Vision Circle

Cruse Control

Crisis of the Negro Intellectual was a great book for a number of reasons - principal among those reasons was that it took the blinders off and named names. It also contextualized the essence of the failure - our collective inability to reconcile Washington to Dubois and Dubois to Garvey. We have failed to do this because of ideology, ego, weak study habits, intellectual laziness, cash payoffs, fear, and any of a host of human failings. To my mind, that is the epicenter of Cruse's book.

Cruse's principal concern was with establishing an authentic cultural framework for American Blacks to build cultural, economic, and political power. To the extent that Caribbean Africans impeded this process due to their unique, geo-political/economic circumstances, Cruse rejected this and explained the genesis, players and solution. He did the same with the Communist Party and Euro-American Jewry.

I am not familiar with the Fordham University professor who made this assessment of Cruse's work, but it carries little weight since I can read for myself - and have read the book at least three times. The term "anti-Semite" is reserved in the mind and suggests a host of unrelated issues - ground which may have covered best by James Baldwin. Harold Cruse was hardly concerned with conspiracy theories. Cruse outlined the SPECIFIC strategies and tactics used by SPECIFIC individuals within SPECIFIC organizations to achieve SPECIFIC aims. He wasn't the type of guy to do guess work.

It seems as though the Fordham cat and Foxman are simply using shared tactics along a singular intellectual spectrum. Dismiss and disassociate - no inquiry, no conversation, no discourse...Sounds like ADL 101 to me.

Spiritually Dead

Beyond Vietnam A Time To Break Silence This Memorial Day weekend I have been awestruck by the prophetic brilliance of this speech. It leaves no doubt whatsoever that America is now spiritually dead...,

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Cruse reviewed in NYT

A new version of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual comes out in a bit, and the New York Times sought to revisit it. I am glad that Cruse is making the rounds again after his passing.

But while there were errors aplenty, what jumped out at me was the charge of anti-semitism. Which brings up the blacks-jews thing that our new colleague Temple3 brought up.

But Cruse reserved special venom for Jews. In ''The Crisis,'' he asserted that ''the great brainwashing of Negro radical intellectuals was not achieved by capitalism, or the capitalistic bourgeoisie, but by Jewish intellectuals in the American Communist Party.'' He also cited passages from Dostoyevsky, oddly enough, about how Jewish merchants exploited blacks in the South. When the book was published, reviewers tended to ignore its anti-Semitism. In a recent interview, Mark Naison, a professor of African-American studies at Fordham University, said he didn't think people take Cruse's analysis of black-Jewish relations ''very seriously'' today, especially not Cruse's dismissal of the role Jews played in the civil rights movement. ''It's too ahistorical and too conspiratorial to have much weight outside the sort of anti-Semitic fringe of the black intelligentsia, which is now a fringe, not mainstream,'' Naison said.

Now on the one hand Naison is right. There is an anti-Semitic fringe which has an intense love-hate relationship with Jews.

But on the other, I think Naison (and the author) are making a few critical mistakes in focusing on this particular component of Cruse's work, and they are making a critical mistake in choosing what aspects of this issue to focus on. Cruse's entire argument is that American society allocates individual rights through group rights. He focuses on three different cultural/ethnic groups--blacks, wasps, and jews.

Now there are probably less than five places in the country we could even have a serious discussion about this relationship that isn't driven by either jewish nationalists like abe foxman, or black nationalists like louis farrakhan. Detroit isn't one of them. DC isn't one of them.

New York City is.

But even here we have to get really specific--again with the exception of flashpoints like the Bensonhurst disturbance. When do they interact? Where do they interact? Are there zero-sum resources involved? Cruse makes an argument that this interaction occurs in two very specific sites--in theater (and later film), and in leftist politics. The type of loose conspiratorial rantings exemplified by Steve Cokely don't have any place in Cruse's work. If anything a much better argument can be made that Cruse was "racist" towards West Indians.

I wish Cruse were here to defend himself...having been around when he slapped Manning Marable about in Ann Arbor, this would have been an intellectual pimp slapping worth paying for.

Druid Hill Sanctuary

Baltimore has some of the nicest playground courts I've ever seen in an industrial city. The Dru Hill park stays open and lit until 11:30, and it is incredibly safe. I stayed out until 10:40 or so playing O.U.T. Ended up like 1-8 or something like that.

I hadn't played playground ball in several years. Once I got kids, I realized that I could potentially shave years off my game if I just kept my knees in shape. But this is the longest layoff I've ever had in my adult life (since 1987 I've never gone more than 4 months without playing a few times a week).

Probably the thing I've got to get used to more than anything else is the dribbling. I can see why Webber would have problems with AI. Nothing worse than a cat who wants to do nothing more than dribble up and down and between, instead of either giving up the rock, or going straight to the hole.

We talk about building community across class barriers. With the exception of the barber shop, I can't think of a better place for black men off the top of my head.

Moving On

This week's cover of the Amsterdam News , New York's longest standing Black weekly, features a picture of the Honorable Louis Farrakhan with headlines referencing the ADL and the Millions More March scheduled for October 2005.

The article includes some interesting tidbits, including Russell Simmons' support adn international travel plans of Min. Farrakhan to generate support in Africa and the Caribbean. Nonetheless, the core of the article is Abe Foxman's missive to "30 black leaders" (unnamed in the article) requesting that they disassociate themselves from the event.

I have not finalized my personal decision to attend. I attended the first MMM. Nonetheless, I would hope that those 30 folks who received the letters would accord them the proper respect - namely a place in the trash bin. Quite simply, this discourse about Black-Jew relations is boring and fruitless. Nine times out of ten, the discussion is based on a short-lived 1960's US-centered strategic alliance. Harold Cruse may have done the best job of addressing this "relationship" in Crisis.

