Vision Circle

My American Journey - Oona King MP

Fear of the "other" drives people further apart, and I'm surprised to find that even my Dad lives in a segregated black enclave. When I ask him why, he says, "It's not so much that it's black, it's just that whites won't live here." The irony for most middle-class African-Americans like my Dad is that they have been detached from the rest of the black population. They can't live with white people, and they can't live with (working-class) black people - or if they do, they choose to live with a level of insecurity that is anathema to the middle classes the world over.

Originally in Tuesday's Guardian an interesting British perspective on Katrina - full story under the fold.

Hurricane Katrina not only destroyed New Orleans, but also laid bare the ugly truth about America's racial divide. Former MP Oona King set out on a personal journey through the southern states to see what has changed since her black father was forced to flee the US

The last time I visited New Orleans I was a student travelling around America. It was the first time in my life that I was physically thrown out of somewhere for being black. "We don't have niggers like you here!" yelled the manager of a scummy youth hostel before throwing my belongings out of a first-floor window, scattering them over the street.

I vividly remember sitting on that New Orleans pavement, eaten up with rage, wondering where I would sleep that night, and how long it would take to become mad or violent if you faced ingrained racism everyday. Hurricane Katrina showed us what happened to African-Americans in New Orleans who faced ingrained racism every day: they found themselves with the poorest-quality housing on the lowest, most treacherous land, and when catastrophe struck, they were left to rot.

Last month, I went back to the Big Easy. I wanted to see if it was really the case that the colour of your skin could determine your chance of surviving a catastrophic incident such as Hurricane Katrina. I had been warned that, post-Katrina, New Orleans had become like Haiti with skyscrapers. I drove along a freeway scattered with speedboats. The natural order of things had been turned upside down - together with palm trees, cars, bridges, even houses.
In the midst of the seventh ward, I came across three men sitting outside a bar listening to Stevie Wonder. A boat on the pavement blocked the entrance. A statuesque black man in his 60s, Alonzo Dawson, was cooking meat on a barbecue. Both his Latino friends, Rollin Garcia Sr and Gary Ker, had a beer and a gun to hand. It was like a sci-fi film in which they were the only ones left. I asked Alonzo what his worst experience was. "Looking out of my back window and seeing a dog eating a dead human body," he said. They had seen Federal Emergency Management Agency trucks arrive to deliver food to the white areas, they said, while most of the needy, who were black, didn't get help until some days later.

New Orleans is now dead; like Pompeii, Dresden and Hiroshima, suddenly annihilated with no time for farewells. Like most of those cities, it will return again, but so too will the schism of race that haunts America. Race governs the lives of most black people, but remains barely visible to most whites. Time and again, I have met white people who are genuinely confused as to why blacks are obsessed with race. Like a Punch and Judy show, they get bopped over the head by angry black people shouting, "It's behind you!"

The remarkable thing about Hurricane Katrina was that, like a bolt of lightning, it clearly and unavoidably illuminated the chilling impact of race. It has finally been revealed for all to see: the elephant in America's living room. Katrina not only defined what it means to be black, it also redefined what it means to be white. And the point about whiteness is that it isn't defined.

"Defining whiteness is really difficult because it is a default category," says Dalton Conley, director of the New York-based Centre for Advanced Social Science Research and a writer on race and social policy in the US. "It's something we don't define. And part of whiteness is the fact that whites don't have to think about race."

At the same time, however, black people - in the UK as much as in the US - always have to think about not being in the norm or dominant group. We have to consider that all our social interactions are governed by this thing, previously invisible to the majority.

In my secondary school in north London, for example, I was one of five ethnic-minority kids in the class. I knew from the minute I walked into that class that there was only one boy there, the one black boy, who could ever be the first boy I kissed. There was no sign on the door, it was never mentioned, and the white girls (who remain my very best friends to this day) wouldn't have noticed. But to me it was blindingly obvious: the white boys wouldn't want a black girl (however light-skinned), and if I wanted to be like other girls and kiss a boy, my choice was clearly limited to this one black boy. Two years later, sure enough, he was the first boy I ever kissed.

When I was 16 I went to Atlanta to attend a summer-school. It was a revelation. For the first time, I was in an all-black environment. I was still "different", not least because of my British accent, but the social dominance flowed the other way. I was part of the dominant culture (black). Yet my light skin still put me in an even more dominant position within the group. Of 60 kids on the course, there was one white boy there. Again, as soon as I walked in the door I knew which boy I would be paired with. It wasn't a decision, more a recognition of reality. If it all sounds complicated and paranoid, that's because that's often the reality of being black. Not so much any more, and especially not in Britain. Notwithstanding the horrific recent axe-murder of Anthony Walker because he was in a mixed relationship, Britain still has one of the highest rates of interracial relationships in the world.

But in America, the effects of slavery remain visible - to blacks at least. There is a cousin I had who was never born. My aunt, eight months pregnant, took food to my uncle who had been arrested during a civil-rights demonstration. The first policeman she met attacked her, and the baby died. Past losses always linger, passed down in attitudes and anger from one generation to the next. The African-American community is crippled by an overwhelming sense of anger and loss - lost identity, lost homeland, lost kinship, lost pride, lost history, lost future.

So when Jesse Jackson visited New Orleans evacuation centres last month and said, "It's like looking at the hull of a slave ship", he brought home the proximity of slavery and its consequences for many African-Americans. Much of white America has the view, "Move on - slavery ended 140 years ago." But African-Americans see the emancipation declaration as the beginning of slavery by other means - first a vicious share-cropping system of indentured labour, and then jim crow with its constant whippings, lynchings, and humiliations. Changing the realities of race in America is a painfully slow process. It took 100 years from black emancipation, at the end of the civil war in 1865, to black enfranchisement with the Voter Registration Act of 1965. And yet when Bush stole the White House from under the nose of disenfranchised African-Americans at the turn of the millennium, it was clear that nothing much had changed.

I'm glad I don't know most of the humiliations my family was subjected to - instead, I just like hearing about the vaguely entertaining ones. Like the one about my grandfather Alan. His grandfather was a slave, but he was a share-cropper in Florida who was heading for a lynching due to his uppity behaviour - he was driving a horse and cart, and hadn't given way to a white person's cart. So he walked to Georgia, taught himself to read and write, set up his own business, and had seven sons whom he instructed to "do good" for the community.

The symbol of his success, both economically and socially, was that he was the first black person in the area to buy a car. The car was shipped to Albany, Georgia, from Atlanta, and Alan arrived at the stationa no doubt full of the pride and excitement that all owners of new cars feel even when buying a car doesn't represent a miracle. But the white stationmaster believed that it simply wasn't possible for a black man to own a car. Even though Alan's name was on the paperwork and the car was already paid for, the station master refused to let him have it, and instead shipped it back to Atlanta. And Alan went home empty-handed.

Jim crow kept black people in check psychologically as well as materially. Segregation had a specific agenda: to remove political and human rights that, on paper, were "inalienable". It worked brilliantly. The basis of it was the view that blacks were not quite fully human. Black people, excluded from the political process, retreated into their churches, and that's where they are today, and where, until Katrina, President Bush targeted them fairly successfully with his faith-based initiatives. Bush even increased his vote among African-Americans from 8% in 2000 to 11% in 2004 - enough to swing the election. As one black southerner put it, "Black southerners will run to anyone with a Bible." The race legacy in America is one of guns and Bibles. It has made both white and black culture more God-fearing and more violent.

