Gregg Primo Ventello recalls a student who reminded him that clothing and degrees don’t make the man.
My first day of teaching African-American literature, I was the sole white person in the room. Twenty-two African-American students, ranging in age from 18 to 60, and me. Even though I was well trained for this, I was a little intimidated. I reminded myself that I was the scholar, the one who’d earned the degrees. But, if there’s one thing that literature has taught me, it’s that those things matter very little.
Twenty minutes into class, a young man entered wearing a puffy, black, over-sized parka, unlaced sneakers with bloated tongues, and a black Sean John ball cap, the visor low over his eyes. A fat gold chain and medallion as big as a saucer swung against a t-shirt with the image of Al Pacino’s Scarface printed on it. He hitched up the back of his jeans and shuffled across the floor as if he were in leg irons. His tongue darted around a toothpick as he sat down and leaned the chair against the wall. I asked him his name.
“C-Max,” he bellowed.
“Okay, C-Max. Here’s a copy of the syllabus. If you’ll stay a moment after class, I’ll explain what we’ve covered so far.” I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. He was more interested in greeting a friend in the back of the classroom. I made an assumption about C-Max based on what I knew about many of the young men I encountered in other classes I’d taught over the years. That is, that C-Max was engaged in a gendered performance, that he, like so many young men unsure of who they are, was trying on an identity for size, trying it on while searching for a real one.
I reminded myself that I was the scholar, the one who’d earned the degrees. But, if there’s one thing that literature has taught me, it’s that those things matter very little.
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At the end of the hour C-Max darted for the door, but I got his attention by calling out “Cecil,” the only name unaccounted for on the roster. I asked him if it was his given name. “Yeah,” he said, “but call me C-Max. My peeps call me C-Max.” I told him I was pleased to be considered one of his peeps, especially since we’d just met.
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We started the semester reading Maxine Clair’s novel Rattlebone, the story of a young African-American coming of age in Kansas City, Kansas. At first, C-Max was noticeably unmoved by the novel, watching the clock and saying nothing, but he attended class regularly. Class discussions got pretty juicy at times as students contemplated whether characters were having extramarital affairs. This piqued C-Max’s interest. My first clue came when, in the book, the young protagonist sees her elementary school teacher with a man who might be her father. She dismisses this possibility because the man is wearing a hat she never saw before. When I asked the class, “What threw her off?” C-Max smiled and pointed to his own Rocawear cap, as if entering a silent bid at an auction. “Good,” I thought, “He’s reading.”
We worked through Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marita Bonner and Zora Neale Hurston. When we read George Schuyler’s essay “The Negro-Art Hokum,” C-Max — wrapped in FUBU sweats and doo rag — opened the discussion by calling Schuyler a “sell-out.” Then, he skillfully outlined Langston Hughes’s rebuttal to Schuyler. When we moved on to Etheridge Knight and Amiri Baraka, C-Max drove most of the discussion. But a poem by Haki Madhubuti titled “Malcolm Spoke/who listened?” triggered a different change in C-Max.
That day C-Max came to class in an oxford shirt and horn-rimmed glasses. No one said a word, but it raised eyebrows. The first stanza of the poem reads, “he didn’t say/wear your blackness in/outer garments.” Everyone sat on their hands and stole glances at C-Max. C-Max said, “It means that the clothing you wear doesn’t matter. Sincerity does. It means what X said. All that matters is sincerity.”
“Well put, C-Max.”
“Call me Cecil,” he said.
A version of this post also appeared in the Kansas City Star
—Photo Courdoreille.fr/Flickr
Hey Mr. G this is one of your former students (not C-max) but I’m doing a presentation on masculinity and I need a refresher on what characteristics you had listed in our sessions. I know Sturdy Oak, No feminine traits, and Big Wheel I forgot the last one could you shoot me a email and let me know what it was. Thank You in advance