I love the ADL's policy of calling for denounciations. It is one of the most successful tactics used in politics today. It allows groups with self-serving agendas to create a public discourse about issues that lack substance while creating implicit public support for their own position. Of course, having money and media access helps.

Black-Jew relations are similar to those between Blacks and any other international culture group engaged in commerce and trade within a settler-colonial nation dominated by white supremacists. Blacks and Indians in South Africa, East Africa, Guyana and the Caribbean have similar relationships to that evidenced by Blacks and European Jews in the US. A similar thing can be said of Chinese immigrant communities in the Caribbean. There has been and will continue to be economic and political competition, amid social attraction and rejection, with locked social orders locating Africans at the low end - and immigrants at a rung or two above.

I would simply argue that the biggest difference in the US(and to my mind, it constitutes an "isolated incident") is the role of Euro-Amer. Jews in supporting the world's first televised social justice movement. If the "Civil Rights Movement" were not televised, the B-J relationship might be viewed in the context of all other inter-ethnic relationships. It is exaggerated to the same extent that all things "New York" or "Los Angeles" are exaggerated. There is far less substance and agreement to the relationship than is imagined.

Black Youth and Self-Esteem

The entire basis of Brown vs. Board of Education was wrong in my opinion. Instead of arguing that black kids felt bad about themselves because they went to black schools, Thurgood et al should have argued that they weren't getting the resources. Black self-esteem isn't a significant problem...though the existence of stereotype threat is a signal exception. So while browsing for something else I come across the following abstract:

Ethnic identity was conceptualized into three categories: (1) unexamined, (2) searching for identity, and (3) achieved ethnic identity. Analyses of data collected from 12,386 adolescents showed that ethnic identity is an important qualifier of the relationships between independent variables of ethnicity and gender, and dependent variables of global self-esteem, academic self-confidence, and purpose in life. Whites and Native Americans had lower ethnic identity, and Blacks and Hispanics had higher ethnic identity. Asians and repondents of mixed ethnicity had intermediate levels of ethnic identity. The greater the ethnic identity, the higher the self-esteem, purpose in life and self-confidence. This mechanism applies to ethnic minorities and to women among whom achieved ethnic identity may blunt the negative effects of social denigration and stereotyping, and it applies to whites, too. The paper argues that multiculturalism in the schools can increase ethnic identity.

You Write the Joke

FDA Looking Into Blindness-Viagra Link

By Lauran Neergard
Associated Press
Friday, May 27, 2005; 9:15 AM

Federal health officials are examining rare reports of blindness among some men using the impotence drug Viagra.

The Food and Drug Administration still is investigating, but has no evidence yet that the drug is to blame, said spokeswoman Susan Cruzan.

And Copy Machines Turned out Song after Song...

If I were to choose one group without whom much of hip-hop, electro, house, techno (Detroit and otherwise), and related electronic musics would be possible....I'd probably choose Kraftwerk. The idea that a few German classical musicians could later inspire a former gang leader from the Bronx (Afrika Bambaata), and a trio of metro Detroit DJ's (Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson), doesn't quite jibe with our understanding of black cultural production. Asking a similar question I asked about Detroit Bass (now "Baltimore Club"), how is it that these productions grab hold of us not letting go even in case of emergency? I remember where I was vividly when I heard Rapper's Delight for the first time. We were driving across the railroad tracks past the Satellite Bowling Alley on the way home.

I also remember where I was the first time I heard Kraftwerk's "Numbers". Talked about it all next day in Mr. O'Kray's class.

Thinking about our role as agents (rather than passive consumers), what are we mapping onto these productions ourselves? What do we see in them? What did I as a working class black kid growing up right outside of post-industrial Detroit see here?

As an aside, I didn't realize the degree to which Kraftwerk themselves were influenced by free jazz innovations from here in the states. Completing the circle...and giving Wynton Marsalis even more fits.

Smut City

Tonight at Nerve Ryan Kennedy talks about Baltimore Club a type of song that mixes 2 Live Crew type lyrics with house music percussion and pace.

I remember the first time I encountered house music within the pages of a Chicago newspaper. The year was 1991. Considering that I'd been a house music acolyte for six years already, and the scene had been hot (in Chicago, mind) for at least another four before that, you figure that being ten years late was better than being 11 years late.

Here? I thought Nerve was supposed to be hot. Supposed to be on it.

Baltimore Club? This is nothing but Detroit bass music...which had replaced house and Detroit techno on the airwaves and most club playlists by 1992. Strippers used to shake to it, young undergrads and high schoolers used to move to it, and a white Michigan undergrad by the name of DJ Assault made himself quite a name on it. Think of house music on a combination of speed and Viagara and you get the picture.

I just don't know why the hell it took so long for Nerve to get the picture. I hope Kennedy didn't pitch the story to someone else too. No need for two news magazines to get took.

For me Baltimore and Detroit have a great deal in common. I don't think it's a coincidence that the music grabs a hold of Baltimore the same it did Detroit.

American Express and Coach K

I'm watching the NBA Playoffs, and I'm hearing this voice during the commercials talking about what the various teams and players bring to the table. I realize it's Coach K from Duke and he's shilling for American Express. It's all good, but I'm trying to figure out something. When was the last time we heard a college baseball coach talking as a voice of authority about a major league baseball squad? I'm firmly convinced that the entire notion of a "pure" college game juxtaposed against a "lazy" pro game is a myth. It sells tickets for a weaker product--I can understand why Duke alumni might want to watch them play from afar but not someone from Whittier--and ensures high ratings for the March college tournament.

