Vision Circle

Michigan Children Left Behind

LANSING - Nearly 900 Michigan schools didn't meet progress requirements and 112 must begin planning for a restructuring under a tough federal law mandating that schools improve standardized test scores.

More here.

From perusing the scores and the schools briefly, the vast majority of the failing schools are either in predominantly black and poor urban areas, or predominantly white and poor rural areas. Should we be shocked?

Poor White Invisible America

I want to make this brief, but maybe I'll get carried away. Poor White America is invisible to the black politics of liberation. The level playing field is lumpy for everyone.

For a long time I beleived that policy perscriptions for blackfolks were necessarily different than those for whitefolks. This was primarily because I recognized the geographical differences in availability to mainstream resources made simple advice more complex. "Get a job" doesn't work where there are no jobs, structurally. Furthermore, I understand that many blackfolks want more from politics than just that which simple enlightened self-interest would demand. Given a choice between the man who pushes the button of economic empowerment and the one who does so employing the rhetoric of black uplift, blacks will choose the latter, and sometimes they will do so even if he doesn't push the button.

These beliefs are in contradiction to my desire for mainstream integration. It is ghettoes that hold back blackfolks, get out of the ghetto and the playing field is leveled. That doesn't mean that the injuries don't linger but it does mean that the number one priority is leaving the ghetto. Some think going the opposite direction is appropriate, making the individual so strong that they can survive the ghetto and thereby romanticizing the ghetto, survival in the streets, thug life and all that lowbrow rot.

The continuing myth of black vs white without consideration of class (I'll coin a term in due time), ignores the disadvantages of poor whites in the level playing field. Part of the problem is that nobody can quantify exactly what advantage ghetto whites have over ghetto blacks in the mainstream. Some would have you believe it is negligable, for others, insurmoutable.

I come to look at this in consideration of the discounting of the 'level playing field' in discussions on integration and affirmative action, but also in consideration of the white strawman. This white strawman does a lot of heavy lifting for hard afrocentrists, especially when they waltz into the arms of organized labor and other grassroots activists engaged in battles against, oh say Wal-Mart.

I suggest that the integration strategies of contemporary white immigrants as well as identifyable 'bohunks' from the white Sticks, be considered in more practical ways by black liberation politics. After all, they're the ones buying Jay-Z and DMX.

Black Student Union and Class

Riffing off of Bowen it might be interesting to see exactly what former BSU leaders are doing. The University of Michigan's BSU was in some ways distinct...as there is a long history of black activism that goes back to the twenties. And we were also distinct in that we received a significant amount of money for programs. Finally...Michigan as a school is about as far from chopped liver as you can get without being private.

But off the top of my head...
1987's BSU president is now a consultant in Detroit. Used to work for one of the big three I think, now he has his own firm. His wife (who used to be VP i think) is a hospital executive.

1988's BSU president used to work as a lawyer for the armed services...now he's working on his PhD in political science at the University of Hawaii.

1989's BSU president is in Detroit...though I'm not quite sure what he's up to.

1990's BSU president is an Assistant Professor in Psychology back at Michigan. She received a young investigator's award for her work on racial identity, and she's got a massive grant that she's running out of the psych program.

1991's BSU president is working in New York in sales.

1992's BSU president just started her own foundation. It deals with issues of education and family in Detroit.

Though I can name the names until 1995...I don't know what they're doing necessarily. I was actually secretary in 1990, and my wife was vice-president in 1991.

Through the old school concept of antagonistic cooperation, we pushed Michigan to be better, even as it pushed US to be better. We've come a long way from Steve Cokely.

Class

Back when I finally got to college, I read Paul Fussell's 'Class' and I have been rather fascinated ever since. The funny thing about Fussell was that he put himself in a new bucket, the 'X' class. Class restraint was all somebody else's problem, he didn't fit in the traditional definitions.

I think the traditional breakout of class has always been too clumpy to work. Upper Class, Middle Class, Lower Class doesn't cover 300 million American people well. So I've improvised. For the most part in my writing I have concentrated on the class differences between African Americans and I've done so from the point of view that geography is destiny in a post Jim Crow society. For African Americans I have used five classes.

{Hill,Hood,Ghetto,Projects,Sticks}

Much of my guidance in these matters comes from Weiss and Garreau, but also Fussell, David Brooks, Cornel West and (of all people) PJ O'Rourke. (off the top of my head)

• The Clustering of America - Michael J. Weiss
• Edge City - Joel Garreau

As pertains to African America, I've been particularly curious about the fate of the Talented Tenth, what integration has done both positively and negatively for that group and those who looked up to them. Thus my interest in creating things like The Neighborhood Project.

As I look around, I wonder how well black politics is prepared to deal with the consequences of the expressed desires of African America not to be percieved as a monolith. Now that the monolith is smashed, who is going to pick of the biggest pieces and which direction are they heading with those fragments?

Taking responsibility for the Old School and Talented Tenth, I percieve our fault to be assuming that the kind of respect we got in the 'hood would translate, or that we would be always able to take it back to the 'hood. Everybody knows, or pretends to know, that we don't respect Jessie Jackson. So who do we respect? And who do we tell about it? Or does that not matter any longer? In other words was politics too much with us for the sake of that one time transition from Negro to Black to African American and now we need to recognize this is the promised land and get back to {home, church, business} and out of the public sphere.

As a Republican (and I'm fairly sure I'm in the mainstream of moderate Republicans, as few as there may be remaining), I advocate for a pro-business, commonsense, pro-family, pro-civil libertarian kind of politics of social power. This is quite distinct from the politics of liberation. So this brings me to the serious question of what to do with gap that makes (real of percieved) between the 'watchdogs / liberators' (often misnamed 'progressives') and those pushing the envelope of black politics.

You see I'm operating on the assumption that Black Culture (which I will no longer put in lower case) is the responsibility of those who surpass ordinary boundaries. As integration and emergence proceed, more and more African Americans of substance will be capable and able to do those things we've always measured ourselves by. 'The Jews do x', 'Whitefolks do y'. And while it's certainly not fair or accurate to have such 'standards' of comparison, there are Jews and whitefolks who are indeed doing some of the things that make our country great. Despite what we do or do not know about their networks, I think it is reasonable to assume that African Americans of a successful hue will clump together in autonomous networks which are multiracial, but include large interconnected black families.

