I cannot tell you how beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible. I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable of free survival, insulated From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all dependent. The circle is closed, and the net Is being hauled in.
Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting
Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off
Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color
light on the sea's night-purple; he points,
and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the
gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net.
They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great
labor haul it in.
I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible,
then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall
to the other of their closing destiny the
phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body
sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside
the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up
to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls
of night
Stand erect to the stars.
Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light:
how could I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how
beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together
into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable
of free survival, insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all
dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet
they shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we
and our children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all
powers--or revolution, and the new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls--or anarchy,
the mass-disasters.
These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps
its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria,
splintered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are
quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew
that cultures decay, and life's end is death.
I've found out about a tool called Frappr (don't ask me where they got the name from). It is based on Google maps (as an aside, damn but I wish I'd have invested in Google when it was "only" $85). I've been interested in the spatial distribution of the black internet for sometime, and this tool may give me some purchase on the question.
So here's the deal. I've created a map for black bloggers. Do me a favor. Send the word out to folks and sign up.
Bennett's awkwardly disclosed bigotry and the insipid apologetics offered in its defense - got me thinking long and hard about our social ecology and how the future is stolen from many of our best and brightest. We live in a society governed by a collective mentality that routinely and systematically - at worst - conflates blackness and criminality, and which - at best - conflates blackness and athleticism. This power wielding mentality, which is broadly and institutionally implemented throughout American socieity, early corrupts or destroys the potential of many of our very best and brightest.
It is encumbent upon us to act communally and institutionally to counteract the malfeasance architected by folks like Bennett, who as Drug Czar and Secretary of Education made a career out of devising and implementing policy harmful to our youth. So much of what passes for conservative discourse nowadays consists of little more than cheerleading for policies and programs that harm black folks. I have enclosed an excerpt from Leon Dixon's book, Future in our Hands which serves as a discourse on the motivation and approach of the Dubois Learning Center in Kansas City.
Future in our Hands is a treatise on why and how it is imperative that we architect our own self-interested institutional approach to supplementing the education and acculturation of black youth so as maximize their potential to both themselves and to our communities.
I was watching a public television program about sled-dogs wherein the trainer was talking about the importance of the lead dog. He pointed out that the particular traits of the lead dog are very special, and how not every dog has them. The traits of the lead dog are so crucial to the sled-dog team that it is imperative that you start training the future lead-dog while it is still a puppy. Quizzically, the reporter asked, "how can you tell which puppy has the characteristics to become a lead dog.?" The trainer explained: "When a litter of puppies is born, you watch them. There is always one puppy who is the first out of the box, the first one to start poking his nose into things and venturing out. The other puppies follow along after him. That's the lead dog.!"
Might this also be true with people? I began to observe young children and reflect back on the childhood of people I know, friends and family for example. Sure enough, I saw the same phenomenon. Are young children who exhibit these characteristics also potential leaders? Keep in mind that a leader is not necessarily the wisest, smartest, most knowledgeable, or most intelligent. A leader is quite simply one who others will follow. Every area and every aspect of different fields and communities has its own leader.
Verifying my hypothesis took time, years in fact. To speed the process, I talked with others who have worked with children over a long enough time that they can discuss the development of various and particular talents with the kind of authority that is derived from experience. From long time and retired teachers, family elders, church elders, little league coaches and others, came the resounding affirmation. They all observed the same phenonomen. Leadership traits as well as other characteristics begin to show up quite early.
Moreover, there was one particular characteristic that one of our staff members, Cornell Perry Sr. of the Dubois Learning Center observed that I think is worth further exploration. For a little background on Perry, to underscore why his opinions on this matter are worth consideration; Perry, as of this writing (1994), has been a little league baseball coach for 12 years. He coaches, eight, nine, and ten year olds, and has never had a losing season. his teams are perennially in the city play-offs and he has won the city championship twice that I know of. I point this out because boys at this age know next to nothing about baseball. Also, since his team plays in a predominantly white league, they face th usual amount of racism. Sometimes, it is very blatant. He lost one game 8-12 and the opposing team didn't even get a hit. The racism he's faced with his eleven and twelve year old team is just as blatant.