Transitions

Come July 1, I'll no longer be associated with Washington University in Saint Louis. Instead I'll be making the move to Johns Hopkins, the first modern research university. The decision to make the move was a lot harder than I thought it would be, so I'm taking the time to publicly thank the students and administration of Washington University in Saint Louis. I know some of them read the posts here. One of the things a school like Wash. U. promises students is personal relationships with their professors. At a school like Michigan, we never got those promises...and I wasn't mad. I WANTED a 35,000 Big Ten, Division I, Rose Bowl type groove. I expected to tolerate Wash. U. at best, with its 38,000/year tuition.

But going back for graduation it was clear to me how much I left there. I'll be back more than a few times. It's pretty cheap to get there, and the summers are cool (figuratively not literally). Damn it was a good run though.

For those of you reading, send this around. You know where to find me. If you need anything, LET ME KNOW.

Your Financial Life

This is your financial life on the net. This is your social security information that is available to the world.

That's all I have to say.

Bank security breach may be biggest yet
Account info at Bank of America, Wachovia sold by employees; more
arrests expected, N.J. police say.
May 23, 2005: 4:19 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Bank of America Corp. and Wachovia Corp. are
among the big banks notifying more than 670,000 customers that account
information was stolen in what may the biggest security breach to hit
the banking industry.

Account information on the customers was illegally sold by bank
employees to a man identified as Orazio Lembo, whom police said was
doing business by illegally posing as a collection agency.

When police in Hackensack, N.J., first announced arrests in the case
on April 28, they estimated that more than 500,000 people were
affected. That number was raised to 676,000 Friday. Because some
people have more than one account, Hackensack Police Chief Charles
"Ken" Zisa says the number of accounts breached may top 1 million.

"As this gets going, these numbers are going to go up and up,"
Hackensack Detective Capt. Frank Lomia told CNN earlier Monday, adding
that more arrests may be coming in the case.

Here's one woman doing something about it. She's a new mini-hero:

A Matter Of Public Record
Activist Aims to Scare Officials Into Protecting Personal Data

By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 25, 2005; E01

Betty (but call her BJ) Ostergren, a feisty 56-year-old from just north of Richmond, is driven to make important people angry. She puts their Social Security numbers on her Web site, or links to where they can be found.

It's not that she wants CIA Director Porter J. Goss, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, or Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to be victims of identity theft, as were millions of Americans in the past year. Ostergren is on a crusade to scare and shame public officials into doing something about how easy it is to get sensitive personal data.

Data brokers such as ChoicePoint Inc. and LexisNexis Group have been attractive targets for identity thieves because they are giant buyers and sellers of personal data on millions of people.

But as federal and state lawmakers try to keep sensitive information from falling into criminal hands, they face a difficult dilemma: The information typically originates from records gathered and stored by public agencies, available for anyone to see in courthouses and government buildings around the country.

What's more, local governments have in recent years rushed to put these records online.

A wealth of documents -- including marriage and divorce records, property deeds, and military discharge papers -- containing Social Security numbers, dates of birth and other sensitive information is accessible from any computer anywhere. Many of the online records are images of original documents, which also display people's signatures.

New Life

So you are in the operating room, sitting at the head of your wife, while behind the curtain, two doctors and a medical student are working on doing their thing on your wife's "stomach".

A nurse, with a white towel with red and blue stripes drapped across both outstreached arms, comes to the side and waits. And then all of a sudden, you see a "big head" covered in wavy black hair appear from behind that curtain and placed on the towel. They announce, "There he is!" and rush off to do some things.

Later, while the doctors are still doing their thing behind the curtain, they bring him back, tightly wrapped in towel.

They place the boy in the father's arms, and as he gazes down, he looks over at his wife to introduce the two, and the husband sees the look on his wife's face that says it all: the bond between the mother and son will never be broken. Dad, the love your wife has for you is nothing compared to the love your wife has for her son.

And that thought is a wonderful realization.

"DS, 2.0" -- Thanks George! -- welcome to your life!
I'm your dad. I'm charged by God to guide you through your life.
This is your mom. She's charged by God to guide you through your life.

We will do as God commands, in the best way that we know how.

God first, us second.

I proclaim here and now, that God has great things in store for you. "DS, 2.0", prepare for the time of your life!!!!

Dad, mom, and big sis love you.

"Let's get it started!
Let's get it started in here!"

More On WalMart

So, in response to "Business Econ 101", Spence kinda sorta spanked me for not providing enough meat.

Here is my response to him, and at his request, at it's own entry.

Don't ask politicians to do what shouldn't take you more than a fifteen minute google search to find.

The problem is, you have LAWMAKERS making LAWS that they have no clue about nor the potential impact nor the numbers behind what they support. And, when they are put on the spot, they spout, what I can term nothing else but nonsense and show no degree of understanding business and how it operates.

I asked my district representative's office about the bill and was not impressed with the lack of business knowledge and health care costs knowlege.

Above, I gave the cost of what I pay for health insurance.

From the link:
http://www.ufcw.org/issues_and_actions/walmart_workers_campaign_info/facts_and_figures/walmartonbenefits.cfm

Employees must pay $218 per month for family health care coverage from Wal-Mart.

That's less than what I pay. I also have looked into paying my own health costs, directly, for a number of reasons, one being I tend to job hop and I want to have medical care consistancy. Paying for health care for my family, the cost would be slightly higher than what I pay now. Either way, both are more than what WalMart workers pay, if that link is correct. (When paying for my own coverage, it is still group insurance).

More than 60 percent of Wal-Mart employees--600,000 people--are forced to get health insurance coverage from the government or through spouses’ plans—or live without any health insurance.