Fear of the "other" drives people further apart, and I'm surprised to find that even my Dad lives in a segregated black enclave. When I ask him why, he says, "It's not so much that it's black, it's just that whites won't live here." The irony for most middle-class African-Americans like my Dad is that they have been detached from the rest of the black population. They can't live with white people, and they can't live with (working-class) black people - or if they do, they choose to live with a level of insecurity that is anathema to the middle classes the world over.

So the past has a grip on African-Americans. And yet to white people, race is invisible. As a child, my white family would tell me that if I got lost, I had to go and find a nice policeman. But I got the idea from my black family that I should steer clear of policemen, avoid them at all costs, because they were racist and violent and might beat me to death.

Myrtle Jones returned to her house in New Orleans with her two daughters and one granddaughter, driving from Houston, Texas overnight with a truck to salvage what they could. I followed Myrtle into the hallway of her home. Imagine all your household possessions are put into a giant food-blender: carpets, fridges, clothes, sofas, stereos, food, plants, jewellery. Then throw in some external objects - say a water hydrant, a car, and a couple of dead animals. Add a generous helping of black toxic sludge, blend for a minute, then rip off the roof, and pour the mixture into all remaining rooms - and, voila, the perfect recipe for life-long depression.

Myrtle's daughter Chanel, 23, clutched her first prize track trophy as though it might help her out-run disaster. Dionne, 34, was telling her 16-year-old daughter Brionne to load other salvaged mementos of a former life into the truck.

"Where are your men?" I asked. It was an old-fashioned question, one you would ask women during a war. "Right now," said Myrtle, "we don't have any. Dionne's man is sick. Chanel's is separated. And Brionne's too young to have one. We gonna keep her single a while." She chuckled. "We want her to go to college so she can look after us all." I looked at this African-American family of women, strong as they are, and I couldn't help feeling the pain that always rips our community apart: the bequest to each new generation of African-American children of family breakdown.

Where are the men? Well for a start, nearly a million of them are in jail. There are roughly as many African-American men in prison as there are in college. Numbers of federal prisoners have doubled in the past 10 years, most of it down to the "war on drugs" and three-strike automatic prison sentencing. In some notorious cases, prisoners have received life sentences for stealing food. The land of the free keeps more of its people in jail than any other. And, of course, the people jailed are disproportionately black. In fact, black men are locked up at seven times the rate of white men. In more than a dozen states, black men arrested on drugs charges are 57 times more likely to be sent to prison than white men on the same drug charges.

In short, many black men are sent to jail because they're black. During the early 1960s, my father was one of them. Of course, as with all racism, it's hard to prove conclusively that a white judge sentenced you because you were black. So my Dad fled the country and was exiled for 40 years. His crime? He joined nine white scholarship students at the LSE for a year, and asked the Georgia parole board (who considered draft-referral applications) to address him the same way they addressed his white peers - using the prefix "Mr". They jailed him instead.

It was a rule of Bible-belt bureaucracy that all blacks were addressed by their first name (like calling them "boy"), and all whites were addressed as "Mr". In asking for the same rights as whites, in a similar way to Rosa Parks on the buses, my Dad was challenging the whole edifice of white rule. So they punished him - hard. And yet after decades locked out of his home, the government told him he could never return unless he could prove the most obvious, yet least provable fact: that he was jailed because he was black.

I thought he would never go home, and that I would always be sent to Georgia, like I was as a child, to represent him at funerals and family gatherings. And then a miracle happened, a once-in-a-lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. In fact, it was a letter from the 96-year-old white judge who sentenced him, addressed to President Clinton. It said, "I jailed him because he was black." And so my father got a presidential pardon, and Jim Crow's stranglehold on our family was finally broken at the beginning of the 21st century.

The critical failings of the US government's response to Katrina forced many grassroots organisations to plan the relief effort themselves. I visited one named SoS (Save our Selves) in an Atlanta basement. An 18-year-old black volunteer from Alabama was manning the phones. She said her name was Margarets. "Really? With an 's'?"

"No, not with an 's' - just I never been able to say my name. It's too long. And don't ask me to spell it neither, 'cos I never learnt." Wow. It was harder to digest that Margaret couldn't spell her name than that she was looking after traumatised black evacuees.

Save our Selves is an informal umbrella organisation of black community groups and churches. One of those involved, LaTosha Brown, is a community worker with a prisoner advocacy group in Alabama that works to restore prisoners' voting rights. The first relief operation came about when she was contacted by a group of concerned ex-prisoners. "They rang me up, and said, 'Listen, these people need help. We'll get the resources, but can you get us the petrol so we can drive it down there? We just need to help the community get through the next 24 hours, till help comes.' But," said LaTosha, still incredulous, "help never came. So we had to set up a distribution network. And we've never stopped."

Churches are the other key organisations working in SoS. The Reverend Tony Lee is the youth director from Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church which has 15,000 members in Washington DC. He's also a rapper and on the board of the Hip Hop Movement, dedicated to advancing education and family values, and preventing gang killings (I applaud their efforts, but reckon that the first step to reducing violence and the mistreatment of women will be to encourage the black community to stop listening to 95% of commercial hip-hop).

Viola Plummer, a prominent activist in Brooklyn, rallied everyone shortly after the disaster by pouring a libation to African ancestors. "Brothers and sisters, on this day we have turned a corner. No longer do we look outside of ourselves for anything. This is just the beginning. We will fight to repair our families, our people and our human rights. Now, more than ever, it has become crystal clear - we cannot depend on anyone else."

Of course, it's not all doom and gloom for African-Americans. College enrolment of black women like Myrtle's granddaughter Brionne has increased by a third in six years - the sisters are doing it for themselves. And even the brothers have halved the murder rate in their own community since 1990, as well as energising a whole new generation of "Million Man Marchers" to rise above discrimination and set an example to their children.

But I also understand why community activists such as Plummer turn to the traditions of our African ancestors to seek strength. My cousin Peggy worked on the New York City African Burial Ground for five years. In 1790, 40% of white households around New York City owned slaves, and it was here that they were buried in white shrouds and wooden coffins, with a few cowrie shells or beads to remind them where they'd been kidnapped from. Nearly 45% of those buried were children under the age of 12.

One coffin lid found in New York had a sankofa symbol on it that still exists in Ghana, the meaning of which is, "Look to the past to inform the future". If you look to the past, it's easy to understand why the life expectancy of African-Americans in Harlem is lower than life-expectancy in Bangladesh. Am I surprised that it was prisoners and rappers who organised the relief effort to poor black people in Mississippi? No.

I Listen to Conservative Radio

[ Edited for corrections aplenty ]

I listen to conservative radio. I also listen to "liberal" radio, but that doesn't seem to a problem for some.

Of course, for others, listening to "liberal" radio is a problem. But that's not what this is all about. What this is about is responding to the idea, to me, that listening to conservative talk radio is a "bad thing".

