For those who have read my pieces, I'm something of a contrarian. Black leaders? Against them. Black churches? Strong critiques of them. Black Public Intellectuals? Most of them I can't stand.
But you know what?
I like Tavis Smiley's Pass the Mic tour. Now I don't really like Tavis (gives soft shoe interviews particularly with brothers and sisters), Michael (there's something about a 45 year old full professor busting a rhyme and posing like a b-boy that i find distasteful), or Cornel (Don't get me started). And at first I thought this was just another hustle.
But Barbara Streisand changed my mind.
Remember when Barbara was doing her farewell tour? I think tickets ran about $1000 a pop at LEAST. I think Streisand is ok...but people who most likely had all of her cds ALREADY were willing to shill out massive loot for her supposed final performance. If folks are willing to shell out that type of loot for a singer...why not for a set of public intellectuals?
Another way to think about it. For those of us lucky enough to even live NEAR a college campus, we can see these cats on a regular basis. I was just on a panel with Michael Eric Dyson on hip-hop last year (best lecture on the subject I ever heard to give Dyson his props, but why did he have to leave in the middle of the panel discussion to give ANOTHER lecture all the way in Boston?!?). Cornel has fallen through the University of Missouri at St. Louis a few times, and I just didn't fell like seeing him. But what about those of us who aren't as lucky? Shouldn't they have access to these cats (for what it is worth) as well? As much as I can't get with Dyson or West NOW, they were very influential in my own decision to pursue the life of the mind (no...they aren't the knuckleheads I refer to...though they DO fit the bill). I'm thinking they are going to give those in attendance something to think about.
A third way to think about it. What would you call the intellectual version of the Kings of Comedy?
I had a chance to glance through NO EXCUSES by Abigail Thernstrom. I also heard an interview she gave on NPR last night. I agree with some of her prescriptions. I believe for example that teachers and staff should be held accountable for outcomes--if they are given the resources in order to make change happen. I do not believe vouchers are the solution, but I do think charter schools are a step in the right direction. And while I am a union guy, I also believe that communities should have more power to determine what does and does not go on in their schools.
But Thernstrom's argument falls apart in at least one place theoretically and there are a number of flaws methodologically.
Take her interview for example. The interviewer asks her whether she thinks teachers should be paid more--perhaps money is part of the problem. Thernstrom acknowledges that people who tend to go into teaching are--with some exceptions--usually not the brightest or most powerful of students. However, she then argues that the reason this is the case is NOT because they are underpaid, but rather because of all the paperwork that education schools foster upon students. Her solution is twofold: increase the pay differential between good teachers and bad teachers, open up teaching to people without education degrees.
I don't know about you, but this argument doesn't quite cohere well. It seems to me that the reason why the best and the brightest now tend to pursue law and business degrees is at least partially because of a combination of interest, and the monetary incentive structure embedded in higher education. The best and the brightest tend to turn away from education not because most of them are uninterested in being teachers, but because of the monetary DISINCENTIVES that turn them away from being educators. Compared to the fundamental question of loot, I think paperwork is a distant second.
While I can understand the second solution--the educational bureaucracy is stifling change so we need to bring in change agents from the outside--I'm not sure I buy this either. Even if it were possible, would you want a lawyer without a license representing you? A doctor without an MD? How would opening up the teaching profession to people who have never stepped into a classroom actually raise performance levels?
The methodological flaws are serious, and severe. In order to properly model the racial achievement gap, you have to account for all significant theoretical variables. For example we know that the education of the mother has a strong impact on the achievement of the child. We also know that material resources are also meaningful. We know that region has an impact (living in the south as opposed to the rest of the country), that urban/suburban distinctions are important, that ethics of care are also crucial.
But with one exception, all of the Thernstrom's tables simply compare educational achievement by race. Now I'm not actually sure whether the Thernstroms actually KNOW multivariate regression, nor do they appear to know the literature on race in education. Finally they don't appear to really understand black culture. In the interview, Thernstrom notes that some people are simply "culturally lucky." Black people just don't happen to be lucky in that way.
When Thernstrom thinks of black culture what exactly does she think of? Even taking the concept of "oppositional culture" there is a strength there that is highly portable and beneficial for blacks (and Americans) of all backgrounds. Like I said before, I have my PhD BECAUSE OF (not in spite of) the knuckleheads.
