In Journeys from Black Youth to Black Manhood-Part 1 last week I shared the academically accepted view that childhood, youth, adulthood, manhood is socially constructed and changes in time and context. As individuals we play a role in that construction and maintenance of those social constructs depending on the influence we carry in the society concerned when it comes to shaping the structures that determine features such as the age of adulthood, expectations of adult males, what you are entitled to as an adult male, what processes you have to undergo to become an adult male, what should a man look like, and behave like, and so on.
On a day-to-day basis however in our own upbringing and in the upbringing of our youth in our own homes, those surrounding the youth such as family, friends, the youth’s peers, neighbourhood, church, and we as Black men, are the most profoundly influential figures in moulding our children and youth in the direction of manhood. Such intercessory powerful agents can change the impact of the wider societal influences on our youth, and this has in many ways provided Black people with the sustenance, affirmation, survival capacity, and time, to prepare themselves for the world they have inherited, largely not of their making. This was beautifully illustrated by Trevor Noah in his autobiography, Born a Crime (2016), where he outlines his childhood and youth in apartheid South Africa, the son of a Black African woman and a White European male, and seeks to explain his emergence to Black manhood and stardom as the current host of The Daily Show in The United States of America, one of the most prominent daily television shows in the States. He also spoke about his life in a wonderful interview with Oprah Winfrey (19th March 2018) where he identified key people who shaped his life growing up including his beloved mother.
Noah stated in his interview with Oprah Winfrey, that we as adults ‘take for granted the ability we have to shape the view of the world our children have.’ This demands that we as Black men, fathers, wider family members, social uncles, befrienders, teachers, are present in the lives of our youth. Not remotely via computer or mobile phone but in person, visible, next to our youth, side by side, living with them if possible, physically within touching distance, being present. You need to be there or someone else assumes your legitimate role or something else that may be detrimental to the capacity of the youth to make his mark as it should be made, in the world.
Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations-Trevor Noah: Born a Crime
My crime at birth unlike Noah’s was not a legal crime in that it was illegal for members of different races to have relationships with each other, sexual or otherwise in apartheid South Africa. That was not the case in the United Kingdom. My crime as a new-born, was social in that it was not socially acceptable in the 1950’s for a White person to have a relationship with a Black person. My White mother had such a relationship with my Black father of African descent who was in the USA Air force stationed in Scotland at the time where my mother then lived. Somehow they met and forged a relationship and then I appeared, visible evidence of the relationship. The wider family on my mother’s side were appalled and scandalised living in a close- knit community, exclusively White, conservative, church going, where every body knew each other. My father’s side of the family knew nothing about his conduct. He was married and had several children at the time in the States. My birth father disowned responsibility at my birth when asked by the hospital and was subsequently sent to another air force base in Europe by his commander for getting a ‘local girl’ pregnant. That was the policy then.
The wider family wanted to remove the family’s shame that could not be hidden because of my colour. The only course was my removal from the home and this is what happened at three months of age. I was placed in to the care of the local government social work authority and entered a nursery in Edinburgh, Scotland, pending the finding of a long-term residential placement because it was deemed likely that I would remain in the care of the state until reaching the age of adulthood. At that time adulthood was 15 years of age. After 15 months in the nursery a long-term placement was found hundreds of miles north of Edinburgh in the Highlands, in a wonderful scenic setting, Morayshire. The institution was Aberlour Orphanage. At its height the Orphanage housed 500 children at any one time, cared for in large houses interconnected by corridors. The children and youth were separated by gender and age. You grew up entirely in single gender settings. The only time you were able to meet someone of a different gender to yourself, was either in Church or at school. I wrote about my experience at Aberlour Orphanage and outlined the experience of six other residents as they recalled it, in my book, Aberlour Narratives of Success (2013).
You will recall that I earlier talked about the primary importance of Black adult males acting as an intercessor, an interpreter and a buffer between the child/youth and the wider societal influences that impact on them. In my case, I had no adult Black males throughout my childhood and youth to act in such a way to benefit and guide me. What I did have and will forever be grateful for, was being a resident in an institution that tried within its means to place the children and youth in its care at the forefront. It had leadership that practically and profoundly believed in the mission statement of the Orphanage written by its founder and first Warden, Canon Charles Jupp (1875-1911), that:
‘Every child has the ability and indeed the right, to grow, up and flourish in society, notwithstanding the origins of their birth’
I found love there and acceptance and in the years that I was there a growing realisation that I was cared for by adults who became my family and the other children living with me in my House, all 30 plus of them, were my siblings. All we had were each other. All of us in the same boat-poor, homeless, discarded, disowned, some actually orphaned, some neglected and abused before coming to the Orphanage. We created family as children and youth, supported each other, cared for each other as far as our capacities allowed, helped each other survive and move forward. The intercessors, those who helped to minimise the negative impact of the wider societal influences on me, were the Orphanage, its way of operating, its mission, Miss Heap, the Headmistress of the nursery school at the Orphanage where I lived on arrival; my carer in my House which I entered about 6-7 years of age after graduating from the nursery, Aunty Phylis (the adult carers were either called Aunty or Uncle) and the 30 plus children who lived with me. This was my world as a child. This was all I knew. My childhood ended at 11 years of age when I left the Orphanage.
When I was 11 years of age the Orphanage was due to be closed because child-care policy was changing in the United Kingdom and large institutions were now out of favour and smaller ones took their place. Foster placements were becoming increasingly fashionable and one day I was in the Orphanage and the next, without prior warning, I was out, travelling hundreds of miles south with my social worker to a foster home with elderly parental figures I had never met. That was my home for the next eight years.
I realised that I was never going back to the Orphanage- the only home where I felt loved and wanted as a child and youth. I also appreciated even at the young chronological age of 11 years, that I was on my own now and that it was up to me to make the most of my present circumstances. With a childhood and youth like mine, one becomes experientially older than your chronological years. Childhood –an absence of adult duties- is a luxury you see. I never had one. I was always ‘old’ carrying responsibilities and cares well beyond my chronological years. Such pressures and my responses to those helped me later in my adult life but I missed being a child when watching my own children growing up who taught me how to be a child and be young. It brought tears to my eyes at times reflecting on the loss. But I sampled it later in life through my children and now as an elder through my grandchildren, and I thank them for the privilege.
Next week in Journeys from Black Youth to Black Manhood, I will conclude telling you about my personal journey to manhood by outlining how I came to know that I was physically different to my peers and that I needed to seek out more information about people who looked like me.