Damn. At that age I didn't know my enemies were external. How, when did you know it wasn't you, it was them?
..............
I'd like to credit my youthful genius but that would just be all kinds of wrong.
Truth is, I attended an interesting little church which, at that time, was gifted with a number of smart, alert men (plenty of smart, alert women too, but the men provided living object lessons for my 12 year old self).
These men made a conscious effort to give us - black boys - a heads up about the world we faced and, an accurate view of our foe. It was a very practical sort of religion: everyone talked about Jesus of course, but "worldly" knowledge (math, science, engineering, the trades) was highly prized and its mastery warmly and persistently encouraged.
This is very different from the "success seminar" Christianity of early 21st century America - marketed as a method for praying your way to a McMansion, a Lexus and magazine cover attractive kids. In its giddy flight from mindfulness of the way the world works (but crackpot realist insistence that it's looking more deeply into the mechanism) and retreat into a fantasy of a thousand year Reich of God approved suburban splendor, success seminar "faith" is almost the exact opposite, or perhaps a perversion of Matthew 10:16's counsel, which was repeated to me and my friends, time and again -
"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." (New International Version).
The training I received is also dramatically different from the 'bash the poor' secular sermonizing of ill tempered billionaires such as Cosby. From the bashers, we endure a torrent of complaints followed hard on by admonitions ("be a father!", "read a book!", etc) which have the television-friendly advantage of sounding good while offering no real content.
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There was also a physical element: we routinely went camping (And I mean the real thing - pitching tents, learning to identify edible plants in the wild, building fires from natural sources, fishing, etc.) and enjoyed other challenges such as making cars from junk parts, farming and learning electronic circuit design. All designed to give us a sense of competence and yes, power.
So, when I started to deal with white folks on a regular basis and ran into the usual problems, it was easy to identify the source. I knew it wasn't me. I knew I could safely ignore the 'advice' of, for example, the nice lady who insisted I look forward to a life of janitorial service (in response to my statement I wanted to work in computer engineering).
.d.