I don't know why, but yesterday I was thinking about "old school thought".
So, here's what it means to me:
Updates below:
To show what I mean, here are some examples of sayings I grew up hearing:
Wynton Marsalis writes about New Orleans in this week's New Republic. His ideas about sustained intensity resound with me. If I could only leave my kids with one skill? One trait? It'd be that of sustained intensity.
As an aside, one of the worst aspects of the blog as a form is that in most cases it detracts from sustained intensity.
But that's another discussion.
In pt. 1, I deconstructured Cosby's comments. It should be clear, if it wasn't before, that Cosby's comments reveal a significant degree of disdain for black poor citizens. In pt. 2, I talked about the distinction between enslaved Africans, and black slaves. A simple way to think about it is grammatically as far as adjectives and nouns. In the one case the adjective is "African" in the other case the noun is "slave".
Steve's response can be found here. In my short comments to his post, I noted that by not asking how whites were damaged by slavery we fall into the fakelore of white supremacy. In his response, and his first Bennett Cosby quote, Steve argues that one way to see negative conditioning is by looking at the way blacks took to white standards of beauty, preferred straight hair to kinked (or "natural") hair, left black communities, and took being smart to mean "acting white."
A lot to cover here.
Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison two of the deans of black literature write about the "fakelore of white supremacy." It refers to the degree to which blacks and whites buy into white supremacy, by arguing that blacks were psychologically and culturally damaged by the enslavement.
The entire "blacks have lost their religion, their culture, their god..." argument? Fakelore.
In point of fact, slavery and oppression may well have made black people more human and more American while it has made white people less human and less American... It is the political behavior of black activists, not that of norm-calibrated Americans, that best represents the spirit of such constitutional norm-ideals as freedom, justice, equality, fair representation, and democratic processes....It is the non-conforming Negro, not the median of the white population, who now acts like the true descendent of the Founding Fathers--who cries 'Give me liberty or give me death," and who regards taxation without representation as tyranny. It is the white American who, in the name of law and order, now sanctions measures that are more in keeping with the objectives of a police state than those of an open society.(Murray, pp. 36, 37)
To the degree that America is a democracy, it is a democracy because of the actions of enslaved Africans and their American descendants. But it is these people who are supposedly crippled? Take a look at lynching pictures if you can. What stands out to me are the smiling faces of white boys and girls, of white men and women. Proud. Happy. Gleeful.
Black people were the crippled ones?
Whenever I walk behind a white woman in the night, she clutches her purse...and often crosses the street. Physically I'm fit, but I'm nothing like Steve. I weigh 155 WITH CLOTHES ON, and am 6' tall. Hardly menacing.
But I'm the crippled one?
Check out that Rodney King tape if you get a chance. Police are given the authority by the state to use deadly force. It took what? A few dozen police officers to subdue him.
HE'S the one that's crippled--even though they had guns?
People who have bought into the fakelore of white supremacy--whether they be nationalists, or integrationists, radicals or conservatives--argue that blacks are crippled IN COMPARISON TO THEIR WHITE COUNTERPARTS.
Not politically or economically crippled--an argument I agree with.
Spiritually, culturally, and psychologically crippled.
And buying into the fakelore means buying into such things as: the myth of acting white, white standards of beauty, good hair, and consumption to ape whites. I don't want to get deep into the social science literature because I don't have a lot of space. I'll just say this. The social science literature on acting white? Mostly Bunk.
On consumption patterns? Bunk too. White standards of beauty? Check out rates of black vs. white anorexia. Black female self-esteem rates (very high compared to whites).
I've been blessed with the ability to do this type of research for a living. To study, research, and write about black life. To be an expert on race and politics, and American politics. Through synthesizing the social science literature with my own experience as a product of seventies and eighties Detroit, I've come to pretty much shirk off the fakelore of white supremacy. Ellison and Murray are on point here.
Next? Steve's got some powerful ideas on thought processes at the individual level. But he attaches this to culture, and to large social groups, in a way that ignores politics and economics. I think this is what I'll talk about...and given I've got a book of my own to write, I may finish there depending.
Black Americans have to be the most internally questioning people in the U.S.
The idea that Blacks "speak behind closed doors" is a farce. Things are mentioned on Black talk radio. Things are mentioned in Black print media. The idea about Blacks "speaking behind closed doors" rests on the idea that it's "behind closed doors" because media appointed "Black leaders" aren't QUOTED as saying certain things. Then, critics of the American Black community, white and Black, say that because those "leaders" aren't saying things, it isn't being said.
