin deaths in New York City and the price of second and third crop alfalfa hay.
I figured that one way to keep it real would be to create a context or environment for our work. Please keep in mind that I said "a
context" and not "the context." And since I staffed the council — which meant posting the meetings in the county clerk's office, creating an
agenda, taking notes/meeting minutes and several other tasks — I took the liberty of showing a five-minute clip from a movie to get the ball
rolling or to nudge it a little further down the winding road of housing.
The movie snippet was from the 1961 film "A Raisin in the Sun." That movie remains one of my favorites to this day. The main
characters included Claudia McNeil, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Ivan Dixon and Louis Gossett, Jr. There are several other
versions of the production. Some with the same actors and others with different talent. The productions took place in venues that included
Broadway, television and movies. But my favorite version is the 1961 movie with Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger, the incomparable
Ruby Dee as his wife, Ruth and Claudia McNeil as Walter Lee's mother. The basic story line is this: The Younger family lives in a crowded
little apartment in (I think it was) Chicago. Like many families, they dream of one day owning a home. Claudia McNeil and Ruby Dee worked
in other peoples' homes caring for their children, cooking their food, cleaning their houses and essentially doing the kind of work that my
grandmother and aunt and countless others did. Sidney Poitier worked as a chauffer and it was clear that the person he drove around
didn't look anything like him even though the person who was driven around never appeared in the movie. That's where assumptions kick
in. In this case, assumptions based on experience and in those days if you put a Black man and a White man side by side and asked who
the chauffer was and who was the one who was driven around, very few would respond that the White man was the chauffer. Today one
might have to weigh clues in addition to race before picking out the chauffer. To my way of thinking, the hesitation that occurs before
selecting the person believed to be the chauffer is a sign of positive change. Very positive change, but the old tapes continue to play and
fight for prominence.
The climax in "A Raisin in the Sun" comes when a mousy little fellow — who is from the association that represents the neighborhood
that the Younger family aspires to move to because they have earned the right to live there with dollars, hard work, the commitment to
continue to work hard and the blood and sweat of the now-deceased Younger family patriarch — attempts to pay the Younger family to not
buy the home that they are entitled to buy. So much for euphemisms. The neighborhood association fellow was at the Younger family
apartment to try to bribe them to stay where they were so that the White neighborhood — that had the home the Younger family wanted to
buy — could remain White.
I shared a very small segment of the film with the affordable housing council as a reminder of what we were charged to confront. To
present a perspective that I, at least, deemed critically important. I didn't present the slice of film with any narrative, avoided any words or
behavior that could be construed as blaming, and emphatically decided to not use the word "racism."
I tremble with rage, and other blood pressure-raising emotions, to this day, when I recall that scene in the movie. Why? Because it's about
housing segregation. Because it's about lopsided assumptions. It's about useless old tapes. And despite the laws that now exist to prohibit
discrimination — discrimination still exists. And it would be naïve or just plain stupid to delude ourselves into believing that the wonderful
state of Wisconsin, county of Dane and city of Madison are somehow, miraculously and uniquely immune. By the way, "A Raisin in the Sun"
was named after a line in a poem by Langston Hughes titled "Harlem" that is also known by the name "A Dream Deferred." The poem goes
like this:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweat?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
— Langston Hughes
There was no way that I could have been prepared for the response I received to showing the short movie clip. Several of the council
members were fuming. One lectured me about how he had owned rental property and rented to Black families back in the sixties before the
enactment of so-called fair housing laws. His reaction seemed over the top to me. He acted as though I had accused him of being a racist.
The fact is that the thought had never even entered my mind. At least not before he unloaded all this stuff on me. He acted as if I was
supposed to thank him profusely for treating people fairly before the law required him to do so. Another council member told me
emphatically that she was not a racist and that I had no business showing the film clip. Interesting. I had never accused her of being a
racist. When she talked to or yelled at me I felt as though I were invisible. As though I had taken on the form of her darkest secret. Her
secret was so secret that I didn't have a clue what it was. Her visceral reaction came from someplace deep inside of her and I guess the
film pricked the bubble of insulation. She went to the then-county executive's office and complained about the new staff person who was
upsetting the housing council apple cart by accusing some of the greater Madison area's best and brightest of treating their darker-skinned
brethren in a less than fair manner.
