Two things occurred today that helped me to see something about mentoring that I never saw before. It was reading a short description of the life of Sidney Poitier in the Inquirer and viewing a film, PBS series: Race: The Power of Illusion, Episode 3: “The House We live In” (56 Minutes) for a course on Racism that I am taking. View it if you really want to know about Critical Race Theory although it is not called as such. It is a factual basis for our nation’s institutional racism and stands alongside the fiction of the half-told story that most of us were raised on and continue to be.
Poitier who died at the age of 94 achieved greatness in his life. He rose from poverty in the Bahamas, was illiterate who went on to learn to read and write after he came to America. He was self- taught. His principal income initially was as a dishwasher. He became a winner of two Oscars, the American Film Institute’s Achievement Award, knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, the Marian Anderson Award, and the Congressional Medal of Freedom. On top of this he marched with The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. Poitier was aware of African American people who broke through the glass ceiling of color such as Jackie Roberson, T. Paul Robeson, Thurgood Marshall and Lena Horne. He did not have a direct mentor to help him through the strange land of Broadway and Hollywood. Harry Belafonte could have, but they had a on again off again relationship.
Poitier said, “I always left the theater feeling embarrassment” as he recalled the stereotypical African-Americans he saw on the screen in the 1940s. He wanted movie goers who saw him to feel pride.
As I watched the PBS documentary and read about Poitier’s life, I thought about a question. Where were the mentors? Where are the mentors for people who go first in their field? It reminded me that this is somewhat true of people who are first in their family to attend college. Most first people in a family to attend college are usually from some form of underserved background. They are ground breakers as well. This was certainly true of Amy Gutman, President of Penn, who immediately began addressing this challenge for many students who were first in their family to attend college at Penn.
Mentoring implies that you have something that a mentee can benefit from. It is usually wisdom or knowledge of what it is like to be on a journey that you wish to be on as well. In essence, they have something that you don’t and need to find in yourself.
It is interesting to me that the Supreme Court is vacillating between mandated vaccines or not. In the last century they determined what race you had to be to receive citizenship and the benefits that came along with it. They were not aware of the biggest thing that white supremacists fear. Race is not about biology. It is something that society and our government created. Like everything in life, it seems on some level that it is going to come down to money. If you are not welcomed into a neighborhood because you are black and your mortgage payments are higher than someone white, you can’t generate the bottom line of accumulated wealth which is real estate, not renting but owning. There were mentors in the black community, but the government took away so much of their freedom that mentoring was a challenge to have as a cultural phenomenon as communicated in both of Isabel Wilkerson’s books, Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns.
There is nothing but skin color that actually separates us biologically. We are all basically the same. This is true of Asian people, Indian people as well as many others who weren’t considered Caucasian enough as well. It is tough on groundbreakers of any description because of the difference of power. There are three positions in relationships; one up, one down, and one shared. That power can be many things such as learned experience of the mentor or connections that someone has that you need and want.
Today mentors for the person on main street are needed more than ever whatever it is that a person wants that you can give. It’s one of those things that isn’t directly about money. What makes it great is that it is a win/win situation. You get just as much from the relationship as the person who is receiving it. One of my important guidelines in life is that “you only get to keep what you are willing to give away.” Poitier, on his own, developed grit along the way, and he mentored others. Maybe it is that joy that Poitier and Amy Gutman get to feel. “A person never stands so tall than when they stoop to help a child or an adult in need.”
But there is more. Whether we like it or not, mentoring develops fierce loyalty in the person who helped you when you are down or needed the experience of the other. You have to be able to claim that the mentor gets a positive jolt by helping another. The mentor’s ego also gets nourished although that this is not the reason that most serve that purpose. The simple statement in the Gospel of Luke: “To whom much is given (not money necessarily but something someone needs), much is required (Luke 12:48). “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts: 20:35).” Insert the word “mentor! It is more blessed to mentor than it is to receive any positive emotion that comes with it.
The crime rate in our cities is steadily rising to new levels. We need unconventional mentors as well
I remember going for a run while in the Palestinian section of Jerusalem and having adolescent boys throw rocks and bottles at me, but what I remember more is seeing what occurred when the youngsters were outside my hotel when I was safe in the lobby. I saw and heard a group of older young men chastise them for what they had done. They talked in right and wrong categories. The kids were spellbound and learned a lesson then that no classroom could teach them. I could also see the pride on the men’s faces as they stepped into the role of mentor. I wish we had so much more of that experience than we did in our American past, but we have a possibility of mentoring becoming more essential to our American story. It could be part of the answer for our democracy to overcome today’s challenges. It is the mentoring void in Washington that has contributed to our search for the soul of our nation. I think of the description of Harry Reid made by Joe Biden says it best. “Harry was a search light not interested in the spotlight.” It is part of the reason that we are looking for it. The problem for mentors is that we don’t have enough of them. Dr. John Crosby, founder of the Uncommon Individual Foundation is doing something about that on a daily basis.
It is particularly true when parents feel someone has helped their child. Parents develop a fierce loyalty to those people. In essence in the same way that race shouldn’t be a cultural phenomenon, mentoring needs to be a cultural construct, and that depends on everyone being equal as well as equally able to share what they have as experience with others. it is the gift that keeps on giving. I know this to be a fact.
Comentarios