I once had the temerity at a Black Press luncheon at the National Press Club to whisper to Army General Vincent Brooks: “Don’t mess up. Don’t embarrass us.”
I had a lot of nerve.
Gen. Brooks is “The Barack Obama of West Point.” He is the first Black Brigade Commander at the U.S. Military Academy–the highest rank attainable by a cadet at West Point. That’s like being the President of the Harvard Law Review. Like being first in his class.
And just like Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) who is poised to be elected President of the United States, Gen. Brooks has Hollywood-leading-man good looks, and he earned his honors based on his undeniable qualifications inside a system that remains to this day, everything but a meritocracy, a level playing field.
But unlike Sen. Obama, who was reared by a single mom with the help of her parents, Gen. Brooks is the younger brother of an Army General–Leo Brooks Jr.–and his father, Leo Brooks, was also an Army General.
I had a lot of nerve cautioning a distinguished soldier like Gen. Brooks. But I come from the generation of Black men whose memories are fresh with the example of friends with college degrees, sometimes master’s degrees, who still worked the night shift at the U.S. Post Office because they could not get work in their fields of preparation. We knew the Post Office to be the “Graveyard of Black Ambition.” Continue reading