On Generations: "Elevate" - Part 13 of ...
'Cause I win, over and over again
Battlin' evil, I'm hopin' to win
I recently rewatched Black Panther again and one of the scenes that stuck out to me was when Killmonger got introduced to the council of elders in the movie. He walks in and says “Y'all sittin’ up here comfortable. Must feel good.”
After spending two years in Wilmington, DE and moving back to the northern Virginia area, it's a line that I take to heart. Northern Virginia is an area of the country that is the definition of comfortable - literally in the top 10 wealthiest counties of the country to live. While that doesn't mean that everyone is rich, it means that everyone is rich compared to many other parts of the country; compared to many other parts of the world. And things that are a problem in another city are not nearly a problem to the same extent in Northern Virginia.
As an example, there was a recent grant application for businesses that were impacted by COVID. The grant offered helped businesses and would not need to be repaid. The county had the resources to explain the application process in multiple languages, enough resources to announce it on multiple platforms, and the luxury to use funds likely from the stimulus package not applied to assist every other service that could have been impacted from COVID. A lot of other areas of the country still have businesses that are struggling but that's on top of every other problem that existed before COVID took hold early last year.
The reason I bring this up now is that living in Wilmington isn't necessarily comfortable. Where we lived we definitely had comforts and that's not what I'm trying to say--I'm saying that the discomfort of others was much more apparent in Wilmington than it will be in Northern Virginia. I'm deciding to go back to the DC area because to me it's the best way we can set up our family for future stability and opportunities. It doesn't mean it's a permanent move but a place to take the next step in our careers. What I don't want to happen is for us to forget that those with less than us who have relative amounts of discomfort and striving just to get to the next day, don’t have the luxury to worry about things like a career. The luxury of choosing to go to an office. The luxury of choosing to work remotely. The luxury of deciding on investments over other opportunities. The luxury of choosing an apartment over a house or keeping two vehicles instead of one. I don't want to forget that housing choices, transportation choices, work style choices are not even in the thoughts of many people in this country. Spending a year to set ourselves up a little bit more is a first step in a process to address all of these problems.
I don't want a different version of myself to look in on the choices I made and a few years down the road and say, “Man y'all sittin up here comfortable.” I want that version of myself to come back and say there's so much less discomfort here. Someone must have been working hard to make it that way.
The other thing that happened this week was seeing my brother perform his second original album called Generations. The songs on the album were very specific to his experience growing up black in a predominantly white and immigrant town. Two songs in particular spoke to the uniqueness of this story. The first, Slide Home describes our hometown of Westerly, Rhode Island and the experience of living there with its positives and like being close to the beach, being home to good Italian food, and a place where people support you as long as you've grown up with them. It's an experience that hasn't been put into writing very often and at least for me in high school, I was not equipped to describe some of the discomfort I felt growing up. Or more accurately I didn't have the perspective to see the limitations and mindset and education that were part of my day-to-day life.
The second song of note from my brother's album is a song called Generations. And this song directly relates to that scene in Black panther. Killmonger returns to ask what more the council could be doing. I often have the same question that my grandfather would ask were he to come back and see his family and heirs making decisions toward their own future. Would he ask us if we could be doing more? Or would he ask us if we realize how comfortable we've gotten. I don't think he would ever go to the extreme of promoting violence and restoring black greatness like Killmonger suggested, but I do think he would relate to how much we have to offer as a people and a family that we're holding close to our own well-being. Maybe our lives could be a little bit better, but that's at the expense of millions of others whose lives could be materially better.
That's the feeling and perspective I don't want to lose moving back to northern Virginia. My own relatives have cut their lives short whether through medical problems or systemic inequities or direct violence and my brother and I have been given the choice, the opportunity, the responsibility to do more with what our prior generations have given to us. My brother ended the song with the quote that his “only inheritance, the knowledge that I can do anything with education.” I echo that exact sentiment that I don't expect any sort of material wealth from my immediate family but I am eternally thankful for them blessing my brother and I with the chance of education and what that can mean for the future.
I want the generations 5 branches down from me to wonder if I think they've done enough and not the other way around.
(Note: The opening lyrics are from the song “Elevate” which is the framework for my posts from 2019 onward. Click back a few posts for more context. I chose to compare Erik Killmonger’s image to my brother as the post relates. You can find Big Lux’s songs on Spotify and bigluxviolin.com.)