As a result of lopsided scores, he was encouraged to move up to another level or move on to another league. Perry and his assistants taught his charges, the lion cubs, to win in spite of the prejudice. In the world we live in, racism is simply a given fact of life. It just has to be dealt with. You acknowledge it, abhor it, grapple with it, figure out how to overcome it, and move on. You cannot wish it or its effects away.
Perry's observation; The talents that our kids have show up at a very young age and what is looked out for, nurtued and exploited is nearly exclusively their athletic abilities. You can see similar potential across the board, but what usually happens to these kids, because of their superb athletic abilities is that they get pampered by adults and the other kids in our communities. These kids are given a false sense of security and signals that they can rely solely on their athletic ability to achieve success. They consequently become lazy when it comes to academics and far too many are allowed to do just enough to get by and seldom do they reach their full academic potential.
This occurs because the media and schools have set the tone in our communities that the quickest way out of the inner city is through sports. And to perpetuate this myth, we as a community allow these kids to showcase their talents in sporting events even when we know that some of them are not performing academically as well as they should. Or we give them preferential treatment so as not to hinder their chances for athletic success.
Even among these kids, however, there are one or two who stand out above the others. Thereis something even more special about them. It is just something that they have. They are the trendsetters and are usually the most popular kids in school. Since they are their schools best athletes, with suspected professional possibilities, they are treated like royalty by a small contingent of their peers and elders. Their activities and ways are mimicked by a lot of our other youngsters for better of for worse. These individuals are natural born leaders with the ability to influence entire student bodies.
Perry's hypothesis: If we can identify and guide these particular youth in a positive direction, starting at a very early age, their effects on our communities could be staggering. If we can develop their natural athletic abilities, with their natural leadership abilities these young people would become very positive influences affecting whole neighborhoods, families, and communities for a generation.
Perry calls this the disciple theory. It is based on the common sense and experientially verified premise that our youth are influenced more by their peers than by adults. If Perry's observations are true, or even partially true, and many of the indicators seem to suggest that they might be, that that indicates a strategy we need to employ that depends on early recognition of talent and the early beginning of its development.
One of the great tragedies in our social ecology is that so many of our youth tend to focus on feast or famine endeavors, like athletics, entertainment, [and even illegal commerce CN]. Too many of our young are walking the razors edge, often so blinded by the glow of fools gold that they do not even see all of the former travelers who have fallen by the wayside on these paths.
Lynne continues structural meditations on being the media. The angle of approach is waaaay steep for my preferences, see, I believe all the enabling technology required has been around for a while but that the bottleneck is the rate of grass roots adoption. Seems etherially interwoven with the notion of a community systems group.., necessity being the inflection point for essential communal adoption and repurposing of existing technology.
Though it's written all over his face, seeing it in writing was very gratifying indeed;
Chávez comes from the provinces of Venezuela, from the vast southern cattle lands of the Llanos that stretch down to the Apure and Orinoco river system. Of black and Indian ancestry, his parents were local schoolteachers, and he has inherited their didactic skills. His talents first came to the fore when he joined the army and became a popular lecturer at the war college in Caracas. He is a brilliant communicator, speaking for hours on television in a folksy manner that captivates his admirers and irritates his opponents.Richard Gott writing in the Guardian is the author of Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution. I want to take this opportunity to remind each and every one of you what Dr. Sonja Ebron wrote in the Black Commentator concerning the actual threat posed by Sadaam Hussein - why the U.S. felt compelled to take him out - and why black folks ought to oppose that war.
Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, is a genial fellow with a good sense of humour and a steely political purpose. As a former military officer, he is accustomed to the language of battle and he thrives under attack. He will laugh off this week's suggestion by Pat Robertson, the US televangelist, that he should be assassinated, but he will also seize on it to ratchet up the verbal conflict with the United States that has lasted throughout his presidency.
Chávez, now 51, is the same age as Tony Blair, and after nearly seven years as president he has been in power for almost as long. But there the similarities end. Chávez is a man of the left and, like most Latin Americans with a sense of history, he is distrustful of the United States. Free elections in Latin America have often thrown up radical governments that Washington would like to see overthrown, and the Chávez government is no exception to this rule.
