Chapters five and six

Chapter Five

 As a child growing up in the projects, Conley’s mom had instilled a heavy dose of fear in him that in her mind was necessary to keep him and his sister safe.  This came in the way of instructions on what to do if someone knocked at the door, if the elevator was broken or if someone was in the stairwell lurking about.  Because of this, the author lived in a state of fear that in many ways was justified when their apartment was broken into and their possessions were stolen.  The steel door that locked out the rest of the world was no longer adequate in Conley’s mind and after being robbed a second time, his parents installed bars on all the windows “From then on we lived in a prison-like apartment unit, wriggling our hands through the bars whenever we wanted to open or shut the window” (Conley, 2000, p. 56).  The bars made Conley feel safe in his own home again, but also made him feel imprisoned as well.

Also during this time Conley and his father take karate lessons from a Black Muslim named Rahim who exposed the author to the practice of praying five times a day while facing Mecca.  The entire purpose of enrolling Conley in karate was to help the child feel safer and secure in his own neighborhood. Unfortunately when Rahim was killed later that year, Conely rationalized that even a black belt in karate could do little against a mugger with a gun.  The instructor was shot at point blank range which implied that he was not randomly mugged but instead shot for drugs so Conley went through a period of time trying to figure out the reasons for Rahim’s death; drugs or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 This chapter shows the fear and brutality Conley experienced in his own neighborhood which is why his mom’s rules of how to handle certain situations made sense. 

 

Chapter Six

Ellen, Conley’s mom, decides it’s time to send her son to a better school.  So she decides to use the address of an artist friend of her husbands in Greenwich Village which is where he resumes his education; at P.S. 41.

 The author soon discovers that this third grade world of education is not about hiding your intelligence to avoid being cast as a nerd but instead to answer the questions and learn the material.  Conley was befriended by two kids, Michael and Ozan, who spoke eloquently and debated on the national presidential election as well as the methodology behind producing crystal radios.  Neither topic was familiar to the author but he managed to pick up enough while listening to the boys speak that he could fake his way through having an opinion on the discussion.

 At P.S. 41 the author starts to understand and learn his way around class.  He was able to make the connection that the most popular kids were the ones that came from the wealthiest of families, or  families where the parents held prestigious jobs, and how these kids were treated at home is how they treated others at school “Only by spending time with some of them after class, in their homes, did I make a connection between the relative opulence of their residences, the profession, style, and grace of their parents, and how they behaved and were treated by the other kids at school”  (Conley, 2000, p. 73).  This is an important turning point in the author’s young life because he’s learning that it’s not the kid with the biggest stick that gets the most respect in the school yard but instead the kid that uses his words to remove the violence from a situation without losing face.

(Conley D 2000 Honky)Conley, D. (Ed.). (2000). Honky. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Chapters three and four

Chapter Three

 In chapter three the author talks about the “flower box movement” which looks at poverty through the lense of aesthetics in that if poor people could just be neater and fix up the appearance of how they live, then the problem of poverty would disappear.  If everything looked good then people would be happier and have more hope for the future. 

 Conley then goes on to describe his parents.  He talks about his mom, Ellen, who has no concept of class but a keen awareness of race.  His father, Steve, came from a wealthy family and has the opposite perspective on race and class; he notices the nuisances of a person raised in wealth but does not consider race in the equation.  Conley then goes on to say his dad was often times unaware or oblivious while his mom saw things that were not there.

The way Conley describes his parents makes me think that even though alone they could be handicapped with these idiosyncrasies in New York City, together they probably made a great pair.  For example, Ellen was fearful enough about the environment that she encouraged her kids to develop a “street wise” mentality while living there.  Conversely, their dad was able to block out unpleasantness and remain calm and sensible even in difficult situations.