All I can do is breathe and try to make it real. Breathe and try to make it real. Try to make it real. Try to make it real. There's nothing
else to do. At least, not for me. Try to make it real.
made famous by Les McCann. I used to play the tune at full volume before leaving my New York City apartment in the late 1960s wearing a
dashiki, conflicting bell-bottom pants and sporting a respectably-sized Afro. I used to confront New York City police officers in those days.
Not a particularly smart thing to do for those who had interest in continuing to breathe. I became a police officer in the city of Madison quite
a few years later. I suppose there's some sort of strange balance in that equation. The line that's so powerfully repeated in the song goes
"Try to make it real compared to what?" You can spend a lifetime trying to figure out what that particular sentence means and there is no
right or wrong answer. Making it real or being true or authentic depends on who we perceive ourselves to be. My best guess is that the
comparison, talked about in the song, refers to the environment we spend most of our time in. For some the environment can be as small
as one city block. For others it can be considerably bigger. One mildly interesting fact is that each of us is likely to make assumptions
about places or environments other than where we are. Another interesting fact is that many of these assumptions are likely to be wrong.
How could they not be when we, for the most part, fail to fully experience ourselves or the places we live?
I've had varying success but I've tried, reasonably consistently, to make it real. What came as a huge surprise to me was the damage
that misconceptions can cause. Assumptions gone awry. People who behave other than how we think they should behave. Interesting.
Like the children's fairy tale — "The Princess and the Pea" — in which the princess is very aware of the tiny pea even though it is buried
underneath several fat mattresses. The moral of that story is, I think, that most of us are unaware of the pea. We wouldn't feel it if it were
placed underneath one thin sheet unless its presence happened to fit in with the "truth" we had manufactured to serve some purpose or
other. Here's an example. Would you like to read a little story? Of course you would. You see, I'm not free from making assumptions either.
I started working for Dane County in November of 1993. Part of my job was to provide staff support to one of the then fifty-plus county
boards, commissions, committees and councils. The Dane County Affordable Housing Council was the name of the body that I was
assigned to work with. I was new to county government at the time and I didn't have any personal knowledge of the people who made up
the council. Some were housing aficionados. Others were county board supervisors. Some had encyclopedic knowledge of housing and
housing-related matters. Some were about as crisp as a saltine cracker left out in the rain. Several were just people who were interested
in various parts of the housing puzzle and saw the huge question of housing from a variety of angles depending, of course, on the
environments they lived in and environments they knew or thought they knew.
I wasn't sure what I was getting into, but it seemed reasonable to me to try to make the experience real. Meaningful. To put on the
table my varied experiences living in intense urban settings as well as intense rural places. I've seen kids die from heroin overdoses in
Spanish Harlem, New York and I've freed elm logs from ice and snow to split and wedge into a wood stove in a very rural Wisconsin
home. I had a bunch to say about housing. Urban people stacked on top of people housing and rural, holes in the roof, wood heat and
missing steps housing. I didn't know too many Black men, or men of any color, who could talk, with authority born of personal experience,
about heroin deaths in New York City and the price of second and third crop alfalfa hay.
I figured that one way to keep it real would be to create a context or environment for our work. Please keep in mind that I said "a
context" and not "the context." And since I staffed the council — which meant posting the meetings in the county clerk's office, creating an
agenda, taking notes/meeting minutes and several other tasks — I took the liberty of showing a five-minute clip from a movie to get the ball
rolling or to nudge it a little further down the winding road of housing.
