(ThyBlackMan.com) The issues I wish to address today in this blog are universal issues. Rather, I realize that they are not exclusive to any particular class, culture or gender. However, I am a middle-class African-American male – so please pardon me if I speak from my own experiences instead of downplaying my vantage for the sake of being politically correct.
The glass ceiling is a universal concept that all career-minded people recognize as the transparent cap that higher-ups place over you. Its purpose is to limit your vertical ascent up the corporate ladder – not based 
on your potential or performance as much as it is debased in the misplaced favor of nepotism, cronyism and “yes man-isms.”
Although the aforementioned topic carries enough weight for its own discussion, for the purposes of today’s post, I will address it with the limited (yes, I see the irony!) expression of Psalm 75:6-7 which spawned the haiku/senryu. After all, despite the power of favor from man’s unfairness, nothing compares to the all-powerful favor of a fair God. So the next time you see someone promoted over you as a Christian – REJOICE! For if the favor of man can move undeserving people ahead, how much more can the favor of God move you above and beyond?!! Be encouraged!:
‘For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: He putted down one, and setteth up another.’
– Psalm 75:6-7
~
A Hire Authority
With cares cast upon
Him, job opportunities
Rain down from up North.~
What I feel lead to address today is the precedent of the glass roof. Though many of us first discerned this transparent limitation after being in our careers for a few years, I’d like to argue that though the form is new, the apparatus has been upon black males since our youth.
As far as I’ve been told and can remember, I’ve always enjoyed school and have sought out learning. The stigma of being this type of student cost me a few years of solitude amongst my peers in elementary school. Or rather, I should specify – in public school. Being the smart black kid, as cliché as it is, didn’t provide me a lot of options for friends coming into the public school system for the first time in the fourth grade.
What I endured echoed the resistance that manifested itself in the Jim Crow era of segregation – except this time, it had transformed itself from white intolerance into the rejection and lowered expectations perpetuated from within black culture.
What I endured tried to very effectively and efficiently kill my potential. As personal as this felt, I realize that it was not about me as much as it was about my people. Other black males such as myself experienced and are still experiencing the same thing when it comes to our education. We are often explicitly and implicitly told to fit into and behind a glass. We are told to bottle up our brightness which, in turn, bottles up anger and resentment over the years for our own people. We are told to fit our genius into a box and to hide it behind athleticism and entertainment.
~
A Genius in a Bottle
Wishing to fit a
Crowded mold, some smart black males
Bottle up brightness.~
While I never really tried to be good at sports (though I have inherited some innate yet underdeveloped skills from my father along with his and my mother’s prowess in mathematics), I did entertain the idea of being a comedian for a time during my childhood. Much like Chris Rock, I developed a dry and quick wit to come up with retorts that would preempt and shatter anyone who had something to say about me. And if I may say so, my timing became quite impeccable!
Despite this skill I was forced to develop – I never dumbed down or opted to shy away from my studies.
But for the sake of fitting into the crowd, many other black males seem to be caving in to the peer pressure. Many other black males who are being blackmailed and black balled are lacking the resolve to overcome the deprivation of being the next George Washington Carver (called the negro Leonardo DaVinci of his time by his white peers), W.E.B. Dubois or Frederick Douglass.
Thus, the glass ceiling is something we’ve been predisposed to – from bottles thrown at those who dared to declare equality to the bottles we’re made to conform into as we drown within sorrowful conditions.
* written to commemorate my 4600th poem and to serve as a rally cry for school district U-46 in my local Elgin community *
U-4600
Through the squalor of segregators,
I’ve become a scholar and educator.
Despite intolerant hesitators – my mind’s been properly chartered.
In spite of cruel, dismissive and disorderly hicks,
My schooled district court has been fixed…
Like U-46, being a roughed up diamond in the cut
has only gotten me farther.But even in school, not being cool
afforded me kicks from my peers –
Those who ignored me for the soaring scores
I eclipsed and cleared.
Through tears, I bore sticks, sneers and jeers
that hurt and tormented me.
But I persevered through the persecution.
My words have cleared such adverse nuisances…
As I’ve added verses in unison to subvert such inhumanly formed entities.So as I’ve overcome external and internal demons –
Both versatile and personally uneven,
I haven’t worsened as a person beaten ‘cause I beat the odds!
I beat the odds of aristocratic racists.
I beat the odds of systematic complacence…
I beat the odds ‘til it simply added a cadence for me
to align my feet with God!All that for a mismatched education!
All that from riffraff’s dispatched desecration.
I AM’s all that – He brought His held back kids back from
desperation one-thousand fold!
But there are still hellcats scratchin’ for their turn at the posts
Seeking to blackmail and mail back His un-returnable post…
As if black learning’s a joke to be told under crowd control.As if they allowed our goals to be reached.
As if they weren’t ousted in polls from a King’s speech.
As if their rowdy roles could control how
I was deemed to reach beyond the grasp of class disruptive oppression.
But like Jesus Whose life wasn’t taken
as much as it was laid down,
My prime thesis as I strive for education
is ‘if the book’s thrown at me –
I’m not putting the pages down…’
I’m the only one who can delay where I’m bound –
as I set the stage now since Brown clashed with injustice’s presence.
Staff Writer; Reggie Legend
Can find more about this writer over at; http://www.steelwaterspoetry.com
Also available as a Keynote Speaker – Book him Today; Speakerwiki – Reggie Legend
