Hello friend, and welcome to Chapter Three of my series, The Journey.
If you haven't read Chapters One and Two, I need to know: what is your beef with continuity? Did you watch Endgame without watching Infinity War first? You ought not do that sort of thing. It'll hurt and confuse your brain, and I don't want that for you.
Content warning: this story contains discussions of racism. If that's not your thing, feel free to skip this. I won't be offended, and you won't have to read something that's not your jam or might be upsetting to you! Thanks!
THE JOURNEY, PART 3
So many nights, my tears fell harder than rain, scared I would take my broken heart to the grave
~~ NOVA Community College, Alexandria Campus, October ~~
Cindy was back on her bullshit again.
I'd arrived at class ten minutes late because it was forty-five degrees, pouring rain, and I'd forgotten my umbrella. I'd waited in the lobby of the engineering building after my Calc class for the downpour to let up, before finally giving up and sprinting across the parking lot, then snuck into class, trying to be invisible. Dr. May noticed, but didn't call me out, which I was thankful for. I spread my wet coat out on the empty seat next to me to dry and pulled my laptop out of my backpack.
She'd posted the grades for the midterm papers on Blackboard, and I was hoping to get to class early to talk to her about mine. I was disappointed to have gotten a B minus. She'd dinged me on my citations too. I still didn't get the whole 'AP format' I was supposed to use, it was so dumb. I didn't understand why my citations had to be exactly a certain way, and the free online word processor I used wouldn't do it for me. I'd had other students tell me that Word would manage my citations for me, but I didn't want to drop a hundred bucks for a word processing program I didn't know that I'd ever use again.
I also needed to get her approval for my final paper topic. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I wanted to talk to her about it in person, not via email. Maybe I could catch her after class.
So far this semester, we'd made our way through the sixties and the Civil Rights Act, the seventies and eighties, the Rodney King incident and the L.A. race riots. Tonight, we were discussing historical disadvantages of practices that were outlawed by the Civil Right Act but which were still having lasting impacts on minority communities.
"But you
just said
, redlining was outlawed in sixty-four," Cindy said, "I understand that those neighborhoods can still be bad, but people can just move to a better neighborhood now."
"
If
they could afford to," Jeremy said from the middle row.
"That goes for anyone though, not just minorities. People have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps." Cindy was so fucking smug sometimes. I had no idea why she'd chosen this class, all she wanted to do was argue. Maybe she took it because it was all that was left open when she enrolled, like me. Maybe she was an Internet troll brought to life.
"Here's some homework for everyone," Dr. May said. "When you get home tonight, lay down on the floor, then grab your shoes and try to pull yourself to your feet. It's not actually possible. It's an expression that people say, but never examine."
"I just mean that people have to work hard to make it," Cindy said defensively.
"I know. And I agree. But working hard isn't the only ingredient for success. Sometimes it's not even the most important ingredient. You need a support system. Both familial and societal. Which brings us back to the original point about the generational wealth gap," Dr. May said. She'd used notes on her legal pad in our first class, but since then she'd had her laptop on the podium every session, connected to a projector over the white board. She used it now to bring up an image.
"This is from a study by the Brookings Institute showing the rates of both black and white families accumulating wealth from nineteen-eighty-nine to two-thousand-sixteen." The chart showed a steadily rising line for white families and a more or less flat line for black families. "The median wealth, not income, wealth, of a white family in the U.S. is one-hundred-forty-seven-thousand dollars. The median wealth of a black family is thirty-six-
hundred dollars.
What might be an explanation for this?" She looked around the class. When no one raised their hand, Dr. May liked to just stand there, waiting, a little enigmatic smile on her face, until someone had the courage to give an answer. Finally, one of the black students in the class spoke up.
"Whites soldiers coming back after World War Two had the VA loan program, so they could buy homes and start building wealth, while we got pushed into redlined neighborhoods that banks wouldn't give mortgages on."
"Thank you, Sam, I knew someone had done the reading," she said with a smile.
I'd done the reading and had known the answer too, but I almost never spoke up unless she called on me.
"So, white families had the opportunity to purchase houses, build equity, pass that equity down to the next generation, who could then use it to build more equity and pass that down, and so on. Meanwhile, families of color in redlined neighborhoods could only rent, usually dilapidated properties in areas of high crime and were denied the opportunity to build and pass down generational wealth."
"But redlining was outlawed sixty years ago," Cindy protested again, "Why should we do anything about it now?"
I snorted with derision, then immediately regretted it as Dr. May looked my way.
Fuck.
This was the third time this semester I'd let myself react to Cindy's nonsense, leading Dr. May to call on me.
"What's your take on the subject, Miss Esparza?" Dr. May asked me.
I thought about what to say. There were all kinds of arguments one could make, from simply acknowledging the injustice of it, to talking about the Fair Housing Act, to discussing Ta-Nehisi Coates' reparations essay. But for some reason, a quote came into my mind. Not from the assigned reading. It was something I'd come across while researching my first term paper. It had impressed me enough that I'd googled the quote and found a video of the original source on YouTube, a grainy black and white film of a tall, thin black man in glasses, impeccably dressed in a suit and skinny black tie, talking to a reporter. I hoped I could get it mostly right.
"'If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, that's not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound. The knife's still in, and some people won't even admit that there's a knife.' That's about my take."
I heard Sam mutter, "Oh snap!", while Cindy's face turned red. Dr. May's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.
"Malcolm X, very nice," she said with a smile.
The discussion continued without me getting called on again for the rest of class. As usual, a handful of students milled around Dr. May up at the front, and as usual I wasn't interested in getting in the crush of people to wait my turn. I packed up my stuff and headed for the bus stop.
It was still raining outside; my coat was still damp from my earlier run across campus and I still didn't have my umbrella. I heaved a sigh, went over to the trash cans next to the doors and rummaged around inside. I found a couple of plastic grocery bags, which had clearly been used to carry some students' lunches. Turning them inside out to keep my stuff clean, I wrapped my laptop and books inside them, then stuffed the now hopefully somewhat waterproof package back into my backpack.
I took my jacket off, held it over my head and trudged out to the bus stop. Like I'd imagined earlier in the semester, the sun was a memory, having set while we were in class. With the rain, it was close to pitch black out by the street, the lone street light over the bus stop struggling, but mostly failing, to banish the rainy gloom. I hoped the bus would get here quick. Just as the thought passed through my head, a car flashed by on the street and threw up a wave of water, soaking my pants and boots from the knees down.
Fuck.
I stood there waiting, getting more and more soaked. I couldn't believe the stop outside the school was one of the few in the county that didn't have a shelter for people waiting for the bus.
I may have to bite the bullet and start looking for a used car,
I thought, not for the first time. Trouble was, I didn't have much to spare, helping out Abuela the way I was, and sending money back to
mam
á
and my cousins
,
in Mexico.