The movie snippet was from the 1961 film "A Raisin in the Sun." That movie remains one of my favorites to this day. The main
characters included Claudia McNeil, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Ivan Dixon and Louis Gossett, Jr. There are several other
versions of the production. Some with the same actors and others with different talent. The productions took place in venues that included
Broadway, television and movies. But my favorite version is the 1961 movie with Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger, the incomparable
Ruby Dee as his wife, Ruth and Claudia McNeil as Walter Lee's mother. The basic story line is this: The Younger family lives in a crowded
little apartment in (I think it was) Chicago. Like many families, they dream of one day owning a home. Claudia McNeil and Ruby Dee worked
in other peoples' homes caring for their children, cooking their food, cleaning their houses and essentially doing the kind of work that my
grandmother and aunt and countless others did. Sidney Poitier worked as a chauffer and it was clear that the person he drove around
didn't look anything like him even though the person who was driven around never appeared in the movie. That's where assumptions kick
in. In this case, assumptions based on experience and in those days if you put a Black man and a White man side by side and asked who
the chauffer was and who was the one who was driven around, very few would respond that the White man was the chauffer. Today one
might have to weigh clues in addition to race before picking out the chauffer. To my way of thinking, the hesitation that occurs before
selecting the person believed to be the chauffer is a sign of positive change. Very positive change, but the old tapes continue to play and
fight for prominence.
The climax in "A Raisin in the Sun" comes when a mousy little fellow — who is from the association that represents the neighborhood
that the Younger family aspires to move to because they have earned the right to live there with dollars, hard work, the commitment to
continue to work hard and the blood and sweat of the now-deceased Younger family patriarch — attempts to pay the Younger family to not
buy the home that they are entitled to buy. So much for euphemisms. The neighborhood association fellow was at the Younger family
apartment to try to bribe them to stay where they were so that the White neighborhood — that had the home the Younger family wanted to
buy — could remain White.
I shared a very small segment of the film with the affordable housing council as a reminder of what we were charged to confront. To
present a perspective that I, at least, deemed critically important. I didn't present the slice of film with any narrative, avoided any words or
behavior that could be construed as blaming, and emphatically decided to not use the word "racism."
I tremble with rage, and other blood pressure-raising emotions, to this day, when I recall that scene in the movie. Why? Because it's about
housing segregation. Because it's about lopsided assumptions. It's about useless old tapes. And despite the laws that now exist to prohibit
discrimination — discrimination still exists. And it would be naïve or just plain stupid to delude ourselves into believing that the wonderful
state of Wisconsin, county of Dane and city of Madison are somehow, miraculously and uniquely immune. By the way, "A Raisin in the Sun"
was named after a line in a poem by Langston Hughes titled "Harlem" that is also known by the name "A Dream Deferred." The poem goes
like this:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweat?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
— Langston Hughes
There was no way that I could have been prepared for the response I received to showing the short movie clip. Several of the council
members were fuming. One lectured me about how he had owned rental property and rented to Black families back in the sixties before the
enactment of so-called fair housing laws. His reaction seemed over the top to me. He acted as though I had accused him of being a racist.
The fact is that the thought had never even entered my mind. At least not before he unloaded all this stuff on me. He acted as if I was
supposed to thank him profusely for treating people fairly before the law required him to do so. Another council member told me
emphatically that she was not a racist and that I had no business showing the film clip. Interesting. I had never accused her of being a
racist. When she talked to or yelled at me I felt as though I were invisible. As though I had taken on the form of her darkest secret. Her
secret was so secret that I didn't have a clue what it was. Her visceral reaction came from someplace deep inside of her and I guess the
film pricked the bubble of insulation. She went to the then-county executive's office and complained about the new staff person who was
upsetting the housing council apple cart by accusing some of the greater Madison area's best and brightest of treating their darker-skinned
brethren in a less than fair manner.
All I can do is breathe and try to make it real. Breathe and try to make it real. Try to make it real. Try to make it real. There's nothing
else to do. At least, not for me. Try to make it real.
