A Man from Another Land: How Finding My Roots Changed My Life (3 page)

“Do you need another pen, son?” The recruiter asked, wondering why I was hesitating.

“No, sir,” I replied. “This one works just fine.”

“You can keep it, if you want,” he said.

I looked back down at the piece of paper. The blank line was just waiting there, waiting for my signature. I signed my name,
Isaiah Washington. I looked at the blue and white ballpoint pen. “Aim High” was inscribed on the side of it.

I thought about myself on the cover of
Time
magazine as General Washington, the first black United States Air Force
Five-Star General. I imagined myself on TV, and my name being mentioned with pride. “Did you hear what amazing, courageous
thing ‘Mickey’ did?”

This was my first step toward manhood. My graduating class of 1981 was the first graduating class of Willowridge High School.
That bit of history came and went. The celebration cake had been eaten. The money from the gift certificates had been spent.
Only the recruiter and I knew that I had joined the air force. I hadn’t told anyone what I was going to do. I had yet to tell
Mama. Now that I had graduated we had a lot more time to talk than we ever had before. She still considered me her baby, but
she talked to me as if I were a man.

Three days before I was to report for basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, I finally got up the
nerve to let the cat out of the bag. Mama was in the bathroom taking a bath, and I stood in the hallway and spoke to her through
a crack in the door. My heart was beating so hard I could hear it pounding in my chest. “I’m leaving, Mama. I’m going to San
Antonio.”

“What the hell are you going all the way there for?” she asked.

“I got a job,” I continued.

“A job? Boy, the post office is hiring right up the street. I checked for you. You know I’ll let you stay here as long as
you’re working. You don’t have to go all the way to no San Antonio.”

“I have to go, Mama. I’m working for the government.”

“Post office is a government job, son.”

“I joined the air force, Mama.”

There was a long silence. Then she screamed, “WHAT!”

I could hear the splash of water as she leaped out of the tub. She didn’t even bother to dry herself off; she just grabbed
her robe and pulled it around her. The door flung open, and she stood there, dripping wet.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“I joined the air force, Mama. I’m gonna be an aerospace engineer and a pilot.”

I watched as an entire range of emotions washed over her face: anger, resentment, fear, sadness, and then, finally, acceptance.

”Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked quietly.

“It’s my life, Mama. I gotta decide what’s best for me.”

“What’s best for you? Boy, you barely pee straight. Oh my God, you’re just seventeen years old.”

“I’ll be eighteen in three months, Mama. I’m a man.”

“Eighteen ain’t no man, Mickey!”

I looked into her eyes. I knew she was going to be shocked, but I had no idea it was going to cause her this much pain. She
started crying, sobbing like a baby. I felt helpless. I didn’t know what to do. I loved my mama, but I knew it was time for
me to get out and make my mark on the world, to make her proud of me, to live up to my name.

“You mad at Mama? Are you leaving ’cause of me? Are you tryin’ to get away from me?” she pleaded.

“No, Mama, you can’t afford to take care of me anymore. Just look after you now. It’s gonna be all right, Mama. You’ll see.
I promise. I’m gonna be just fine. You’re gonna see. I’m not gonna disappoint you like Daddy did. I’m not going to end up
like my daddy. I’m gonna make you proud. You’ll see.”

I was ready for the world; at least I thought I was. Whether I was or not didn’t matter, because it was too late to back out.
“General Washington,” I said under my breath. “General Washington.”

The military provides one with a strong sense of extreme patriotism and the doctrine of taking and following orders. The only
time you are an individual is on the weekends. I could not promote a particular party while I was serving. If I wanted to
vote it had to be as an absentee in the state where I was from. I was eighteen years old; I could die for my country, but
I could not legally buy alcohol. After just a short time in the air force, I knew that spending twenty years in the military
was not going to be my purpose or legacy in life. After serving my four years, I left.

In 1985, I reentered civilian life. I like to say I had a “midlife crisis” at twenty-two years old. I knew my life was off
track. I wanted to “find my purpose.” I was certain the military wasn’t my life’s calling, but I had no idea what was. I was
living in Gaithersburg, Maryland, working as a temp at IBM. A year later, in 1986, someone gave me a book called
History of the Theatre
by Oscar Brockett. I didn’t know anything about acting or the world of theater. There was a picture and a name in the book…
Ossie Davis. As I read about him, I learned about his Pan-African philosophy and his legacy at Howard University, where he
founded a theater company, the Howard Players.

On that same day, a friend took me to see the movie
She’s Gotta Have It
. I was inspired by the strong, complicated, dignified black characters that appeared on the screen. I was filled with so
much pride that such an amazing and important work was written and directed by a black man. As I left the theater, I walked
taller and felt an overwhelming sense of dignity. I also wanted to create art that would inspire people to see African Americans
in the same way I saw those characters on the screen. I thought, “If this guy, Spike Lee, is doing this kind of work, then
I want to do that too.” I said to myself, “Ossie Davis is an actor with the Howard Players. Howard University is not too far
from my house. This is what I want to do.”

When I told people I wanted to be an actor, that I had a ten-year plan to work with Lee, the exciting new director, and that
I would also one day meet the venerable Ossie Davis in person, they would just smirk, or raise their eyebrows, writing
my comments off as mere persiflage. But I was undaunted by the naysayers, the people who told me I couldn’t. I pursued my
new dream with an unbridled focus, intent on gaining a platform to do what I really wanted, use my newfound artistry to eradicate
stereotypes and educate the world about the complexities of the African American male and his humanity.

It was Davis’s tenure at Howard that led me to apply to the university. In 1987, I became a student there. Just as no one
believed I’d meet him, no one thought I’d go to college. Few people from my neighborhood went to college, and most of my family
members barely made it through high school.