1. They don't break down the percentage of how many are "forced" to get it from government, spouse or live without.

2. Of those who live without, they don't give a breakdown of how many do so by choice.

3. "Forced" to get health care from their spouse? Uhhh.... My wife and I made a decision who had the best health coverage and that was the one we went with. If they are still covered, so what?

Wal-Mart has increased the premium cost for workers by over 200% since 1993

That's a lot, but I think that's better than the averge.

That link was from a union backed web site.

Here is another link:

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart/health_insurance_program.php

Detractors point out that Wal-Mart covers only 48 percent of its employees. But according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, in the retail sector overall only 45 percent of workers receive health coverage from their own employer. Still, why do more than half of Wal-Mart's employees opt out of the company's health insurance?

For one thing, part-time workers who make up 25 percent of Wal-Mart's workforce are not eligible until after two years. Then there is the cost. Wal-Mart pays 67 percent of the cost of health insurance for employees, about equal to the retail industry average of 68 percent for family coverage—but, for individual health insurance, far below the 77 percent that retailers contribute on average.

Many employees opt out because they are otherwise covered. The company says that two-thirds of its employees are second-income providers, college students, and senior citizens. Many of these have health insurance through their spouse's employer, parent's plan, or retirement and Medicare programs. Thus about 40 percent of the company's workers are covered apart from Wal-Mart's plan.

The Index Awards

I stumbled onto World Changing last week and quickly added it to the list. I think Dorsey's blog might have been the first step that led me to it. Anyway I remember talking to George Kelley a long time ago about an idea of a blog dedicated to workable outside the box Afrofuturist solutions to global problems in general, and black problems specifically.

I heard about The Index Awards through World Changing. Whether you are a diehard socialist or a hardcore capitalist, one has to be impressed with any effort to make automotive plants green.

Business Econ 101

Business exists to provide a product and or service. In general, they exist to make money. When something happens that negatively affects their ability to make money, the businesses make adjustments.

In the case of WalMart, they have delayed creating a distribution center in Maryland because Maryland politicians, supported by Giant Foods, a WalMart competitor, decided to create a law that affects only Giant.

The politicians determined how much WalMart was spending on health insurance and then decided to pluck a percentage out of the air, a percentage that was more than WalMart spends, and made it a basis of a bill. The bill says that "big employers" must spend at least 8% of its payroll for the health care costs of their employees, or give the difference to Maryland or pay a fine. Gov. Ehrlich vetoed the bill as being anti-business. And he is right. It is anti-business. Maryland, which has an anti-business reputation anyway, made the national news because of this bill.

Additionally, other states are looking at the outcome of this to determine if they are going to do the same thing.

This is stupid.

The WalMart distribution center would be located in a county that has the second highest unemployment rate in the state. If the state legislation over rides the veto, potentially 800 jobs would be lost.

And, the real heart of the matter, for some anyway, is that WalMart is taking a big bite out of the competition. Giant didn't care about WalMart until WalMart started selling food. That's when Giant went whining to the politicians for help. The politicians found an "out" using health care and there it was, a serious dent to Giant's competitor.

Oh, and it should be noted that after the bill was passed and the legislative session ended, Giant announced it was moving its administration offices to another state and closing some of its warehouse facilities.

Now, compare that to this news about Hyundai.

Hyundai's non-unionized plant, for example, will pay most of its 2,000 employees a starting wage of $14.46 an hour, far below the $20-plus hourly wages for comparable United Auto Workers members in Michigan. The Hyundai workers also will have to contribute $14.54 every two weeks for health coverage, which is free to employees under UAW contracts.

There is no pension available to the Hyundai workforce; instead, employees have a 401(k) plan.

By contrast, GM, Ford and the Chrysler Group of DaimlerChrysler AG carry more than 800,000 retirees and family members on their pension rolls at a total cost of $11 billion per year. The companies estimate that about $1,500 of the cost of building each vehicle goes toward health care -- several times what Hyundai pays.

That's part of the reason Hyundai can offer a laundry list of safety features on the new Sonata, quality that ranks near the top of the auto industry and a price that undercuts competitors at Honda and Toyota -- and still make more profit than GM.

Maryland politicians tried to get many of the foreign companies to build plants in the state, but all efforts failed. One reason for the failure is the anti-business reputation of the state. A second reason is that Maryland is a strong union state while states further south are "right to work" states.

If the legislation overrides the veto and makes it law, how long will it be before the politicians decide to raise the 8% level? How long will it be before the politicians decide to lower the number of employees a company has? How long before the number of employees level starts to impact small business? And how long will it take for businesses to pack up and leave the state of Maryland because of the law?

When that happens, jobs will be lost, unemployment levels will rise, and who will be the most impacted? The lower economic levels and the middle class.

The Democratic politicians in Maryland did this to show support for their union money spigots. They didn't do this for people lacking health care. WalMart is used by the poor and middle classes because of the lower prices. If WalMart has to raise its prices in Maryland, who are the people who get hurt?

Neuticles

Neuticles are a distinctly Murkan prosthetic oddity that Indra Neuticle, oops, that's Nooya, cain't flex.

Not exactly in the order of the St. Georges, Madam Neuticle was quick to apologize for having breathed a little truth concerning the empire.

Of course the thought police were quick to flex nutz like you'd expect real prankstaz to do.

What exactly ARE neuticles?

They're what the self-interested, self-serving, and so-called black political leadership got implanted with YEARS ago....,

Commentary Thoughts

• Hat tip: The Scott Wickham Experience

  1. The U.S. is a Constitutional Representative Republic.

  2. The Senate exists to protect the "wishes of the small states" against the "wishes of the big states". Thus Delaware's senators have the same weight as California's.

  The fillibuster is fine. "Secret holds" that prevent the committee from even voting is "undemocratic".

