Cultural Memoir Activity - Rediscovering my Blue Crate

In case one wonders why I was insulted by the results of last week's Harvard Implicit test... feel free to read on...

As part of our coursework for Cultural Competency and Leadership class, each student was asked to make a five minute presentation, giving a brief description of ourselves and what part of our cultural background has made each of us the people we are today.

My first concern with this exercise was validated as soon as the first presenter almost 20 minutes. There is little doubt that as people, most of us like to talk about ourselves. Given an audience, an assignment and time, this was the opportunity for 19 classmates and me to really open up and find our common threads.

Of course, the presentations took up a bit more than two full sessions, but I’m not complaining.

My first insight was how many people identified themselves first by ethnicity. I don’t necessarily mean Asian, African-American or White, but more specifically Italian, Jewish, Korean, and so on. The second point always seemed to be one’s hometown, or even state. In one instance, a presenter noted being from South Carolina, but from a different part of the state than Dr. Chon Glover, our professor, who serves the College of William and Mary as an assistant to President Reveley, focusing on issues of diversity. Some schools might call her position the Director of Diversity, but I think she has earned a couple of upgrades in Tribeland.

It was an interesting activity. For the academic critics who view William and Mary as upper-class and predominantly white, these would have been an interesting two class sessions to sit through. Then again, it might have been taken into consideration that this was a conglomeration of 20 students who chose to participate in this elective course; therefore, the students were more culturally aware or concerned about this subject because of personal choice, not academic program requirement.

Picture this crate..but 30 years older

Regardless, the best part was that I got to look through the crate again!

About 25 years ago, I took a few worn-out, blue milk crates out of the back of my local McDonald’s and decided to use one to hold my personal knick-knacks. The first items were collectables from my alma mater, Wagner College, such as old student newspapers, assignments, graduation pictures, and letters sent from friends and TKE brothers from vacations, or our study abroad program in Austria. As time progressed, newer and older items found their way into the crate. Birthday cards are automatic entries. Pictures that haven’t been snatched up by my younger sister Carrie have found a new home.

I had not dug through the crate in about ten years before this assignment came about. The main reason being – once I start, it’s going to be an all-day event.

While this viewing was completed in under eight hours, it was no less enlightening. First item found was an autobiography that I wrote for “Apollo and Dionysus” class at Wagner for the IDS (Interdisciplinary Studies) program. Wow, we all hated having to take those 18 credits, but it was amazing to see how I viewed my life history at 19 years old. Right under the report (which received an A) was a book of poetry which I submitted for a writing contest during my senior year of college. I am not a poet, but the contest was named for Dr. Jack Boies, at the time, a recently deceased English professor at Wagner, and a great help as my academic advisor during the two years of school, particularly as I was aiming to become editor of the school paper with Keith Giglio. First bit of advice should have been, follow Keith as he is the gifted writer!

Ten minutes later, I found a Hank Aaron baseball card. One of these days, I’ll really get into the story of our Hank Aaron parade here. In short, in about 1973, a few of us from the neighborhood, my family (Kelly and Carrie were there, Jeff might have been too young), the Hopewells (Fred, Jimmy and Denis), the Hadeeds (Bobby and Fred), let’s see, Monique Laventure, some of the Rosser’s (Lisa?)… maybe a couple of other people decided that we were sick of hearing how people were intending to harm Aaron as he pursued the all-time homerun record held by Babe Ruth. So, we called the Alexandria Gazette and told them we were having a parade. They came and covered the event and the result was a half-page story (with picture). A year later, I was able to present the article to Hammerin’ Hank as he was on a meet and greet tour with Magnavox.

Given that this was Alexandria, Virginia in the early 1970’s didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. Of course, the symbolic parallel is that “Remember the Titans,” one of my favorite movies, even though I didn’t attend T.C. Williams, was set in Alexandria, in 1971. Had to figure that was a story to share in Cultural Competency class. Can’t believe we ranged in age from 4 to 11 and had enough sense to recognize the racial hatred being directed at Aaron, and then to act in a public manner on it.

More to share … next week. My blue crate is not big, but there is a story behind most of the items.