So while this work is an important one to grapple with for those of us interested in old school solutions to higher education, it is in many ways a work of ignorance. And while I can understand why they might be ignorant about black life, black culture, and the literature on educational outcomes ignorance is NO EXCUSE.
Next semester I teach Public Opinion and American Democracy (I'm looking forward to student attempts to create their own propaganda!) and a senior seminar for African American Studies majors. The students register today.
As of this moment I have 10 students in my senior seminar class, and another 4 on the waitlist.
No men.
I talked about class as behavior. Thinking about class in this fashion is meritocratic in one sense I guess, in that the barometer isn't how much money you have (income or wealth) or what type of gig you have. The barometer is character. Pure and simple.
The content of one's character SHOULD determine one's worth.
But let's take a look at this further. When I asked my Race and Politics class to determine what is and is not "lower class behavior" this is what they came up with: talking loud at the movies, criminal behavior, drug use, disgusting eating habits, bad manners, kids that cuss (i came up with that one). There are a lot of other indicators...but let's be real. We know what ghetto is when we see it. A single mom on welfare is ghetto.
Or is she?
I am a professor at one of the top ten schools in the country (whatever that means). I remember talking to one of my former students about a project I was working on involving hiphop. He told me that he could help me if I needed tracks, because he had a lot of them downloaded.
"How many?" I asked.
"About 5 or 10 thousand."
My jaw dropped. If that isn't criminal behavior I don't know what is. Kids on college campuses routinely download not only full albums, but full-length movies, and entire seasons of shows like the Sopranos.
But that isn't "ghetto" is it?
A lawyer decides that she does not want to wait to for marriage to have a child. What does she become? She becomes a role model.
So there's an obvious double standard that goes on.
Now one counter-argument coming from the old school would be that these lower-class folk are bringing down the race by touting negative images. But we've been down
Thinking about Cobb's Old School Values, I argued that discretion should be added. Knowing when to speak, and when to shut the hell up, automatically gives people with that skill a leg up on people without that skill. Even in the rap game. But there's another value that should be added as well--tenacity. The ability to fight and fight and fight and fight.
Then fight some more.
I believe that folks like Allen Iverson, Warren Sapp, and 50 Cent, have that in SPADES. And without that value, where exactly would we be?
I'm going to apply this directly to education next time around, in a piece called "How knuckleheads got me my PhD."
One of the reasons the idea of "old school values" resounds with me so much is because it is one of the organizing principles upon which my fraternity, and much of black college life was (and probably still IS) based. Being old school was to a certain extent about time served, and about experiences acquired and applied. If you had to say you were old school....most likely you weren't. (To reiterate: discretion is a virtue.)
So when Cobb noted that he wanted to create kind of an intellectual old school family tree, I looked around (as an aside if i were to designate a triumvirate, it'd be coterminous with the contrarian school--Adolph Reed, Harold Cruse, Albert Murray) and came up with the following treatise I wrote. The original list was about 75 deep, but I culled it a bit. The concept of the basics again goes back to my fraternity, and is very much related to the idea of the old school.
In 1998 a number of individuals interested in preserving and propagating those principles upon which the pursuit of the noble and the just is founded, began the Basics Institute. An institute designed to study and propagate those self same principles. Given that any life truly worth living must be based, at some level, on understanding history, we have presented this book list in the hope of generating discussion, and similar efforts on other levels.
The Basics Institute has taken the stance that the history and life of the descendants of enslaved Africans stand at the center of the American experience. As such, classic works which illuminate various aspects of the lives of this community are truly universal in that they deal with aspects of all members of the American family. Though an individual may not be African American, there is undoubtedly something she can take from The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Furthermore, there is something that African Americans—even Christian African Americans, can gain from The Tao Te Ching. These works are truly universal and speak to not only the grand, but also to the tragic as well. Books such as Political Ideology are included precisely because they speak to the reasons why some members of the American community seek to foster beliefs which are spiritually underdeveloped. And given that some of the greatest American philosophers, such as Martin Luther King jr., or Anna Julia Cooper, received some of their ideas from their European American counterparts, the Basics Institute has also chosen a few works such as Walden. We hope that you would disseminate this list to as many as you see fit, and create similar ones for yourselves. (The works are not listed in order of importance.)