So, if I listen to conservative radio, does that mean I, therefore, am not able to think for my self?

Lord forbid I should happen to want to formulate ideas based "pro and
con" vs. just based on knee jerk reaction. Lord forbid I should happen to want to be logical about what I base my beliefs upon.

I guess if I was to follow the "logic" that since I listen to
conservative radio, I'm brainwashed, then that means those who listen
to liberal radio are brainwashed. What an interesting concept. And
what a condenscending concept. [Let's ignore that I listen to left leaning talk radio as well].

I listen to conservative radio, therefore, I am beholden to conservative thought.

Let's see, I believe in low taxes. Of course that could only mean I
believe that way because I listen to conservative radio, not because I feel abused when I look at my year ending tax statements and see about 40% of my money going to taxes. Should I mention all of the regular people who buy homes for the reason of the tax deduction? Isn't that trying to keep as much money as possible from the government?

I believe the size of government is too big and mostly ineffective and wasteful. That must be because I listen to conservative radio, not because in my dealing as contractor I've seen government employees read the newspapers, walk the halls, visit their friends, shop in the on site stores, and take care of a lot of personal business during the day, instead of doing their jobs. My belief has to be that way just because I listen to conservative radio, not because I've seen the waste in government money when the end of the government fiscal year nears and organizations rush to spend all of their money for fear that next year's budget will be less if they don't spend all of the money. Or, when I've witnessed contracts let based on internal politics and "empire building," not the job required or who is best qualified to do the work.

I guess it's easy to forget that I had an inspector tell me that I had
to have wired electrical smoke detectors installed in the bedrooms
upstairs, otherwise he would fail the last inspection for having a
bathroom installed, and storage room finished _in the BASEMENT_. I
guess it's easy to forget that I had to challenge the inspector and
threaten legal action before it was said that all I had to do was show that I had smoke detectors in the bedrooms. I don't think I told you all the inpsector did was ask if the detectors were installed. He
didn't do a verification. But believing that government is wasteful
and ineffective is based not on experience, but based on conservative
radio.

My support of school vouchers must be because I listen to conservative radio, not from seeing lousy teachers protected by the school system by sending them to minority majority schools instead of firing them. Or from seeing Black students overwhelmingly placed in "special education classes" to get more federal aid instead of properly assessing their capabilities. Or from seeing school systems like the Baltimore City Public School System have the worst performance in the state of Maryland, while having the highest administration costs in the state of Maryland. Or from seeing the Baltimore City Public School System know they have a problem with lead in the water but still letting kids drink from the fountains. This was until the school system was sued. Then, the system used bottled water for 1 1/2 years before turning on the water fountains again, but NOT FIXING the lead problem. Or from seeing public school teachers send their children to private schools at a rate that is higher than the rest of the community. Or finding out how a private school makes their book selection with 3 telephone calls, but never being able to find out how a "good public school system" makes their academic book selection. Who cares if I recognize that school vouchers
are backed by some who want the end of government schools but the
situation in some areas is so bad that parents of the children need
more options, not less. Who cares if I recognize that charter schools
are a public school option that may fail but why point them out when other public school failures get a pass.

The fact that I think Bill Clinton is a "cracka in a suit" is because
of conservative radio, not because he hung Lani Guinier out to dry
when he claimed he didn't know about her views. Or when he hung
Joyclen Elders out to dry just because she said that the idea of
teaching masturbation could be discussed. Or when he signed the
cocaine vs. crack sentencing disparity into permanent law, instead of
letting it sunset like the CBC wanted. Or when he did nothing about
racial profiling. Or when he took time away from campaigning for
president to go back to Arkansas to oversee(!) the execution of a
retarded Black man convicted of murder. Or when he signed the welfare
reform act even though the CBC was against it.

The fact that I think that the CBC is ineffective, lacks political
skill, and suck up to the Democratic Party power structure comes from
listening to conservative radio not the fact that Bill Clinton signed
bills into law that the CBC was against. Or that the CBC, in a
Democratic controlled congress, seemed to get little of what they
wanted.

But at least the CBC throws one helluva party.

The fact that I think the Democratic party takes the Black voted for
granted comes from listening to conservative radio, not from the fact
that the Democratic party promised to back McCall in the governor's
race in New York, instead did nothing. Or that Charlie Rangel said
that he wished their were more J.C. Watts' in congress so that he
could get more consessions from his party.

The fact that I think "Global Warming" is not proven comes from
listening to conservative radio, not from the fact that scientists
disagree if the warming is a result of human actiivites, or if the
warming is not normal when the long range is taken into account, or
even if it really is occuring. The fact that I think "Global Warming"
is not proven can't be based on my engineering background that compels me to ask how they are determining global warming exists when a baseline is not discussed or how the baseline was derrived.

But we all know that liberal radio is much better to listen to for
Black folks, right?

How about those liberals, who clearly love us Black folk, when Air
America displaced Black talk radio in New York? You don't know what I
mean? Read this about Air America and Black radio.

Let's pick on more liberal radio some more. How about when Air America got a "loan" from a New York Boys and Girls Club? So what you say? How about how the loan was given and by whom? You don't know what I mean?
Read this. This one
has more.

On September 5, 2005, I wrote this about what's being said in the
media

Those are 5 simple questions. Need I mention that the conservative AND
liberal media were reporting things that didn't happen in NOLA?

The attempt to use the fact that I listen to conservative media to
attempt to shut me down is nothing but intellectual weakness.

When we were on soc.culture.africanl.american and
soc.culture.africanl.american.moderated, I remember noticing that with
each wave of conserva-kook attack, the regular posters refinded and
enhanced their responses to the same tiring wave of garbage. I also
remember Michael Bowen mentioning that very same fact.

I went searching, and here's something I wrote back in August 1998,
concerning Clarence Thomas:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.african.american.moderated/msg/ffdcc9bb0b995fff?dmode=source&hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.african.american.moderated/msg/e7dc3c339626e731?dmode=source&hl=en

"Next, by making all of the negative comments about him, without
attacking his views in a purely intellectual manner, Thomas is
being built up, not torn down! People in the 'liberal media,' are now
saying 'It's a shame those Black people are calling Justice Thomas all of those mean names.'"

Meaning, if all you are going to do is call the man a "sellout" or
uncle tom, shut the hell up! If you are going to pick his views apart,
intellectually, do it. Then the labels aren't necessary.

I caught hell for writing that, but I was proven correct when Judge
Higginbotham wound up saying the same thing and wrote a piece
attacking Clarence Thomas' on his understanding and application of law.

Just deal with the information presented. If you don't like it, argue against it. If you do like it, then so be it. But if you disagree because of the source, and attack that only, then it looks like you can't argue otherwise.

Or, at least, that's how I see it.

News and Notes with Ed Gordon

I've had a couple more commentaries air on News and Notes with Ed Gordon.

One on homeschooling.

Another on the difference between looters and finders.

A couple of my boys have lightly joned on me for not sounding how i really sound. I don't listen to the stories after they air, I just tape them and move on. Too much work to do. And I get pissed when they delete important sentences (my looting commentary ended with the following phrase. "Maybe rather than spending time on looters, reporters should examine why FEMA's response time was so shoddy." It got cut.)