False.
Then those same critics will say that those "Black leaders" don't speak for all Blacks.
True.
Then those same critics will say that the Black community, in general, is being "lead" by the "Black leaders".
Then those same critics will point out where the "Black leaders" are not sychronized with the general Black community.
Ummm.... Ain't there some contradictions there somewhere?
Based on an intentionlly provacative post from LaShawn Barber, and the comment thread I've become a part of, I've come up with the following questions.
For those who want to label themselves conservatives, and for those who believe that conservatives are "people who think vs. feel", I want you to think about the following questions:
1. It's well known that the membership numbers of the NAACP has been steady since about the 70s. Given that the American Black population has grown, essentially, the NAACP membership has fallen. If the NAACP is a group that "leads thoughts" of Black people in the U.S., how is it that its membership numbers are steady with the average age of NAACP members rising?
2. With question #2 in mind, how is that public Black conservatives only point out the membership troubles of the NAACP, but never publically point out the criticisms of the NAACP by "non-conservative" Blacks?
3. With questions #1 and #2 in mind, why is it when it is reported that Blacks who have been polled favor "conservative" ideas like vouchers or support heterosexual marriage only, none of the conservative critics of said "leaders", try to find out other areas of disagreement?
4. With #3 in mind, do you believe that the images of Blacks, by "news media" is accurate?
5. With #4 in mind, if you do NOT believe the images of Blacks are totally accurate, have you ever wondered why conservatives, of any race, have tried to give a more complete picture of the Black community.
6. To go further, if there is indeed a "silent conservative Black population", why are there no efforts by conservatives to profile the everyday "conservative Black population"?
7. If you believe that "standard" conservative image of Blacks, do you believe that Earl Graves, publisher of Black Enterprise is someone who is castigated or cheered?
Bonus questions:
1. Why is it that the biggest critics of the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton, are not white conservatives or Black conservatives, but the general Black population?
2. Why is it that the biggest critics of Blacks in the U.S., are Blacks?
3. If the media distorts the picture of Black conservatives, and the media distorts the picture of progress of American Blacks, why trust the picture of Blacks following "Black leaders"?
Cobb wrote this about his view of the Black Political Spectrum.
I put the following in the comment section.
Thinks a bit...
I think my relation to society is that I am part of a society that has set high goals for itself, but has only historically recently, really started to live the goals that it has set for itself.
There are definitely problems that still abound, but some of those will always be around: crime, poverty, deviency. Society sets the standards and society addresses those that live outside of the standards.
"As Black folk", we are a part of the society as a whole, even though there are many who view us outside of society and still not willing to be a part of society. For "Black folk" in general, that view is garbage. And, IMNSHO, speaks to the ignorance and bias of those who think so, regardless of race.
Thinks...
But racism or other's ignorance ain't our greatest foe, though it is one that can beat down those who aren't prepared. Our own ignorance is greater. But I'm hard pressed to think of something that IS our GREATEST foe.
After writing that, I'll add some more thoughts.
There are those who will say that morality is our greatest issue. I understand that point as well and have some sympathy for it, but if you go strictly by the Bible, most of America is immoral. If you don't believe me, look up the statistics on out of wedlock sexual activity of those under 21 and ask yourself if it moral to have sex outside of marriage.
Education definitely is a problem as well as business creation. The latter is improving, the former has some bright spots and some bleak spots.
Now for the big "DUH" moment: it's not one thing is the combination of all things that provide the biggest challenge.
But African-Americans are Americans, and most Blacks know and understand this. I say to you, question all of those who say otherwise. Question all of those who say Blacks are not part of the mainstream. No matter what they tell you to support their idea, the are shoveling muck.
On Cobbs analysis, it breaks down in my view because it doesn't take into account the role of government. Despite what the critics state, the view of Blacks toward the government is more complex than "depending on the government for everything." Welfare doesn't define Black America, neither does "depending on the government."
Liberal, conservative, progressive, whatever. Trash those labels. Blacks can't afford to be a part of that nonsense.
My daughter working for the summer, seeing her way over the rough spots called college/university life.
The wife feeding "D.S. 2.0" with a look that tells me there's nothing between the 2 of them but pure love.
Standing over a grill, puttin' my foot in salmon steaks, chicken, lamb chops and grilled veggie kabobs.
