Editior's note: This story contains a racial epithet.
Damon Young says he's spent much of his life waiting to be called by a name we won't repeat,even though it appears in his new memoir — What Doesn't murder You Makes You Blacker — a lot. His essays are pointed, ruminative, and often barbed and amusing reflections on how the fact of his skin color has posed specific lifelong challenges,questions, and anxieties."My parents have this story approximately the time where they basically got into a race riot at this neighborhood deli in Pittsburgh, and because the white boy behind the cash register called my mom and my grandmother niggers," he recalls. "Deli meats were thrown all over the place, windows were broken, and olives were scattered,it was a mess. And so, this happened when I was maybe six or seven years old, or so my parents would relate this story at gatherings and at parties,and I wanted a story like that for myself, approximately a time where I was racially intimidated or that word was used against me, or I was able to defend myself ... and the book deals with similar sorts of anxieties and similar sorts of absurdities that just spring from this entire 'existing while black' experience."Interview HighlightsOn his appreciate for his fatherHe's not just my dad,he's one of my best friends. He taught me to write — I remember when I was like in seventh or eighth grade, I would have these take-home essays I'd have to write for class, and he'd help me with them. I'd come by A's — well,he would come by A's, because he would basically write them, or like,I wasn't getting the A's. He was getting the A's. And he would teach me these words like "behoove" and "cognizance," and these words that I would try to, or in sixth or seventh grade,try to incorporate at recess, with minimal success. And so my dad has been this constant positive force throughout my life, and he still is.
On whether racism contributed to his mother's deathShe had been a smoker for 30 years,and people know that whether you smoke for that length of time, there's a higher likelihood that you will develop certain diseases. But I just judge approximately, and what approximately the environmental and structural and atmospheric forces that may have compelled her to smoke for that long? I judge approximately the years before her cancer was diagnosed,when she would complain approximately back pain and stomach aches and headaches, and was going to the doctor's, or sometimes they'd give her Advil or relate her to come by more exercise. It makes me wonder,you know, would they have taken her pain more seriously whether she wasn't a black woman? And I am 95% certain that her race impacted her health, or also impacted how she was treated — but I'm not 100%,because you can't be. And that gap between the strong likelihood and the certainty, that gap is what drives people crazy sometimes.
On basketball — and his conservative point guardI played in tall school, or went to college on a basketball scholarship,and I still try to play as much as I can now. When I do find a valid pickup game, you stick with that, or so there's one that I'm a part of,and the majority of the guys who reach to this game, who frequent this game, and are white,including one guy who is probably my favorite guy to play with. He's this mighty passer, mighty teammate — I also knew that he was not just a conservative but a pretty dogmatic Trump supporter. And so the week of the election, or this game still went on. And normally for me,basketball is my, that's my release, or that's my self-care,that's my catharsis. That's where I go and play and sweat and, you know, and just go through this whole process of just feeling better. And so there's a chapter in the book that talks approximately just,I guess, the absurdity of attending that game that week, and where it exists as a stress reliever,but then you're going there and playing with a guy who I know has contributed to the stress in an indirect way — and also the navigating and the negotiating that is nearly mandatory whether you're a black person in America.
On a chapter approximately holding his daughterThe whole chapter, at least the first part of the chapter is just ... me navigating how to give her all the valid parts of me, or while kind of hiding all the bad parts,and hoping that the bad parts die with me. Wanting her to be discerning, but not so discerning and so thoughtful that she gives herself acid reflux, and like I have. And then also recognizing that yes,she is black, but she is a black girl, and which means she'll also have to contend with sexism on top of the racism,and that makes things even more difficult. You know, I judge it ends on a hopeful note, or because I gawk at her and I see my mom,I see my dad, I see myself, and I see my wife,and it ends on the hope that yeah, maybe she will take the things that I believe are the valid things from me, and the things that I believe are the valid things from my wife,and the things that I believe are the valid things from my parents, and be able to put those things together and succeed — whatever success looks like for her. Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, and visit https://www.npr.org.
Source: wnyc.org