But they have a point. When I usually give a lecture, or an academic presentation, I usually use a modified form of BEV. It allows for more improvisation, warmth, and humor than standard english. I can do this pretty well on radio interviews, and the few times I've been interviewed on television.

It's a bit different when I'm taping a commentary though. The most important things are enunciation, sticking within the 3 minute or so time limit, and nailing the commentary within the production window. I get maybe three or four takes, then loose editing work afterwords. So I'm taking this as a challenge. Because lord knows I'd be talking MASSIVE sh*t if one of my boys was on television sounding like Bill Bonds.

T. D. Jakes

Does T. D. Jakes deserve to be put into the same category as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or Lewis Farrakhan?

Is T.D. Jakes leading Christians astray?

Just What We Need, Another Jackleg Preacher

I've had a chance to wade through some of the comments so far.

Maybe it's the time of year? It's hot as hell out these parts...perhaps the heat has addled my partner?

To wit:

They were subversive but what was the aim? The aim was integration, it wasn't to defeat the enemy. The aim was bourgeois brotherhood, not control of the resources of the enemy.

The aim was to defeat white supremacy. Find me a citation, a quote, where someone actually STATES "the aim was brotherhood." The bourgie part is just goofy so I'll let that slide. And in as much as cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Gary, and Atlanta, were resources controlled by the enemy, the aggressive actions of folks like the Black Slate out of Detroit certainly seem to rise to the standard set here.

Let me put it this way, you cannot be militant and also for 'non-violent social change'.

So exactly why was King and his ilk referred to as militants? Why exactly did Hoover spend so much capital surveilling him?

You are taking 21st Century realities and porting them backwards. Damn Coretta was fucked up for not emailing Betty when Malcolm got put down. She should have at LEAST called her on her cell.

Sheesh.

What I'm saying is that the Old School ought to be about rescuing black consciousness and black nationalism from the knuckleheads who have been coddled by the Left. The kind of knuckleheads who would say that people like Assata Shakur are the heirs of the black progressive agenda.

Could you even name a single knucklehead here? Who are you talking about?

What the Old School should be about is preserving the best of our history, and our knowledge. What you're doing here, ain't old school kid. By consistently playing loose with the facts, you're on some new jack shit here.

Wait, wait. See you can't just compare pre- and post-Reconstruction and post-Brown.

Oh. But you CAN put Steve Cokely--a CONTEMPORARY knuckleheaded conspiracy theorist in search of a theory--and the Black Panthers in the same sentence? Even though they lived in two totally differrent time periods?

The crack must've worn off for a second.

When I'm talking black militants there are basically three: The Panthers, MOVE and the Symbionese Liberation Army. If there was a black equivalent of the Weather Underground, and whomever Chesimard thought she was. Maybe you could count the Fruit of Islam, but that's basically it. Break out the FBI's Cointelpro targets and that's the comprehensive list, most of whom were harmless radical loudmouths which everyone admits, now.

When the hell did MOVE start? There are TWO fundamental events in MOVE history. The battle with Rizzo occurs in about 78, and getting bombed out occurs in the nineties. A full generation plus AFTER Watts. Why would you even include them here?

Further, are you saying that the FBI Cointelpro list is the definitive list? You DO remember that FBI agents put Karenga on the same militant list as the Panthers right? That the shootout between US and the Black Panthers was partially spurred by FBI infiltration right? That King was on that list as well.

We all can flunk black militancy and move forward. Beyond the politics of human rights, beyond the politics of civil rights, towards the politics of social power.

No. YOU can flunk black militancy. But as soon as you do, whether it's because you don't think education is as important as capital accumulation, or because of whatever...you place yourself firmly outside of the old school. Albert Murray might flunk and still be down--but even here you won't see him sleeping on jazz and the blues. The rest of us don't get that pass.

What there *is* is a lingering sentiment that black rage can be converted into black militancy and that this is an effective political strategy. That's a myth, and McWhorter just exploded it.

um...right on brother!

i'm not teachin', just preachin.

Just what we need. Another jackleg preacher.

Flunking Black Militancy 101

In two different pieces, black bloggers have evinced a startling disdain for the rudiments of black political history. To the point that I feel it necessary to slap some sense into some folks. I'll start with my boy. Kwanzaa? The holiday he defends to the death? Black militancy. NSBE? The organization he was elected National Finance Officer of? Black militancy.

Oh.

Cobb's hanging out in Detroit this weekend if I remember correctly. His wife's high school anniversary is coming up. She went to Cass Technical High School--one of the most prominent high schools in the country. All black now, but black kids were getting rejected from Cass like they had the plague. What stemmed the tide?

You know the answer.

If I knew Ed's backstory (and that of Baltimore) better I think I could run the same game. And of course we all know about McWhorter's dalliance with Affirmative Action.

Slapping around knuckleheads like Steve Cokely is no substitute for thinking long and hard about the triumph and tragedy of black militancy.

Be better.

"Black Militancy"

Bear with me for a few minutes please.

Can someone tell me exactly what came out of "Black militancy" other than a lot of hot air?

This is asked in response to Booker Rising commentary and P6.

[ Update ]

lks said the question should be phrased a different way, so here is the question phrased a different way: What would we as individuals have today WITHOUT black militancy?

And now I guess I should ask, what do you define as "Black militancy"?

Again, bear with me. I'm going somewhere. Just hang on for the ride.

I Keep Saying

So, I'm home a little early from work, stretched out on the bed, with my headphones on, listening to sometimes talk radio. (The kid is asleep at the head of the bed, I'm at the foot of the bed).

I wake up from a catnap to hear Black people talking about the Republican vs. Democratic party thing.

One person gets his facts twisted and states "Republicans" when it should be "Democrats". The Republicans in the discussion jump on him.

Should I mention this was an all Black panel?

Anyway...

What got me is one person said that parties don't matter, it's the policies that matter.

That's where I'm at in this stage of my life.

To hell with the party labels, I'm going to support the PERSON who is saying things that most align with my views.

Alan Keyes and Michael Steele and Olympia Snowe are all in the same party. (Shouldn't Keyes be pissed about the GOP pushing Steele as a star?)

Mfume, Ford, Teddy Kennedy and Zell Miller are all in the same party.

Screw the labels, I'm staying independent and will support the person not the party.

Footnote: I find it a damn shame that some people can't handle a person being critical of a party but that not meaning that a person supports the opposition party. How many people realize that the U.S. political system is not a 2 party system, but a multi-party system with the 2 primary parties rigging the game against all other parties?

Spence on News and Notes with Ed Gordon

During my month and a half long sojourn back to Detroit, I attended an event in Chicago on behalf of the Charles H. Wright African American History Museum in Detroit. I talked about the museum's innovative fundraising technique in today's News and Notes with Ed Gordon.

Fishing Fill-os-o-fee

So, my friends and I chartered a head boat from Chrisfield and went off to do battle with the Croakers, Spot, and Sea Trout of the Chesapeake Bay.

While waiting for the fish to realize that we had placed squid, blood worms, night crawlers, and peelers in their domain for their feasting, we touched on a lot of topics.

