Makes Me Wanna Holler

“It was only years later, when black communities as we knew them started falling apart, that I came to understand the system for the hidden blessings it contained: It had built-in mechanisms for reinforcing values and trying to prevent us from becoming the hellions some of us turned out to be.” 

The surrogate system was one of community policing that pervaded black neighborhoods in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The white community was not looking out for them, so they looked out for each other. Adults treated all children as if they were their own and the responsibility for raising children was on the whole community.

“It seemed we were niggers by birthright and destined to spend our entire lives striving in vain to shed that rap. But white people could never be niggers, even when they acted like niggers with a capital N.” 

Black children received heightened scrutiny from their parents when around white people, and were subtly made to believe white people were superior. Black children were taught that they must impress whites, while white children needn’t accord black adults with the same respect.

“At school, it was commonly understood that white folks considered grown black men to be boys. ‘Boy’ was a fighting word, one of the most detested, disrespectful things somebody could call someone else. More fights started over one person calling another ‘boy’ than over anything else. To counter that indignity, we addressed each other respectfully as ‘man,’ even though we were not adults.” 

Black Americans spent centuries being disrespected. Even white children didn’t treat black adults with respect. An example of this is the word “boy” used to reference black men. The psychological impact of this disrespect is profound, and to counter it, black folks accorded each other heightened respect.

“Much later, when I thought about it, I realized that my folks were typical of their generation of parents: Their idea of raising children was making sure we were clothed, fed, and protected. They didn’t focus much on us unless we were sick or had done something wrong. They didn’t hold conversations with us. Love was understood rather than expressed, and values were transmitted by example, not word of mouth.” 

When McCall was being raised, parents didn’t communicate as thoroughly as modern parents. Parents provided for their children and ensured their safety, but they didn’t express love or take the time to discuss issues they faced maturing. McCall partly attributes the perverse ways he developed into a man on this lack of communication.

“It wasn’t until I became an adult that I figured out how utterly confused we were. I realized that we thought we loved sisters but that we actually hated them. We hated them because they were black and we were black and, on some level much deeper than we realized, we hated the hell out of ourselves.” 

McCall, his friends, and many black boys mistreated black women. On their scale, lighter-skinned black women always ranked higher, and their twisted ideas on love and sex influenced them to treat black women horribly. Their psychological conditioning to adore whiteness and detest their blackness was partially to blame for the way they treated black girls and women.

“I knew my heart was hardening. In fact, I wanted it to harden so I wouldn’t get scared or feel weird inside when we did crazy things like that. I didn’t want anybody to see me equivocate.” 

McCall’s book begins with him portrayed as a sensitive, caring, emotional boy. Over time, it becomes clear to him that to survive, he will need to do things a sensitive, caring, and emotional boy can’t bring himself to do. To face the challenges he is convinced his life will entail, he purposely hardens himself. 

“I can never forget that moment. Whenever I hear about shootings now, I try to imagine what happened in the gunman’s head. I try to imagine what he was thinking, because I know the feeling of standing there with all that power literally at one’s fingertips. For someone who has felt powerless and ignored all his life, that’s one hell of an adrenaline rush.” 

The allure of guns to McCall and most others was the power they conveyed on the person wielding the gun. To a group of people powerless and disrespected for centuries, the power of a gun was intoxicating.

“That’s why I shake my head when I hear so-called social experts harping on the problems of black single-parent households. They don’t seem to understand that the problems go deeper than that. A two-parent home is no better off than a single-parent one if the father is fucked up in the head and beaten down. There’s nothing more dangerous and destructive in a household than a frustrated, oppressed black man.” 

Racism and oppression affected every aspect of McCall’s life. For a household to be a two-parent household, both parents must be present, but often in black communities, the father spent his life working for low wages and being mistreated by whites. To cope, many turned to alcohol and drugs. Even two-parent households in McCall’s neighborhood were one-parent households.

“The irony of the sound tracks to Superfly and The Mack is that they both contained songs with strong anti-drug, pro-black messages. I was so caught up in the glitz and glamour of the street-smart stars that those messages went right over my head. Also lost on me was the contradiction in the whole notion of getting over. Drug dealers and pimps operate on familiar turf, preying on their own people. But like so many other guys, I reasoned that the end justified the means—any hustle that kept you out of the system was justifiable.” 