As a generation who integrated predominantely white colleges and universities, black networking was significant and useful to us, both academically and socially. What becomes of the leaders of the Black Student Unions of 1984 now in the greater society in 2004? This is not simply an echo of the Black Baby Boom. There is rebellion and synthesis, but it doesn't quite have a face. Certainly not a nationally recognized one when it comes to politics.

I think Class plays a big part in this, but I don't think 'trans-class unity' is an appropriate way to identify the pull between previously proud Talented Tenthers and the black man on the street.

More later...

How Do

After long lurking, I'll post random musings from time to time.

Might be politics, might be "race," might be sports, might be excerpts from previous work.

We'll get down and have a little fun, and maybe we'll learn something before it's done.

So let's get ready, okay?

Hey, hey, hey.

Bush and the Enlightenment

Baldilocks asks the question Did Bush Lie?

My answer?

Nope.

But what he did was worse.

Here's the thing that separates advanced civilizations from civilizations that aren't so advanced. The ability to use reason to change previously held opinions and "facts." While some of my colleagues think this is the purview of the West (more properly thought of as the North), I don't think so. But that isn't really important here.

What Bush has done consistently in both domestic and foreign policy, is take his own belief, and translate it into policy...even in the face of strong contrary evidence. In fact, in some cases (education stands out here) he has actually gutted attempts to even collect information that can be used to contradict hypotheses. For a regular guy, this would be ok...though we'd probably call him a hard head. And let's be fair, we do this all of the time. The vast majority of us hold fast to beliefs that are routinely hamstrung by the facts.

I think that Bush truly believes that there are weapons in Iraq. This is why he continues to say so even now. So he didn't lie at all. But it appears as if he ignored contradictory evidence. Evidence that eviscerated all of the facts the White House posited as "proof" for example. He also ignored variance in international sentiment. While there was unanimity on the point that Saddam was a bad man...there was variance with regards to Iraq's threat level, and with regards to the possession of weapons. There was also variance WITHIN US BORDERS about this issue--not simply among Bush's enemies, but among his bureaucratic allies.

Bush chose not to listen. Instead he chose to listen to individuals who were already predisposed to attack Iraq without provocation. I'm not certain, but I believe this is a war crime.

"Evil Chemistry?"

A quote from Att. Gen. Aschcroft:

"Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern, not only to the United States but also to the world community. They were the subject of U.N. resolutions," he said.

This sounds like bad science fiction. Well...perhaps "bad" is the wrong word. "Pulp" is probably a better term. I can easily recall lines like this delivered by Commander Cody or Flash Gordon watching their reruns in the seventies. One argument could be that these folks mean well, and are excellent at what they do. Except for speaking. Kind of like what I was talking about yesterday when I said that I thought Bush was smart...just not "smart like THAT."

But it worries me that we don't have more "smart like that" folks in office (not just in the White House).

Death by Soundbite

Presidential campaigns are usually driven by soundbites. Bush says for example that he wants to only appoint "strict constructionist judges". There's a whole lot of information hiddeb behind that icon if you just click on it. For both liberals and conservatives, we take that term to mean that he's going to appoint people who will take an aggressive stance against abortion and a host of other issues.

But as , there is often not much there there. Wonder what would happen if we would've actually gotten a chance to see Bush (or others) pressed to expand their definitions a bit. While I don't think Bush is particularly "smart like that" (I don't think he's stupid....I just don't think he's smart in the way that a Nobel prize winner in Economics is smart), I'm surprised that he couldn't give a nice succinct answer to a really simple question: What is a strict constructionist judge?

The most important question?

The crisis of the American cities in the 1960's and 1970's is often ascribed to racial tensions, which did indeed play a part. But Mr. Rae suggests that the problems were broader, that what was later called "white flight" actually began in the 1920's with the weakening of the city center. The tragedy, in his account, is that the great migration of blacks to Northern cities in the 1930's and 40's began at the very moment when the jobs and factories they were seeking were becoming less stable.

This snippet is taken from an article that appeared in The New York Times entitled What Should a City Be? You won't hear this question brought up in a single debate. You won't see it asked on a single Sunday News program. You definitely won't hear Bill O'Reilly talk about it...but this is the most important question of the early 21st Century from my vantage point.

Think about it this way. Cities were created largely to efficiently bring together warehouses for finished/raw product, massive labor pools, manufacturing plantations, financial engines, and shipping routes. Manufacturers left for the suburbs beginning in the fifties, then overseas...along with the warehouses. The financial centers are now largely virtual with a couple of international exceptions. The freeways have largely bypassed waterways like the Detroit River.

What we have left is the large labor pool with nowhere to go for work.

Ofari is trying to grapple with this question in LA (though I don't think he knows it). The Kangaku Book Club here in St. Louis along with The Commonspace are working on this explicitly, as well as The Boggs Center in Detroit.

Many cities have taken the entertainment route. St. Louis, Detroit, and a number of other cities across the country have implicitly argued that the 21st Century City will be a sort of New Babylon, filled with neogladiators, man-whores, and crap games.

The New Urbanists take another route. Let's bring the fifties neighborhood back, they say. I liked watching Leave It To Beaver but I don't think I'd want to LIVE there. See The Truman Show for this view taken to excess.

Boggs and the others in Detroit call for a grassroots transformation of empty blocks and broken alleys into community gardens, lo-tech environmental filtering systems, new waterways and open micro-markets.

This discussion will pretty much remain underground I think. Not many voters, or corporate donors interested in this discussion.

Open Thread - Lucy Florence

There was not enough time to discuss all of the things that went down today at Lucy Florence, but there's no question that there's a great deal of interest in the issues that are pressing in Black Los Angeles these days.

I've invited folks to sound off here and I will probably be setting up a real Kwaku Network within the next few weeks to handle the overflow of opinions we have. What's clear is the Ofari has the pull and people don't say no to him when he invites them to speak. What's not clear is that any of this passion gets translated into action or communicated to all the people who might be interested right left or center.