Music and lack there of in rap, getting our children to be more responsible, a knucklehead who was running from the police and was captured because "his damn pants were falling off of his ass!"

We hit upon immigration. The two people most impacted by illegal immigrants didn't blame the illegal immigrants. "After all, they are just trying to earn some cash". But they mentioned that their bosses are now hiring nothing but illegals, some having multiple pieces of the same identification, each with a different name. They also mentioned that it appears many can't understand English until they are put into a rough situation, like someone mentioning that if no one understands, they will call a policeman so the police can get someone who speaks Spanish.

Of course, there was the conversation about women, cars, the housing market and the like.

So what is the point?

None really. Just a part of life that keeps going.

Such as it is today, the blogosphere is a sub-optimal technology for advancing black interests. Threaded discussion I got no problems with. With proper slashdotting, the emergent qualities of the same are of indisputable benefit. But slashdotting is not what's happening in the black blogosphere. What is instead happening by-and-large is that we are caught between a demographic and technological Scylla and Charybdis of a technology architected as popularity contest - with financial rewards proportional to popularity. In my opinion, this greatly limits the utility of the blogosphere as an instrumentality of free black pedagogy and leadership in what appear to be some fundamental and irremediable ways.

In a nutshell, free and valid black-partisan demagoguery {demos - the common people agein - to lead} cannot be undertaken in a context in which facilitators between people's emotions and their decisions are constantly at moral and economic cross-purposes with themselves.

Four data points prompt me to these conclusions;

1. Cobb's recent definition of punditry;

I think we in the intellectual elite have been cowed by the notion that there is some extraordinary 'grass roots' phenomena that is not essentially captured in our debates. If there is, I would submit that it is nothing more than chaos, solopsism or force of personality. Let me stress as clearly as I can that what we pundits do is control the publicity of rationale. All the logic in the world is pretty much out there, but the reasons those charged with making the final decision is are different from our own and everyone elses. Right now, there doesn't seem to be a way to change or deal with that.

We are not changing what people can think, we are influencing how they think by giving them paths of rationality towards our opinions and away from the opinions of our opponents. I think this is (heh) an interesting way to think about the business of all punditry, whether it be MSM or New Media. In other words we are not owners of the ideas, we are facilitators between people's emotions and their decisions. We offer a publically referenceable decision making augmentation process. This is a great value add, especially if and when people can accept and vibe with our existentials.

I need to say that I think is one of the more profound insights I have come upon. The reason that I'm here is because of the confluence of events that have transpired for me in the past few weeks with regard to my acknowledgement of the value of progressive politics in African America, my broadcast TV debut as Cobb and my recognition of the value of porch conversations.

2. Because digital or blogospheric porch conversations are subject to constraints which would not apply in the real world setting, by interests unique to the digital rationale publicity site;

I'm on the verge of asking you not to comment on anything you haven't thoroughly explored on Vision Circle. The impact on your traffic will convince you I'm right about this mysogyny repels.

On the porch, in the barbershop, or around the kitchen table, a free-wheeling discussion of Faheem Akuta's Blacktown.net website would - and most definitely has -taken place countless times without fear of recrimination. Such issues are discussed all the time in far more direct terms in every place where unconstrained black discourse takes place. Nobody I kick it with on the porch practices or preaches misogyny. Most everybody I kick it with has a point of view concerning assimilation, aesthetics, and gender.

3.The valuable reminder that Temple3 dropped into this thread last night;

Given this, it must be our CHOICES that define our unity - just as we choose friends, but not family - we choose what we believe and how we choose to wage war and frame piece. Kujichagulia is all about the choices and the right of a people to define themselves and their world. To the extent that a people define and live in light of their own interests, they are "free." We recognize the distinction between individual and collective freedom - we also understand the distinction between what people say and what people do. The critical mass is all that is needed...the unity of all is neither necessary nor sufficient.

led to my less than sanguine epiphany concerning black-partisan utility and the blogosphere. Thankfully, as I mulled this notion, the quantum mechanical aethernet went to Work on my behalf and I received a wisdom infusion.

4. The grand master just now called to give me a head's up about the C-SPAN2 program on Class Divide in Black America. {i.e., Bill Cosby's afrosticratic diatribes} Personally, I had to work my way through quite a number of free-wheeling porch conversations to come to terms with what Cosby is perpetrating. I told Mr. Dixon about what was on my mind concerning the blogosphere, the issue of hair as signifier, {a big issue for Akuta on Blacktown} and amplified further by my viewing of the Madame CJ Walker program the other night on True Stories - about which I remarked in response to something Temple3 said;

Of course we have trouble differentiating from the conscious and unconscious realms - our subconscious doesn't even bother - which means it is programmable.

I saw a program the other night about Madame CJ Walker. In it, these two elderly Walker-agent women from Indianapolis protested vehemently that no aspect of the Walker aesthetic programme was intended to make black women look white, rather, it was about looking beautiful...,

Most often my Work consists of the struggle to sublimate immense resentment for people who fail to Work with what is termed subconscious -because in so doing - these people fail not only to complete their own development, which is the fundamental responsibility of every being daring to claim itself conscious - they also mechanically subject not only themselves - but every other duppy with whom they interact - to the most pernicious, ridiculous, and obvious memetic infections. case in point, the two lily-whitened little old women from Indianapolis vehemently denying the visually obvious about the Walker aesthetic written all over their lyed, dyed, and fryed heads and faces!

If I were to apply the Promethean/McGee-ian litmus test, in commenting on these two little old ladies, I just now veered waaaay deep into the realm of misogynistic hateration. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

I asked Mr. Dixon what he thought about all this. He told me about his Aunt and the argument about good hair/bad hair. The upshot of the story was that one his cousins was being upbraided by the aunt for "bad hair". Mr. Dixon told his aunt at that very moment that any hair that doesn't come off your head in the shower is good hair. Everyone laughed then, as I laughed today, on hearing this. Then he dropped the moral of the story, "it's not so much a question of the extent to which people sell-out Craig, the real question is the extent to which people unconsciously buy-in to notions pernicious to their own interests."

Boiled down to salient points gravy;

1. We are not changing what people can think

2.We are influencing how they think by giving them paths of rationality towards our opinions

3. We offer a publically referenceable decision making augmentation process

4. This is a great value add, especially if and when people can accept and vibe with our existentials

5. The impact on your traffic will convince you I'm right about this mysogyny repels

I interpret these dots as indicative of a common debilitating constraint conjoining the Cobbian and Promethian ends of the political spectrum in the context of this digital medium; argumentum ad populum As Temple3 said;

To the extent that a people define and live in light of their own interests, they are "free." We recognize the distinction between individual and collective freedom - we also understand the distinction between what people say and what people do. The critical mass is all that is needed...the unity of all is neither necessary nor sufficient.

Cognitive Flexibility of the type currently permissible only on the porch - is an essential prerequisite of black partisan freedom and utility.

