YES! Throughout my life, I was always under pressure to succeed. I’m not sure if that was because I was the 1st male in my family for some time, my parents and relatives' own narcissistic traits and personalities, especially from that woman who called herself my mother. Or that they believed and expected me to redeem myself to make up in their eyes for the deficit that I was born Gay. Who knows? Perhaps it was a combination of all of these.
Being under all that pressure was overwhelmingly exhausting! However, in retrospect, I realize
that many of my accomplishments were driven by the desire to seek their approval. Therefore, they were achievements in life that I was not permitted to own. Most importantly, their outrageous and ridiculous expectations left me feeling invisible to the very people I expected and prayed would love me for who I am.
I think Franklin is saying that a parent’s lack of fulfillment is too commonly passed on to their children, so that they may fulfill their own selfish needs, thereby accommodating some emptiness that exists within themselves.
As a former college professor, I would always tell my students, “Life is a journey and not a race! These years you have within these walls and classrooms are a gift and opportunity to fuck up as much as you like before you grace our world stages. Never forget that every person has the right to fail and to learn from their mistakes and shortcomings. It is not a fatal flaw to do so.”
I appreciate this reply so much, especially the message you gave to your students (which was one I never heard growing up). So many young people feel an intense pressure from family and society to hit certain markers of achievement by the time they hit 25 or 30 when the reality is these are still learning years. I also have witnessed as the mechanism of white society has used reputation and social mores as a bludgeon to control people and keep them in line, and many families have feared for their children's safety and survival if they stepped outside those boundaries. I hope sometime we can create a society where we can be more forgiving of our young people as they learn to become adults in their own ways because perhaps then they wouldn't carry shame or that lack of fulfillment on to the next generation.
I think the novel is somewhat heavy handed at times but I do appreciate how Franklin is illustrating how capitalism drives his parents/his family and the pressure they put on him. They aren't "wealthy enough" where their kids can afford to make mistakes or be messy (another perk of white generational wealth! when one error doesn't set your family back). I see his parents has somewhat fulfilled but wanting to ensure their hard work isn't lost both out of selfishness and love, they don't want their children to suffer
I agree! It's heavy-handed at times. I also felt a distance occasionally from Franhlin and what he was trying to say! Yet, I appreciated it very much. What you may not fully appreciate and understand are the unwritten pressures and ridiculous expectations that come from being a child born within the Black bourgeois. For that, I think you should read Margo Jefferson's Negroland.
As a white woman, I am trying to stay in my lane in regards to this book, although I believe I have much to learn from the conversation. I have parents who didn't understand what success looked like for me (and my father still doesn't).
The pressure to succeed was the pressure to escape my rural religious upbringing, not to live up to their expectations for me, which were more in the "be conservative and religious, marry someone who is also conservative and religious, live in a small town instead of a city, have babies that grow up going to church" department. I didn't live up to any of those things, although I am happy with the career success I have achieved.
While I think there are a lot of parents whose idea of ambition is aligned with career success for their children, and who care a lot about competing with the neighbors, I found Smith's mother and father perhaps overly obsessed with it. But as the book's title suggests, maybe they feel compelled by their own community to feel that way. Even if Smith hadn't got caught, would his friend's death have derailed him sufficiently that he wouldn't achieve the success he was expected to attain?
“While I think there are a lot of parents whose idea of ambition is aligned with career success for their children, and who care a lot about competing with the neighbors, I found Smith's mother and father to be perhaps overly obsessed with it. “
YES! You’re correct! These are ‘bourgeois’ Black folks who have been conditioned not only to imitate and copy the external appearances of success as having been defined by a majority white society and culture. But also by a family who has followed certain previous conventions for so long, they haven’t a clue how to encourage their son to live a more authentic and basic life based upon ‘his’ values, as opposed to their own.
Regardless of how we may identify, it’s a common intergenerational experience we have all lived through and hopefully survived.