The topics for this week are three.
Wal-Mart Inglewood
Wal-Mart intends on opening a superstore and the April 6th ballot initiative they are 'taking it to the people' in an end-around of the Inglewood city government. Supporters say it's all about the benjamins. Inglewood consumers deserve the lowest prices and the convenience Wal-Mart offers. Not only will there be the regular old Wal-Mart jobs that everybody jokes and spits about, but there will be a great deal of construction work necessary just to build the place. Detractors say that this is a classic sell out to union-busting capitalists who are not only generally not trustworthy, but particularly suspect in this instance. They say Wal-Mart has rigged the situation to completely bypass the political process. Furthermore, the giant is going to empty out Downtown Inglewood businesses creating 'broken windows'.

R. Kelly's Image Award
The NAACP has accepted a nomination for suspected child-molester R. Kelly. I'm afraid I can't even be open-minded about this one. That punk needs to be taken down. Let him sing in prison. The NAACP continues to fulfill its destiny as a laughingstock.

Donovan Jackson Trial
Steve Cooley's assistant DAs have no experience prosecuting police officers and the accountability of police department is completely compromised.

This is your opportunity to speak up. No time limits, no waiting for the microphone.

The Low-Down Grassroots Consequences of Current Events

My minivan was broken into last night here in St. Louis. My brother's home outside of Detroit was broken into last week. The woman in charge of taking care of my grandmother had her car broken into last week as well.

US News and World Report ran a story last week about the "boom economy." I thought it was a joke, because the only boom I'm seeing is the one being dropped on us. But nope. It was straight up.

There's been discussion over at Baldilocks about the impact of the Republican Agenda on black folks. I think the bottom line question is simple. How are working class and middle class folks doing now? How many of them are employed? For those with jobs, are they making ends meet? I think we know the answer. And while perhaps the President takes too much credit and gets too much of the blame for economic swings, he can definitely soften the blow through public policy.

So where are we now? The unemployment rate of black men and women are off the charts, creating a rise in what I call edge-type criminal activity (crime committed by non-habitual criminals) and a rise in the market for illegal products, which in turn creates an increase in "regular" crime. Like car breakins.

On King

I was gone when King's birthday came and went. I've written on black leadership here before...and much of the current problems we have with unaccountability and charisma can be laid on King too. But I've begun thinking about black politics as a health issue (partially because I've been interviewing for health related fellowships), and I heard a snippet about King that gave me pause.

King was assassinated at 35. At my age.

When had has his autopsy it was discovered that he had the heart of a 65 year old man.

Wrap your head around THAT. I'm betting that when Jackson, Sharpton, even someone like Cornel West passes away, you'd find the same thing. The stress involved in the type of activities they engage in on a daily basis is TREMENDOUS. I can't imagine what it would be like to not only live under constant threat of death (West gets death threats too) but to be constantly expected to PERFORM. Under those circumstances I can excuse King's various indiscretions...though I still think his praxis was shaky.

On the Kobe Trial

It had to come out sooner or later. Today's Espn NBA page (which I check out four or five times a day like a schmoe) has this as a headline "RACE CARD COMES OUT."

I guess I should've known. Before I played ball today someone asked me how I thought the case would go down. I have NO IDEA. I believe the evidence is suspect, and under other circumstances the case would've been thrown out...I don't know what is going to happen. Too many moving parts. We've got a wealthy man against a middle-class woman....a black man against a white woman...a rural resident v. an urban(e) one. Running the permutations in my head makes me dizzy.

What I do know is that the entire concept of a "race card" is based on a shibboleth. I wish that term, and horse-race centered discussions about political campaigns would go the way of the Brontosaurus. To act as if race doesn't play a role in this case explicitly and implicitly is to believe that up is down, red is green. I suspect I'll be bringing this up again.

Back on the block

Visited Berkeley earlier in the week and returned late last night.

Blasted.

Wanted to give a quick shout out to George. He offered to hook up with me last time I was in Oakland, but I wasn't able to get with him. This time around he offered to give me a ride back to the airport. Those of us in black fraternities and sororities have come to expect this type of treatment (in varying degrees) from our brothers and sisters. And I have received it in spades (with one exception) from the brothers in the Oakland area.

But it never ceases to amaze me how because of the internet I can receive the same level of treatment, love, and respect, from someone only known through the ether. If anybody in my age group is old school...it's got to be George.

Real African Americans

Glenn finagles a dumb complaint about 'real' African-Americans.

Let me break it down to for you. If you are born somewhere on the continent of Africa and migrate to America, then you do so as a

• slave
  
• illegal immigrant
  
• legal immigrant
  

Two of these answers mean that you are associated by the US government as a former citizen of an African nation. And while it's true that a goodly percentage of Americans cannot locate America itself on a globe, those of us with a rudimentary understanding of geography should make a small effort to recognize that country as well. Africa, in the American imagination, suffers a great deal of ignorance. People here can name more animals than states. That is unacceptable for political discussion, period.

So while the good professor attempts to make a point about the term 'African American' he does so with an article which is a crushing indictment of this very ignorance. The soldier in question who hails from Kenya is so tightly identified with his country of origin that fellow soldiers don't remember his real name, only 'Kenya'. Kenya is a nation, and that's the point.

We African Americans identify with the dark continental myth. It's overreach, but the term serves its demographic purpose well, if not specifically. But the term is ours. We invented it, like 'black' and we resent its misappropriation. We cannot prove which African nation from which we originated, our contemporaries can. Do us all a favor and respect that.

Volokh also give a bloodless legal rendering of a related controversy. The disrespect in the matter is clear.

Gutting reproductive rights?

Got an article about a controversial Bush appointee from a colleague. Snippet:

President Bush has announced his plan to select Dr. W. David Hager to head up the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. The committee has not met for more than two years, during which time its charter lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration is tasked with filling all eleven positions with new members. This position does not require Congressional approval.

The FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee makes
crucial decisions on matters relating to drugs used in the practice
of obstetrics, gynecology and related specialties, including
hormone therapy, contraception, treatment for infertility,
and medical alternatives to surgical procedures for sterilization
and pregnancy termination.

