The America That Is Not For Me: Part 16

I saw this attractive job advertisement online and applied for it with intense swiftness.

I was very happy after submitting the application because I saw it as an opportunity to break into an industry with an operational interest in solving engineering and management problems.

Thus any program designed to improve the human condition, to produce practical solutions to address problems and to make the world a better place for all has the full support of the major characteristic features of my personal philosophy about life.

Investing in a praxis context that assists in instantiating and applying a body of acquired theoretical knowledge in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and management to the human condition in an industry with established experience in responding to the myriad challenges of nature, for me, goes beyond the enticing fantasy of speculative thinking.

An exposure to instantiative values and a rich world of technical experience that brings about improved outcomes in the human condition, a process realizable through the strategic convergence of praxis and theory, is worth carrying to its logical fulfillment. This has been the only engine running my personal philosophy and worldview―how best to put my education and ideas to good use in advancing society and personal development.

It’s important I point out that useful application of ideas from science, engineering, technology and mathematics to the human condition takes on an instrumentalist character if is it’s appropriately married to the humanities. Science communication, law, literature, journalism, political science, literary criticism, human geography, and the like do in fact matter in how we unravel the secrets of science and engineering and mathematics and technology for the singular benefit of neutralizing existential conundrums, in how they are understood to shape the sociology of thinking overall, and in how they are exploited for man’s exclusive benefit. I’ve managed to unite these disparate departments of intellectual and ideological pursuits in my body of writings.

When we fully understand that mathematics and engineering and science and technology are forms of art, it’s only then that we find ourselves on the path to discovering the aesthetic munificence of the mind and soul of nature, in which case doctrinaire assumptions about human infallibility are laid to eternal rest.

Given that man clearly delineates an intrinsic phenomenology of nature in my narrow opinion, my other view is that man also represents a point summary of the complex ontological architectonic of apperception. Man, an intricate expression of life and nature, is a living apperceptive art for that matter. Thus, life and nature are art forms in and of themselves. These spectacular art forms are all around us. Art:

In the powerful voice and music of Bob Marley.
In the lyrical militancy of Fela Kuti and Peter Tosh.

In the anti-establishment tactile supremacy of Nina Simone’s piano keyboards.

In the poetic string theory of Sylvester J. Gates, Jr.

In the symbolic ethos and pathos that swathed Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X in marked excruciation.

In the Afrocentric lucubrations of Ama Mazama, Molefi Kete Asante, Cheikh Anta Diop.

In the anti-establishment poetry of Amiri Baraka.
In the novelistic pathos of Toni Morrison.
In the grand humility of Abdias do Nascimento.
In the anti-Joseph Conrad Things Fall Apart of Chinua Achebe.

In the pre-colonial African mask that gave Europe its cubism, awakening Picasso from artistic decay.

In the maverick directorial severalty of Spike Lee.

In the dramatic excellence and ennobling language density of Wole Soyinka.

In what Molefi Kete Asante picturesquely calls “the dramatic genius of Charles Fuller.”

In the piquant flora and fauna of planet earth.
In the warmful smilets of the Sun and Moon.
In the boundless, ever-expanding cosmology of mortality―of the universe.

In the vernal chaos and summery game theory of human complexity.

In the balmy cacophony of Albert Tyler’s queer saxophone.

In the colorful science and mathematics and engineering and technology of human thinking.

Art is what the assertive rhetoric of science, engineering, technology and mathematics is fundamentally about, namely, applying the intrinsic beauties of science and engineering and technology and mathematics, the commanding presence of their exploratory powers, and their extrusive technical languages to the underlying humanities of the expansive universe of the human mind, in hopes of extending the frontiers of mortal curiosity beyond the narrow confines of bounded immanent mystery.