1. Tao Te Ching
There is a subtle rhythm captured here that represents the essence of what it means to capture God in text. Kind of like trying to catch mist.
2. The New Testament
The tension between Jesus on the one hand, and Paul on the other is stark...wayy too stark for my take (I think Paul was a bastard). But the lesson of Jesus is a powerful testimony.
3. The Apocryphal Gospels
Some Christians may not agree, but I believe that the selection (and rejection) of text is a political act. The Apocryphal Gospels represent a vision of Christianity that was suppressed. Christians would do well to read it in order to get another perspective on what God (and Jesus) meant to those professing belief.
4. The Old Testament
Man. Reading the Old Testament one can understand how enslaved Africans were able to take what was essentially a religion used to subjugate them, and find something powerful and majestic in it.
5. The Book of Emanations of Ra
Referred to as "the Book of the Dead." Karenga translates it as "The Book of Coming Forth by Day" but my brother Dr. Caurnel Morgan thinks the above title is more correct. I believe that the true old school lies in the wisdom of the Ancients. The 42 Negative Confessions alone are worth the price of the book. Remember my ideas about discretion? I don't know which number it is, but the Ancients were thought to have violated the right order of things by "speaking too much."
6. The Wisdom Literature of Ancient KMT
See above. The Ancients got it right.
7. Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Harold Cruse
Cruse was/is one of the most insightful intellectuals produced on American soil. Writing in the sixties he recognizes many of the pitfalls of both black nationalism on the one hand and black integrationism on the other. He calls for an agressive "Negro cultural nationalism" that would take the best of black AMERICAN culture and place its material products in the hands of black communities.
8. Shadow and Act Ralph Ellison
A book of Ellison's essays. Invisible Man is below, but Ellison's non-fiction work is important as well. As I think about it Trading Twelves would also be an excellent addition.
9. Plural But Equal Harold Cruse
In this work, Cruse moves away from the cultural dynamic and addresses the political sphere. Arguing that Brown v. Board was a failure (the first person I saw make this argument), Cruse calls for a political movement that recognizes the unique caste position of black folk in America. I am not doing the work justice, but you should really see how he skewers Thomas Sowell in about a paragraph or so.
10. The Miseducation of the Negro Carter G. Woodson
Classic. But miseducation isn't just for blacks anymore...if it ever was in the first place. Woodson and Gramsci deal with some of the same themes of hegemony, of the media, and of the role of organic intellectuals.
11. Class Notes Adolph Reed
Reed is an old school Marxist, fighting the good fight in both academia and on the street. Class NOtes is a compilation of columns written for the Village Voice and for the Progressive. Most of the ideas I have about the way black politics should be analysed (and practiced) come from either Reed, Cruse, or Albert Murray. The pieces I've been writing about Dean? I'm channelling Reed.
12. Beyond Good and Evil Frederich Nietzsche
There's something to be said for setting standards and pursuing them aggressively, and going whereever that path takes you. Nietzsche is lightning in a bottle.
13. Up From Slavery Booker T. Washington
I don't like Washington much to be honest, but there are a few texts that you have to read to really get a handle on the deep south. This is one of them.
14. The Souls of Black Folk WEB Dubois
Dubois wrote this when he was MAYBE 28. Hasn't gone out of print in 100 years. Enough said.
15. Black Reconstruction WEB Dubois
Black Reconstruction represents an attempt to on the one hand grapple with the most important era of our history--the post-Civil War era--and on the other place black men and women firmly within American history as agents of their own destiny.
16. The Philadelphia Negro WEB Dubois
With this piece--an extended exegesis on the way that urban context impacted American life, using the Negro in Philly as the focus--Dubois drags sociology (a baby at the time) into the 20th Century. He PERSONALLY interviewed several hundred men and women in Philadelphia for the study.
17. The Omni American Albert Murray
I've said it before. Before I read Murray I was a nationalist with a capital N. Didn't think an American flag was good for much more than wiping. Murray's work here changed that.
18. Democracy in America Alexis DeTocqueville
Some say we are foreigners even though we've been here since 1619. As noted directly above, I thought this as well. But for insight into what a real foreigner thought, check out DeTocqueville--who travelled around America in the 19th century to get a feel for the new American experiment. The second volume isn't as interesting as the first, but this work is remarkably prescient.