Dr. Hager's views of reproductive health care are far outside the
mainstream for reproductive technology. Dr. Hager is a
practicing OB/GYN who describes himself as "pro-life" and refuses to
prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. Hager is the author of "As
Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring omen Then and Now." The book
blends biblical accounts of Christ healing women with case studies
from Hager's practice.

More here. I'd love to be wrong on this one.

In Berkeley tomorrow through Wednesday.

Taking Jacko Seriously

Taking Michael Jackson seriously is the last thing I want to do, but we have something serious going on here.

Here is the latest scoop that I have heard from Najee Ali, director of LA based Project Islamic Hope. Ali is the man who helped get legislation passed in the California and Nevada pursuant to the failure to prosecute negligent witness David Cash in the murder of seven year old Sherrice Iverson. He is the leader of an organization which has its rhetorical foot deep into R Kelly's butt. So here is a man with no problems defending children. He believes Jackson to be innocent.

Not being a legal type myself, I don't know what the reasons are that the district attorneys' office would bypass the grand jury process to persue a felony conviction. What I do know is, that according to Ali, Jacko's bail is set to 3 million dollars for child abuse, whereas Robert Blake, accused of murder, had his bail set at 1 million, as did Phil Spector, similarly charged with murder. Depending on your suseptibility to outrage at the criminal justice system, this can be merely curious or a complete outrage. Ali leans towards the latter.

Jackson is a good guy who has donated many millions to black charities over the years, quietly and consistently. So there are a number of good reasons for him to have black political support. But even if he didn't do any of that, I have learned something about Jackson today that makes me respect him a great deal - for which if he did nothing else in his entire life this would be good enough. We are mostly aware that Jackson owns most of the Beatles' songs. What I didn't know was that he owns most of Elvis' recordings too. Most symbolic of all, he purchased the rights to Little Richard's music. He gave that all back to Little Richard, so now he won't die broke. Whether that is materially too little too late or not, it is a trenchant symbol of respect for black culture we probably didn't know Jacko had. That may count for a great deal from where I stand, but it doesn't mean squat in a court of law.

If people on the Kwaku Network are right, or close to being right, we should be prepared for another round of black vs white in the court of public opinion. MJ as OJ is just a verdict away. Najee Ali, who is a defender of Jacko's choice in the Fruit of Islam security detail (brother Jermaine is a member of the Nation) and who supports the notion that white jurors in Santa Barbara county will not give Jacko a fair trial will nonetheless present a complicated picture to a media eager to spin the divide. For he has said that if Jackson does get a fair trial and is found guilty, he will be the first to pour dirt on Michael Jackson's grave. Ali has no patience whatsoever for child abusers. So if Ali becomes spun as a racial defender of child abusers if the child is not black (I don't know anything about Jackson's current alleged victim and neither should you), remember that you heard it here first that this is a lie.

There is a kind of self-fullfilling prophesy in the matter of black and white opinion being divided on Jackson's innocence or guilt. What matters is how smartly the press plays that angle. Good thing we have blogs.

I know, according to the History album that somebody was 'a cold man'. Now I know that somebody was Tom Sneddon. He's the man determined to bring the King of Pop to the jailhouse. He's also the man who famously couldn't do it 10 years ago. So it's personal. Why there shouldn't be some kind of recusal in this matter is certainly a legal question I assume has been previously decided, but we should all wake up and smell the vendetta.

The Jackson defense is under a gag order, but Sneddon and the gang behind the allegations are having a publicity field day. This is why Ali has taken to the streets in defense of Jackson. If there are battles to be won in the court of public opinion Najee Ali is taking sides with no compunction. With allies like the NOI and the Gloved One himself, its going to be tough sledding for Najee Ali and the Jackson defense team. Nevertheless Ali presents a convincing case that if Michael Jackson is consistent about anything, it's that he loves children. What a cruel irony if it is a child that Snedden uses to destroy Jackson.

I don't believe that nobody knows or nobody can know whether Jackson has 'a history' or is a pedophile. But he has been exonerated by an investigation sponsored by the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, and surely his legal team knows whether or not Jackson merits special consideration or needs to be kept away from little kids. I think much of the public opinion will fall to a question of Jackson's sexuality and brains. A hard sell for a pseudo-black manchild.

I do beleive that Michael is smart enough to know better than to do something stupid but that his handlers know but never tell. Let's see if they are compelled to testify against him based on the new Iverson law which was established by Najee Ali.

Live from Lucy Florence

I will be making a journey on a regular basis to Los Angeles to hook up with the National Alliance for Positive Action, now hosted at Lucy Florence in Leimert Park. This morning was the first of many trips. I'm excited by a number of things that are in the mix and I will be reporting it here in the pages of Vision Circle.

You may or may not have heard of Earl Ofari Hutchinson, but he is an Old School fellow who has quite a bit of credibility in Los Angeles. He is kind and gentle, grass roots and community oriented and is providing a non-partisan forum for folks to discuss matters of political interest in a respectful way. Ofari and Lucy Florence, run by the Harris twins, are a perfect fit, and I never fail to be impressed by just how well things go there.

Today's visit was an excellent introduction to an interesting cluster of folks. If you've never seen black republicans and democrats sit down at the same table and work things out, this is the place to be. I met a Republican candidate for state senate as well members of Karenga's original US organization. The full political spectrum is here.

The Alliance will be hosting forums every Saturday at 10am at Lucy Florence and the next few weeks look to be very interesting. Topics over the next few weeks include Wal Mart in Inglewood, the Donovan Jackson trial, HIV AIDS Prevention and the election campaign of Steve Cooley. Ofari has the ability to bring big names to the forum so you can expect important folks and press to show up. I'll be there, so you will too.

The State of the Union et al

The Atlantic has an article in its newest issue (not even on the web yet) from folks at the New America Foundation on The State of the Union. I was really interested in their article on tax reform (in a nutshell we should tax in order to both generate revenue AND get individuals to save...hence the installation of a consumption tax along with various other platforms). But while browsing I found an that asks a question I asked a while ago--where are all of the black men? The Black Gender Gap is interesting reading to say the least. Particularly when coupled with a book written by one of my friends at Michigan entitled, The Minds of Marginalized Black Men. Given our economic future I forsee that this book is a harbinger of things to come for white men in rural and suburban areas.