Oppressed black Americans were so eager to avoid the white man’s system, that they often ignored the collateral damage their actions had on their communities. Drug dealers and pimps made money without working for oppressive whites, but they did so at the expense of their neighbors, often deteriorating communities. It’s easy to judge their decisions in retrospect, but facing their harsh realities, the decisions were understandable.

“It seemed that the guys who got the biggest scholarships were the very ones the fellas and I had considered lames throughout school. They were the ones we made fun of and harassed. They’d sacrificed popularity to do their work; now this was their day. Watching them walk proudly to the stage, I wondered why they had gotten so much out of school and I had not. Tears welled in my eyes and I struggled hard to hold them back as I watched friends walk forward to get their diplomas.” 

Time is a central motif in McCall’s memoir. At his high school graduation, McCall is struck by the realization that there always existed another way for him to have spent his time. Others made different choices than he did; they chose not to give into social pressures and sacrificed some aspect of their time in high school to focus on other aspects that would allow their future time to be better spent.

“Dealing drugs is harder than any job I’ve had, then or since. To this day, I laugh when I hear folks say drug dealers are lazy people who don’t want to work. There’s no job more demanding than dealing drugs. It’s the only thing I’ve really tried hard to do, and failed at.” 

McCall repeatedly expresses the notion that black folks in his neighborhood possessed the requisite skills for success in the white man’s system but weren’t given the same opportunities to cultivate their skills and focus them in ways conducive to success in said system. One such example is drug dealing, which requires accounting, personnel skills, creative problem solving, and many hours of work. McCall reasons that successful drug dealers could be successful in legitimate businesses, but they are deprived of the opportunity. 

“By cleaning out the store and forcing it to close, we took away jobs that employed people in our community and we got rid of a business that brought revenue to the area. We didn’t view it that way at the time, but we did ourselves in.” 

McCall frequently explains the ways in which his actions for short-term benefit were detrimental to his community and to his long-term interests. A significant moment in his personal development occurs when he learns to think broadly when making decisions and plan for his long-term future.

“I shot and nearly killed Plaz, a black man, and got a thirty-day sentence; I robbed a white business and didn’t lay a finger on anybody, and got twelve years. I got the message. I’d gotten it all my life: Don’t fuck with white folks.” 

McCall’s long prison sentence provides an example of racist individuals wielding the might of institutions to oppress black Americans. Viewed in conjunction with the light sentence he received for shooting another black man, it also illustrates the low value America’s institutions placed on the lives of black men. Again, the racist ideology of individuals is imparted to society’s institutions and wielded to oppress black Americans.

“People who think small in life tend to devote a lot of energy to capturing pawns, the least valuable pieces on the board. They think they’re playin’ to win, but they’re not. But people who think big tend to go straight for the king or queen, which wins the game.” 

This ideology, expressed in a chess metaphor, reframed McCall’s approach to his life and provided a backbone for his self-improvement.

“And my getting the new job demonstrated something that hadn’t been so clear before: that education commands respect, wherever you go. Compared to most inmates, I was educated, and that distinction benefited me—it helped me get that plum job.” 

Another realization central to McCall’s self-improvement was that intelligence was more important than macho bravado. Educated people were afforded more respect, and intelligence provided a strength more fearsome than brawn.

“I’d heard white people brag about being free, white, and twenty-one. There I was, black, twenty-one, and in the penitentiary. It seemed I’d gotten it all wrong.” 

While making clear that McCall took the wrong path in life, and was finally reckoning with his decisions, this passage also subtly illustrates the racial disparities of young men at the time. McCall had made poor decisions, but he was in a penitentiary full of black men who made the same poor decisions, and few white men. There was a reason why black men made those decisions and white men didn’t: society’s institutions were designed to force black men into making those decisions while shielding white men.

“Black people had been systematically brainwashed, and our parents had paid their tax dollars for the schools, biased textbooks, and curriculums that helped carry that out. Without realizing it, we’d been taught to hate ourselves and love white people, and it was causing us to self-destruct.” 