Love and life baby. That's what it's all about.
Yeah....
Queue up Change and other Luther old school records.
Searchin' searchin'
For so longggg...
Searchin'
Tomorrow, the youngest of the family sees the family matriarch, again.
Love. Right. There.
My wife. My daughter. My son. The family matriarch.
Love. Right. There.
Life is good.
I'm blessed.
So a comment on Cobb has me somewhat torqued. And the comment can't get past a filter, so I'm putting it here and trackin' back.
I think he did answer your question, DarkStar; he simply declines to be constrained to answer it in a manner demanded by you. Because the question includes a presumption he doesn't accept, right?
Wrong, but thanks for playing.
Look at all that I wrote:
Why is that that "Black conservatives" and conservatives in general, in denouncing "Black leadership", never promote the people and organizations like those listed here, as being "Black leaders" or being representative of the Black community or the strengths of the Black community?
Note the bolded part?
I'm not pulling this question out of thin air. It's based on LONG TIME observations as well as taking part in a past "Black conservative email list" where they, THEMSELVES, were asking each other the same thing.
Look, I saw a dang near civil war over the 1st Trent Lott and CofCC association mess on that email list. What blew me away was a list of self proclaimed Black Republicans saying the same things about themselves that Black Democrats say about Black Republicans. When "sellout" was flying between them and when the phrase "Black CON-servative" was used, from a Gingrich staffer no less, I took notice.
So back up. I'm not constraining anyone. And I don't ever expect a straight forward answer from Cobb, based on experience. And that's not a bad thing, that just is what Cobb is.
I don't accept that Blacks are not mainstream. I've traveled outside of the country enough to know that line is garbage.
A separate nation is foolish. A separate agenda is NOT foolish but will never happen because the Black community is not monolithic; radicals, conservatives, liberals, apathetic, all have a place in the mix.
I recognize and say that the civil rights battle has been fought and won and the next needs are economic and moral. You pick the order of importance.
Straight up, the questions about Black politics are annoying on all sides. I'm not being wishy washy or a "stick my finger in the air and see which way the wind blows" or whatever slander some conservatives place on those who proclaim the "moderate" label. BTW, I proclaim no label.
Straight up, it's all b.s. and I call 'em all on it. "Both sides" are equally pessimistic, negative, and degrading of the Black community. Neither show the positives going on. And as a parent who has one on the cusp of standing on her own damn 2 feet, and another just on the breast, I don't have the patience for the garbage being spewed.
When a proclaimed liberal calls a man like Clinton a brotha and gets cheers, and Fox News proclaims a semi-literate, race pimp reverend named Jesse Lee Peterson a "Black leader" while at the same time denouncing the label "Black leader" and the need for such, some Blacks need to stand up and call people on their b.s.
Yeah, I called Jesse Jackson a punk some years ago. And I just called Jesse Peterson a race pimp. What other man of God would say that if a person wants to get saved, they should not go to a Black church? No, he didn't say a particular type of Black church, but any Black church.
Yeah...
I'm pissed.
I'm sleep deprived 'cuz the new baby has "cholic", plus the ish is hitting the fan on the "9-5".
It took WHITE CONSERVATIVES to point to good goings on in urban schools across the country. Something REEKS about that.
Breathe....
Presumptions my fanny...
So you are in the operating room, sitting at the head of your wife, while behind the curtain, two doctors and a medical student are working on doing their thing on your wife's "stomach".
A nurse, with a white towel with red and blue stripes drapped across both outstreached arms, comes to the side and waits. And then all of a sudden, you see a "big head" covered in wavy black hair appear from behind that curtain and placed on the towel. They announce, "There he is!" and rush off to do some things.
Later, while the doctors are still doing their thing behind the curtain, they bring him back, tightly wrapped in towel.
They place the boy in the father's arms, and as he gazes down, he looks over at his wife to introduce the two, and the husband sees the look on his wife's face that says it all: the bond between the mother and son will never be broken. Dad, the love your wife has for you is nothing compared to the love your wife has for her son.
And that thought is a wonderful realization.
"DS, 2.0" -- Thanks George! -- welcome to your life!
I'm your dad. I'm charged by God to guide you through your life.
This is your mom. She's charged by God to guide you through your life.
We will do as God commands, in the best way that we know how.
God first, us second.
I proclaim here and now, that God has great things in store for you. "DS, 2.0", prepare for the time of your life!!!!