19. When and Where I Enter Paula Giddings
Writes American history from the standpoint of black women. I learned the real story about Rosa Parks here.
20. Testament of Hope Martin Luther King Jr.
It should be made law that no one should quote King without reading this work--a compilation of most of his major speeches as well as his three books (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Why We Can't Wait, Where Do We Go From Here?).
21. A Voice From the South Anna Julia Cooper
A forgotten voice from the beginning of the twentieth century. While in many ways Cooper's viewpoint on black Americans was mired in uplift ideology (if black people acted right and carried themselves right they would be treated right) she still developed some of the themes that would later appear in the work of prominent black feminists and womanists.
22. Conversations in Maine James and Grace Boggs
The Boggs' are old school organizers from Detroit. James passed away a few years back, while Grace is still kicking. They, like Murray, have not only helped me to recognize that this land really IS my land, but that our struggle isn't simply a struggle for black people. It is a struggle for the WORLD. Not just today, but 1000 years from today. Conversations in Maine represents an attempt to grapple with the fundamental political and social questions of the early seventies. They met once a year during the summer, in Maine, with a few other old school activists, for the purpose of theorizing from practice.
23. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom Charles Payne
If the Old School concept existed during the Civil Rights Movement, few figures would be more worthy of the moniker than those who fought outside the spotlight, doing political organizing in places like Mississippi and Alabama while King was on tv. Payne's work tells the story of the real Civil Rights Movement.
24. Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
The American novel. Period.
25. Radical Equations Robert Moses
Want to change the schools? Want to REALLY change the schools? Want to change the schools AND build citizens too? READ THIS BOOK. NOW.
Been here done that.
If you've got access, check out this article. Talks about Dean reaching out to black voters. Where does it start, praytell?
In a baptist church, where for once a black dean supporter "doesn't stand out."
But it gets better. When Dean supposedly describes what he has that connects him with black voters how does he respond?
"In a recent interview, Dr. Dean summed up his relationship with black voters the way he had at a dinner with black leaders in South Carolina: "I've got soul."
"I don't know what I mean by that — I wish I could tell you," he said in the interview. "There's something in me that gets it."
I know a whole lot of people who went to B school. I wish to God I knew more who went to J school.
Because, and maybe I'm wrong, I don't think the whole black people spirit soul god thing would fly if people actually were forced to study the intricacies of black life. To reiterate--not all black people go to church, not all black people believe in God, not all churches are political, most black people don't make their political decisions based on what their pastor (if they have one) tells them to.
I recall when Clinton had his troubles, and it seemed like whenever he was down and almost out, he'd go to a black church and everything would like magic, get better. A colleague of mine wrote a paper arguing that in the face of growing economic troubles in the mid nineties (which in itself should burst the bubble that a rising tide raises all boats) black people were blind to the facts because of their intense love for Bill Clinton. I thought that argument was strangely APOLITICAL, particularly coming from a political scientist. But it is par for the course when it comes to black people.
But wait, there's more:
"Since hiring Andi Pringle, an African-American strategist, as his deputy campaign manager, Dr. Dean has spent many Sundays in black churches. He recently told congregants in Detroit, "Its going to be a long time before I go to a white church again." He also has aides devoted to promoting him in the African-American news media and has hired Doug Thornell, the former spokesman for the black caucus, as his traveling press secretary."
Yep. Make a few hires. Put a few black faces in there. I'm all for brothers and sisters getting gigs. And to be fair there aren't enough of us in political advising positions (if Jesse Jackson didn't do ANYTHING ELSE in either 84 or 88 he at least made it possible for black folk to see the inside of a presidential campaign, something we hadn't seen before). But I wonder if Dean really thinks this will make it all better? I bet I know Pringle's answer.
What does class mean for black folk? As my thoughts about the state of young black men imply, it is very difficult to think about the state of black America without also thinking about matters of class and caste. I say class AND caste, as opposed to class (marxist) OR caste (nationalist), because I think both matter simultaneously.
There are a number of ways to think about class. In order to flesh out these conceptions I'm going to use a number of pop culture referents in order to give folks a handle on what I'm saying.
