BABY DOLPHIN BRAIN.

“Pick a side- left or right. Pick a color- red or blue. Pick an ideology- conservative or liberal. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE- and you’d better not stray away from your first decision. Nothing can sway you away; not time, nor change, nor circumstance can lead you down a different path. Don’t even muse about other streets, other lanes, or alleyways. Do not ask questions. Dig your heals into the dirt and we’ll pour water over the soil, making it a sticky, unmoving paste for your feet. The thing you pick will become a warm womb of comfort and stability. It will feed you with what you need to fester…I mean, ‘grow’ into what you need to become…”

I’ve always been a “ decently good girl” growing up. I got into my fair bit of trouble (a missed curfew here, a secret tattoo there), but typically followed the path laid before me by my parents. I don’t resent that fact. My parents talked to me about their reasoning and I always had a keen understanding that they were thinking of me and about me. As a child, I had a mild understanding of that same desire within myself for others- chatting with friends on the playground or watching out for my little brother. I always cared about the “othered”. My dad called me a “little socialist” and while I didn’t understand then, I get kind of get it now. 

I had consequential experiences that caused real friction in my mind-planting seeds of curiosity and wonder about the world and systems around me. During my 7th grade summer, my parents put me in an enrichment program. At first, I was only interested because they promised us a stipend at the end. As the weeks progressed, I learned about oppressive systems around me and my brain fired on all cylinders. I read the book, “Kaffir Boy”, vividly illustrating the nature of Apartheid South Africa. This rattled my mind as segregation seemed to be an era so far reaching in my mind’s concept of time. My cohort learned about the prison industrial complex and we exhibited our presentation to the parents, blaring Akon’s “Locked Up” over the building’s speaker system. This tickled my brain as I had previous, stark views about good versus evil and I’d never considered how hyper-capitalism could be nefarious. A few years later, I attended a summer program at UCLA and learned about the “tracking system” in public schools and the education to prison pipeline. My brain whispered, “Would I lay down my privilege of honors and AP classes for someone else?” A few years later, I read Elie Wiesel’s “Night” about his life coming through the Holocaust. In those class discussions, my mind began to tie the ragged, suffering strings of Africa to Europe to the U.S.  Don’t even get me started on my time at Spelman College…

I’ve had moments that caused friction in my mind about my faith, too. The loss of my mom, family members and friends. Seeing suffering and pain across the world, trying to better understand the “hard parts” of the Bible and interrogate it in my heart and mind. I ask hard questions to not only God, but my friends in the faith and leaders too. I toil with and chew on the hard parts of what America says it means to be a Christian versus what the Bible says. I sit with my own internalized racism and fidelity to capitalism and how it can overshadow the true person of Jesus. 

I am a big advocate for asking questions and having tough conversations. This is nothing new when you look at my older pieces: Exhibit 1, and 2, and 3. I grew up debating with friends about music and movies. I sat at Jazzman’s with my friend Fatima, having conversations with Morehouse students about relationships, gender and sex. While there aren’t as many safe spaces to discuss faith and politics, I still manage to listen to different viewpoints and try to find the meat. I’ll never forget when someone got upset with me online because I disagreed with a law that Governor Newsom tried to put in place around pronoun identity and keeping information from parents. It was visceral and uncomfortable. We both had a choice to throw each other into the labeled basket in our brains, “ignorant”, “irresponsible”, “bigot”, or “crazy”. Instead, we read other’s views and agreed to disagree, respectfully. It isn’t always that respectful in the world, but I am particularly invested in nuance and tension. 

But we have a massive problem on our hands: the smoothing of our brains and humanity’s repulsion to tension. We’ll soon have Baby Dolphin Brains.

To be continued….