I’ve brought my own little contributions to bear on a utilitarian quest for internal satisfaction, as well as on the aforesaid categories of intellectual pursuits―prosecutable only in the grand topography of human thinking―through my body of writings. It’s rather unfortunate that I’ve not had any useful experience in the art of reifying my acquired body of theoretical knowledge in a particularistic sense of praxis context, of accumulating additional knowledge directly sourced from the practical implications of this body of theoretical knowledge, of addressing these instrumentalist strategies to the underlying structures and objectives of scientific inquiry.

My acquired body of theoretical knowledge had gone rusty before I could bring myself to reevaluate my sense of location in the marketplace of ideas, having detached myself from the pointillist coordinates leading from the centered location of my inner convictions to the leaping chapiter of self-actualization.

Isn’t it true that it takes a convoking of strands of hair to produce a clump of hair?

“You see, one, one cocoa full a basket,” sings Bob Marley sings on “Wake Up and Live.”

I never considered taking little steps toward giant steps in the pursuit of happiness, for, indeed, as experience has taught me about my own life, it’s these little steps that project the expanding possibilities of human potential onto the giant steps of epic breakthroughs in the human experience. This existential truth is borne out by the lived experiences, however varied, of many an individual I’ve been privileged to read about or befriend in life.

I was ever ready to take the little steps to the enduring crown of Mount Everest at the crucial intersection of China and Nepal, the latter purportedly the birthplace of Buddha, a colorful and nostalgic reevaluation of the philosophical depths of Hermann Hesse’s classic novel Siddhartha. From afar, I saw the enduring crown of Siddhartha’s Mount Everest in the implied fulfilment of gainful employment through the magic wand of the online job application. It was only a matter of time.

The online job application I filled out held promise in this regard, the idea that it was potentially capable of underwriting the kind of revolutionary philosophical and intellectual transformation I sought in the cousin marriage of theory and praxis.

The fact that the embedded implications of this characteristic marriage for improving the human condition is possible, even remotely so, only positions the human mind to question its irrational beliefs in the supposed intrinsic mercuriality of nature.

The enabling potentiality of my quest for a stabilizing transition in a purposeful furthering of the cousin marriage of theory and praxis, for me, therefore tendentiously resolves into a powerful impetus that makes it possible to pursue the imperatives of humanism in the interest of progress.

That was not to be, my unyielding quest for internal happiness. The Gohonzon of my Nichiren Buddhism turned into a promising possibility then into a pipe dream, an evaporated dream.

In fact that promising job never came to be. It chose instead to disappear in the aerosolized thinness of possibilities.

That promising job, the Gohonzon in the seat of my fictionalized Mount Everest crown, ghosted out of my existence never to return to my existential space of limited possibilities. Such was the life I’ve always known, good things and ghosts of innovative ideas appearing in my life and then vacating my existential space unannounced.

My life, my dreams, my hopes, and my future became a mirage of uncertainties and impossibilities. This snuffed the Olympic flame of possibilities out of the tough road to self-actualization, contaminating the art of triumphalism.

What kind of life is that?
Is life a ghost?
Is life death?
Who has been in charge of my destiny? Who has been in charge of my body and soul? Who has imprisoned my destiny such that I couldn’t let it out of the genie-bottle? Who is in charge of the destinies of men? What has become of my firm belief in the rigorous methods of scientific inquiry, the marriage of scientific inquiry to the humanities? Was life no longer an art form? How could an African art form lead to a revolutionary new art form in Europe while my stagnant life decayed further and further? I was contemplating these thought-provoking questions when my phone rang. I picked up the phone. “Is this Francis?” a female’s voice on the other line asked.

“Yes,” I responded not knowing who she was. “How can I help you?”

“Well I’m calling you for a phone interview.”

“A phone interview?”
“Yeah.”
“For?”
“A job you applied for.”
Then I remembered!
I’d been waiting for this call which never came. The lady introduced herself and then launched into her role as a staff in the human resources department and management. She proceeded to talk about her employer’s clientele, the types of services her employer offered this clientele, her employer’s vision, and prospects for growth for new and existing employees. Her part of the phone interview was equal parts sermonizing and lecturing. “How long have you been in Colorado?”