Off to Michigan...and then Berkeley next week. I don't expect to post much. We'll see.

The Afro Samurai

I grew up, like many urban folks my age, reading comic books, watching monster movies (Johnny Socko and Ultraman loom large), and watching Charlie Rum's Karate Theater. The first novel I read was The Hobbit (at six). The kids in my neighborhood couldn't really pronounce "Kenyatta"... so many of them called me Hiyata (alter ego of Ultra Man) instead. Where some knee jerk Afrocentrists (there are other kinds...in fact one of the giants just passed recently) would argue that imbibing these products caused us to lose self-esteem (ain't a black face in Middle Earth unless you count the Uruk-Hai), I take the exact opposite approach. These works allowed us to imagine new worlds....and as we grew up, we began to fuse these various forms together. The Afro Samurai is going to be an interesting I think. I look forward to it.

On a related note, if you're interested in hearing what the future SOUNDS like...check this out. I'm not familiar with the DJ...but believe it or not the origin of this sound is Detroit. The future is here.

Paul O'Neill speaks

This quote, taken out of Paul O'Neill's Time Interview says it all:

When the corporate scandals rocked Wall Street, O'Neill and Greenspan devised a plan to make CEOs accountable. Bush went with a more modest plan because "the corporate crowd," as O'Neill calls it in the book, complained loudly and Bush could not buck that constituency. "The biggest difference between then and now," O'Neill tells Suskind about his two previous tours in Washington, "is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis, and Karl (Rove), Dick (Cheney), Karen (Hughes) and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics. It's a huge distinction."

Others have said as much. I'm not sure people really understand what this means. I've never been one to shout the praises of The Enlightenment from the rooftops, largely because it was always hard for me to see the light through all that smeared West African blood. And it isn't like other cultures were clueless as to what reason was.

But embracing social science it's hard to go against hardcore EVIDENCE. The thing that scares me most about Bush is the idea that evidence simply doesn't matter. I detested Clinton, for a number of reasons (none of them including what he did with Monica). But I knew that at the end he was smart, a hard worker, and believed in evidence.

Black Political Maturity

Negrophile dropped this piece on the dynamics of black political endorsements. Turns out that black elected officials don't quite know who to endorse. Detroit's own John Conyers is going for Dean I think, Tennessee's Harold Ford is going for Kerry, and Charlie Rangel out of NYC is down with Clark. To Ron Walters this is absurd:

"It's more than incredible; it's disastrous for the black community," said Ron Walters, a professor at the University of Maryland and former adviser to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "What they are doing is giving away their collective power because if they had made a collective endorsement, it would have said something different to black voters."

Quickly.

1. Black voters tend to do their own thing...not following elite cues. I can recall vividly Coleman Young telling Detroiters not to vote for Jesse because he didn't have any experience. Most old school folks in the city love Coleman (me included). But you think they listened to him when it came time to vote (even though he was right)? Hell no. So on one level it really doesn't matter who black elected officials support...because we're going to make up our OWN minds.

2. The whole idea of a "black collective" has to this point at least, not quite translated into policy benefits that are distributed across all income levels. While I consider myself an old school Crusean nationalist with a strong democratic Boggsian streak, everytime I hear the words "black collective" come out of a politico's mouth I want to "earl."

Brazile thinks this is healthy for the black community. NO. We've always been about making our own mind. We're ALREADY politically mature...at least in comparison to our non-black counterparts (truth be told, we're ALL sick). This is healthy for the community of Black Elected Officials. Now maybe we can get some true democratic discourse about POLICY.

Naaaah. That'd be too much like right.

Thanks Rush

P6 beat me to it. I know McNabb ain't old school (his GAME is, but he isn't...doesn't mean I don't like him though) but I wish to God he was. If he were old school when he was first asked about Rush wayyy back when Limbaugh stuck his oxycontin filled foot in his mouth, he'd have asked why the hell ESPN would hire someone with no professional football experience at all to do commentary.

Idiots.

Shocked

According to Salon there are some serious questions about how Sharpton has been spending his campaign loot. I'm shocked. And Paul O'Neil (former Secretary of the Treasury) has come forward stating that Bush is a bit....disengaged. I'm doubly shocked.

The Harlem Club

A group of young black professionals in New York have decided to create an exclusive organization for the beautiful people (my term for the "black elite"). Called The Harlem Club, it has only 250 spots for men and 500 for women. As it is a men's club the women will only be associate members...but they won't have to pay the $2,500 yearly fee.

Sounds like an excellent deal for the women, but there's a catch. They have to be fine, between the ages of 24 and 39, and single (with no children).

You know they're going to catch hell for this right?

But you know what I'd do if I were the sisters? It's evident to me that within that age group at least there are far more professional women then there are professional men. I'd flip the script. I'd create a club, get a space, let women in for the fee....but let fine single men slide.

So you've got two choices as a professional brother. Do you pony up for the Harlem Club, or do you go to the Meta Fuller Club with the free membership and the most powerful black women in the city?

It's an easy choice for me.

On Colin

I never bought the claptrap about Colin Powell being able to run and win from the Republican Party. Times may have changed a bit since '96 but whites routinely overstate their support for black candidates. But at one time I had a great deal of respect for Powell. I appreciated the way he stood strong for Affirmative Action in the heart of the Republican National Convention, revealing attacks against it for what they were.

And in his position as Secretary of State I've often thought that he was the only one between us and an extinction-level event. But when he was pimped on the national stage...making claims that he had to have known were not only false but were falsiFIED, I lost it. Sidney Blumenthal over at Salon takes Powell's interview with the Washington Post and uses it to make the claim that Powell has truly taken the high road. Fighting the good fight in private but in the end recognizing that he will in all likelihood lose.

On one hand this is definitely Old School. "I thank whatever Gods may Be, for my Unconquerable Soul."

But on the other? That extinction-level event looms large for me. I don't even think Powell's character would allow him to critique the current policies of the Administration after he retired. And this is problematic for me.

