BLACK LAUGHS MATTTER
“If you had a choice of colors,
Which one would you choose my brothers.
If there was no day or night,
Which would you prefer to be right?” 
Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions, “Choice of Colors” 1969
This summer I read how a woman, Rachel Dolezal, head of the NAACP in Spokane Washington, was forced to resign after revealing she was really white. But when she stood by her statement, “I identify as black,” I felt sure that more and more folks would be coming out.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-banks-rachel-race-20150616-column.html
So far, none have. So I had to. Why? Because growing up, I identified with African Americans so badly that I wanted to be black. And bad was a big word in those days – the 1960s in Detroit — as in “You so bad!” This bad meant good; you played excellent music, were a darn good athlete, or maybe even —best of all— you were a badass.
That was the coolest of all possible worlds.
One of the first 45-RPM records I ever bought—for 69 cents at Monroe Music on Livernois—was “Love’s Gone Bad” by the Underdogs, written by the great Motown team of Holland, Dozier, Holland.
Okay so it wasn’t about that kind of bad, and the band was all white guys, but I still identified it as a bad song. Not only did I love the Motown sound, memorizing every lyric by the Supremes, Four Tops and Temptations, but I had my own “soul group” in 6th grade. We called ourselves the Jesters and entered talent contests at MacDowell Elementary. We never won anything because a) we lip-synched, thus displaying no talent; b) our rendition of “Respect” came via The Rationals version, not Aretha; and c) we were four white guys.
The Rationals were bad though. Here they appear on “Swingin’ Time,” hosted by a Detroit deejay my sister Jill really liked named Robin Seymour:
I went bad by sneaking out of Hebrew school to meet my black friends at Milton’s Drugs where we’d rip open packs of crispy pork rinds, spin Milt’s five fountain stools, drink chocolate Cokes and compare notes on the Marvel comics revolving on his one rack. My favorite was the Black Panther, who first came on the scene in 1966 in the pages of The Fantastic Four. His real identity was an African King from the country of Wakanda; I just read Marvel is making a movie about him.
When I played high school football my role models became Detroit Lions defensive back Lem Barney and running back Mel Farr. And how’s this for mind-blowing: they sang backup on a song by Marvin Gaye. You can hear them going “Solid!” and “Dig it” and “Everything is everything” throughout Gaye’s 1971 hit, “What’s Going On.”
Everything I knew about covering receivers and coming up to make the tackle I learned from Barney. Number 20’s full first name was Lemuel, and in his first game for Detroit, he intercepted Green Bay’s Bart Starr, leaping, falling down, rolling over, and getting back up to return the pickoff for a touchdown.
Against the Packers, are you kidding? Oh Barney was so bad!
Marvin Gaye lived around the block from us. When he sang the national anthem during the 1968 World Series, I was there. (15 years before his revolutionary take on the tune at the NBA All-Star Game.) We rode our bikes past his house every so often. He was over on Appoline Street, and one time he was right out in front of his house mowing the grass as we came by.
“Hi Marvin!” We shouted from our banana-seat imitation Sting Rays.
“Hey kids,” he looked up. “What’s going on?”
Well, that’s how I remember the conversation going.
* * *
One of the few black Detroit Tigers in the early 60s, second baseman Jake Wood was my favorite player. I saw him once steal home. It was all about being fastest when I was a kid. Wood wore #2 and that was a fast number. (Later it was about being quick to the play, more than just being a “speed merchant” like Jake.)
Basketball star Dave Bing was my favorite Detroit Piston. “Bingo!” we shouted when he sunk buckets at Cobo Arena downtown by the river. Bing was a cousin of one of my high school teammates. Once Ray put Dave on the phone and suddenly we were chatting. I have no recollection how that conversation went, but later, Dave Bing became mayor of Detroit.
Bill Cosby was my favorite comedian; I memorized his first four albums by the time I was 12.
Boy, could I pick them!
Whom?
Them.
Black folks. Some of my best friends, who welcomed me into their homes, where I saw photo portraits of John F. Kennedy and MLK on the wall. One of my friends let me use his Afro Pik on my curly, pathetic-looking Jewfro. Another taught me how to “cap” – verbally topping an opponent with a remark smart-alecky enough to get the other kids standing around to go, “Capped on you!” Or simply, “Wooo…”
Black laughs mattered. A lot. It was probably the closest I got to being good at being bad.
(Later I would read the Norman Mailer essay, “The White Negro, Superficial Reflections on the Hipster” and learn: “Any Negro who wishes to live must live with danger from his first day, and no experience can ever be casual to him, no Negro can saunter down a street with any real certainty that violence will not visit him on his walk. The cameos of security for the average white…are not even a mockery to millions of Negroes; they are impossible. The Negro has the simplest of alternatives: live a life of constant humility or ever-threatening danger.”
I identified ever since, although never achieving any hipster-hood.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-white-negro-fall-1957 )
* * *
My best friend growing up was Mark Williams. He lived down Steel towards Outer Drive and one Saturday afternoon, doing nothing – just reading comic books, gulping our NuGrapes, nibbling 5-cent Chunky bars – we went hey, let’s be blood brothers.
On the grass median in the middle of Outer Drive, we sat down between some Dutch elms with a razor blade. Mark went first, cut his right index finger and bled onto mine. But it ended up being a one-way deal. I never did return the rite; I was too scared to slice my finger.
During the summer of 1967, I could not identify with black Detroiters. There was a huge riot (45 ended up dead) and I was crying myself to sleep miles away at summer camp worrying about National Guard tanks the Free Press said were right behind my grandparents’ house rolling down Livernois.
Some of us could only dream of being cool. What we really were: crybabies. I never passed as Black. Closest might have been while wearing that Jew fro for a few years, until I went bald in college.
Never destined to be a bad ass, maybe I could try for what John Coltrane said he wanted, “to be a force for real good.” Or go for “a radical goodness” – that’s how Pacifica radio announcer Eben Ray put it in an interview I heard her do with Gerry Fialka last month at the Unurban Café on Pico.
* * *
In 1969, I bought a 45 record called, “Choice of Colors” by the Impressions, written by Curtis Mayfield. I saw him sing it once in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and often thought of those lyrics, especially in the second verse:
“Now some of us
would rather cuss or make a fuss
Than to bring about a little trust.
But we shall overcome
I believe someday
If you’ll only listen to what I have to say…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCXGvukcv0w
