Growing up on the Southside: White and Privileged
There was nothing like growing up Roman Catholic in Chicago during the mid 80’s to mid 90’s; the Bears sung the Super Bowl shuffle; the Bulls were the world’s team; Big Frank and the Sox were unstoppable; the Blackhawks were badasses; and all the movies were being filmed in Chicago: Blues Brothers, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and pretty much every John Hughes film.
Of course, I remember watching all this from bars with my little brother Johnny and our dad. I remember the ninety degree heat, no air conditioning, minus twenty degree cold, no heat, and the stench of stale beer. I remember the cigarette smoke suffocation like I remember the stifling eighties smog pollution. I remember the stench of rotting wood and soiled old men. I remember my father giving us quarters to play Pac-Man. But by time Johnny and I finished our games, pops was sloshed, and you did not dare ask for more quarters, because daddy wanted to spend the rest on his beer. Oh, I learned from an early age you never ask a grown ass Roman Catholic man for anything. You just get the man his beer and shut up. It didn’t matter if it was dad or whatever mom’s boyfriends; they all beat your ass. So when we ran out of quarters we played with the cigarette machine, pulling on the nobs, hoping to geta smokey treat. Classical and operant conditioning is what they call my learned behavior in psychology.
Naturally, dad would get too drunk, so Johnny and I had to find our own ways home sometimes carrying our baby sister Bridgette, Peanut. We weren’t teenagers; we weren’t even old enough for grammar school. Yet, I remember watching a grown ass man kick my mother in the stomach so hard, she literally went through a wall. It was us-four kids, our mom, and our mom’s boyfriend...we lived in a two bedroom apartment. No air conditioning. No cable. Hell, we didn’t even have power half the time.
Do you know what you hear in a two bedroom apartment built in the twenties? You hear everything. You see everything. Your mother sucking. Your mother f-ing. The lines of coke. The broken beer bottles. The punches. The kicks. The chokes. You see and hear it all in a two bedroom on the Southwest Side.
Of course at the ripe age of six years old, I was expected to do the grocery shopping, clean the house, change my siblings’ diapers, have food on the table, and miraculously manifest beer or vodka, because for some strange reason when this strange man wakes up, he’s going to beat the living hell out of me for “drinking his alcohol” when I didn’t drink a drop, I was six! The gas station clerks down the street sold me alcohol at six. AT SIX! They sold me cigarettes at six. AT SIX! I guess I should not be surprised, because this still happens in Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Eastern European countries. It’s called being Roman Catholic!
Eventually, relatives noticed what was going on and-or they received enough calls from the police, so they intervened, but of course, they’re all Roman Catholic-aholics with their own kids and their own issues, so it’s impossible to take on an additional four kids, but they tried. Before long I was in the intercity Catholic group homes, aka modern orphanages, where you and your little brother were the only white kids in the place, and your little brother had to start protecting you, because your will had been broken, time and time again, because your body had been broken, time and time again. I always gave up, and he was my strength, which is weird, because later in life my littlest brother was my strength, and now my sister is my strength
Anyway...they were just abused and neglected kids like us, but we were white. They were black. We were not like them, so they made us like them. They made us black by beating us black. “Here cracka; eat some snow,” he said as he smashed my face into a foot of snow until I pretended like I passed out. “Here cracka, cracka, cracka,” come get your whipping. They say the abused become the abusers. Well, I was aquatinted with BBDs at an early age, like seven, seven and a half. For the longest time, I hated the other kids for it, but they were just kids with horrible parents like us. We were babies. That’s what you are at that age. But we were on our own at that age.
Gangs? At seven? No; you can’t be serious? Gangsta Disciples, Vice Lords, Latin Kings, the blue and black, red and black, gold and black, pitch fork up, pitch fork down, six point star, five point star... “Here cracka, cracka, cracka!” come get your whipping. But thank the Roman Catholic Church and God I am white and privileged with my peachy pink skin and my white privilege card. Here’s my white privilege card, so I can get beat with soup cans. Here’s my white privilege card, so I can get whipped with steel hangars Here’s my white privilege card, so I can start working at twelve. Here’s my white privilege card, so I can work full-time during high school. Here’s my white privilege card, so I can have no direction in college. Here’s my white privilege card, so I can deal with the young death of my mother whom I have never met. Here’s my white privilege card, so I can deal with deployment drama. Here’s my white privilege card, so I can deal with post-deployment drama. Here’s my white privilege card, so I can cope with post Marine Corps drama. Here’s my white privilege card, so both my grandfathers can die without my knowing either. Here’s my white privilege card, the first time the police beat my ass. Here’s my white privilege card, the second time the police beat my ass, or the seven times they pulled guns on me or slammed me on the hoods of cop cars for fitting the description: big ass white Roman Catholic. Here’s my white privilege card, the time I lost the love of my life, because I grew up Roman Catholic without my Roman Catholic father. Here’s white my white privilege card, so my father died on November fourth, twenty-twenty, at approximately three or four. Here’s my white privilege card. Why can’t you see it? Why can’t you give me privilege How often must I wave my white privilege card? Here’s my white privilege card, growing up Roman Catholic on the Southside of Chicago white and privileged.