Chávez is a genuinely revolutionary figure, one of those larger-than-life characters who surface regularly in the history of Latin America - and achieve power perhaps twice in a hundred years. He wants to change the history of the continent. His close friend and role model is Fidel Castro, Cuba's long-serving leader. The two men meet regularly, talk constantly on the telephone, and have formed a close political and military alliance. Venezuela has deployed more than 20,000 Cuban doctors in its shanty-towns, and Cuba is the grateful recipient of cheap Venezuelan oil, replacing the subsidised oil it once used to receive from the Soviet Union. This, in the eyes of the US government, would itself be a heinous crime that would put Chávez at the top of its list for removal. The US has been at war with Cuba for nearly half a century, mostly conducted by economic means, and it only abandoned plans for Castro's direct overthrow after subscribing to a tacit agreement not to do so with the Soviet Union after the missile crisis of 1962.
The Americans would have dealt with Chávez long ago had they not been faced by two crucial obstacles. First, they have been notably preoccupied in recent years in other parts of the world, and have hardly had the time, the personnel, or the attention span to deal with the charismatic colonel. Second, Venezuela is one of the principal suppliers of oil to the US market (literally so in that 13,000 US petrol stations are owned by Citgo, an extension of Venezuela's state oil company). Any hasty attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government would undoubtedly threaten this oil lifeline, and Chávez himself has long warned that his assassination would close down the pumps. With his popularity topping 70% in the polls, he would be a difficult figure to dislodge.
Chávez comes from the provinces of Venezuela, from the vast southern cattle lands of the Llanos that stretch down to the Apure and Orinoco river system. Of black and Indian ancestry, his parents were local schoolteachers, and he has inherited their didactic skills. His talents first came to the fore when he joined the army and became a popular lecturer at the war college in Caracas. He is a brilliant communicator, speaking for hours on television in a folksy manner that captivates his admirers and irritates his opponents.
He never stops talking and he never stops working. He has time for everyone and never forgets a face. For several years he travelled incessantly around the country, to keep an eye on what was going on. This was not mere electioneering, for he would talk for hours to those who had hardly a vote among them. He exhausts his cadres, his secretaries and his ministers. I have travelled with him and them into the deepest corners of the country, and then, after a 16-hour day, he would call the grey-faced cabinet together for an impromptu meeting to analyse what they had discovered and what measures they should take.
There was always a touch of the 19th century about this frenetic activity, as though the president were still on horseback, and Castro is known to have warned Chávez not to absorb himself unduly in the minutiae of administration. "You are the president of Venezuela," he is reported to have said, "not the mayor of Caracas." Chávez has taken the advice to heart, and has become less the populist folk hero and more the impressive statesman. Concern about possible assassination has long predated Robertson's outburst, and for the past two years Chávez has cut down his travels inside the country and been accompanied everywhere by fearsome-looking guards.
Abroad, however, he is a frequent visitor to the capitals of Latin America, and he is widely perceived as the leader of the group of left-leaning presidents recently elected in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, as well as the inspiration of the radicalised indigenous movements now clamouring at the gates of power in Bolivia and Ecuador. There is another touch of the 19th century here, for Chávez is a follower and promoter of the ideas and career of Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan leader who brought the philosophy of the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution to Latin America, and liberated much of the continent from Spanish rule. Chávez has labelled his movement the "Bolivarian Revolution", and he hopes that his political ideas will spread throughout the continent.
This in itself would be alarming enough to the United States, had it the time to pay proper attention. Equally worrying for the Americans is the time Chávez has devoted to the Middle East, successfully courting the governments that belong to Opec, the oil producers' organisation, some of whom have been labelled by the Americans as "the axis of evil". Today's high oil price has much to do with increased demand from China and India, and from the Iraq war, but the spadework that has given Opec fresh credibility was put in by Chávez. Soon he will be helping to show the new Iranian president, using the Venezuelan example, how to increase the revenues of a state-owned oil company and channel them into programmes to help the poor.
