Plain Talk and Common Sense from the Black Avenger - Hardcover

Chapter 1

The American Dream

Doing the Right Thing Pays Off

First published July 1996

Recently I performed a ritual that parents, who have been blessed with the luxury, the joy and the wonderment of holding their children's children, have enjoyed since the dawn of humankind. I traveled across the fruited plains of Kansas on a pilgrimage to behold my firstborn grandson.

Rayce Ricardo Denton II isn't my first grandbaby. No, sir. That honor belongs to his cousin Olivia Christine Hamblin, who came to us like a gift from heaven five years ago.

To be honest, after sixty months of doting over a little girl -- whom I cuddled when she was just forty-five minutes old -- I was curious whether my new grandson would rip and tug at my heartstrings the way Olivia had.

Don't get me wrong about little Rayce. I was definitely overflowing with joy and pride when the news of his birth reached me by cellular telephone. I remember the exact moment. It was about 4:45 in the afternoon of May 31, and I was stuck in southbound traffic on I-25 in Denver.

My phone rang, and at the other end of the line was Grandma Sue announcing to me that it was a boy. We had a grandson. I was so delighted after her call that I punched the "end" button, rolled down the window on the passenger side of my car and announced the arrival of my grandson to the first face that came into view in the traffic.

The face belonged to a white guy about thirty-five or forty years old driving a service truck. He looked hot and cranky from trying to stretch his neck long enough to see what the traffic delay was all about.

"Hey," I shouted.

He threw an impatient look to me, as he took another draw on his cigarette.

"It's a boy," I said.

"What?" the trucker said, irritably.

"It's a boy. My wife just called to say I've got a new grandson?

In that moment, without any hesitation, the expression on his face changed from one of a man trapped in slow-moving Colorado traffic to one that appeared to send nothing but great joy and happiness for me.

He flashed a wide smile my way, followed by a supportive thumbs-up.

"That's great, buddy. That's really great. Good luck with him."

"Thanks," I said. And the enchanted moment that two strangers happened to share because of the birth of a baby -- my grandson -- became a pleasant imprint as we went about our separate ways.

Before long, Grandma Sue and I were headed east across the eternal plains of Kansas. During the long ride, my head was filled with a million pointless questions.

Would I like him?

Of course, you'll like him, I answered myself.

You're going to love him and you know it.

Grandma and Grandpa live in Colorado and he's way across the country in Missouri, I thought. What's that going to be like? Will we really get to know each other? Or will our relationship become one of the millions of long-distance telephone relationships that I've heard so many other grandparents bemoan.

Needless to say, in that nine-hour motorcar trip from Denver to Kansas City, I did a lot of thinking about my grandson. I thought about stocks and other financial investments I would make for him as a means to secure his financial future.

I wondered whether he would follow in the hardworking, talented footsteps of my daughter, his mother, who had scrapped her way to a television anchor position Kansas City.

I wondered whether he would be a sports geek like his dad.

Finally on Saturday morning, after a short night's sleep in Salina, Kansas, the nose of our car turned in to the baby's driveway. Grandma reached over and honked the horn excitedly. As if on cue, a door in the garage opened, and there he was -- no bigger than a ten-pound bag of sugar, swaddled in his father's arms.

Hugs and kisses were exchanged and finally I was introduced to little Rayce. He squirmed in my arms, and as he did so, the pride of being his grandpa washed over me like a tidal wave.

I felt like he was my ultimate reward for being brave and not yielding to the misfortune and dead end of poverty, for not buckling and giving up on the belief that I and my children had an inherent right to the American Dream.

Today, I have two rewards for doing the right thing in my two grandbabies -- one from a son and the other from a daughter, neither of whom ever wavered from following their father's advice to chase ideals founded in pride, character and self-respect.

Doing the right thing has paid off for me, and it's paid off for them. And as I held my grandson for the first time, I knew without a doubt that those principles would pay off for him too.

Pick a Better Country

First published July 1996

I've taken a lot of criticism from affirmative-action-and-quota-prone blacks because of my deeply held beliefs about the merits of the American Dream.

What's amazing to me is why I'm chastised for believing in a dream that promises that any man -- no matter his color -- who works diligently and stays the course of right instead of wrong is destined eventually to prevail. That dream certainly beats the alternative of facing a lifetime of wretched poverty and dependency on the kindness of strangers and the dole.

Perhaps I've given more thought than usual these days to the benefits of the American Dream and what it promises, because of late I've been buffeted by an assortment of modern-day pseudo-black revolutionaries calling my radio show to denounce me for escaping the ghetto and prospering like a lot of other mainstream Americans.

Sometimes the voices of my detractors haunt me at night just before I drift off to sleep.

"No, you ain't right. You is ah Uncle Tom."

"You don't believe in nothing, except the money the white man is paying you to run the brothers down."

The best denunciation of them all is: "You ain't black no mo'. You done forgot where you come from."

It's remarkable once you've decided not to be any man's nigger how easy it is to muster your pride and your self-respect in the face of such criticism. I think about that a lot at night when I'm in bed, the house is still and the only sound I hear is the wind rustling through the pine trees.

About that time, I feel a smile creeping across my face. Then I'm able to turn off the voices in my head, because I'm reassured, as I approach the final third of my life, that I have made the right choices.

Choices that catapulted me away from the mean streets of Brooklyn, New York, where I grew up. Decisions that ultimately meant that my children and my children's children wouldn't live in a world where they were overcome by the culture of bottom-feeding black trash. I know that whatever they become, I fought the good fight so they too saw that they had choices.

Like other successful men and women, I doubt whether it ever will be possible for me to forget my roots or my road traveled, as my critics claim I have. I will always be aware of just how far both America and I have come in my lifetime.

After my own life of struggle and the difficulty I and others faced to forge the America of opportunity for all that we know today, I find it quite paradoxical to be denounced by the new wave of politically correct hyphenated African-Americans.

If, as they contend, the U.S. is a doomed nation, I think she is doomed because she suffers from a mega-dose of forgetfulness concerning her rich historical past. Too many have forgotten the opportunity she has always provided for all -- albeit an opportunity for change during her ugliest days of racism and hatefulness.

Pick a better country.

Name a greater nation where people of color, who still today have little hope or opportunity in their native land, can get a better opportunity to be all that they can be. I defy you.

It definitely wouldn't be on the African continent, where in countries like Maurita