From Hip Hop to Movement

In this week's Village Voice there is a piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates on Russell Simmons' attempt to make hip-hop into a political force. Coates is one of the few journalists that "get it right" I think. It is not necessarily a coincidence that Coates appears in the Voice rather than in the Post or the Daily News or even the Times. A snippet:

Simmons hopes he can add a coolness factor to social insurgency. "The most important thing we gotta do is make it cool to show up at the rallies, make it in style to pay attention," says Simmons. "At the hip-hop summit in Philly, we had tremendous success. It was the place to be. LL Cool J was there, Wyclef was there, Damon Dash was there. But no one could get in unless they registered to vote."

Like most brothers and sisters of my age, hip-hop is my life's soundtrack (though to be fair, I'm really a househead). But here's where I get off.

Ever since Bambaata created the Zulu Nation in part to shift the energy of New York youth towards beats and breaks, there's been a political component to hip-hop in general. You can't properly talk about the growth of hip-hop without talking about the budget cuts during the Reagan era that decimated cities left and right. And even now you can't talk about the supposed thematic shift in rap without in turn talking about the political-economy of popular music (Norman Kelley's puts his foot in it in his RHYTHM AND BUSINESS).

But to make the step from this to the type of movement that Russell is involved in (along with Benjamin Chavis)? I'm not buying it. Not because the intentions are off...though they very well may be. I'm not buying it because the theory is way off.

Check out this path:

Inform people of their material reality
-->people participate and-->mobilize
Give them the tools to change their reality

If you both tell people what's going on around them, how politics at a local and a national level is having an adverse impact on their life chances AND educate them about their options...you will THEN get people to not only participate, but odds are those people will in turn mobilize others. Teach a man to fish....

We don't see this in Simmons' account. This is the logic we're seeing:

Create mass events
---->people will vote
Make these events cool

See the difference? I acknowledge that the first path has more moving parts, and is harder to pull off. But the payoff is much richer isn't it? Or is it?

This is nothing new, really. There's always been a difference between the rich organizing style of black folks on the left, and the pseudo-organizing of the integrationists on the one hand (King stands out) and the nationalists on the other (Farrakhan stands out). The pseudo-organizing approach is about one thing....getting enough votes to be able to take them to some cat and say "give ME something, because I've got THESE [shows votes]."

Maybe I should start calling this the bling-bling model of politics?

More on Broken Windows

I talked about Broken Windows theory a couple of days ago I think. I hollered at one of my boys about it, and he saw something I didn't catch the first time around.

This theory has been one of the most important in criminology. It was first proposed in an article published 20 years ago in The Atlantic Monthly, written by Dr. James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. The theory provided the intellectual foundation for a crackdown on "quality of life" crimes in New York City under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Today, "broken windows" policing is endorsed by police chiefs across the country, its proponents sought out for lectures and consulting around the world. But from the beginning, Dr. Wilson concedes, the theory lacked substantive scientific evidence that it worked.

"I still to this day do not know if improving order will or will not reduce crime," Dr. Wilson, now a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently said in a telephone interview. "People have not understood that this was a speculation."

Did you catch that? So basically all types of black men and women in places like New York City have criminal records over stuff as small as jay-walking over a theory that according to the primary theorist wasn't even a theory but a mere speculation.

Damn.

Of course this is perfectly obvious (folks never really need theory to throw black men and women in jail) and fits in the groove well. But I'm willing to bet that Dr. Earls theory (backed up by data gathered meticulouslyn and analyzed rigorously) will NEVER generate the same type of fervor. Not without political battles at any rate.

Remember the Alamo

Federal Courts allowed a Texas redistricting plan to stand this week. As I wrote I think this is the new Southern Strategy, but what do I know?

I've got to commend Norquist, Delay, and the others for this move though. It required tenacity, it required ideological fervor. But probably most of all it required a proper understanding of modern day politics. I noted that Sun Tzu's THE ART OF WAR should be thought of as an old school classic. Also a standout is Clausewitz' work On War. Sun Tzu is all about subtlety...about winning the battle through psyops before war is even engaged. Clausewitz is about as subtle as the Geto Boys. War is politics by other means...and conversely Politics is War by other means. There is no distinction.

And while I loathe war-like rhetoric ("black people are at war!!") largely because it saps the democratic spirit (hard to cast votes on troop movements), it sure worked in this case. The courts won't save the DNC (and by extension in this case Latino and black folk) this time. Unless they are made of chain mail I say it's high time to take the gloves off.

(Brief) Thoughts on Immigration Reform

Today Bush made only the second decision I agreed with. The first was the decision to go after Osama Bin Laden back in 2001. Today's decision to give immigrants at least temporary legal status was something that should've been done a long time ago. While some are (probably accurately) castigating him for catering to the Latino vote, it doesn't really matter to me for two reasons. The first is that the policy goes in the right direction. The Democrats support a neutered Affirmative Action largely because of their black constituency...are we to castigate them for the same thing? To reiterate...it's about POLICY.

The second reason? Latinos won't be voting for Bush any time soon. With the notable exception of the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida.

Krugman v. Norquist

Yesterday on the Diane Rehm show she spent the hour talking to Paul Krugman (Princeton Professor, NYTimes columnist) and Grover Norquist (tax reform activist). Krugman wouldn't appear on the show with Norquist, so Rehm interviewed them both separately over the course of the hour with Krugman getting the first half, and Norquist getting the chance to rebut in the second half.

Dustbury doesn't know what the hubbub is about...and neither do his readers. Norquist doesn't have beef with Krugman...why would Krugman have been with Norquist? There's a very clear, and very conservative reason actually. While Norquist is an activist (in the area of tax reform, an activist without peer), Krugman has a PhD in economics and is currently a full professor at one of the best institutions of higher learning on the face of the planet. He's published article after article after article in some of the toughest academic journals, and emerged through literally dozens of intellectual battles (you've got to wage war and WIN to get published in an academic journal, jack) unscathed. He SHOULDN'T be on the same panel with Norquist.

Think about this another way. If I were Michael Jordan, and someone came up to me and said that they wanted me to play one-on-one against Michael J. Fox, unless it was a joke, or for charity, or for the lives of my children, I'd feel insulted. While Fox is an excellent actor, he isn't anywhere near a basketball player...much less one of my caliber.

Krugman probably feels similarly. And he has a right to.