Chávez is widely popular today, but for much of his presidency he has been a contested, even a hated figure, arousing widespread discontent within Venezuela's traditional white elite. Yet although his rhetoric is revolutionary, his reforms have been moderate and social democratic. He criticises the policies of "savage neo-liberalism" that have done so much harm to the poorer peoples of Venezuela and Latin America in the past 20 years, yet the private sector is still alive and well. His land reform is aimed chiefly at unproductive land and provides for compensation. His most obvious achievement, which should not have been controversial, has been to channel increased oil revenues into a fresh range of social projects that bring health and education into neglected shanty-towns.
The hatred that he arouses in the old opposition parties, which have seen their membership and influence dwindle, lies more in ideology and racial antipathy than in material loss. Some opponents dislike his friendship with Castro, his verbal hostility to the United States, and his criticisms of the Catholic church, and some people still have a residual hostility to the fact that he staged an unsuccessful military coup in 1992 when a young colonel in the parachute regiment. Many Latin Americans still find it difficult to come to terms with the idea of a progressive military man. But mostly they are alarmed by the way in which he has enfranchised the country's vast underclass, interrupting the cosy, US-influenced lifestyle of the white middle class with visions of a frightening world that lives beyond their apartheid-gated communities.
Over the past few years this anxious opposition has made several attempts to get rid of Chávez, with the tacit encouragement of Washington. They organised a coup in April 2002 that rebounded against them two days later when the kidnapped Chávez was returned to power by an alliance of the army and the people. They tried an economic coup by closing down the oil refineries, and this too was a failure. Last year's recall-referendum, designed to lead to a defeat for Chávez, was an overwhelming victory for him. The local opposition, and by extension the United States, have shot their final bolt. There is nothing left in the locker, except of course assassination.
The fingers of mad preachers are usually far from the button, but the untimely words of Pat Robertson, easily discounted in Washington and airily dismissed by the state department as "inappropriate", might yet wake an echo among zealots in Venezuela. A similar call was made last year by a former Venezuelan president. Assassinations may be easy to plan, and not difficult to accomplish. But their legacy is incalculable. The radical leader of neighbouring Colombia, Jorge Gaitán, was assassinated more than 50 years ago, in 1948. In terms of civil war and violence, the Colombians have been paying the price ever since. No one would wish that fate on Venezuela.
Temple jogged my memory with the following comment;
The question of obtaining an effective foothold or control of an industry - from production through distribution must be resolved in the affirmative...and it won't be settled by anything other than black folk being excellent at activity x. And, in most cases, it will certainly require excellence.
Summoning to mind Dr. Oba T'Shaka's commentary on mastery culture vs corporate civilization. On the spectrum of knowledge-power-freedom - it is necessary to realize that the way things are is not the only way for them to be - and sure as hell not the best way for them to be. For example, the industrial development of Japan, up until comparatively recently, was not in fact due to emulation of Western capitalist methods, but to a much less hierarchically organised structure based on a different kind of relationship between local industry and the capitalist sector. In the light of the economic destruction being wreaked at present by the proponents of crude corporate globalisation, this is interesting to say the least....
Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetites:
"The predominant viewpoint in Japanese studies is that the emerging industrial economy of the Edo Era was “premodern” or merely the commercial extension of feudalism. Economic historian Heita Kawakatsu disputes this notion of a premodern transition existing phantom-like between feudalism and capitalism. The late Edo era, he argues, gave rise to a productive revolution on par with the industrial revolution in Western Europe and the United States. The modernization of Japan came about as the result of an evolutionary process within Asian civilization rather than by emulation of the capitalist West."
"...The evolution of silk- reeling technology reveals one of the notable features of Japanese industrialism: the incremental improvement of production technology by “skilful” workers. The role of the “skilful” worker represents a major difference between the Asian and Western models of industrialization in their respective management philosophies and in the relationships between labor and capital...In the West, as Max Weber pointed out, the entrepreneur has been exalted as a member of a predestined elect whose faith was affirmed with hard work and accumulation of capital. The result was a bias in favor of the capital congealed in the machine, while the worker faced the steady loss of his social status from craftsman to unskilled laborer. The Western factory is the meeting point of the smart machine and dull worker. The Japanese model, on the other hand, has stressed the role of the “skilful” laborer who exercises a significant degree of authority and responsibility over his tools and, collectively, over the workspace and production process. ."
