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"A KNOWN TROUBLEMAKER!"
Published On 04-04-2009 , 6:29 PM
“That woman Shirlee Smith is a known troublemaker,” said the woman who was sitting at the table next to mine. It was a loud stage whisper, which was, I suspect, intended to be a quiet piece of information aimed to enlighten her companion who was perched in the seat next to her.
If, before I left home that morning, I hadn’t practiced being on my best behavior, I would have turned around, given Ms a friendly smile, raised my fist in a black power salute and said, “Right on Sister and power to the people.”
Troublemaker? I hadn’t heard that one since my early days in Pasadena, back in 1967, when the PTA at Washington Elementary School wanted to know why I wore my hair in a natural/afro and referred to Negroes as African Americans.
Fortunately for all concerned, I missed the meeting where I was listed on the agenda under new business.
In defense of the lady at the next table and of the PTA members, my mother, Bernice Smiley, who, as a resident at Scripps Home in Altadena, told me that on the days my column appeared in the newspaper she would miss going to breakfast because she didn’t know what “trouble” I was stirring up for the day and she might be uncomfortable sitting at the table while the other senior residents had read what I was “lighting into” that day.
My mother’s husband, even on his sick bed, provided lectures to me all based upon his, as he put it, concern for my safety and well-being because I didn’t know how to “make nice.”
However, my father, Eugene Pickett, never seemed to have a problem with my behavior. Maybe that’s because we were born under the same lunar sign and rather than me being trouble my father simply understood Capricorns.
My column last week on military recruiters in the schools brought many a reader to send me their views on the issue. One reader said I was a racist with a chip on my shoulder for writing that recruiters targeted African Americans and Latinos.
If my mother had had her way with things, I’d be the person she tried to mold me into and that means I would behave quite properly for the public as my older sister has always done.
Nobody has ever called her, the eldest of the Pickett daughters, a troublemaker. She may well have been labeled racist since, back in the day, she wore an “afro” and had a boyfriend who sported a black leather jacket, as did Huey Newton’s Black Panthers.
No apologies offered, here. I am who I am. Racist? Not hardly. Troublemaker? A resounding yes, if it means I stir things up, make people uncomfortable with the way things are, say what a lot of folks are thinking but don’t say and that I proceed regardless of public opinion.
I assure you my mother put her best into raising responsible children but I don’t think she ever came to realize she wasn’t responsible for my views on society. But then maybe she had a bigger hand in it then I realized before now because she and my father stressed compassion, honesty and individuality.
I suspect the problem with my views on society that disturb so many people is not that I take a position that isn't nice, that isn't what they want to hear or consider but, instead, it is that I have wrangled my way into a position that gives me a platform to express them.
his blog can be found in our columns section where you can print a copy or e-mail to someone
http://talkaboutparenting.org/pages/articles.php
 Tune-in Wednesdays Noon to 1:00 p.m. Talk Abut Parenting with Shirlee Smith LIVE Call-in at 626- 794-2116 or 794-2551. PCAC Charter Channel 56 in Pasadena. Return to our home page and click the red television for streaming. See our calendar listing for further details
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Comment
| | 1. | The last sentence says it all.
- by Robbie Jones-Cook, 04-05-2009, 5:28 PM
| | 2. | Right on, Sister Shirlee. Power to the People!!!!
You are what you are, and you do it well. You surely do make "comfortable" people, uncomfortable-sometimes. But, then, that's what's required of folk like you %28and me, too%29. Power does not concede without demand. It's always been like that.
I'm glad you have this platform you have. You use it very well. It is being expanded, as your voice reaches out to more and more folk. Soon, the whole nation will hear it.
YES WE CAN!!!!!
Hank
- by Hank Wilfong, 04-05-2009, 5:17 AM
| | 3. | Right on and Power to the People!!!!
- by Beverlee Bruce, 04-05-2009, 2:11 AM
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