I wonder whether a thorough exploration can now proceed, inclusive of material reflexively censored as misogynistic and thus inherently unpopular, or, whether my objection will be dismissed as specious demagoguery or nothing more than chaos, solopsism or force of personality...,

meanwhile, I rest easy knowing there's a free, conscious, and cognitively flexible multigenerational, multi-gendered porch conversation taking place - even as I type - over at the Learning Center...,

Posted by at 02:20 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Apology for Slavery

An Apology for Slavery

By Carol M. Swain

Saturday, July 16, 2005; Page A17

It's time for the Republican Party to write a new chapter in race relations. What I have in mind is something beyond the Senate's recent resolution on lynching and this week's expression of regret by a high-ranking Republican official for the GOP's use of what came to be know as the "Southern Strategy." What I propose is a formal apology for slavery and its aftermath. This could take the form of a joint resolution passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president in a ceremonial setting where Americans could gather to symbolically bury their past.

Whenever the idea of an apology is raised, some whites reflexively recoil. They believe it is a bad idea because it conjures up images of innocent whites prostrating themselves before blacks for crimes they never committed. Most outspoken are whites whose ancestors arrived after the end of slavery and those who fought for the Union. Neither we nor our ancestors, they argue, had anything to do with slavery, so why should we apologize?

Others will say that an apology is not necessary because one has already been issued -- two, really. In 1998 President Clinton acknowledged the evils of slavery. And last year President Bush visited Goree Island, a holding place for captured slaves in Africa, and spoke of the wrongs and injustices of slavery. "Small men," he said, "took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice."

More at the link provided.

Black Voices

My latest column for Black Voices looks at Tavis Smiley's Black Empowerment Summit a few months later.

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.

Black Voices et al

Sometime last week it was revealed that a Floridian child was put in handcuffs by police after having a temper tantrum in school. The event actually happened weeks ago but it was just covered by the press. I wrote about it in this week's Black Voices.

And my friend Liana has been following our discussion about Thomas Sowell. For my money, the best critique of Sowell's work comes from Harold Cruse's Plural But Equal. But this article isn't bad either.

Mind Control

Can someone who believes that "Black leaders" lead Blacks to think a certain way, give me concrete proof that this is the case?

You have to be able to demonstrate that Blacks, as a group, believed one way until a "Black leader" said differently.

Or, you have to be able to demonstrate that Blacks, as a group, had no concrete opinion on something until a "Black leader" "told Blacks how to think".

This has to go beyond ancedotes, please.

Commentary on Nuclear Option

Hey. I'm not sure what's going on with Black Voices right now, but I was recently put down with News and Notes with Ed Gordon. The first commentary was on the filibuster battles in the Senate.

Education as a civil right

Today's edition of The Black Slate looks at my family's decision to homeschool.

Black Voices Update

Ok. I've got a bit of a breather. Haven't done much writing of any sort lately because over the past couple of weeks I've been to Detroit, LA, Philly, Jersey, Alexandria, and Williamsburg. Heading to Chicago next month, I am on the longest jag I've ever been on in my short life. I had to say SOMETHING about Cruse but couldn't really put on paper what I wanted to. Suffice it to say that if I could name three books out of my basics list that changed my life THE CRISIS OF THE NEGRO INTELLECTUAL would be one of them.

I haven't written about my black voices stuff in a bit. Here are a couple of my most recent columns. One on the growing black exodus for the suburbs. Another on Bush's conception of "the ownership society."

As an aside they are running a tally on who is the most popular columnist. As of right now the total number of respondents is 70...meaning you can't say much statistically about the results. But if you're so inclined and have the time, vote here. The folks I actually get the most out of are Amy and Jimi.

Tavis Smiley: "Black Leader"

So says David Lambro:

At a well-attended "town hall" meeting in heavily black Prince George's County, Md., some 250 people turned out to hear Mr. Mehlman in a question-and-answer dialogue. It was a rare event in a party that has all too often ignored the black community. A chief adviser to Mr. Mehlman told me this week he plans to meet with and speak to a broad range of black groups in the coming weeks. A major speech is planned at predominantly black Howard University, and he plans to visit more black neighborhoods. "There will be a lot of community-type events within the African-American community," this adviser told me. Notably, Mr. Mehlman appeared last week on the nationally televised PBS talk show named after and hosted by Tavis Smiley, who sponsored the civil-rights meeting in Atlanta that alarmed Miss Brazile. An independent-minded black leader who wants a broader political dialogue in the black community, Mr. Smiley is being sounded out by the NAACP to become its next president, a sign that the venerable black organization may be ready to soften its often-harsh anti-GOP rhetoric.

This is funny.

Tavis Smiley: State of the Black Union

Just woke up from a nap and the wife has this on.

After clearing my head, George Fraser started speaking. The man brought it and the man hit it.

Fight for freedom --- achieved.
Fight for right to public access --- achieved.
Fight for economic strength --- yet to be achieved and must be a focus.

He said that we are the only people to go for political access but not economic access. (I hope I got that right).

I've heard him speak a few times before and he always says things I agree with.

More coming for as long as I'm in the house...

Update 1:

If there is a contract/conventent with Black folk, the first section should be what the responsibility of Blacks, ourselves, is.

Update 2:

Bishop Eddie Long -- just because I was invited to the house, it doesn't mean we have intercourse.

His response when Smiley stated that Bishop Long was invited to the White House.

Update 3:

Al Sharpton, again, has aired Democrat dirty laundry. It appears the Dems told him and others the last week before the election, that there was no money for travelling. They found out a week after the election, there was millions left in the bank.

Last update:

In the end, this means nothing if nothing comes out of it.

And if the Black populace isn't held accountable, nothing comes out of it.

And given the lame state of Black Democrats at the national level, nothing should be expected of them.

Black Voices and Cosby

My bi-weekly column has moved to Black Voices. Last week's column dealt with Rosa Parks.

I read a book called CULTURE AND AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICS by Charles Henry some years back. Due for an update...but one passage struck me. What would we call people who slough their kids of on strangers for the majority of the week, who don't have jobs, and move from place to place with the change in the seasons?

We call them shiftless if they are poor. We call them something else if they're rich.

This is what upset me more than anything else about Cosby and about attacks on the poor in general. The cultural arguments that are used against the poor are based on the fundamental reality that the poor are different because of the way they BEHAVE.

Take away Paris Hilton's last name, put her in a trailer park, would she have her own tv show?

This is one of the best stories I've seen written about the Cosby revelations as they relate to his smackdown quest. And even IT doesn't get the story quite right. Folks forget (xcept for Jimi) that Cosby has a long history of both smacking people around who aren't black like him (see: Eddie Murphy) and a long history of problematic behavior himself.

Black Press Alert!

Out here in the boondocks of deliberative reason, aka the blogosphere, there are extraordinarily deep and complex conversations going on. They are civil and insightful, often humorous but always worth reading. To my eyes, they are much better than those one could get just about anywhere else.

Not everyone thinks so, but that's probably because they are adrift seeking wisdom through the power of search engines. Some fortunate few of us have years of experience to lead us over the proper hyperlinks and know how to get to the right places. I think we owe it to them to lead them here. So all of you within earshot should note that Poynter Online has an article which merits your comments.

Do the right thing.

Thinking Negative

The general thrust of this piece is what I've been writing for years in the ether that is the internet.