  Let's get down to the basics, senate and house committees are undemocratic. Why should, say, 12 representatives or senators get to decide the bills that make it to the floor or appointees that get a vote? Why should the chairman of a committee, ONE PERSON even get to decide whether or not a bill or appointee gets a chance to face a vote in the committee?

• Hat tip: Booker Rising

  I keep saying that Sharpton is doing more to break the binds of Blacks to Democrats than Black Republicans are doing to break the binds of Blacks to Democrats; and he is.

• Why is it that most "Black conservative" commentary, when the topic is the Black community, is overwhelmingly negative?

• By the reasoning of those who say Blacks shouldn't support the fillibuster because it was used to try to stop civil rights legislation, those who support the Confederate flag shouldn't do so because it was used by anti-civil rights supporters.

  And who are those Confederate flag supporters today?

• Black Self Help.

Man Up 102

and on the liminal tip, Lucas joins his fellow georgean Galloway and shows precisely how to lay the P.I.M.P hand down on The Man.

Viewed with several hundred other nerds playing hookie y'day morning at a mega-auditorium in Kansas, and despite the plague of simplemindedness wreaking havoc across the state - this pop-cultural screed against neocon tyranny received a standing ovation at the end.

Mfume Quickie

Mfume has admitted having a relationship with a woman, a subordinate, at the NAACP.

Now, given the situation that happened with Clinton, one would think that he wouldn't get involved like that. There's a difference because Mfume is not married, but she was a subordinate.

That was stupid.

Rep. Cummings has not said that he will run, but he has not said that he will not run. Before this mess, Cummings has fired some verbal shots at Mfume that have hit hard.

The fact that doesn't get noticed by the white media is that Mfume has made enemies in the Baltimore region because a lot of things have happened that many believe Mfume could have had a positive impact on, IF he chose to get involved.

One such issue is lead in the water of public city schools.

The Baltimore school system was sued by the ACLU and a children's advocate group because of high levels of lead found in schools through out the city. The public schools turned off the water fountains and brought in bottled water. This lasted one school year. The next school year, they turned the water back on. Many advocates believed that if Mfume got involved, the situation would not have had to go to the courts AND the issue may have been more properly addressed. (Of course, the parents should bring more heat but that didn't happen).

Mfume didn't get involved because Mayor O'Malley is his friend and O'Malley will help fund Mfume's campaign.

Of course, this gets said in the Black media, but the white media, especially conservative media, still thinks Blacks are all in lock step and don't think for themselves. This includes Black conservatives.

Man Up 101

Can you even imagine a black politician...?

Nah, nevermind.

Not since Malcolm got shot and black testicular fortitude personified as factual, logical and rhetorical integrity took a permanent nosedive....,

Oh, and watch him laying the parliamentary pimphand down. Slapped em like he was they daddy!!!

Prohibition

This is rough. Real rough. I wanted to put it out a few days ago, but it got lost. So, I'm just throwing this out here now.

Years ago, Kurt Schmoke said that the U.S. needs to consider decriminalizing or legalizing drugs to take the profit motive out of the drug trade. That would cause the violence and crime associated with the drug trade to go down.

I somewhat disagree.

Would crime related to drugs go down? Sure. But that's because of the change in legal status. The question to ask is will the crimes committed by people on drugs go up, stay the same, or go down?

Let's assume the government taxes the sale of drugs. What do you think is going to happen to the money? Do you think it will go towards addiction programs?

No. It will go towards the general government fund where the politicians will spend it at their will. That's what happened with the tobacco settlement money. Most of it went to other purposes, not towards tobacco use prevention and addiction programs.

Amersterdam is shown as the model for drug legalization but the proponents don't examine the rise in addiction nor do they examine the break down of families of drug users.

People like to point out that the end of alcohol prohibition took out the profit motive for the mob to be involved in alcohol production and distribution.

Not exactly. "Moonshine" production and distribution still occurs. It is a low key multi-million dollar business.

Let's assume it does become decriminalized. What would the local dealers do? Maybe run cigarettes? In New York and Maryland, states with high cigarette taxes, state authorities are finding out there is a growing business in shipment of cigarettes to get around the taxes placed on them.

My point? New illegal areas of making money will be found.

Why not concentrate of getting kids to not get involved in selling drugs in the first place? Maybe the problem is it is "harder".

Bankruptcy Laws on Ed Gordon

My second commentary for Ed Gordon comes out today. You can find it here after 1pm EST. It deals with the bankruptcy laws recently passed by the House and the Senate. If you ever needed proof that neither party really cares about flesh and blood constituents you don't need to look further than this bill.

Rex Chapman speaks on inter-racial dating

I've followed Rex Chapman since he was a McDonald's all star. Could jump out of the gym, and had a real nice stroke. Ended up coming out a couple of years early and being drafted by the Charlotte Hornets. When Magic announced that he had HIV/AIDS and was retiring, Chapman was one of the first people to step up with loot and with support. I'm not sure what provoked his statemenets on UK's stance towards his inter-racial dating, but they were interesting. What jumped out at me was when he talked about then vs. now. "I don't know how it is now, but that's how it was twenty years ago."

I did the math quickly in my head.

Twenty years. DAMN. That went by quick.

So quick that I wouldn't be surprised if things haven't changed all that much.

Mexico's Fox draws ire for racial miss-step

Mexican President Vicente Fox was sound criticized for comments made about blacks during a speech criticizing US policy. Fox noted the following:

"There's no doubt that the Mexican men and women _ full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work _ are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States,"

Now to be fair, he's right. The jobs that Mexican immigrants take are jobs that most Americans would not want to take. Where Fox makes the mistake is in revealing the fundamental nature of the contemporary racial hierarchy. "...Doing the work not even blacks want to do." That is to say, the work that not even the lowest among you would do for money.