 Chapter Four

Chapter four starts off talking about the national Head Start program which is a federal program that offers breakfast, a snack and lunch five days a week during the school year to kids between the ages of 2-5.  Both Dalton Conley and his sister Alexandra are participants in this program and it’s here both children learn they are different from the majority of people they live with in that they are white, not black.

Dalton goes on to recount the story of Christmas at Head Start when everyone in Alexandra’s class got dolls.  The boys got black male Barbie dolls and the girls got black female Barbie dolls.  Panic broke out when all the girls in the class noticed Alexandra, the only white female in her class, got a white Barbie and the black female students rushed her for the doll because it was a “real” Barbie.  This unfortunate incident illustrates the media driven campaign at the time that only beautiful girls could be white, skinny and have large breasts and this message was not lost on the little black girls in the class. 

When my daughter Alyssa was five she wanted a Barbie doll.  At the time she had a short bob haircut and we searched and searched for a Barbie that had a hairstyle like her’s.  We never found one so rather than make her feel like only pretty girls had long blond hair, I found a Barbie and cut the hair like Alyssa’s.  Problem solved.

But this concept of what is beautiful is still being defined by the media and packaged in a similar way.  A beautiful woman is still considered to be someone that’s thin with long hair and large breasts when in reality beautiful women come in all shapes and sizes. 

At the end of chapter one I started to wonder how the Conley's ended up in the projects and as I read through chapter two, I found out.  There had been a robbery at their previous tenement that the author's mom had actually witnessed.  After the police had arrived and apprehended the thief, he threatened to harm Ellen, Conley's mom, once he was released from jail.  So they started to look around for another apartment the family could afford, hence the reason they moved to the projects.  Dalton Conley's dad was a part time artist and full time gambler as he was addicted to the ponies.  His mom was a struggling author that had yet to be published which is why they qualified for the low income apartment.

Interestingly enough once the family moved into the apartment Ellen started to feel guilty for taking the apartment away from a more "deserving", or black family.  To abate these feelings she would tell the story of the burglary and the threat from the thief over so as to reassure herself that even though some of the consequences of the move were a bad school district and Dalton having to share his room with his mom's study, it was all worth it.

Chapter one and two

After the dedication page is the following quote "Your mother is so white, she went to her own wedding naked".  I laughed and then I thought, what makes kids say stuff like that?

I picked this book because I grew up in upstate New York on Lake Erie and there was one black family (at least one that I knew of) in the entire town of Hamburg, NY.  When I went to high school we moved to Williamsville, NY and I think there were two black families in the whole town.  I wanted to learn what it felt like to be the minority instead of the majority.

Chapter One ~  Conley, who is white, starts the books off by discussing the baby kidnapping incident that he talks about on the back cover of his book.  His mom, who is white, was pregnant and he was most excited that the new addition would be a sister and not a brother.  In his excitement and enthusiasm to have a baby sister immediately, he kidnapped a black sleeping baby girl from the playground where he lived.  She was in a stroller and he rolled the stroller up to his mother and announced he had found his baby sister.  In her shock and embarrassment, Conley's mom returned the sleeping baby to her own parents that happened to be the local leaders of the Black Separatists movement.  Needless to say, Conley's mom did not make a new friend.

This incident made me reflect that very young children don't understand why one person is one color and another person is another color.  Meaning when Conley took the little black girl and told his mom he found his sister, it didn't occur to him that a black child didn't biologically come from a white family.  How then do we come to understand that groups of people that live together, or families, are usually, but not always,  arranged by color?

What are your thoughts?

Welcome to the Honky Blog :-)

Greetings all and welcome to my first attempt at blogging.  For this assignment, I chose to blog on the book  Honky by Dalton Conley.  This book is about a white young man growing up in the projects of Manhattan's Lower East Side among predominantly Black and Puerto Rican kids.  Throughout the book, the author chronicles his thoughts on race and social class as he moves through the public school system and the social system of his youth.  Stay tuned as I blog each and every week about the lessons Conley learns and the insights he brings to the surface of this controversial topic.