I say this position is a conservative one...and it is. It is based on the idea that merit exists, that it can be measured, and that people who rank high on that list should be treated differently than people low on that list. I think when it comes to analyzing arguments at least, we HAVE to be elitist. Anything else is uncivilized. Norquist and Krugman are by no means peers.

The Science (and Politics) of Crime

I've been thinking a lot lately about the role of social science in building a better democracy. I'm a finalist for the Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Program, and will be interviewing at the University of Michigan, and at UC Berkeley the next couple of weeks. The purpose of the fellowship is to get social scientists to turn their research agenda towards health. If I were to be selected, it wouldn't be a big transition for me. I consider myself a new jack Fabian in some ways, and I firmly believe that my scholarship doesn't mean much if it can't be used to help people build a better society.

So when I read today's New York Times article about the Science of Crime, I was immediately intrigued. From the bio of Dr. Earl it sure sounds like he should be considered part of the Old School. His tenacity, his ingenuity, and his willingness to knock down the broken windows theory proved it.

James Q. Wilson is the dean of conservative social science and one of the primary intellectuals behind the "broken windows theory" of crime prevention. In a nutshell, this theory posits that there is a relationship between tangential signs of social disorder (broken windows, weeds, graffiti, etc.) and crime. If you on the one hand punish individuals for acts of social disorder AND fix the signs themselves, you should lower the crime rate.

But there are two problems. The first is intellectual--there is little proof that there is a relationship between fixing broken windows (or punishing graffiti artists) and lowering crime rates. And when I say "proof" here I'm talking peer-reviewed journal article type proof--NOT New Republic type proof. The second is both philosophical and political. The basic policy response that emanates from broken windows theory is an aggressive form of policing that basically operates on the assumption that citizens are either criminals to be arrested, or passive standers-by to be maneuvered around.

Here is where Dr. Earls comes in. First the method and the data:

From June to October 1995, trained observers drove a sport utility vehicle at 5 miles per hour down every street in 196 carefully selected Chicago neighborhoods.

As they drove, a pair of video recorders, one on each side of the S.U.V., recorded social activities and physical features: litter, graffiti, drug deals, public drinking, everything within the camera's view. When the researchers were done, 11,408 blocks had been observed and videotaped. Then the police records on homicide, robbery and burglary were pulled for each of these 196 neighborhoods, along with in-person surveys of 8,782 residents.

Just the numbers alone are impressive...but for me as a social scientist this is much deeper than that. The mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods involved in this project is a potent fusion. I don't think I would've ever thought about actually doing drive by videotaping, much less combining that with surveys AND neighborhood crime data? You've got to be KIDDING me. Ingenuity doesn't even begin to describe this approach.

But here's the kicker:

In a landmark 1997 paper that he wrote with colleagues in the journal Science, and in a subsequent study in The American Journal of Sociology, Dr. Earls reported that most major crimes were linked not to "broken windows" but to two other neighborhood variables: concentrated poverty and what he calls, with an unfortunate instinct for the dry and off-putting language of social science, collective efficacy.

What this basically means is simple. You get communities to organize themselves, and the crime rate decreases. You organize citizens and empower them, and they transform their own reality. Whereas broken windows basically requires an aggressive state apparatus to subjugate (dare I say "crush") citizens, Earls' approach requires that we give citizens the ability to establish order (whatever that means to them) from the bottom up. I talked about how our goal should be to establish policy that can be spun from ANY perspective (democratic, republican, conservative, liberal, radical)...this is an excellent example. In one fell swoop Earls moves social science forward by his innovative research design, and moves democracy forward by using the results to call for empowering citizens. Dubois would be proud.

On racial profiling

Prometheus 6 posted an article about the difficulties associated with data collection as it relates to racial profiling. My students found similar problems in Missouri. My thoughts on racial profiling are kind of mixed...while I know it is real, it seems to me another class game fronting like a race game. Think about the image we have of the typical profiling case...some brother driving a benz in a neighborhood he supposedly shouldn't be in. When was the last time a brother in a Yugo was profiled? For working class brothers and sisters I'm thinking that either police deriliction or police brutality are more salient issues.

But to be sure we need to collect data. Maybe it's my old school roots, but I'm thinking that citizens should be doing the data collection simultaneously...and waging the war with data rather than pickets. Probably a bit of Sun Tzu in there too come to think about it.

Black support for GOP increases

I haven't been able to get much writing done over the vacation, hence the flurry.

But anyway, Cobb sees the growth of black support for the gop as a good sign. It is. I wouldn't have said this probably a year or more ago, but I've grown up. We need cells in a wide variety of institutions in order to build democracy from the bottom up in black spaces, and in America.

But a caveat is in order, at least when it comes to Baras' article.

I haven't read her work before now to know for sure. But I think that while the trend she identifies is accurate, the reason she posits for that trend is most decidedly NOT. That is, blacks aren't leaving the Democratic Party because the party is too far on the left for black people. It's probably that they aren't ENOUGH to the left. Of course they're to the left symbolically...and for us what that means is that they say the right things about police profiling, and about affirmative action. But that's about it.

Take the following argument:

None of this is coincidental. More African Americans now have college degrees, ushering them into the middle class, shifting their values and priorities while prompting them to abandon the "blacks-as-victims" theology. Many low-income blacks have gained an appreciation for the opportunities provided by the free enterprise system and are rejecting the notion of government as savior.

Now this is an excellent reason why the SCIENCE in political science should be taught in schools. The more education one is likely to have the more liberal one is likely to be....and this goes in the opposite direction than the one Baras is positing. The "blacks as victims" argument isn't part of the Old School Conservative OR the Old School Liberal ideology. And low-income blacks have ALWAYS had an appreciation for the opportunities of free enterprise. Particularly in cities like Detroit. Baras' article at least appears to be a knee-jerk uninformed journalistic response and even though i'm not yet in full bastard mode, her ignorance pisses me off. We need to be better than this.

What appears to be happening from my viewpoint is that democratic elites have taken over cities like Detroit and used government to enrich the coffers of their supporters rather than that of black working class men and women. The citizens see this, and say that they are no longer simply going to give their votes to someone because of the race/party constellation. The first people who are able to couch anti-poverty policies (like free college tuition) in GOP language (individual initiative, wealth-building, etc.) in black spaces, will win big.