Edited to add: Bomani's got the same ideas on this, but fleshes them out a bit more.

Dave Chappelle

Time magazine has a feature on Dave Chappelle, who recently left his show on Comedy Central. People speculated that he'd had a mental breakdown.

I thought otherwise.

What struck me about the Chappelle show was that is was extremely edgy. Literally skirting the edge between sly racial commentary and cooning in some cases. In fact, talking it over with my wife last night I am surprised no one has made the comparison between Chappelle and the character from Spike Lee's classic Bamboozled. Chappelle's problem seemed to me to be a simple one to diagnose--he was successful.

We all WANT success. We think we work hard at it. We think we yearn for it. But I believe that most of us are really very comfortable working in relative obscurity. Every now and then we get our fifteen minutes of fame, but not only do we not want to work for it, but if we get it we have no idea what to do with it.

Think about Lotto winners. You ever read follow up stories about them? About how they end up being extremely depressed, often times losing their friends, their family, and THEN their loot in the bargain?

I think this is what is happening here. And the fact that Chappelle has made his loot doing racially edgy comedy makes it even harder. I'm not convinced that he had a strong grasp on when his comedy was pandering to racism BEFORE he blew up. I'm thinking it's got to be even HARDER for him to keep that vision in mind now.

Revisiting Tulsa

Steve I don't know if you read this, but you should check this post out. This is the hidden history of Tulsa that shouldn't be that hidden. In a time where a great number of us are focused on terrorism (rightly so), we should revisit our own terrorist history. Thanks to Barr, whom I met on Flickr. I'm hoping I can shift my research agenda to deal with comparative issues soon enough to travel the world before the oil goes....

Real Power

Quickie:

They don't like the power these tribes are obtaining.

It's about economics. That's the real power of this country.

That's why is so asinine that a minority of vocal Blacks speak about the ills of capitalism, the ills of the U.S., the "lack of power" of Blacks and then spout socialist economic theory nonsense.

Hat tip: P6

LeBron kicks agent to the curb

Lebron James recently fired his agent Aaron Goodwin. What's made news though is Goodwin's replacement--James' childhood friend. While some of my people are tripping--some of the same ones that worried about him getting a Hummer before his deal was cut--there are other opinions out there. Me?

I created a new category here entitled "Cooperative Vision." And I think James' decision (and James isn't the first to employ this tactic successfully) fits here. The value of group cooperation, group initiative, and group loyalty can never be overstated. We've got to start using the social capital we accumulated to build institutions of value. Bron, the boy-king, may be a worthwhile model to emulate.

The Real Sh*t

Craig Nulan introduced me to the concept of "peak oil" and for that reason alone I would be eternally grateful. But here's an interview with James Howard Kunstler that bears reading. Here's the central question: how should we live in the next forty years, when the oil runs out?

So we've all been talking in various ways about rebuilding the ties that bind. But as far as concrete stuff? Create co-ops. If you live in large large cities, don't plan on being able to survive there. If you live in the suburbs and commute to work? Move back to the city (unless the city is large large). If you live in a place like Tuscon? Move. Vegas? Move. Want to make money? Invest in urban housing.

Other ideas?

Thoughts

• Matt Drudge IS mainstream media. His web site is mainly links to news articles.
• LaShawn Barber points out "liberal" media bias. Media matters disagrees. I happen to think that media matters makes some interesting points. The media IS biased, but I don't fully by the "liberal" line.
• Michael Eric Dyson is making the rounds pimping his new book. I heard parts of different interviews. I find it funny he blasts the "Black middle class booo-zwaaa-ZE" for their ills of not embracing hip hop. Seems to me that many younger people did. But they don't embrace the crap, now. Dyson has been on my list since he defended the disrespect of Black women by some rappers.
• Is Project 21 representative of Black conservatives? If so, does it mean anything that I think most of the commentary is negative about the Black community? Is there nothing good to proclaim?
• I'm branded a "liberal" by "conservatives" and a "conservative" by "liberals". I think that "fact" alone means most people tossing the labels don't have a clue.
• I have a "secret"...
• Those who push the idea of "blue" and "red" states, are pimps pushing the divide of the country. They are intellectually lazy and it is easier to categorize people and thought instead of actually thinking. They mean the country no good.
• I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. Right now, I find the harshest criticism directed towards me from Republicans for daring to challenge them. Democrats concede my criticisms of the Democratic party. At least this is the case as it concerns Blacks and the Democratic party and Blacks and the Republican party.
• I'm not rich. I'm comfortible. I'm blessed. I see no reason why the government should take more than 10% of my money. Why is the government getting more than I give God?
• I don't get the WalMart haters. I like the prices. I hate going to the store because it is ALWAYS crowded. And, I'm sorry, but it seems like a large majority of the workers, excluding the door greaters, aren't too swift. But, they allow shoppers to save money. So, what's wrong with that?
• WARNING! Never mix the less mentally acute and self service check out lanes.
• The "discussion" between the "Black left" and the "Black right" has left me convinced that American Blacks, in general, are brain damaged. We can't afford to get caught in the mess. But yet, I'm in it.
• Tom Delay is not in trouble. Many of his ethic sins are sins that all congress-criters take part. The fact that most of the American public who pays attention, hasn't rushed the congress with burning stakes, shows to me, that the congress-criters can feel safe in continuing to play the American populace for fools.
• Booker Rising is a great blog.
• Black Self Help Dot Info. Yeah, I have to update it. I have a lot of links on the hard drive.

