Harvard and the Hole Principle

There’s a certain sense of accomplishment when your child’s taste in music mirrors yours. Even if it’s for just a moment. Even when they’re only five years old.

The most beautiful moment of Father’s Day this year was when my son asked to hear “Harvard” by Aloe Blacc on repeat, a song that I had only discovered, by happenstance, the day before. The song is beautifully written and wonderfully performed, but the reason I was most impressed, and moved nearly to tears, was because of the depth of this particular song that my son wanted to hear on repeat. Now, it will likely be years until he fully understands the lyrics, but the powerful words of the song will linger in his subconscious as life and learning help him make meaning of poetry:

I ain’t been to Harvard
And I ain’t got no big degrees
Everything I know, I learned it on these bitter streets
And I can’t afford the good life
But only real love comes for free
And some days my head’s up in the clouds
But I’m allowed to dream

I’m can’t say where Aloe Blacc got the inspiration for the chorus, but something about the statement “I ain’t been to Harvard, and I ain’t got no big degrees” feels deeply familiar and particularly Southern. It’s something I could imagine a matron in the mold of Fannie Lou Hamer saying before she imparts the type of wisdom that could confound the most lettered academician.

If you’re not familiar with the song (and don’t feel bad if you’re not, as I said, I only learned about the song a few days ago), the first verse recounts a conversation with a woman with two children working two jobs, whom Aloe Blacc describes as “full of fortitude and grace.” She is taking a break from her walk across town to her second job, which makes it impossible to spend meaningful time with her children, including “no time to sit with them and read.”

I don’t believe in coincidence, so the fact that I was introduced to this song in the same week I finished reading Brian Goldstone’s There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (thanks, Katy and Pastor Veldhorst) and I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle by Dr. Charles M. Payne (thanks for the signed copy, Dr. Payne!) feels almost foreordained. Harvard could have served as a soundtrack for Goldstone’s presentation of the viciousness of the housing market for people living anywhere near the poverty line. Many of the local leaders from Greenwood and other Mississippi Delta communities, like Susie Moore, Laura McGhee, and Lula Belle Johnson, probably said something along the lines of “I ain’t been to Harvard (or Howard or Fisk or Clark Atlanta or Jackson State), and I ain’t got no big degrees” to SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) staff and volunteers before schooling them on how things worked in the South in general, and in their community specifically.

All these ideas and images brought back a principle I’ve shared with a few people over the years that stands as a critique of the “uplift suasion” and “lifting as we climb” modes of thinking that dominated the Black elite’s approach to improving social outcomes for the larger Black community. Modes of thinking, that I might add, have redoubled, in many respects, over the years.

The idea, as I understand it, is that as one becomes more upwardly mobile, one should look back (or down) and extend a hand to others to pull them up closer to you (but not necessarily on the rung of the ladder you currently occupy). Now, let’s imagine that the person (or people) you want to help aren’t on the ground or lower on the ladder, but in an actual hole, and from your vantage point, you can’t tell how deep the hole is or what’s in the hole. All you know is that there’s a hole and at least one person is in it.

Now, the “lifting as we climb” approach (or in this case, the lifting as we walk around holes in the ground approach) would tell us to reach down and pull the person out of the hole so that they can walk on the terra firma we are fortunate enough to tread. But, the way I see it, is that we don’t know what’s in the hole, or, to step out of the metaphor for a moment, we don’t have a real understanding of the context and constraints of the environment that person is experiencing. What if our arm isn’t long enough to reach the person? What if we’re not strong enough to lift that person out? What if there are several people in the hole? What if there is something in the hole that’s critical to their emotional or social well-being? What if there’s something dangerous in the hole that could be set off if they move?

The only way for us to know the answer to any of these questions (and the countless others we can and should be asking) is to go down in the hole with them. Not only does that enable us to get a firm understanding of what’s actually happening in the hole, but it also lets us look the person in the face, eye to eye, granting them the dignity they deserve, and ask questions that matter: How are you doing? What’s important to you? What’s going on down here (and up there) from your point of view? How might we get out of here together? And what ideas do you have about how we can work together to ensure others don’t end up in this hole in the future? (and the countless other questions we can and should be asking)

The other reason I think it’s necessary for us to get into the hole is that it makes getting ourselves and others out of the hole much more urgent. It’s easy for us to walk or drive around the “holes” in our communities and say, “It would be nice if someone fixed that hole before someone falls in,” or even, “when I have some extra time (volunteer time, perhaps), I’m going to go help pull some of those people out of that hole.” We watch people struggle in holes every day, and sometimes we even help dig them. But we don’t do anything about it most of the time. And even when we do, it’s hardly enough.

I didn’t go to Harvard either. I do have a degree, but it’s not a big one. I learned some important things in classrooms, but I learned the most important lessons of my life when I was organizing and studying alongside others who are dedicated to the pursuit of justice and freedom. One of those lessons came from a mentor to many and a champion of freedom, former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, who once said that if you don’t love the people, you’ll eventually betray the people. Whether we’re digging the holes or walking by while people are in them, we are betraying them, and since you can’t love from a distance, we have to get in the hole.

I’m jumping in with both feet. What about you?