YES! Throughout my life, I was always under pressure to succeed. I’m not sure if that was because I was the 1st male in my family for some time, my parents and relatives' own narcissistic traits and personalities, especially from that woman who called herself my mother. Or that they believed and expected me to redeem myself to make up in their eyes for the deficit that I was born Gay. Who knows? Perhaps it was a combination of all of these.
Being under all that pressure was overwhelmingly exhausting! However, in retrospect, I realize
that many of my accomplishments were driven by the desire to seek their approval. Therefore, they were achievements in life that I was not permitted to own. Most importantly, their outrageous and ridiculous expectations left me feeling invisible to the very people I expected and prayed would love me for who I am.
I think Franklin is saying that a parent’s lack of fulfillment is too commonly passed on to their children, so that they may fulfill their own selfish needs, thereby accommodating some emptiness that exists within themselves.
As a former college professor, I would always tell my students, “Life is a journey and not a race! These years you have within these walls and classrooms are a gift and opportunity to fuck up as much as you like before you grace our world stages. Never forget that every person has the right to fail and to learn from their mistakes and shortcomings. It is not a fatal flaw to do so.”
I appreciate this reply so much, especially the message you gave to your students (which was one I never heard growing up). So many young people feel an intense pressure from family and society to hit certain markers of achievement by the time they hit 25 or 30 when the reality is these are still learning years. I also have witnessed as the mechanism of white society has used reputation and social mores as a bludgeon to control people and keep them in line, and many families have feared for their children's safety and survival if they stepped outside those boundaries. I hope sometime we can create a society where we can be more forgiving of our young people as they learn to become adults in their own ways because perhaps then they wouldn't carry shame or that lack of fulfillment on to the next generation.
I think the novel is somewhat heavy handed at times but I do appreciate how Franklin is illustrating how capitalism drives his parents/his family and the pressure they put on him. They aren't "wealthy enough" where their kids can afford to make mistakes or be messy (another perk of white generational wealth! when one error doesn't set your family back). I see his parents has somewhat fulfilled but wanting to ensure their hard work isn't lost both out of selfishness and love, they don't want their children to suffer
I agree! It's heavy-handed at times. I also felt a distance occasionally from Franhlin and what he was trying to say! Yet, I appreciated it very much. What you may not fully appreciate and understand are the unwritten pressures and ridiculous expectations that come from being a child born within the Black bourgeois. For that, I think you should read Margo Jefferson's Negroland.
Negroland is fantastic
As a white woman, I am trying to stay in my lane in regards to this book, although I believe I have much to learn from the conversation. I have parents who didn't understand what success looked like for me (and my father still doesn't).
The pressure to succeed was the pressure to escape my rural religious upbringing, not to live up to their expectations for me, which were more in the "be conservative and religious, marry someone who is also conservative and religious, live in a small town instead of a city, have babies that grow up going to church" department. I didn't live up to any of those things, although I am happy with the career success I have achieved.
While I think there are a lot of parents whose idea of ambition is aligned with career success for their children, and who care a lot about competing with the neighbors, I found Smith's mother and father perhaps overly obsessed with it. But as the book's title suggests, maybe they feel compelled by their own community to feel that way. Even if Smith hadn't got caught, would his friend's death have derailed him sufficiently that he wouldn't achieve the success he was expected to attain?
“While I think there are a lot of parents whose idea of ambition is aligned with career success for their children, and who care a lot about competing with the neighbors, I found Smith's mother and father to be perhaps overly obsessed with it. “
YES! You’re correct! These are ‘bourgeois’ Black folks who have been conditioned not only to imitate and copy the external appearances of success as having been defined by a majority white society and culture. But also by a family who has followed certain previous conventions for so long, they haven’t a clue how to encourage their son to live a more authentic and basic life based upon ‘his’ values, as opposed to their own.
Regardless of how we may identify, it’s a common intergenerational experience we have all lived through and hopefully survived.