”You have to, because you`re black. . . .”
Claudette Folks, 23, had a history of making people proud of her, and often, she admitted, it was those buzzwords that prodded her along.
By the time she was sophomore at Clark College in Atlanta, her life already read like a carefully prepared script. Young black woman emerges from working class background. Becomes first one in family to attend college while her mother works two jobs to send her through. The pride of her family. The pride of her school. Roll credits. Happy ending.
But while she was in her sophomore year of college, Folks began to have problems with grades and with the expectations of her family.
”They expect me to do this?” Folks said. ”God, I don`t know if I can. Deep down inside, I knew I hated school, and my mother said, `I`m proud of you.` And my little sister kept going, `You`re the only one.` And then you have your teachers telling you how good you are and how they want to help you, and that`s okay, but deep down you know you don`t want to do this . . . I felt like I was disappointing them.”
Folks visited home, on Chicago`s West Side, but her depression deepened when she became aware that to be young, gifted and black often means trying to measure up to an unusually tough set of expectations. Folks said she believed that she had to ”make it” because if she did not, not only would she let herself and her family down–she would let her race down.
Folks` problem is hardly unfamiliar to Theophilus Green, a black psychologist in Chicago. According to Green, Folks had become a victim of the ”keeper of the dream syndrome.” He said he had seen a series of young students with the same problem, struggling with a sense that a motivation other than skin color is needed to direct their lives.
Although much has been written about the transitional problems that students from predominately black backgrounds experience when they move into mainstream society, Green said, little has been said of the additional burden that parents and teachers inadvertently place on the same black youths. They must achieve, they are told, because they owe it to their race.
Green and several other psycholgists said in interviews that they knew of no formal studies that measured the impact of the phenomenon but that from their experience they had found that this pressure affected a significant number of black youths.
”A lot of kids are keepers of their parents` dreams. That`s not unusual,” Green said, giving an example of a father who pushes his son to be the baseball player he never was.
”What is unusual for blacks is that their parents could not do what their kids can do today. Consequently, they support their kids. Or do they?” Jerry Schecter, a psycholgist who works with gifted children in Chicago public schools, said that question goes to the heart of the matter.
”Sometimes parents unwittingly put pressure on their kids,” Schecter said. ”Parents will sometimes vicariously live their lives through their children. They will put pressure on their kids to do everything they couldn`t do. The problem is when children feel that they are only worth what they produce and not who they are. Sometimes it`s easier not to try in the first place.”
According to Green, black youths who excel in predominately black schools and are among the first in their family to go to college frequently become the keeper of the dreams of virtually everyone except themselves.
It is not new for ethnic groups to motivate their youth to enter the American mainstream by stressing their importance to their heritage. Blacks are only the latest group to begin the process–and after a long delay caused by slavery, segregation and discrimination. As young blacks move into college, there can be a clash of values with older blacks who were motivated by racial solidarity and consider the youths ambassadors, the hope of the black race.
Coupled with the usual fears youths undergo as they enter into what many op prperceive as an hostile world, Green said, this additional burden is harmful.
”To say that you should do something because you`re black,” Green said, ”and because you have to be better, is another way of saying you can`t fail. The reality is we all fail.”
It is a phenomenon with which Alvin Pouissant, a black psychologist at Harvard University, is also familar.
”Many black students complain about the expectations to constantly represent black people,” Pouissant said. ”Or that they have a special responsibility to serve and save the community. Some kids rebel against that. They wouldn`t have a sense of what their parents are talking about. They`ll say, `It`s not that way for blacks anymore.` ”
But the problem, Green added, is that the support system for many black youths–the family, the church, the educational system–is frequently tied to the notion ”You must because you`re black.” He said that black youths know they will often face severe rejection if they say, ”I must, not because I am black, but because I am me.”
Instead, these black youths gradually become less human and more symbol, often without their or anyone else`s knowing it. The pressure directed at black students to validate what others proclaim them to be can lead otherwise talented individuals into depression, loss of identity and, in some cases, self-destructive tendencies, Green said.
The fact of the matter, said Green, is that ”nobody knows they`re doing it. The students don`t know what`s happening and the teachers don`t know they`re doing it.”
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”I have to make it,” said John Wallace, 21, a University of Chicago senior, majoring in sociology. ”I am the first generation to go to college. If you come from a pressure background, you have to succeed because you owe it to yourself, your family and whomever is depending on you.”