Later in my life, I would have the honor to meet Ossie Davis when working with him on the Spike Lee film
Get on the Bus
. And after Ossie Davis died, I was again honored that BET CEO Debra Lee chose me to give a tribute to him at my first and
only BET Awards appearance.

My experience at Howard was not at all what I had hoped it would be. I soon discovered that just like back in my old neighborhood,
people had in their minds degrees of blackness, ideas of what it meant to be “black.” The campus culture—students, faculty,
and administrators—included judgments of each other’s “blackness.” At Howard, I would soon discover just how black I was and
how black I was not.

Things were not easy there on any level. I slept in my car for the first week because I had no money for student housing.
I couldn’t find a job that allowed me to attend classes by day and work at night. Socially, I felt cold and alienated. The
term “African American” was not available to me yet. It seemed only my hue determined my relevance in the caste system that
was campus culture, just like in the eyes of the Frazier sisters.

One night, thinking that I might find some camaraderie among other black “brothers,” I attended a “smoker” for the Alpha Phi
Alpha fraternity. However, it was immediately made
very clear to me that entry into the group was not predicated on our shared history as black males. Rather, permission to
pledge and join the line was contingent upon my ability to produce a valid American Express card. To the Alpha Phi Alphas,
doing so would validate me and prove that I came from a wealthy family. I refused to respond to such an idiotic request and
left.

I was later approached by another fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi. To gain entry into that organization, I was required to subject
myself to the “paper bag” test (a degrading test that blacks had been historically subjected to in order to determine if their
skin color was light enough to gain entry into certain places or groups) and get an S-Curl (a popular hairstyle at the time
which involved applying a chemical process to curl and soften the hair). When I refused to do either, they recommended that
I join the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, whose members, they said, “look like you.”

The women of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, made up mostly of lighter-skinned black women, treated me no better. They refused
to even look my way while I was on campus, deeming me too dark to be from a wealthy family, and therefore not appropriate
dating material.

Just as when I was a child, I couldn’t figure out this obsession with the lightness or darkness of one’s skin color, or why
the texture of one’s hair was so important. This idea of what supposedly constituted black beauty seemed idiotic to me.

I had no interest in pursuing membership in a fraternity, and instead turned my attention to other things. In addition to
pursuing my acting career, I was increasingly intrigued by the continued questions I got from native West Africans on the
streets of DC about my background. I focused on learning more about Africa and its people. While apathy was high among the
general student body, I was growing more interested particularly in what was happening in South Africa.

Nelson Mandela had become, and still is, a source of great inspiration. I felt very connected to him and the plight of the
South African people. And unlike the Alphas and the Kappas, the African people looked like me. Further, unlike the lighter-skinned
students and others who looked at my dark skin with contempt and disdain, the African people I encountered almost always smiled
at me and were happy to greet me.

I spent my time attending private meetings, planning and marching in antiapartheid protest rallies that were commonplace in
DC at the time. I handed out flyers and “Free Nelson Mandela” buttons to help raise awareness of what was happening in South
Africa. I even once played the part of a South African freedom fighter in the play
Tied-Apart
written by Clayton LeBouef. It ran for three weeks in a church playhouse, the Sanctuary Theatre.

Still things on campus grew increasingly difficult. I continued to find the so-called pedigreed students shallow, mean-spirited,
and elitist. I ran out of money, and could not qualify for tuition assistance. I was told that to attend class, I would have
to satisfy my tuition bill in full. Yet, at the same time, two of my classmates who had lighter complexions and “good hair”
were allowed to remain in class, even though it was common knowledge among the students and faculty that neither had paid
his full tuition. The deans, two light-skinned women, looked the other way. Apparently, the prevailing assumption at the school,
shared with me by a darker-skinned professor, Joe Selmon, was that Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Miller would excel in Hollywood,
in New York theater, and on TV as leading men.

Desperate to earn money, I was forced to take a job doing dinner theater with a company owned by Dr. Jeffrey Newman, a light-skinned
Howard professor. The pay was minuscule, but the exposure and experience turned out to be a blessing.

At the close of each evening, I was entitled to a meal. One
night over dinner, one of my cast mates, a white woman, chided me for using the term “axed” when I spoke, instead of the appropriate
“asked.” I must have said something like, “I axed him for a ride,” as opposed to “I asked him for a ride.” This was how everyone
said the word back home. I never realized I should say it a different way. Today, I thank her for bringing the error to my
attention in such a loving and respectful way. From then on, I made sure to pronounce the word properly.

We would talk about various things as we ate. She was more interested than the majority of my African American peers at Howard
were in the atrocities taking place under apartheid rule in South Africa. Their focus was on getting “the envelope” in the
mail. I watched as many of them excitedly held it up to the light, feeling for a hard spot inside. If it was hard, it meant
they had received a new American Express card and, in the eyes of the rest of the student body, were now legitimate. The times
seemed to be all about those who were accepted and those who were denied.

But this was not my story. Still just in my early twenties, I had already experienced much. I had married at age twenty-one,
separated, divorced three years later; worked as a Kelly’s temp at IBM; dug ditches and worked on construction sites for the
Tracy Labor Company; and served four years in the United States Air Force and been honorably discharged. I had acquired, and
lost, all of the very credit cards that my peers lusted after.

On campus, I felt surrounded by psychosis and self-hatred based on one’s skin color, family bank account, and status in the
community. It was absurd to me to focus on these things when so many South Africans were being killed, raped, maimed, and
displaced in their own country by whites.

One day I came across a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see.” It resonated with me. I realized that
I couldn’t focus on my fellow students’ lack of understand
ing of the importance of Africa in terms of their own identity as African Americans. The quote became a call to action for
me in my own life.
I
had to become the change that I wanted to see. Through my work, through my life, I had to become my own example.