The Ellisonian notion...which probably encapsulates the old school way of thinking more than any other is simple. Class isn't your relationship to the means of production, or your occupation, or your bank statement, it is how you act. Put another way...class is something you either have or don't have.
Marsalis? Class.
Nelly? Nope.
Grant Hill? Class.
Allen Iverson? Nope.
Class is a mode of being, a way of interacting with the world, a sense of savvy, and discretion in the face of adversity. (As an aside, Cobb's got a list of old school core values. Discretion has GOT to be in there somewhere.) Doesn't matter how broke you are, or how broke your PEOPLE are. If you know that you aren't supposed to be out there with your backend hanging out, you've got class. To a certain extent, this is democratic. Everyone can learn how to carry him/herself right?
Ok. They aren't in the military...or not in large absolute numbers at any rate, because the military is shrinking. They aren't in manufacturing jobs in large numbers (with the exception of places like Detroit), because those jobs are shrinking as well. And they aren't in schools like Washington University or the University of Michigan because these schools routinely have female-male ratios of 4:1.
So the easy answer is that they are incarcerated.
I don't think this answer is the easy one at all.
Angela Davis most notably has fought against the prison industrial complex, arguing that it has directly led to a stark increase in the number of incarcerated men and women in general, and an even starker increase in the number of incarcerated black men and women. For those of you who are unaware, black men and women constitute a numerical majority of the prison population. The majority of these men and women are in jail because of non-violent drug-related crimes (dealing, possessing, etc.). There are at least three political and economic interests that of course, benefit from this boom:
1. Rural communities benefit economically, as most prisons are placed in rural areas. These prisons replace manufacturing plants as a sure fire way to economic growth as they create well-paying jobs with benefits. Because prisoners count for the purposes of representation (even though most of them can't vote), they also increase the political strength of these communities.
2. Multinational corporations benefit economically, as they use prison labor for their products. The image of prisoners pressing license plates has been replaced by prisoners manning 1-800 phones. Customer service anyone?
3. The three-strikes crowd benefits politically because not only does crime sell advertising, stances against crime get votes.
But yet and still I am not convinced that this actually answers our question. Because it seems to me that the prison dynamic impacts lower-income black men, and some middle-income black men. So the population of men most likely to attend places like Michigan or Washington University is a very different population than the one most likely to be sent to jail.
Presenting this in another way. I've got three sets of friends--friends from Inkster, Michigan (poor town/city about twenty minutes outside of Detroit). Friends from undergrad (my fraternity brothers who attend schools all over, and friends from the University of Michigan), and friends from grad school (the University of Michigan). Each of those friendship groups is part of a larger network (comprised of people i know second hand through my friends). Looking at the networks, I know of a significant number of people in the Inkster network who spent time in jail. I know of fewer people in the Michigan network. I know maybe a couple in the grad school network.
But maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong. To a large extent this question is a comparative one. That is it isn't "where have all the black men gone?" It's "where have all the black men gone in relation to the women?"
So we're comparing two distributions across class. The distribution of black women, and the distribution of black men. If we assume that black women regardless of class are more likely to go to college, less likely to go to jail, less likely to go to the military, less likely to be incarcerated....then the end result would be what we have. Women far outnumbering their male counterparts in most college settings. And we would expect women in lower-income schools to outnumber their counterparts 8-1, whereas women in upper -income schools to outnumber their counterparts 4-1?
Taking The Miner's Canary as a guide...the quicker we answer this question and get solutions, the quicker we can deal with the larger problem. Because as quiet as it is kept, top tier schools are now thinking hard about instituting male quotas. Because white men are dropping like flies too.
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.
Kathleen Blanco won the gubernatorial race in Louisiana over the past weekend. Blanco, a Democrat, becomes the first woman in Louisiana’s history to hold that post. But while that story is interesting in its own right that’s not what intrigues me. Her opponent “Bobby” Jindal, is not only a conservative Republican, he is Indian American, and if he would have defeated Blanco he would’ve been the first non-white governor since Reconstruction. According to my colleague Adolph Reed (who is a native Louisianan) Jindal was as far to the right as you can get in politics, calling for the severe curtailment of several policies and programs designed to aid the poor.