Wallace grew up in an all-black neighborhood on the South Side, and talking to him and other young blacks shows that there are diverse responses to the pressure of others` expectations. Unlike Folks, Wallace seems to thrive on them. He said he was not going to blow the ”once in a lifetime opportunity” of going to college. His skin color is a big reason for his motivation.
”You always have to work harder because you`re black,” Wallace said.
”When they see me, they already have a preconceived stereotype. Until you prove yourself intellectually, you`re still black to them. If you can prove you can keep up with them in any conversation, and you`re just as intelligent, you`ll at least get respect.”
Michelle Goolsby, 17, a recent graduate of Robert Lindblom Technical High School, a predominately black college preparatory school on the South Side, brushed aside the expectations of her family and teachers. Unlike Folks, she decided early by going into the military instead of college that the motivation should come from herself and not her race.
”When I was first thinking about the military, everybody said I shouldn`t,” Goolsby said. ”My mother was shocked. She just knew I was going to some elite school and get straight A`s. My Aunt Jackie said, `You know Michelle, being black, it`s really hard, it`s really competitive.` But I don`t think people should obligate me to something because I`m black. I refuse to be miserable if I don`t have to.”
Some black students have experienced no expectations to keep anyone`s dreams except their own. They are self-motivated. Many come from integrated and more affluent backgrounds, and their parents encourage them to achieve not because they owe it to their race, but because they owe it to themselves.
Kevin Jolly, 24, a graduate of Howard University in Washington with a degree in television production, is one such person. Jolly`s middle-class parents did not attend college, but he said they never experienced the pressure of keeping a dream. Jolly said his parents encouraged him to do well, for himself.
”I don`t negate color, but at the same time you should not necessarily wear it in every endeavor you take in life,” Jolly said. ”Things are changing–as opposed to the previous generation that said `because you`re black,` now it`s more, `because you`re you.”`
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For Folks, who said she was ”a quiet type,” it was not that simple. Unlike Wallace, who seemed to embrace the expectations set before him, and Goolsby, who could shrug them off, Folks began to resent doing everything because other people were depending on her to do it.
”You`re not always cut out for what people want,” Folks said. ”I try my best, but being the only black woman to do it may not be for me. Everybody doesn`t really look at what`s going on inside a student. You have all these people telling you about this and, `I told so and so about you,` and you don`t want to tell these people how you feel. If you say something, it`s like
(mimicking a voice), `You don`t want to what?` ”
Despite the experience of black youths such as Folks, said Joyce Van-Tassel Baska, a Chicago educator who has been working with gifted children for 13 years, pressured students later come to see the expectations of relatives and friends as a blessing as well as a burden.
”Most of them are glad they got the push,” Baska said. ”Because people said this to them, because people were willing to believe in them, it really made a difference. A lot of kids really need that. They are scared of what the future will hold.”
But Green disagreed. He questioned the motives of those who pushed black youths. He said that if a black youth believed that what was expected of him was too much, he could not reveal it to those closest to him because, ironically, this was precisely where most of the pressure is coming from.
”You say that these kids are getting support from these teachers and people,” Green said, ”but I`m saying for half of them, that`s not true. The people who are yelling, `You`re great,` `You`re our hope,` are really supporting their own dreams. A lot of these people build up these kids as superpeople, and it`s hard to ask for help when everyone thinks you are superman.”
Green suggested several solutions. He said that black parents should choose a college for their children not just for its academic reputation but also for its support system for helping a youth to develop.
He also said it was important for youths to find mentors, perhaps an older student or a minister, who can empathize with them. Green said that if black youths join interracial activity groups and modify their expectations
–”expect to disappoint but plan to graduate”–they can gain better perspectives on their relations to others.
”Race can`t be as important when you move into mainstream society,”
Green said. ”Remembering that you`re black is irrelevant. When people talk about holding onto the past, that`s great as long as the past is going to remain the same but not if it`s changing as constantly as it is nowadays.”
Folks, who was graduated from Clark and now works at a bank in Atlanta, said she had only recently learned that.
”People are saying, `You`re not doing this,` but I feel happy,” Folks said. ”I`m not going to satisfy anyone else anymore. I felt like I did that all the way through school. When you get to the point in life when you say,
`Hey, I`m going to this because I want to,` that`s all that should matter.
”Everybody is not going to judge you by your color. . .”