“Since 2012.”
“Tell me a little about yourself.”
And I did.
She then asked me a few specific questions about my work experience, about my education, and about what I hope to bring to her employer. I answered these questions to the best of my knowledge.

“How much do you weigh?” she asked after I was done answering her laundry of questions.

“About 125 pounds.” I didn’t understand where she was heading with this strange question, an unexpected question to boot, the first time ever that I was being asked such a question in a job-related interview, an informal interview for that matter. I thought I was in a clinic, a hospital, or being prepped for a featherweight title fight. What she didn’t know was that the challenges of life had turned my previous heavyweight division into a paperweight division. I was now Saddam Hussein’s entombed paper tiger caught up in the weeping jungle and cat’s cradle of life.

“Great!”
I thought through a number of questions to ask her. “May I ask you a question, please?”

“Sure, why not? Go ahead.”
“Why my weight?”
“What did you say?”
I hesitated before answering her question as other questions competed for my attention. “Never been asked this question before in a job-related interview?”

She laughed. “Never been?”
I laughed too. “Are you serious?” I still thought she was joking. I also couldn’t believe my ears.

She continued to laugh. “Of course.” She seemed to be enjoying herself in this interview.

“Well, Francis, we need your weight to help us determine the weight of boxes you’ll be carrying, lifting in one of our warehouses.”

I never saw this coming, this neutron bomb now being dropped upon my unsuspecting, unprotected head. A warehouse? Was this what I’d applied for? What was the origin of this warehouse idea? I was a dead man and couldn’t tell tales anymore. She was as silent as a sleeping grave. I was weighing these questions and their possible answers in my congested mind when she punctured the bubble of my contemplation. I was silent for a moment. “Are you there Francis?”

“Yes.”
“Is everything alright?”
“Yes.”
“You sound a bit worried.”
“Well, well…”
“Is there anything you are worried about regarding this interview? Anything you want me to know?”

I hesitated asking any more questions but eventually changed my mind. “The warehouse…” My voice trailed off.

“Oh I see. What about it, the warehouse?”

“Not that a warehouse job is demeaning. Not that I am better than a warehouse job. I am not. But I think you may have mistaken me for someone else.”

“How so?” She laughed. “Mistaking you for someone else? How is this possible? Haven’t you already confirmed every piece of information you provided on your job application?”

I joined the train of laughter. “Yes.”
“Ok.”
“Something is definitely wrong here,” I interjected. “Miss, because I don’t think I applied for a warehouse position.”

“Think about the offer,” she dragged on, “and call me when you make a decision.”

That was the end of this promising job. A sad aspect of this interview, about the eventful demise of this advertised job particularly, was that it brought back to life another demoralizing experience I had with a promising job offer in New Jersey after I graduated from Northeastern University. A friend of mine who was a year ahead of me in our undergraduate mathematics program, and lived in New Jersey, where he taught high school mathematics after graduating from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) with a Master’s in Information Systems, alerted me to a New Jersey-based agency that was recruiting graduates with majors in computer programming, statistics, operations research, mathematics, management science, information systems, and engineering.

My friend with whom I was living at the time then introduced me to an agency recruiter who agreed to consider my job application if I demonstrated proficiency in SPSS Statistics, a software tool for statistical analysis. The recruiter and I began a long series of correspondences, during which he sent me a number of statistics problems, to which he expected solutions based on the SPSS software. When he was finally satisfied with my work, he asked me to come in for a formal interview. The interview went well until he inquired about my immigration status. “Are you an international student?”

“No.”
“What is your status then?”
“I am a US citizen.”
“Good.”
He ended the interview on a good note with a promise to give me a call. I went home buried in a cloud of elation. Of course, I never heard from him again because he refused to pick my calls or those of my friend. A staff of the agency, my friend’s classmate, later told us the agency recruited mostly international students because the agency made more money off these students than students with green cards and US citizenship.