"...Studies of the traditional economic dynamics of mountain communities could lead to a better understanding of their potential for industrial self- development, as well as more sustainable trade links with the developed countries. In its early development drive, Japan’s homegrown industry proved to be the basis for economic growth rather than a disadvantage. ....The retreat of NGOs and tourism before the ongoing Nepalese hill people’s insurgency, reminiscent of the Chichibu Rebellion, shows that external dependency relations, no matter how well intended or ideally conceived, cannot substitute for indigenous industry rooted in the environment and culture of mountain communities."
Education and identity have been critical factors in the transformation of Cuban agriculture in the 1990s. They have provided a framework within which new policies, new actors, and new agricultural systems gained acceptance and were implemented. Cuban agriculture is something very different and the extent to which its model is applicable elsewhere is unknown. Conclusion: Given specific factors embedded in the Cuban paradigm, more research – certainly comparative research evaluating agroecological efforts in other countries – is necessary before universality questions surrounding the Cuban model can be adequately addressed.
The nation as we know it would not actually BE a nation if it had not been for the action of enslaved and freed Africans during the Civil War. The Fourteenth Amendment besides giving citizenship to black men and women, actually created the "national citizen." Before the passage of the 14th, one was a United States citizen through being a citizen of a given state. Afterwards? The nation came first and foremost.
But few have considered the Corwin Amendment. I've begun to think about an alternate timeline beginning with the passage of the Corwin Amendment.
In reverse:
I've been reading the entries at Worldchanging.com on the regular. In a word, I find them visionary. The June 5, entry was particularly so:
The connection between social inequality and environmental destruction isn’t one made easily by most environmentalists. Sure, they may see a connection between a perceived lack of concern among politicians and corporations about both people and the planet. But that’s usually about it.Van Jones tells another story. For him, the two are inextricably linked. “Both problems are reaching crisis points,” he writes in the Summer 2005 issue of Yes! magazine. “We act as if they are separate. But they are linked -- economically, politically, and morally. The solutions and strategies for each must, therefore, be one.”
Last week, during the World Environment Day festivities in San Francisco, the Ella Baker Center, the Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit Jones heads, launched an initiative that attempts to link the two: Reclaim the Future. RTF is envisioned as a think tank and advocacy group representing and empowering ecologically sound, urban entrepreneurs and their local communities. According to the Ella Baker site:
Our goal is to push for public-private-community partnerships endorsing clean, healthy, and economically developed urban environments. The project is devoted to fostering the creation of dignified, clean-energy job opportunities for de-incarcerated individuals and those at risk of encountering the punishment industry.
Or, as Jones puts it: “Green Jobs, Not Jails.”
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?
When I posted the link to part I of Kilson's article a couple of weeks ago, I made it clear that I was not sanguine about his concluding prognosis. Now that I've read and reflected on Part II in which we hear one deafening silence and two modest challenges to the afrostocracy to step up; I'm even less sanguine about whatever Kilson has to say - though I found his data useful.
1. Family Structure/Poverty Problem Sphere - deafening silence (though I gave that prescription a long time ago)
2. Racist Criminal Justice Problem Sphere - afrostocrats must challenge it. Start with the War on Young Black Men I mean Drugs and leverage off the crank epidemic among poor whites and the disparate sentencing standards and voila!
3. Education Opportunity Performance Problem Sphere - afrostocrats should study it. Kilson please! Surely a Hahvahd professor can do better than that! Come study this exemplary institutional effort and consider yourself schooled on the optimal solution.
So, while I lack Kilson's bully pulpit, my faith in the creativity and capability of technocratic black autodidacts willing to step up and personally shoulder our guardian/teacher role within the community - remains unbounded.