Now here is where it gets tricky. Several prominent black religious leaders supported Jindal…as did the (black Democrat) mayor of New Orleans. Jindal only received 9% of the black vote. This should further put to rest the notion that black voters blindly follow their “leaders”. If they DID blindly support their leaders wouldn't they have voted in droves for the minority candidate? Further...if blacks only see color when they walk into the voting booth, wouldn't they have voted for Jindal?
But what I was trying to figure out was why exactly the religious leaders and the mayor would support Jindal over Blanco? From what I gather, Louisiana is (like other states) in a budget crunch, which is probably the reason Jindal gave for wanting to slash and burn social services. I also gather that Blanco did not explicitly create a platform to deal with New Orleans problems, whereas Jindal did.
But something is really fishy. Jindal's policies would've eviscerated social service programs which would've had a horrible impact on the black poor. I believe that in some cases it is appropriate for black voters and representatives to withhold support from Democrats even if it hurts short term black interests. But to give support to a neoconservative instead?
I’m thinking some type of kickback had to be in play.
We know a whole lot of brothers are supposedly drilling j after j in gym after gym (thought you knew--the urban playground is dying out as a consequence of urban disinvestment and budget cuts). We know a FEW brothers are actually making it into the league.
The Fab Five was at Michigan while I was there (Juwan Howard is the real deal...cool as the other side of the pillow. The rest were straight too, but Juwan was cool.). I remember thinking...can't ALL of them make it into the league. The three that do (and it was pretty much known that webber, rose, and howard would get paid. i thought king would too...but jackson was a tweener with no real j or handle) should pay the law school tuition for the two that DON'T. and THEN the two that don't should represent the three that DO.
i didn't say this aloud. and blogs didn't exist then. nobody would've listened to me anyway.
but SOMEBODY GOT THE PICTURE. See the guy that represents both Bryant AND Maguette? Rob Pelinka?
White lawyer. Went to school with me too. Played ball with the Fab Five. Could shoot the lights out...but he knew he couldn't make it into the league.
Now he's got the next best thing.
This is the type of strategic thinking that we've somehow got to transmit to large numbers of young men and women. Some of us get the picture already. We need to increase those numbers.
Christopher Priest is a comic book writer among other things. He singlehandedly put the Lee and Kirby back in Black Panther (re-imagining him as one of the most dangerous men on the face of the planet, rather than as a black guy in a catsuit), and has manipulated time and space and conceptions of the superheroic more than any other mainstream American superhero writer I am aware of.
But more important than that, he gets it right on Lynch. I've said this before...it took me some time to actually embrace the concept of America, to embrace the idea of actually BEING American. About 25 years or so I think (I've got Albert Murray to thank among others). Took me until 9/11 to begin to embrace the American flag. And I had to start really thinking about where all the brothers were at before I started thinking that maybe the armed forces wasn't a bad career decision after all.
But in the wake of a war criminal using a herrenvolk democratic impulse to basically impose an American Reich on the world, in the wake of Lynch being lauded and feted while Johnson and thousands of other vets are seeing their benefits cut severely, I'm not sure how much American sentiment I'm going to be feeling on Veteran's Day.
So what. McNabb comes from behind to win in the frozen tundra of Green Bay. So what it's the fourth time in a row....tying a modern day record.
If he was white, at least one of those teams wouldn't have called it in and let him win.
Bastard.
Listening to the Diane Rehm show today gave me confirmation about a dynamic I thought may be racially tinged. Turns out that the number one environmental cause of mental retardation in kids is fetal alcohol syndrome. Not being born to a crack addicted mother...being born to an alcoholic mother. A group of researchers out of Detroit were actually able to do comparison studies between groups of people addicted to alcohol, groups of people addicted to cocaine (who did NOT use alcohol), and I THINK (the show is still on as I type, so I might be getting this wrong) groups of people addicted to both. This method allowed them to tease out the differences between the two groups. Whereas the babies addicted to cocaine had social problems...and responded very quickly (and wrongly) to stimuli, the response rate of the children addicted to alcohol was very slow (in comparison).
Given all the stuff we used to hear about crack babies back in the eighties (when these kids grow up, we're going to need a WHOLE BUNCH OF PRISONS), this finding gives us pause. Do any of you remember some of the draconian policies enacted against women addicted to cocaine (particularly crack) to keep them from having kids?