Crystal Meth

OVELL, Wyo. — Tucked under the snowcapped wall of the Big Horn Mountains, with its cattle and horse ranches and large Mormon church, this could be "that sleepy little town everyone wants," said Nick Lewis, the police chief.

Except for one thing. Lovell, population 2,264, and two nearby towns have become infested by methamphetamine.

In the past two years, about 70 people from this small slice of northwestern Wyoming have been convicted of buying or selling methamphetamine, with more arrests and convictions expected soon, the authorities say. Methamphetamine-related crimes now consume half the time of Chief Lewis's seven-officer force.

The above quote ripped from the headlines of the New York Times. If you're a full subscriber, the entire article can be found here. One of my colleagues used to work in a prison in Missouri doing counseling. From what he tells me, meth addicts glow in the dark. I know that meth (along with drugs like oxycontin) is decimating rural towns in Missouri.

When the drug laws hit these folks like meat tenderizers, we're either going to see a prison explosion unlike one we've ever seen before, or we're going to see a drive to end the drug war.

Ralph Wiley

I was talking to my mother last night after I got back to St. Louis. She was talking about John McWhorter. McWhorter's doesn't even come close to being Old School....or being a Bastard. Of course I didn't tell mom this, I just gave her the cleaned up version. "McWhorter's no good," I say. Moms is like "you say that about everyone I bring up." She's right. I get more from reading what people like Cobb, or Jelani have to say here than most popular folks in print.

One exception though is Ralph Wiley. It's both a testimony to Wiley's skill and an indictment of popular nonfiction writing that he lases with uncanny accuracy time after time again from the damn pages of Page 2!

The Year of the Bastard

My panel on African American Presidential Campaigns will be on tonight at 3am EST if you're on the late night tip. We filmed it during the American Political Science Association in Philly during Labor Day Weekend.

The history of the panel was interesting. During the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, Al Sharpton came to town and allegedly showed the crack of his ass. I was there, and saw some of it....but not all of it. Hence the "allegedly."

So here's what is alleged (that is, what I cannot verify with my own eyes but COULD verify through second hand accounts):

*Sharpton asked the National Conference of Black Political Scientists to pay a significant honorarium even though we barely have enough money to cover the costs of the conference itself.

*Sharpton refused to stay in the hotel suite provided to him by NCOBPS, giving that room to one of his assistants. Instead he requested a suite at the Four Seasons.

*An assistant professor was tasked to escort Sharpton. The young professor wanted to bring an associate, but Sharpton refused to ride with the associate in the young professor's car forcing the professor to evict his own friend from his own car.

*When Sharpton arrived at the banquet to speak, he ignored most of the members of the organization and of the planning committee unless they could actually benefit him in some way. There was a major anti-war rally going on at the same time and one of the people at the conference was one of the planners. When Sharpton was given this information he gave this person every cell phone number he'd had...but blatantly ignored him until this point.

*Sharpton spoke at our banquet where a number of awards are given. After Sharpton gave his speech, the award ceremonies began...and Sharpton stood up to take a call. He didn't return.

By way of comparison, both Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee were not only present but engaged in the activities of the day.

So the next day we hold a panel on Sharpton. Ron Walters (author of White Nationalism, Black Interests and involved with both Jackson campaigns), Bob Starks (actively engaged in Sharpton's campaign), Katherine Tate (author of From Protest to Politics ), and Bill Fletcher (political scientist and activist) were on the panel. With the exception of Fletcher, the panelists talked about what Sharpton had to do to succeed in his campaign...ignoring the elephant in the room. When the chair of the conference (Robert Smith, author of We Have No Leaders) basically detailed how unprofessional, disrespectful, and anti-black Sharpton was, Walters asked (straightfaced) "what does this have to do with what we're discussing?"

At that point, I lost it, and cussed the panel out.

Literally. What the hell? They can't take my PhD away from me.

To make a long story shorter....after I cussed the panel out they asked me to serve on the APSA panel.

The panel itself, and the response to the panel, made me even more aware that democracy doesn't work without bastards.

Military Public Opinion

This semester I'm teaching a senior seminar in African American Studies and a class on Public Opinion and American Democracy. I'm particularly looking forward to this latter class. The first time I taught it was the semester of the attacks. I'd originally planned a normal (boring) series of readings on public opinion, and exams. In the wake of the attacks I decided to make a radical change. I threw the syllabus out and with the permission of the students spent the majority of the time having them conduct innovative research projects around the attacks. If I was a BIT more nimble I would've created a website to document the students' output....

I expect then to spend a bit more time this semester at least on public opinion issues.

I was watching C-Span and see that the Army Times conducted a survey on the enlisted. I don't think the editor was gaming the audience on C-Span at all...but I do think there are some important caveats to the survey that the editor didn't reveal until prodded.

The first deals with representativeness. Surveys are supposed to (in theory) present a snapshot of a given population. So the findings of this survey are SUPPOSED to represent the thoughts of enlisted brothers and sisters as a whole. But check out the fine print. Of those enlisted, the officer corps was significantly over-represented. Rather than thinking (and reporting) about this survey as an Army survey it is probably more accurate to think of it as an Army OFFICER survey. A survey of elites rather than of the rank and file.

The second deals with question wording. Take the question about support for Bush. What the hell does "support" mean in this circumstance? Agree with everything he does? Does it refer to the degree to which the respondent wants the President to do well in general? To do well in Iraq? It's hard to tell. A much better set of questions would refer to specific government actions.

The third problem deals with the nature of the military. The military isn't the most democratic of institutions. Who the hell wants to determine troop movements by votes? In order to insulate the military from politics, a culture of don't ask don't tell has developed. Don't ask about my politics, and I won't tell you about them. This problem exists in the general population too, particularly around sensitive issues (like race and racism). Just like white Democrats in Chicago were likely to SAY they were voting for Harold Washington (African American) when he ran for mayor in Chicago and then vote another way once they got in the booth, I would argue that this survey significantly over estimates pro-government military public opinion.

Reading the survey as an underestimation of military sentiment, I think there is serious cause for concern.