In prison, McCall learned that the curriculum of his elementary and high school was designed to favor white narrative at the expense of other cultures. Further, much of what he learned was outright lies. Schools were integrated, but curriculums were not. Black Americans were taught to glorify the achievements of white European cultures and denigrate their own people.

“At the start of the eighties, I’d begun hearing a lot about the so-called shortage of ‘available’ black men. I didn’t believe it was true until I went into the white mainstream. Then I saw a lot of single sisters in the professional ranks, and they seemed hard-pressed to find healthy, marriageable black dudes on their level to hook up with. The math was simple: After they subtracted those brothers who were locked away, gay, strung out, unemployed, or plain fucked up in the head from trying to cope in white America, black women often found the pickings slimmer than slim.” 

The oppressive culture was ruining black men, and consequently making it difficult for black women to date black men. The effect was profound. Black women attempted to secure any marriageable black man they found for fear that if they didn’t, they wouldn’t find another. This caused many unhealthy relationships.

“It has always amazed me how some black people are so brainwashed that they’d fight to preserve a life and culture detrimental to their own mental health. Over three centuries ago, white folks took away our names and assigned us theirs, and we’ve continued that confusing practice ever since. That’s why I applauded when young black girls started giving their babies crazy, made-up names like Tamika, LaWanda, Loquita. They may sound funny, but at least they’re original. They’re not slave identities.” 

Cultural oppression is sometimes experienced in seemingly subtle ways. McCall found it perverse that free black Americans would continue giving their children the Anglo-European names that were used to strip their ancestors of their identity and culture as slaves. 

“I was curious to see, close-up, just how much we benefited from having blacks involved in politics. I saw in Atlanta that we benefited in the sense that black political leaders could use the city government as a vehicle to hire other minorities and to ensure that black businesses got a fair share of the city contract dollars. But beyond that, there was only so much they could do to help the masses of black folks. There were only so many jobs the city government could provide. To employ more people, the city needed help from private industry, which was composed primarily of white businesspeople. That’s where the major breakdowns occurred. Covering City Hall, I saw how white-run businesses, such as banks, actually undermined development in black communities.” 

Even in a city like Atlanta, where blacks controlled the levers of power, their ability to achieve progress was still limited by whites. Banks and white-run businesses were able to hinder development in black communities, despite black citizens possessing all the political power. 

“When I first went into the system, I assumed, like many blacks, that whites could be won over if I proved myself. Once they worked with me and realized I was just as smart and skilled as them, they would drop the racist assumptions they used to justify holding me and other blacks back. But I saw now that racism ran deeper than a few misconceptions. I realized I could spend a lifetime trying to prove myself and nothing would change.” 

As McCall worked with whites in the white man’s system, he realized that racial attitudes were engrained at a fundamental level. He couldn’t simply overcome them by proving himself to be intelligent and hardworking. At a subconscious level, whites would never view him as equal, regardless of what he achieved. The system viewed black Americans as inherently inferior and treated them as such.

“I learned something else from Danny that hadn’t been clear to me before. I learned how little even the most highly educated white folks really know about blacks. He was very well educated and yet he struggled to understand some of the most basic things about black life in America. He struggled because in school he hadn’t been taught diddly about blacks. Even though he saw us every day and interacted with us, we were puzzles to him. That showed me that the education system in this country has failed white people more than it’s failed anybody else. It has crippled them and limited their humanity. They’re the ones who need to know the most about everybody because they’re the ones running the country. They’ve been taught so little about anybody other than white people that they can’t understand, even when they try.”

McCall had an epiphany when he realized white Americans were more disadvantaged by the system than black Americans. White Americans received the fruit of unequal distribution, but to further the oppressive system, they sacrificed their own human development. White males were taught their whole lives that they were the only ones that mattered, and they correspondingly believed that no one else mattered. Their own oppressive system hindered their humanity.

“I knew why so many young brothers, and black people in general, were losing their minds. They look up and see that they’re catching hell from the cradle to the grave, and that the whole fucking country is pointing fingers at them and saying it’s black people’s own fault that they’re catching hell.” 

This passage captures the impossible situation black Americans face. From birth to death, they are crushed by an oppressive system designed for their failure, but they are told the entire time that their failure is their own fault.