The issues I wish to address in this blog are universal. Rather, I realize that they’re not exclusive to any particular class, culture, or gender. To that end, I’m 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 placed over employees by higher-ups. 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 things like nepotism, cronyism, and “yes man-isms.”
I want to address and shatter the glass ceiling by focusing on Psalm 75:6-7 which spawned the following set of haiku/senryu. It reads:
“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.”
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! 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!:
A “Hire” Authority
With cares cast upon
Him, job opportunities
Rain down from up North.
*
The Lord’s Open Door Policy
Who cares how low glass
Ceilings are when God opens
The doors and windows?!!
*
May God Designate My Résumé
May my résumé
Resonate to levitate
My destination.
*
Hire Grounds, Hire Altitudes
Higher grounds yield grounds
for hiring that firings
cannot withstand.
*
Razing the Roof
a.k.a.
Shatter Proof
I’d rather blast through
Shatter proof glass roofs to prove
How headstrong Christ is.
Though many of us first discerned this transparent roof after being in our careers for a few years, I’d like to argue that this strategic apparatus has hovering over 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 many options for making 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 programmed into black culture.
This low bar tried to lowball me to effectively and efficiently kill my potential. As personal as this felt, I realize it wasn’t 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’re often explicitly and implicitly told to fit into and behind a glass. We’re told to bottle up our brightness which, in turn, can bottle up anger and resentment over the years for our own people. We’re told to fit our genius
into a box and hide it within 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 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 blackballed lack 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. Du Bois, 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… drowned out in and weighted down by sorrowful conditions.
Uneven, Beaten Odds
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-thousandfold!
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.
** U-46 in the local school district of Elgin, IL where I lived
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