Speaking of Jindal, Esquire came out with its yearly best and brightest. While I am trying to move away from bean counting, it’s very difficult to do. Particularly when it at least appears as if that is the modus operandi for many prominent American magazines. If you don’t know what I mean, check out the yearly film issue of Vanity Fair. The cover is usually a three page pullout, with only the first page visible to the casual browser. For the past several years the “colored” person is always in exactly the same spot. Not on the outsider cover, but third to the ledt of the first inside cover (the middle page of the layot). I can’t help but think, “damn…good enough for the cover, but not really” every time I see it. Most black people play versions of this game.
So I noticed that in this year’s best and brightest there were a few non-whites….four to be exact. But of the various scientists, architects, businessmen, and visionaries…the only non-whites were politicos. Jindal was there (as a sidenote, Jindal is barely 35), as was Kendrick Meeks, Jesse Jackson Jr., and Harold Ford Jr. Meeks, Jackson, and Ford are all not only congressmen, but second generation politicos, with Ford and Meeks’ father and mother respectively serving in the House before their children ascended to take over their spots, and Jackson’s father being…well you know.
So I’m thinking about the brothers I know. Just in my fraternity, I know a young brother with a Ph.D. in physics who is working to build the next generation of high-powered lasers for Dow, another young brother with a PhD in physiology who is working to unpack the genetic basis for obesity, and yet another brother with a PhD in Chemical Engineering (who is also a reverend incidentally) who is working for NASA trying to ensure that the next generation of African American scientists have even more opportunities to succeed than do the present generation. None of these men are interested in hype as it were, so I wouldn’t expect Esquire to necessarily know about them. But I’ll be damned if black excellence doesn’t appear in more spaces than in some political box, even given mechanics of white supremacy.
Posted by at November 21, 2003 08:19 PM | TrackBack
Hey LKS whats the message ;only politicos should apply.Politics is a noble profession only when public service is the prerequisite.Sadly in America thats not the case only staying in office is foremost in there mind.
Posted by: tootsie at November 24, 2003 07:35 AM