As long as afrostocrats don't call foul on the kneejerk and racist tendency to scapegoat poor black kids/parents and and prescribe policies that lift all boats - they don't merit the title "elite". Such as they've demonstrated themselves to be, they're just entertaining 21st century "responsible negroes" with a little money.
The afrostocrats have pretty much played themselves...., you'd think that Cosby/Oprah/Diddy et al..., would've figured out - given the extent to which their commercial successes have been rooted in crossover appeal - that whatever solution the black elite is capable of proffering will have to be an all inclusive solution that leads all America forward out of its malaise. Poor white kids are struggling with educational woes in larger masses than poor black kids and until and unless we bind all our interests together, it's simply not going to get fixed. Freebooting, globalizing plutocrats love the American divided and conquered as they're so much easier to hoodwink, bamboozle, and ultimately govern.
A genuine afrostocrat would have the pride and testicular fortitude to step up and exemplify for all Americans..., and damn-well expect all Americans to follow their lead. Going forward, this will be my personal litmus test for separating 21st century responsible negroes from a 21st century black elite.
When I was much younger, I used to dream of being an astronaut. My father, and his father before him would regale us with tales of the Old Negro Space Program. Loopy Lou...Stinky Pete...Billy Starfire Boston...most of the old school was familiar with these names long before Aldrin and Armstrong rang bells. It's about high time these stories were made public.
will be making a dramatic rebound far sooner than most people think. I say, "why wait for the rush?"
Begin organizing the wagontrains now...,
If a cat has kittens in an oven, that doesn't make them biscuits"
"Today most Africans in America accept the nomenclature "African American." But what does that mean? What does it mean to be African American? For some it means that we are Americans who happen to be descendents of Africans. These African Americans want to emphasize their Americanness. Some even see African as an unnecessary prefix they would have removed so as to simply be viewed as American."
Full Monty on this timely piece by Ewuare Osayande here:
Again, from Grace Boggs...only this time a more recent piece. One of the many ideas that struck me:
We need to be very conscious, as radicals rarely are, that those with whom we disagree will not disappear off the face of the earth but will continue to be our neighbors, fellow workers,
classmates, etc.
I've been rereading CONVERSATIONS IN MAINE.
"Revolutionists have been able to think of a revolution in every sphere except man's concept of himself. Revolutionary struggle consists of a series of illuminations--not simply plodding or leaping from peak to peak. Revolution should be to discover and create where we should be tomorrow, not merely to correct past injustices or put to rights past grievances. Mankind is obviously at a threshold, a border, a frontier. Precisely because of the growing counter-revolutionary danger, it is necessary to utilize the wealth of human resources in this country, including ethnic diversity. The conflicts are not just between rich and poor, or between generations, but between two different concepts of what a human being is."
(p. 14)
Over with the Afrofuturists, I've been going through a number of raisons d'etre and mapping out black cyberspace. Here follows materials from the archives...
The full transcript of this forum can be found at Drylongso.
Phase One:
When I first got on computer networks to communicate with other folks, there were very few black women or men online on at all. This had mostly to do with the fact that I was emailing on the Xerox internal network in the mid 80s long before there was a public Internet. So, I started my online discussions at a time when the builders of the networks frowned heavily on any non-technical discussion. Matters of netiquette were taken very seriously. That didn't stop me from having black oriented political and social discussions in the Xerox corporate intranet.
Since I had been fairly prominent in college as a national officer with NSBE, I felt that on the Xerox network I was continuing the discussions about the fate and future of blacks in Corporate America from a business and technical angle. It was certainly a male dominated world, but it existed primarily as a support network. Nobody took any social discussions seriously. The very idea of men and women meeting each other socially online was simply not done. Besides, most of us already knew each other. We assumed that white folks were listening in, and the biggest controversies had to do with airing dirty laundry.
Phase Two:
A literacy project got me involved with open mike poetry in Los Angeles around 1990. Some of that got political, and it occurred to me that any black organization that would publish a newsletter would be a candidate for their own website. It was in this spirit a few years later that I created my first website with the idea in mind that many black organizations would follow suit. It was not to be. Everything associated with the information superhighway was considered elitist, and there was a sort of anxiety about it being another example of what white folks purposely did to leave black folks behind. So between black men and women there was no issue because most were not participating.
