Diary of A Young Black Liberator
As an FNN alumnus, I've taken a particular liking to working with youth—inside and outside the classroom. Graduating from Lafayette College in May of 2012 with a dual-degree in Africana Studies and English didn't necessarily hinder my decision to continue on my path...though for a brief moment I did consider going to graduate school to teach academics on a more mature level...but then I realized it's easier to teach a bird the steps to flying beforehand than to try to teach them after they broke their wings.
I work as an online editor for FNN. I assist Mr. Elshazli with alumni relations for FCA. I act as a consultant for organizations affiliated with Lafayette. (And by consultant, I mean unpaid advice giver.)
I like to give back to the community, if it isn't painstakingly obvious.
It's difficult defining this community when it changes at a pace more rapidly than gas price increases or mortality rates among young Blacks in America.
It's difficult defining this community when half of my foot is firmly attached to it, as if the streets stained with innocent childrens' blood and confused generations of hate desperately disguise themselves as quicksand.
It's even more difficult to define this community when you are no longer engulfed in it.
How do you teach a slave that she/he is, indeed, still a slave? That just because they don't see puppet masters' hands placing chains around the chains that they now kill each other for, that the whips and materialistic possessions that they yearn to own so badly, that the degradation of themselves are all just a part of a grander scheme to submit to an ethnographic narrative ascribed by none other than old, wrinkly, white men who will do whatever it takes to maintain power. How do you teach a slave that these same men stand on the heads of their wives and children, and gays, and anyone else who is not their color, class, or creed, to keep everything you want out of reach?
I moved to the Bronx and I'm teaching kids how to care for their communities.
At M.S. 363, I'm teaching ten- to thirteen-year-old youth how to identify, analyze, and resolve social issues in their communities.
They chose teen pregnancy, bullying, self-harm, and obesity.
They're going to create a film, fundraise, then donate the proceeds to a shelter that exclusively serves pregnant and/or parenting teens.
My students come from broken homes that shatter them like fragmented pieces of a hollowed past. I refuse to let them become statistics or live their lives without understanding how wings work – how the wind feels beneath them once they're
free.
Kameisha Jerae Hodge was a 2007 graduate of Friendship Collegiate Academy, and 2012 graduate of Lafayette College.