It appears that if we hear something negative about ourselves we are quick to take ownership. “Black people are drugs addicts and drug dealers,” and our response? “Yep, that’s us.” “Most Black folks are lazy and on welfare,” and our response? “Yep, that’s us.” It seems that we don’t challenge, we won’t question and we do ourselves a great disservice.

...

...

If we are so ready to condemn, then why are we not equally ready to commend? Where was the “well done” for our young black sisters when the press release from the National Center for Health Statistics (dated December 17, 2003) stated that teenage pregnancy had gone down by 30 percent in the past decade and that the sharpest drop of any group was African-American teenage girls – 40% in the last decade and 50% since 1991? Where was the collective “bravo” for our young people when the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of the Census acknowledged that the African-American dropout rate (as of 2001) was at 10.9% - the lowest it’s ever been? Also, it was almost identical to the national average (meaning all students) of 10.7%. Most of us appear to be unaware of this information – so it appears that our youth aren’t the only ones who need to study more. Yes, I’d love to see the dropout rate down to 0%; but that shouldn’t preclude us from celebrating what we have achieved. I think it would be wonderful if none of our young women became pregnant in their teenage years, but I am proud of what they have done. The high-profile prophets of black negativity, who are so geared up to impugn our youth, could not be found to herald their triumphs just as enthusiastically.

Faye Anderson

I've referenced the name Faye Anderson a few times in discussions concerning the Republican party and Blacks.

I was fortunate to receive an email from her stating that she's now blogging at http://andersonatlarge.typepad.com.

She is a former vice chairwoman of the Black Republican New Majority Council.

Check her out.

Armstrong Williams

I don't really care much about the situation with Armstrong Williams. In my view, the man has shown himself to be an idiot. You don't take money for what you are going to shill for, for free, unless you state you got paid.

I have other points to raise:

• George Will has had a few instances of "conflicts of interest" come out. From what I can tell, no such furor has been raised. Why the double standard? I bet some people just fainted.:-)

• If the line of "individualism" is to be believed, then "Black conservative pundits" and "Black conservatives" shouldn't worry a hoot about Armstrong Williams. He made the mistake. He is going to suffer for it. If "Black conservative pundits" are on the "up and up", then they aren't getting paid like Armstrong Williams did and they should be able to challenge anyone who claims otherwise.

  Unless, the line of "individualism" is just a line.
  

• Lastly, some critics are wondering why it's okay for a small government conservative to take money from the government. Uhhh... HELLO!?!?!?!? When was the last time you heard any small government conseratives speak out against non-8A government contracts?
  

LaShawn Barber writes a strong piece on the matter.

Terrorism

Lately, I've been hearing more people refer to criminals in high crime areas as terrorists. I've been hearing more people refer to drug dealers who apply fear to the neighborhoods where they do their criminal activities as terrorists. I've been hearing people say that the dealers using intimidation is nothing more than terrorism.

I am not a wordsmith and I am guilty of loose use of the American version of English, but the use of terrorism and terrorist, as I have given it, is an abuse of the language that should not be allowed to stand.

I understand the seriousness of crime in some areas. I helped board up a dwelling that was being used as a drug den. A police officer saw what we were doing, parked his car, and watched. Later, the people who wanted to get into the dwelling undid our work and continued to do what they did. The only reason why we boarded up the dwelling is because complaints to the city about the problem resulted in nothing. About 2 years later, a 70-80 something year old woman was dragged into that dwelling and raped. The woman was kind to everyone in the neighborhood. One teenage girl heard what happened and told the police that some people in that dwelling had raped her as well. The city then tore down the building.

If the authorities did their jobs, from policing, to applying correct terms to those convicted, to keeping them locked up when they have committed violent crimes, more people would be willing to speak up and help out the authorities.

We don't need to call criminals terrorists. We need to call them criminals and deal with them as such.

Democracy Matters

A while back I mentioned reviewing Cornel West's new book DEMOCRACY MATTERS. It hit the Washington Post on the 30th. Happy New Year.

Selected Quotes: Jesse Lee Peterson

These quotes come from listening to his show:

"Most Black people are not honest and don't like to work."

"Most Black preachers aren't called by God, they are called by their mommas."

"Most Black preachers teach hatred of Israel."

"Most Black people, not all, but most, like lies over truth."

"A lot of Christians aren't really Christians, especially Black ones."

"When it comes to sex, you can't trust a Black preacher."

"Blacks who complain should be put back onto the plantation so that they would know how to work."

"Most Black men are not worth anything."

"Black preachers are racists".

Boohabian Slamdance Revisited

It has been a while since I have focused on anti-racist politics or ethics in particular, but I recently stumbled across a section of my website that was dedicated to repurposing and reviving some of that spirit: The Boohabian Slamdance.

It turned out that I ran out of steam fairly quickly as I started out on those tangents, but I think that the site works fairly well as a resource. I'd like to remind VC readers of it.

An Open Letter to Joe Watkins

This letter that appeared on Black Electorate.COM, to me hits it almost squarely on the head.

This is just a SMALL section of the open letter that really resonated with me.

The immediate challenge for the Black conservative is to find a way to make their ideology and partisan relationship serve the Black community at least as much as it serves the White Conservative establishment and the bank account of a relatively small group of opinion leaders who have commercialized their expression of conservative thought in a growing communications niche and business model. The Black conservative, if sincere, in my view, must do so in a way that does not misrepresent the Black community to those outside of it.

The Black conservative opinion leader has to balance the power and influence they have, largely derived from a platform provided them by Whites, with finding a way to engage the Black community in a meaningful dialogue that results in positive change on the ground. Many Black conservatives fall into the trap of painting an unrealistic picture of the community overstating the influence that political liberalism has on Blacks and exaggerating the potential that political conservatism has to "save" the Black community. It appears, too often to me, that Black opinion leaders on the right revel too much in the one-variable approach of explaining to overwhelmingly White audiences what is wrong with the Black community rather than building bridges or expanding their influence within Black America. This does not mean that the truth should not be told. It should. But I think, in a way that establishes it, not just in the minds of White listeners and readers, but within the community around which the discussion revolves - Black America. I have often found it peculiar that many Black conservative writers and talk show hosts seem to believe that they are changing Black America by almost exclusively communicating in media outlets majority controlled and read by White Americans.

And this one...

To me it is simple, a Black conservative should care more passionately about what is going on in the Black community than what is happening at the Heritage Foundation, Republican Party, CATO Institute, or Conservative talk-radio. And they should be mindful that they do not further the Black inferiority-White supremacy complex in how they personally relate to their non-Black peers, when the subject is money and intellectual ideas.

This isn't a 100% agreement on my part, but I get where Cedric Muhammad is coming from.

Big hat tip to Angela Winters.

More on NAACP Rift

Now THIS would've given me something to put my teeth into. Turns out that there was a rift between Mfume and Bond over strategic choices. Armstrong Williams applauds Mfume and has the following to say:

The rift grew as Mfume continued to reach out to the Republican Party. Mfume realized that by reflexively voting Democrat in every election, the black voting populace has given away most of their political bartering power. After all, what incentive is there for either party to go out on a limb for blacks, if it is taken for granted that blacks will automatically vote Democrat? In effect, the black voting populace has created conditions that make it very easy for both parties to take them for granted. Mfume rightly reasoned that by reaching out to the Republican Party on issues that they already agree with -- like empowering faith based charities, supporting school vouchers, etc. -- the black voting populace can send the message that they�re no longer willing to blindly support the Democrats.