Dad, mom, and big sis love you.
"Let's get it started!
Let's get it started in here!"
Wisdom. One definition:
Wisdom comes when you are old enough to have made quite a few mistakes and have learned from those mistakes so that you don't make them again. You know that if you see situation A, last time you reacted by doing B, but you learned that C was better. So next time, situation A comes along and you go for C, instead of B.
Given that the youth aren't joining the NAACP, and the membership is getting older, isn't the NAACP reacting from their learned experiences, hence "wisdom", when the come out against vouchers?
For those who care to look into the history of vouchers, vouchers first came about in reaction to school desegregation rulings. For example, in Virginia, private academies were created and public funding when to white parents to send their children to private schools.
So, when critics, rightly, say that they seem to be stuck in the past, it may be because, collectively, they are reacting to situations that they learned from yester-year.
That's what I find interesting about the "Black liberal" vs. "Black conservative" sham that the Black community -- me included -- has allowed ourselves to be sucked into.
By targeting the "under 40" crowd of Blacks, the focus is being paid to those without the institutional memory to help form a basis for making some decisions. To put it more bluntly, and probably grammatically correctly, the "under 40" crowd is being targeted because of their "ignorance".
That is not an attack this is just an observation.
"It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans" Martin Luther King, Jr., March 1968
If you aren't familiar with Harold Cruse and his works, and consider yourself a scholar of American life, whether you are a social scientist, or a philosopher, you're on crack. I had the chance to take a class with Cruse as an undergrad, and a number of chances to talk with him while in grad school at the University of Michigan. A few of my boys and I held a conference in his honor several years ago, and Jelani Cobb (no relation to Mike) came out with an edited collection of his best pieces. In fact it was through Jelani that I'd gotten word that Cruse passed in his sleep on Friday. I wish I could've found out sooner. We were in the middle of our annual conference for black political scientists, and it would have been an excellent time to reflect on his legacy. Vision Circle would not be here if it weren't for people like Cruse. He'll be sorely missed.
For the sake of argument, let's accept the premise that the "pro-life side" of the Schiavo mess is a result of "the religous right" being given their due because of their support of the Republican party.
Given that, what does it say about Black politicians who couldn't get Clinton to let the cocaine and crack sentencing disparity to sunset?
What does it say about Black politicians who couldn't get Clinton to pay more attention to the situation in Rwanda?
What does it say about Black politicians who tried, late in Clinton's last term, to address the slavery issue in Sudan and other countries?
What does it say about Black politicians tried but couldn't get Clinton to change the U.S. policy towards Haiti?
What does it say about the CBC?
What does it say about the Democratic party and it's core base?
So, if Republicans are trying to get 20% of the Black vote by going to Black preachers, good for them as long as Blacks get something out of it this time.
Ok. The Fryer meme has been going around and hitting up some of my boys. Bomani emailed me about my thoughts after reading Cobb's take...and I've already weighed in on Prometheus' ideas on him. In as much as the number of black social scientists with blogs is currently at two (Melissa Harris-Lacewell has one but doesn't really claim it as such) I thought I'd weigh in.
Here's the deal. I don't know Fryer personally, but I heard of him around the same time I heard of Steven Levitt. I don't think Levitt's conclusions are all that deep. Those who are in the know have always known that drug dealing doesn't REALLY pay more than McDonalds. If it really did, then the ghettoes wouldn't all look...well, like GHETTOES. Hell, one of the reasons that the drug of choice in urban areas shifted from crack to heroin was because the supply was so great that the profit margins on the product were so slim that fools couldn't really make loot off of it.
So they shifted.
When I hung out with Cobb (and as an aside the moment was just as he captured it. If I didn't have writing deadlines up the wazoo I'd write more. Suffice it to say that it was one of the best times I've ever had in my life.) I said as much. For Levitt this question was interesting enough to ask...whereas for us (that is, black social scientists with access to drug dealers and even some intimate knowledge about dealing) these questions weren't as interesting.
I mentioned this to Prometheus. I know a couple of mid level drug dealers well enough that if I wanted to I could've gotten this information from them. I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT DOING SO. And I'm decent at what I do. This in and of itself separates Levitt from me. And this in and of itself qualifies him as a talent.
So even though Levitt is simply a riff off of the Dalton Conley story (I don't feel like linking, do a google search if you're so inclined) I admire his chops.
Now where does Fryer come in?