SCAA
There was a golden age of black conversation on the net that took place between 1993 and 1996. For the most part, however, gender issues were deeply subordinated to racial and political issues. The core of the group of participants there came to know each other well enough to distinguish gender issues from personality issues. Nevertheless, there were always new folks coming into discussions, who would take communications issue and extrapolate them to "the problem with us." As a compiler of the FAQ for the SCAA group in 1995, gender issues simply weren't high on anyone's priority list. What was much more important was maintenance of the space free and clear of racist "drive-by" conduct. SCAA finally fell to a barrage of racists and serves no useful purpose today, diehards not withstanding.
Salon Table Talk
At Salon, we got into issues of identity and gender a lot deeper. One notable conversation there was specifically about hiding race and gender in cyberspace. Having been hardened by the experience of SCAA, it was clear to me, as the Internet was getting popular with non-technical folks, that certain mythologies were being promoted. I don't believe any of the black veterans of the SCAA wars would easily swallow the cliché on the Internet that "nobody knows you're a dog." We knew all too well that being black was more than just skin color--that identity was a crucial part of the way you saw and thus discussed things online. If anything, the anonymity of text enhanced the differences and conflicts as well as the contrasts and synergies. But it certainly did not obviate them. Cyberspace made you more of what you are; only the things you really felt passionate about would come through in a memorable way. So when this subject was breached at Salon's Table Talk, I really took a hard line against masking.
I never wanted to get into a trap with "authenticity," partially because spoofing identity was part of the fun of some cyberspace haunts. I think the nature of MUDs and IRC lend them particularly to this. But I never considered these places for the kinds of discussions I wished to have vis-à-vis black cultural production, criticism or political talk. Instead they were social adventures. I did have an online life as a girl named "Sindeetha" at a game site called "Sissyfight," which was very popular for a short time.
Black Planet, NetNoir
I have spent only a limited amount of time in black on black social forums where the primary activity is socializing and flirting. They simply came into being too late in my life to be of any use.
Conclusions
In general I would say that black folks' expectations for the type of interactions in which gender issues are significant came to the Internet some time after I did. In the early days, people simply didn't expect anything. People didn't expect black folks to *be* online, much less socialize there with any seriousness. Even when I had dreams of millions of black folks online, I didn't expect or desire a dating service.
I think it must be said that the contributions of black cultural production or academic quality materials has been disappointing and too little too late for me. It is in that area that I wish such matters could be handled better. I blame black professors and professionals for following the dollar instead of contributing to community. Those who are intelligent and capable of delivering evolutionary content to the web don't bother and/or take a cynical attitude towards the entire enterprise. Those who have been trained to speak about such social issues only do so to be paid, and their default in the online world leaves it to lay-people to struggle with issues to which the answers already exist. Consequently, I don't really look for much. Yet. I can admit to having exceptional expectations. That I'm not satisfied in no way suggests that a plurality of black folks can't be. I've always been the explorer looking to carve out new frontiers. Let's see what happens next.
Mike Bowen - Summer 2003
I perceive that people have come to appear more real to each other over the years in cyberspace. The convention of masking, originally established by techies, and the inability of the medium to use long names and pictures, has given way to more highly interactive virtual communities with highly stylized artifacts. I would think that BlackPlanet is a very good case in point. When content management software became available at no cost, the texture of online communities changed. Suddenly people who were very opaque in IRC using an abbreviated name and spurting short comments intermittently had the chance to put some style into a permanent website which added a dimension to their chat. With IRC, as soon as you stopped typing, you disappeared. With a website, you became permanent. Furthermore, with a website, you could attach pictures of yourself, artwork, favorite quotes and longer texts about yourself.
Additionally, people became more real in cyberspace because they volunteer information about their own circle of communicants and interests. Back in the days of Usenet before free website authoring became possible, individuals would put their sig at the end of each post. I have never seen a sig with a list of friends. Websites always list things that people might find interesting. So people could then be judged not only by what they say on one particular day, but by the online company they keep. Sure, you could tell something about a man who quotes Shakespeare, but he could become more complex if his best friend quotes Muddy Waters and less so if his friend also quotes Shakespeare.