Thoughts about Undergrad and Black Politics

My life as a scholar emanates from two central experiences. Here I'll focus on one--undergrad life. I may have talked about this before elsewhere, but I thank Cobb for bringing it up in the context of organization and black politics.

For me, I had two homes in undergrad--the Black Student Union, and Omega Psi Phi. The ques were a special case, but looking at black fraternity and sorority life at Michigan what I found was that the fraternities and sororities in general were highly efficient at organizing and mobilizing folk. It was nothing to pull thousands of black students for a set. Nothing to have personal meetings with high ranking university officials. But for the most part they didn't really care much about black people...nor were they intellectually driven in any stretch of the imagination. (Again, the Ques were a special case here.)

The Black Student Union on the other hand was never efficient at organizing and mobilizing large numbers of black people, they loved black people and the life of the mind. Talking about the viability of a black state, the wonder of the philosophy of the Ancients, the 13 thirteens in a dollar bill, the ideology behind George Bush's New World Order (Novus Order Seclorum).

I wouldn't be here without both experiences. But if it is at all possible to compare the experiences of a select subset of young adults to the experiences of people within an entire metropolitan area, we've got some of the same problems. The black people with the most expertise in organizing people and capital are the least interested in black people as a whole. The black people with the most love for black people don't have a clue about organizing capital much less people for anything other than protests.

Educating kids to do both should be a central goal of black educators.

Organization & Black Politics

Subtitled the Politics of Black Organizations.

Spence is a great provocateur for me. In the past couple of months we've talked on the phone maybe 7 times. Each time we ramble into interesting places. There are only a few people I know with which I can do that. One of them was Richard Yarborough, the prof at UCLA with whom I've had exactly two conversations in 15 years. I suspect that Gerald Early and I could talk up a blue streak. These are the geek moments I live for.

Part of the great difficulty of black intellectual life at this moment in American history is that we live in a post-Civil-Rights world which also has a real cultural acceptance of racial integration. Though I haven't mentioned anything about the passing of Kenneth Clark, we live in his legacy. For ideological and economic reasons, there is now an internal black diaspora in America. In Clark's day, all of the best and brightest black scholars could be found at Howard University. By the time I was ready to apply to an undergraduate program, it was clear that I had a wider variety of choices. (It is interesting in hindsight to review which colleges recruited me - I really had no idea about their repuptations). This creates an interesting problem which I feel personally and that Black America feels collectively. That is the matter of The Hookup.

Just like the idea of the Drop Squad, African Americans have a sense of longing for The Hookup. 'Hook a brother up', means where's my cheese? Where's my inside track? We've been on this land for more than 400 years, show me the places I can breathe free and get some benefits. This is social and it is political as well. We want not to have to be the first blacks anywhere. We want somebody to introduce us, show us the shortcuts, tell us whom to ignore and whom to mind. Having been a road warrior for many years, the Hookup for me often entails something as simple as finding a good barbershop in whatever town I happen to be in. But it's also as sophisticated as determining which of the many black conservatives who get national exposure are closest to my own political philosophy and determining their influence on the national scene. Blackfolks looking out for each other is made manifest by the Hookup, simple or complex.

So getting into the point, what do black undergraduates do when they begin classes at a predominantly white campus? Do they join a black fraternity or sorority? Do they join the black student union? Do they sit at the same cafeteria tables? Do they form study groups? Do they segregate into various cliques? Those are too many questions, but let's focus on the matter of how it is that blackfolks who would be leaders go about getting leadership experience.

Even that's a huge area of study, but I think it's very useful in determining what the hallmarks of leadership are as regards whom black masses might consider their leaders and how black leaders might seek to appeal to those masses. Leave it at that black on black dynamic for a minute if you would.

What Spence told me that resonated was that his fraternity was tightly organized whereas the Black Student Union on campus was lame. The same was the case at my school. Furthermore, what the BSU tended to do was grab the lowest common denominator of black students on campus, therefore having the largest numbers.

I'm going to get specific to my own experience and make some general assessments. Your mileage may vary.

I never bothered to be a black leader per se although I was called. It's probably fair to say that much of my early concept of my Talented Tenth upbringing was more about being 'proper' than it was to modify the behavior of my peers. My sense of responsibility always had more of the connotation of ability than that of didacticism. I figured I might be a leader because all the other kids were just cutting up, while I was being straight. They wouldn't because they couldn't, it had nothing to do with my force of personality. And so that left me in strange places, especially when dealing with charismatic individuals who were just wrong. Hell, I could name names all through the 'hood and into high school - people who lead with black style and charisma, but at some level were knuckleheads.

Examining this dynamic from a black perspective could be said not to be useful at all, except that the general presumptions against blackfolks in general allow black fakers to be exposed more often than white fakers. The consequences of that, and general black on black hateration results, to my eyes, of black organizations not getting much benefit of any doubt. Despite whatever validity they might have in their aim or organization, this concern about fake leadership is a burden that black orgs have. I'm not so sure this has changed much since my college days.

So what I'd like to investigate in this thread is what might be done to establish the Hookup. Determine what are reasonable expectations of it and assess where my generation and the next are able to take this. How can I know when I'm getting hooked up with an okey-doke organization? How can I get objective when the subjectivity of it being a *black* anything might be making me irrational? What's particularly fascinating to me are some of the stories I am getting back from, among other places, South Africa which seems, very much like Brazil to offer African Americans (ok African American men), some very extraordinary social and business opportunities.

The Science of Gender and Science

Save yourself the long grind and simply cut to the concluding 20 minute video chase.