Do the words FORCED STERILIZATION ring any bells?
While such a policy enacted to alcoholic women would be just as problematic, I doubt we have anything to worry about. Soccer moms represent a powerful voting demographic...compared to poor women addicted to crack.
The home opener of the Detroit Pistons had Kid Rock singing America the Beautiful with a couple of backup singers. When I first saw him I thought it was a joke...but he didn't do badly. In fact, when I heard him I realized he had some serious country skills. Not Garth Brooks country...Johnny Cash country. So I'm flipping through the Free Press, and check this article out.
What jumps out at me are his comments about hip-hop. How the hell can you be 32 years old and still be in the same artistic place you were at 23?
Here's another way to think about it. Last night I got food poisoning. Like an idiot, I ate some food that was bad...thinking that it didn't matter.
And it didn't. Like TEN YEARS AGO!
So here I am writhing in pain with four kids to take care of, and a basketball game at 3:30. I make the game in time for the beginning of the second half...but it dawns on me. While I have known for quite some time that I am now in middle age--I had a middle aged revelation this summer--I hadn't yet made the transition in my eating habits. I just can't down anything like I used to. I'm in another place.
So when Kid Rock talks about having a 10 year old kid and not wanting to be about wearing bulletproof vests and issuing vendettas I see exactly what he means. MCs are now at the point where they have to make a choice. Mick Jagger in the early seventies said he'd NEVER be playing rock n roll at 50 or 60.
Yeah right.
How would we judge DMX as an artist, as an MC, if at 35 all he's got going on is still the growl?
Outkast has got it right I think.
Ok ok. There are some serious intellectual/academic problems with projecting political positions onto dead folk. It's all well and good as a political strategy, but I wouldn't touch that project for an intellectual conference with a ten foot pole.
But in this case, I'll wade into that pool quickly, then take my black ass out.
My boy Bowen thinks that Malcolm would be a Republican if he were alive today.
I actually don't think it matters much what Malcolm WOULD be, given that he isn't actually HERE to engage in practical political engagement NOW. But for what it's worth while it is easy to point to Malcolm's pro-self defense stance, his stance on black life, and his stance against the government, the central reality is that Malcolm X was an anti-imperialist at the time of his death. And it is very difficult for me to imagine the brother who spoke highly of the Bandung Conference being willing to step arm in arm with the son of the former head of the CIA. Don't get me wrong, Malcolm was old school. Not South old school like the heads in Alabama (who kept quiet until it was time to pounce), but Detroit old school. But just as Farrakhan and his ilk are extra conservative on social matters, they all supported Jesse when push came to shove.
The Army's got a brand new bag. The Godless capitalist thinks it isn't a bad idea. Whatever the case, the Air Force has picked up the ball...I drove by a tricked out Air Force hummer on the way to the office last week. Maybe the young brothers are in the forces?
Nope. The armed forces have pretty much scaled back, though there is some talk about a return to the draft. Where the army, navy, air force, and marines, used to take young brothers (and some sisters) out of places like Detroit like it was nobody's business, there's been a marked attempt to scale back the size of the forces. To use an old school metaphor, the army is trying to become "pimp size." So even though the numbers of working class black, white, and Latino men in the forces are (probably) significantly larger than their proportion in the general population, we can be sure that the gap we're seeing isn't because most of them are in Iraq.
Eventually I'm going to get to some policy solutions, but the Godless capitalist brings up a point. Maybe the army is the best way for young men of various backgrounds to become disciplined and to make a way for themselves. Certainly cities aren't the place for them anymore as manufacturing jobs are being shredded like so much wet paper. If cities have no use for them anymore (I've got Warren/Ralph Ellisonian visions of living mecha cities jettisoning black and latino men out of their pores), then where do they go?
Unless we see a significant political tectonic shift, there won't be a large scale public works project designed to rebuild cities. Unless there's a similar shift in private industry, Rouge Steel is NOT going to be hiring every high school aged graduate in Detroit to work within her dark confines.
So while they aren't there...maybe they should be?
And in as much as hip hop is now the tool used to sell everything from Sprite, to full metal bling bling grills, to Chevrolets, to Ipods....why not use it to recruit? If house music brings me to God, hip hop is the air my generation breathes, the water we drink. But I'll be damned if hiphop lost its revolutionary fervor the minute we lost the distribution rights.