According to my friend, the agency, it turned out, took sizeable cuts of the salaries they negotiated for these international students in return for their employment, with a number of companies positioned nation-wide that it posted these students to after their graduation, while it used a fraction of the cuts to enlist the services of lawyers to secure work permits―in the form of H-1B visas―for these students.

This would’ve been the best job offer for me since I moved to the US if my application had successfully gone through.

Not knowing what to do next in the aftermath of the warehouse job fiasco I contacted two of my good friends at Temple University, Drs. Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, the Chair of Africology and African American Studies and the Graduate Director of Africology and African American Studies, respectively, about my interest in their doctoral program. Following the prime examples of Howard University’s mathematician, economist, historian and author Kofi Kissi Dompere, a close friend, and of others such as Ron Eglash, author of African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design, I wanted to investigate how best to use the interplay among science, mathematics, technology, engineering, Africology, and African American Studies to generate optimal strategies for tackling problems specific to the larger African world―Africa and the African diaspora, a higher level of art form I thought was worthy of my time and intellectual resources.

Drs. Mazama and Asante, however, succeeded in getting me admitted into the master’s program but I didn’t get funding for it. I was so happy for this initially. Dr. Asante was conversant with my intellectual capability, was of the view that I could complete the doctoral program in three rather than five years, and was also aware of my intimate familiarity with the content structures of the texts upon which the comprehensive exam was based. Unlike doctoral students who received funding for their studies, I didn’t receive funding. Therefore, I made a decision to defer the program for a year in the hope that the department would rescind its decision not to fund me.

My understanding was that my undergraduate and graduate studies hadn’t been in the humanities, thus admitting me directly into the doctoral program wouldn’t have sat well with the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. In the final analysis, I didn’t enroll in the program because the department stood its ground not to fund me. Charles Bradley’s soulful “Why Is It So Hard?” sums up my American journey:

“Why is it so hard to make it in America?
“I tried so hard to make it in America
“A land of milk and honey, a land supposed to be built with love

“It takes love and understanding to live and let live

“I was born and raised in Florida
“I traveled far and wide
“Then I moved to Brooklyn New York
“Had hard times, but sometime I hold on…

“Seemed like nothing is going right
“So I said to myself, you gotta move away from here

“I went off to state of New York, a little town they call Poughkeepsie

“Got me a job to get away from all that stress

“But I couldn't get away, no matter how far I went

The friend who introduced the employment agency to me understood my plight because he’d been battling the faceless nemeses of the American Dream as a teacher of mathematics in New Jersey. During one of his many teaching sessions, a student of his raised his hand to ask him a question, “Did you sleep with monkeys in Africa?” He was so disturbed by this question that, in a fit of mindless confusion, he quickly packed his personal effects and stormed out of the class, driving straight home. I was there with his live-in girlfriend when he got home, drenched in a pool of sweat and anger. He told his girlfriend everything. “Now that you are home and don’t want to teach anymore when you don’t have another job,” she said, “how are we going to pay the bills?”

Then, without warning, rather than justifying his off-the-cuff actions, he picked up his personal effects again and drove back to the school. He’d later enlist in the U.S. Navy out of frustration.

Charles understood my plight, my arboreal forests of struggles so well.

Charles understood his own plight and intimidating struggles so well, like his soulful threnody “Why Is It So Hard?” In America, the Promised Land of the American Dream, hard work and honesty and studiousness and deferred gratification sometimes don’t pay. It’s probably why many resort to crime, cutting corners on the path to the heart and soul of the American Dream.

The American Dream murdered Charles in cold blood at the moment success came knocking on his door. This is why the American Dream shouldn’t be trusted.

I think Charles was me, and I, him. We were merely mirror images―spitting images of a haunting illusion, the American Dream. I’d lost my art because it’s so hard to make it in America.

A question from me to the American Dream, why is it so hard to make it in America?