Elizabeth Spelke clocks Steven Pinker about 2/3rds of the way through their concluding remarks. When she invokes the meritocratic nature of athletics and how black athletes have taken over every field endeavored, because of objective performance standards, imoho it's game over for the boys club of science. Pinker huffs back that women are well represented in the less hard social sciences and veterinary medicine, but still glaringly absent from physics. (word to your mother, physics, like EVERY other branch of hard science, is just as fully circumscribed by social networks as business and commerce. These relational frameworks substantially control access and exposure within the field. Getting ahead depends to a very great extent on who knows you and who likes you)

A lot of other good materials documenting the debate in detail. Ever since Lawrence Summers inserted foot in mouth, this has been gradually brewing. While I find the debate interesting on its own terms, I think you could just as easily say, The Science of Race and Science and much of what Spelke asserts would equally well be true.

"Stop Snitching" and Economic Boycotts

I've made reference to a DVD titled "Stop Snitching".

"Dawson Family and Snitching"

"Stop Snitching"

Some things are just so out of bounds, that very little has to be said.

When people/companies decide to take advantage of something like the "Stop Snitching" DVD, an appropriate response must be made.

In shopping malls around the city, young people are buying T-shirts with statements that would make any parent, police officer or community leader cringe: "Criminal minded." "Let's get blown." "Ready to Die."

But one in particular has some city officials particularly stunned: A T-shirt that warns boldly across the front, "Stop Snitchin."

Coming on the heels of the Stop Snitching DVD that began circulating in Baltimore last year, the T-shirts are disheartening to those who say they aggravate an already chronic problem of witness intimidation. While shops that sell the shirts say the tees are not connected to the DVD, city officials say the message remains the same - and it's a damaging one.

...

But those who buy such T-shirts - and those who make or sell them - say the shirts are just fashion.

"I don't take it to heart," said Larry Smith, of Essex, who recently bought a "Stop Snitchin" T-shirt from Changes, a jeans and urban wear store in Eastpoint Mall. "I just like the shirt. It's just a figure of speech."

The shirts, some of which simply say "Stop Snitchin," and others that are more graphically embellished with shotgun targets or other images, sell for about $19 to $28.

This is obscene and that's being nice about it.

I shop at that store when giving gifts to younger family members. I have purchased a few items for myself as well.

No longer.

Not only that, but I've made it clear to my offspring that Changes is off limits. If something comes from that store, and I find out about it, My Wrath Will Be Felt.

[ Update ] The contact info.

Changes Enterprises, LTD

Andrew Goetz, President & CEO

409 Ensor St

Baltimore, MD 21202

info@changesenterprises.com

The Dawson Family, And Snitching

This is for cnulan.

The Dawson Family

More than 2,000 friends and neighbors paid last respect to a mother and five children of a Baltimore family who were killed in a house fire believed set by vengeful drug dealers. A day earlier, a seventh family member died from injuries he received in the Oct. 16 fire. Funeral services were held for Angela Maria Dawson, 36; and her children, 9-year-old twins Keith and Kevin, Carnell Jr., 10, Juan Ortiz, 12, and LaWanda Ortiz, 14.
During a press conference, police commissioner Edward Norris, calling the day the saddest in his career, admitted that the reality of life in Baltimore�despite his zero tolerance for drug dealers�is that when a family like the Dawsons is threatened by drug dealers, there is little the police can do besides relocating them for their own protection.
A message of death was sent to Angela and Carnell Dawson when they asked dealers selling drugs in front of their East Baltimore row house to move and set up business elsewhere. The heartless answer from these street thugs came Oct. 4 when they threw two Molotov cocktails into the family home.
As fire swept through their kitchen, and suffocating smoke filled the three-story house, the couple blindly grabbed their five children and stumbled outside into the darkness. They stood there trembling in terror. Mrs. Dawson, realizing the deadly danger posed by the attempted arsonist, wrote a hand-written note to police asking for help.
Two weeks later, on Oct. 16, shortly after midnight, the fear and retaliation the family had expected arrived in flames and death. One resident said the house looked like it �blew up, just burst into flames,� as if caused by �an incendiary device.�
The blaze erupted into a raging fire that swept through the sleeping family�s corner house at 1401 E. Preston St. The mother and her five children were burned to death. Carnell Dawson Sr., 43, jumped through a window, and was in critical condition at the Bay View Burn Center with burns over 80 percent of his body. He died last Wednesday, the day before his wife and children were buried.

Now, for Snitching...

In Boston, a witness to a shooting by a member of a street gang recently found copies of his grand jury testimony taped to all the doors in the housing project where he lives.
In Baltimore, Rickey Prince, a 17-year-old who witnessed a gang murder and agreed to testify against the killer, was shot in the back of the head a few days after a prosecutor read Mr. Prince's name aloud in a packed courtroom.
And in each city, CD's and DVD's titled "Stop Snitching" have surfaced, naming some people street gangs suspect of being witnesses against them and warning that those who cooperate with the police will be killed. To underscore its message, the Baltimore DVD shows what appears to be three dead bodies on its back cover above the words "snitch prevention."
These are only a few examples of what the police, prosecutors and judges say is a growing national problem of witness intimidation by youth gangs that in some cities is jeopardizing the legal system and that bears striking similarities to the way organized crime has often silenced witnesses.
"Witness intimidation has become so pervasive that it is ruining the public's faith in the criminal justice system to protect them," said Judge John M. Glynn of Baltimore City Circuit Court. "We are not much better off than the legal system in Mexico or Colombia or some other sad places."

Carmelo Anthony appeared in that DVD. That's why Cummings is in Anthony's behind.

Now you know.

Happy Mother's Day

For the mothers, adoptive mothers, people standing in for the mothers, have a Happy Mother's Day.

"Stop Snitching"

Elijah Cummings is about to get all up in Carmelo Anthony's behind.

More coming...