I've been bouncing a lot of P6's stuff in my head. His site was really cooking in early September (and still is). Reviewing the following quote of his I've arrived at something of an ethical dilemma:
There's also a difference in the way we deal with rules and laws. A common statement among Black folks is that as soon as we learn the rules, the rules change. I think it's more subtle than that. The problem is that there's a split in how they are interpreted by Blacks and whites (another subtle thought!). For white folks, the rule for applying rules is: That which is not forbidden is allowed. For Black folks, the rule for applying rules is: That which is not allowed is forbidden. White folks are punished for breaking the law; Black folks are punished for failure to follow the law. When law tells white folks what they can't do, it tells Black folks what we can do. When law tells white folks what they can do, it tells Blacks what we must do.
I think that Malcolm would probably be a Republican if he were alive today (boy I'd love to see him slapping Diane Feinstein around, but I digress). I think so because I know he would be pro-gun, pro-life, anti-government, pro-business. But on that last score I thought about the following. If Malcolm were a pro-business and presumeably anti-tax, would he do what Arianna does? That is to say if he were rich would he use tax attorneys to get him the best breaks on his taxes possible?
This is probably not a fair issue to place at the feet of those two. Huffington for her part says that it's the illegal shoving of huge deductions through already fat loopholes that is the problem, not necessarily that loopholes exist. If her miniscule tax bill were illegal, then she'd have more explaining to do than she does. And now that I think about it, I don't think Malcolm would have any problem whatsoever keeping every dime from the feds, and the state.
Still the question of black ethics stands in light of bogarding against the presumptions P6 raises about the allowable under the law. Nobody from Arianna's team is going to open a tax advisement center in the 'hood. Legal aid in the black community hasn't meant tax shelters, although I can tell you about a whole lot of blackfolks in A.L. Williams. (Heh, it became Primerica, there's a lot of blackfolks there too). My point, which I will try to emphasize more and more now that it's becoming clearer to me as it survives lines of questioning like this, is that I strongly believe that the properly interpreted impetus of black nationalism would be for blackfolks to take every advantage America offers.
Black consciousness outlived its usefulness as a consuming ideology when it failed to accomodate the religious, ethnic and class diversity of an increasingly liberated African America. Plus it had some fairly large problems with sexism. But it did overcome the Duboisian dilemma of dual consciousness. It did give the Negro a way out of his guilt trip, it did show a way around a lot of problems Carter Woodson so eloquently exposed. Black nationalist politics launched hundreds of independent organizations which retained autonomy through the integrative movements of the 70s and provided great environments for doing well. (Although too many people today probably believe it was all Affirmative Action (hmm.)).
That black nationalism and consciousness was foremost in the minds of the individuals who launched organizations like the National Association of Black Accountants and the National Black MBA Association should be self-evident. What is not so self-evident is where the line between integration and segregation is blurred. I'll simply assert that it is the in the interest of a revised black nationalism to employ mass markets for the purposes of a black elite. Furthermore it is in the long-term interests of African Americans that these black elites reach a certain level of success, whether or not they conflict directly with the class interests of ordinary blackfolks. If blacks don't sell out successfully, African Americans will only marry into wealth.
There are a number of significant questions that arise from this suggestion that need to be handled at length. I think the most important is whether or not there need be a meaning or a message embedded in the success of African American elites. I am likely to elide this question on egalitarian grounds but advocate gently that there already is a meaning which is simply a fulfillment of a dual destiny. The first is the generic destiny of the American Dream and concurrent proving true of meritocracy and equality. The second is the historically specific aspirations of African Americans in their many social and political movements of race raising. I want to avoid any suggestion that there is embedded essential meaning to the success of a race - that a Black President of the US is not a materially different kind of President in any way other than as the fulfillment of these dreams which are not in conflict with each other.
But the ways and means of black success will be different and in that way grown differently than any other because of the existentials of blackness. But these are not permanent distinctions and could not be described or predicted by those who advanced Black Nationalist aims. The Black President or elites should be like other American elites and subject to the same forces. They will only own themselves and their own unique history.
So at the top of the American mountain, the view will be the same. Malcolm's intellectual progeny will use the system like Arianna does, hopefully with better results.