Lannis was a new girl on campus, but many of the black students from Detroit knew her from Cass Tech high school. She was always pretty and popular, but after a year at Tuskegee Institute, she was different. Confident and self-assured, Lannis sailed through undergrad at UM, and apparently through medical school as well.

But I was always told that Black colleges were second rate. “Glorified High School,” my father called them.

Curtis skidded through undergrad by the seat of his pants. A fifth year senior at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (the same black school my father had attended), he didn’t take school seriously until his jr. year. I, on the other hand, graduated in four years from University of Michigan with distinction. Curtis has more confidence in his little finger than I have in my whole being.

Coincidence? I think not. In this season of self-examination, I’m realizing some of the things that have defined my life, and I see how some of my identity problems came after I left Chicago at the age of 6.

One of my oft-repeated anecdotes is how I had never seen a white face before I was 5. I don’t mean anything by that statement; it is just true. My parents were certainly not the sheltering type; quite the contrary, in fact. It was just possible, (and I suspect still is), to spend your whole life on the South Side of Chicago and not see a white face.

For me, this meant that I finished Kindergarten without ever having heard the National Anthem, but I was well acquainted with Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing, the ‘black national anthem.’ It also meant that if I did well in school, it wasn’t some shocking anomaly. Since everybody was black, everyone was an individual. Ironically, it doesn’t feel like that when there’s fewer of you. Then you become a stereotype, or you’re expected to be.

My cousins who stayed in Chicago were on the swim team at school, all became Eagle Scouts, and graduated 3, 1, and 2 in their large graduating classes. I would have been regarded the FREAK OF THE UNIVERSE accomplishing half of those things, even though I thought my High School was a better school.

When my family moved from Chicago to Nashville, TN, talk about a culture shock! We literally moved from black town to white town, in terms of neighborhood and school. Armed with my Chicago roots, I had the confidence to sing in front of the school by myself for two years in a row. The music teacher suggested I take voice lessons, so sure she was of my gift.

I was just thinking about this this morning. Why is it that I choke at the thought of singing in front of anybody now, when I was like that in Nashville?

Then I remembered Chicago. I still get warm feelings whenever I get near the city. I can’t explain it. I know, Chicago is loud, dirty, ugly, even smelly, but it always feels like home.

I’ve lived here for over 30 years. And it has definitely had an effect on me. I no longer think as many things are possible as I once did. My possibilities are limited by my perception of where I belong. You could blame middle age, but I see it in young children here. It is a dampening spirit.

I put Yanni in the blackest school I could find to overcome this. That school cultivated her ghetto side, but didn’t do anything for her confidence. When we took her out of school, Yanni was very timid and unsure. I put her and Xay in Ujima, trying to ground them in afrocentricity. They hated every second of it, or so I thought, and we eventually pulled out because afrocentricity is actually a religion, and it runs contrary to Jesus.

Today, with a shock, I remembered how Yanni’s confidence grew after we took her out of school. She was free to be herself–wearing costumes and stage make-up on an ordinary day, reading books about germs and bile, and snot. And to my utter amazement, Yanni, who wouldn’t sing in front of her family, began singing in front of our 2,000 member church!

And I just wondered. . . if maybe my insistence on giving her strong black roots gave her the wings she’s trying out now.