One of my younger chapter brothers is friends with Williams. I hear he's a good man. I wish there were something more between his ears. Find me an evangelical arguing at any point within the last thirty years that the evangelical Christians should split their vote.

But the bottom line really doesn't change here. The NAACP has the same things to deal with no matter who is running the show. An interesting comparison though could be made between this battle and the one that is brewing between Howard Dean and the DLC'ers.

The Black Slate and the NAACP

Today's version of The Black Slate deals with the NAACP of course. To be honest, I wanted to deal with Pell Grants, but I will get to that next time around. A news event like this is where the rubber meets the road if you're black, write a column on black politics, and publish that column on a website that speaks to black issues.

So even though to be honest I think jacking Mfume (if he indeed got jacked) is a non-issue, I had to write about it. For another take, you can read Star Parker's version (thanks to cn). Or you can read Jelani's version. I probably should've known Jelani was going to deal with it.

I got word today that a good friend of mine got jacked in a professional deal that should've been a slam dunk. I can't say much more without divulging private details. But it's becoming clearer and clearer to me that in order for us to move forward some of us are going to have to move "backward". And some of that entails taking over moribund organizations like the NAACP. A lot of folks are going to get hurt in that battle--people who can't get props from any other place.

Images, Continued

To continue on Cobb's piece.

Cobb writes:

Black Conservatives don't play the 'Positive Black Images Game'.

I disagree with this one.

I can point to the examples of Black conservatives speaking out against the negative imagery of Black life put forth by rappers. If "Black conservatives" don't play the "positive Black images game," then why worry about the negative images put forth by rappers.

Woodson resigned from AEI over Dinesh D'Souza's, End of Racism. In a response to a press release, the president of AEI responded:

Loury and Woodson not only called the book racist but made the charge the headline of their press release (�Black Conservatives Resign From American Enterprise Institute in Response to �Racist� Book by AEI Resident Scholar Dinesh D�Souza�). Mr. Woodson has several times, and with great relish, called Mr. D�Souza �the Mark Fuhrman of public policy.�

It seems the imagery in the book disturbed Woodson.

But that's on the macro level of Blacks as a whole. After re-reading the piece, and re-reading what I wrote, maybe I addressed what was written at too high of a level.

Maybe I need to go lower.

One day I saw Woodson on Tony Brown's Journal. On the show, along with other things, he addressed the view of many Black conservatives by the Black community. If I remember correctly, he said the negative imagery bothered him some. He then went on to attack "Black leaders". But, if I remember correctly, he did say that some of it is self inflicted. If Woodson is comfortable within himself, as Cobb wrote, then why say he was bothered and then why go on the attack against "Black leaders"?

There are many other "Black conservatives" who attack the negative imagery that they are tarred with. So, I can't agree that "Black conservatives" don't play the "Positive Black Images Game". They are trying to improve their image. They are trying to be seen as positives, not negatives. That's playing the "Positive Black Images Game."

But, then if the comment was intended to say that Black conservatives don't feel the need to point out positive Blacks because of "individualism" issues, then, again, I disagree. For example, Condi Rice and Clarence Thomas are regularly written about as being positive models for Blacks to follow.

The battles are fairly shallow and interminable. They go on and on about the same idiot things. It's a trap that liberals never seem to tire of baiting. Black Republicans take a measure of false pride in their embattled status and do a good deal of sniping back.

I agree that the battles are fairly shallow. I really don't like it, though I engage in it. But many comments being made, initially, from "Black conservatives" are simple minded. That's not to say that many comments initiated from "Black liberals" are not simple minded, because they are simple minded.

At this point, I want to say something about what was quoted. Black Republicans take a measure of false pride in their embattled status.

I'm sorry, I don't see why that is not "victimology" as expoused by "Black conservatives".

And there I go, on a tangent about the shallow "victimology" label thrown around.]

It's late, this is getting long. I've re-written it a number of times and still the thoughts flow. Let me finish this edition. These last paragraphs are intended for "Black conservatives" in general and not Cobb in particular.

If "Black conservatives" are about the business that is claimed, then doing the work that needs to be done will change the image. If there is seriousness in the drive to do it, then why not hook up with people who have the benefit of a doubt? Hence, why I bring up Earl Graves, Sr.

Read the man's bio. Then read about The Black Wealth Initiative. Then read a few issues of Black Enterprise.

There is a real need to get more Black businesses going. Would it be hard for "Black conservatives" to coordinate some activities with Earl Graves, Sr. and/or Black Enterprise to get some real work done?

Or is it really about the "Black conservative" image, just not within the Black community?

Getting Religion

My recent edition of The Black Slate came out on Tuesday and I'm looking at race, religion, and the dnc. I wrote this piece a while back, right after the election I think...and did a little bit of editing the day before. Reads like it too incidentally, there's a paragraph near the end there that had me scratching my own head...and I WROTE it.

Anyway, while I'm not an atheist by any stretch of the imagination, I am highly skeptical of democratic party elites always coming to black people through churches. Makes me sick to my stomach. In fact, the more I think about it, the more hypocritical it is for the Dems to go to churches whenever they want black people, and then say WE need to get religion. Whatever.

Check out Jelani's piece on John McWhorter while you're at it. I've been wanting to take McWhorter on for a while now. He's one of the few conservative scholars--the only one as far as I am aware of--with a credible record of publishing in peer reviewed academic journals in his area of expertise. You'll NEVER find Shelby Steele in an English Lit journal though that is what he received his PhD in. Similarly I don't think you'll find Thomas Sowell in an economics journal either--he writes the hell out of some books, but Economists treasure books about as much as they treasure toilet paper when they don't have to go.

But McWhorter? A nice publication record. Which makes his intellectual laziness when it comes to race even that much harder to take. Jelani handles him though.

Partisan Garbage

Oliphant has done an editorial cartoon of Condi Rice that is out of bounds. Some on "the right" have been asking why groups like that NAACP have not come out against the cartoon.

Why should they? After all, unfortunately, the NAACP has become a partisan organization. Has the "Black right" defended those on the "Black left" when slurs, slanders, and lies have been directed towards the "Black left"?

Of course not.

[Update at the end of the entry]

When Mfume had a chance of having a national talk show, did the "Black right" defend the man's right to have such a show? No. Instead, "the right" got into gear and shut down the floating idea of Mfume having a national talk show. But, "the right" had a cow when local people in Los Angeles attempted to have Larry Elder taken off of the air.

When Mfume had a local show in Baltimore, the show addressed problems in urban areas, and show cased people and groups that attempted to solve the problems. But did the "Black right" say anything about that?

After Ron Brown was killed in an airplane crash, many on "the right" went after integrity of the man. At one point, they were claiming he had a marijuana habit. Ron Brown's family, in mourning, had to deal with that garbage. In fact, Ron Brown's doctor was given permission by the family to discuss Brown's health. Evidently, he had a lung condition that made it hard for him to be in smoke filled areas in general. If he smoked, anything, he would h