Despite all of this, serious dislocations occur. The more real the cyber presentation is, the less likely one is to question your interpretation of it, and therefore the more likely you are to be shocked if you misinterpret all that you see. The problem is that as real as this cyber presentation feels and as much communication as it allows, it is not community. It still lacks the nuance we have with personal relationships offline. Whatever is established online is always and can never be more than an artificial community. We can no more have a relationship with people online than we do with movie stars or rock idols. Every communication is a presentation, and every presentation is interpreted. What exacerbates this problem is the reality of connecting with a wider variety and larger number of individuals online than offline.
Before establishing my persona of boohab I wrote:
Everything I do in computer-mediated communications (CMC) is an experiment in blackness as a post-modern concept. I am futzing with identity in cyberspace and trying to figure out what happens to your race when people cannot see you, hear you or smell you. (hee haw). Everybody knows that you have some freedom in CMC to choose who you be. If I choose to be black, how would I express it? If I choose to be white, how? Why? What can I say in CMC that I would never say face to face? What silences are overcome w/ respect to racial issues, which are created?
Everyone who represents consciously in a gender-specific way in cyberspace must reckon with its sensory deprivation. Its not enough to simply write I am female because this is not how people perceive femininity offline. And so presenting oneself simply as female has issues not unlike presenting oneself as anything for which the imaginations of your audience cannot easily adopt. If you are attempting to be an instructive figure as well, the challenge is even more severe.
I recently got into a bit of trouble addressing someone who called herself thuqmami. I was looking around for black content in the blogosphere and found a registry site called blogs of color. It turned out that it was undergoing construction, but 9 out of 10 links I found were dead. I considered it an embarrassment and said so. I was certainly passing judgment from the perspective of an upper-middle class middle-aged father from the old school, but I ended up being corrected. There actually is a difference between a thuq and a thug. Thuqmami actually inherited the name and the site from someone else. After a time, we came to understand each other, but it took more than a few emails.
Goddess remarks brought to mind something that I did see very often, which was the flaming of younger more naive persons, especially women but all newbies , who were trying to express themselves artistically without any understanding or consideration of the conventions of online conversation. I seem to recall this happening often. One spot that I used to hang out in was Caf Los Negroes. It was chocked full of people who felt it was their appointed duty to put a personal spin on everything that happened. So it was as much a billboard for certain characters to rant on with inside humor as it was a public hangout. Anyone who felt it important to creatively express their blackness was suddenly held to very rigorous, if arbitrary standards. A certain smallish clique of members would give each other affirmations on their own style of speak and observations, and others who came in fresh, especially those considered unorthodox would get the virtual equivalent of a cold shoulder. I recall that this seemed rather cruel for some.
So I think the reality of cyberspace is that black folks feel as though the kinds of relationships they have in real life will be the same kind that they have online and are sometimes surprised and/or ill equipped to deal with the real individuality of people they do meet. People seeking affirmation of their personal lives and relationships are just as often as not given a cold reception or condescended to for opening up their feelings online. Its very easy for people to turn you off and decide not to care. I think it is a mistake for black folks to assume that all black oriented content online is expressly for them and people like them. They must recognize that the monolith is shattered. This ability of cyberspace to create connections ends up introducing people to each other with widely differing perspectives on what it means to be black, the negative experience of a failure to create community only reinforces the stereotype of black disunity. Considering how important the idea of unity has been, it is not surprising that black folks may tend to be more disappointed with online experiences than others.
Cyberspace is capable of establishing a type of communications that you wouldnt be able to sustain in person and that is good. Cyberspace fails to maintain the quality and nuance of multi-sensory communication of community and flattens experience into the strictly literary and visual; this is destructive of the expectation of a beloved community. The distinction between advanced connectedness, which the Internet delivers, and real community, which it does not, is the difference between our expectations and reality.
Mike Bowen - Summer 2003
The full transcript of this forum can be found at Drylongso.
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.