Perceiving

While reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, I came across this observation by a young Malcolm about well-intentioned whites. "They'll be there to support you during thin, but not during thick." Malcolm rejects the patronizing compassion of whites towards black. How often am I guilty of the same! I meet a need and I feel good about it, but ask me for more--ask me to hang out, ask me to be your friend--I don't know about that. The best kind of friendship is a mutual sharing of joys and pains, a relationship between two equals. What we need is more friendship, not charity.

Alex Haley has been challenged about the authenticity of his genealogy that he determined through investigative research. In one's quest for answers, often one may be so desperate to find answers that it's possible that he might overlook hints of inaccuracy in what he discovers. Jesus said "seek and ye shall find". Those who don't seek rarely find. Serendipity happens but once in a while, but those who seek will usually find. The latter ends up in a better place, if not finding the truth, at least one step closer to it.

Finally finished listening to 30 hours of Roots on Audible , wonderfully read by Avery Brooks .  Brooks reads out the story masterfully, adding song and rhythm to words, making the characters come alive in the listener's imagination. Roots tells the tumultuous story of an African-American family encompassing seven generations, starting from the proud African who was kidnapped near his village in Gambia, following the story of his descendants enduring five generations of slavery and then life after emancipation.  In each enslaved generation, the desire for freedom was always present in the undertone, with hope rising and ebbing with the reality of their circumstance. There were many emotional moments listening to the recording, such as when the fiddler finally saves up enough money to buy his freedom, only to discover that prices have gone up and he would never live long enough to buy his freedom.  Or the agony of a slave mother enduring the second time that her baby ...