Fryer co-authored the naming paper with Levitt, so that in and of itself identifies him as having skills. The article though doesn't focus on his work half as much as it focuses on the hurdles he overcame on the way to Harvard.
Here's a dirty secret--while there ARE actually a number of second and third generation black PhDs floating around, most of us come from hard knock environments and had to work our asses off to get to where we are. There is a reason why you can count the number of black professors at Washington University on a couple of hands sans some fingers. My best friend in the discipline grew up in Mississippi when it was Mississippi. Segregation isn't an academic concept for him--he was there.
Hard knock stories and a few dimes will still leave you a buck short if you're trying to get from Union Station to Dupont Circle on the Metro. You can't convince me that someone is the next Dubois (a title I do aspire to) based on a hard knock life.
It also isn't clear that Fryer really wants to tackle the hard questions about black behavior. Throw a rock blindly in the prominent black blogging cirlces and you're bound to hit someone who believes that black culture is inferior to white, and that Affirmative Action hurts more than it helps. You want to go against the grain in the most conservative of all social sciences? Tackle white supremacy, jack. So whereas Levitt is asking interesting questions (granted, coming up with non-interesting answers but still...) with innovative datasets, the best that Fryer can come up is a salt narrative???
With with that said, I'm willing to bet that Fryer is as cool as the other side of the pillow as far as a running buddy. He'd probably fit in well with me, Bomani, and at least SOME of our boys. But I'm not going to hold my breath. As far as I'm concerned the best social scientists of my generation are: Claudine Gay, Mark Sawyer, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Vincent Hutchings [political science], Stephanie Rowley, Rob Sellers [psychology], Dalton Conley, Tyrone Forman, Mary Patillo [sociology]. And Bomani has a much better shot at being a Dubois-style economist (that is, one who publishes in high quality journals AND in public fora) than Fryer does. Now if he just gets that diss finished....
I have just determined that I'm not Black.
It is impossible for me to be Black.
I say this because I keep being told that Blacks follow "Black leaders" like Jesse Jackson, Sr, Al Sharpton, the NAACP, etc, but I keep missing out on them telling me what to think or how to think.
Where are the mind meld sessions being held?
I am missing the sessions. So I cannot be Black.
How can most Blacks not support "gay marriage" but the "Black leadership" support "gay marriage"? How else can most Blacks support school vouchers but the "Black leadership" not support school vouchers?
I guess "most Black people" are missing the mind meld sessions. Does that mean "most Black people" are not Black?
There's a domain name purchased for 2 years.
It's called blackselfhelp.info.
I hope that for at least 2 years, it will house information about Black self help groups across the country.
You can help set it off by submitting information about Black self help groups to submitinfo at the domain name given.
Your help is appreciated.
Other than mental masturbation, what was my trip down memory lane all about?
Let's try multiple viewpoints from the same situation shall we?
In the grade school years, I noted actions taken by my family and teachers to help me in my education. I also noted hurdles faced during that time. I tend to like to point out the "positives" of things but I'm also a realist, so I feel compelled to point out the "challenges" of things.
Critics says that Black students don't take advanced classes in grade school and the numbers back them up. However, you can't take what isn't available.
Is it "liberal" to point out that I faced "acting white" charges, not in general, but only from a few who weren't doing well? Is it "liberal" to point out my "advanced" high school had the challenging classes but the "general" high schools didn't? Is it liberal to point out when Jesse Jackson said something right?
Is it "conservative" to point out the family intervention on my behalf? Is it "conservative" to point out the teacher intervention on my behalf?
In the college years, I noted who went to college, who didn't, and who didn't stay. I pointed out things that happened during my four year stay at the college I attended.
Is it liberal to point out that some people dropped out of college because of money or because of disinterest? Is it liberal to point out, because of this background knowledge, more information than just "drop out rate" is needed to determine if affirmative action is the reason why students drop out?
Is it liberal or conservative to point out what I had to go through just to take regular classes my first semester? Is it liberal or conservative to point out that I was the only Black person to graduate with a computer science degree? Is it liberal or conservative to note that whites and Blacks dropped out?
Is it liberal or conservative to note the differences in fighting "the war on drugs"?
Is it liberal or conservative to point out problems with the Honor System?
Is it liberal or conservative to point out that a school that graduates Black students at about the same rate as white students is targeted by Linda Chavez as being discriminatory to white students?
Is it liberal or conservative to point out that, despite the problems, I got through in "normal" time?
In the running the street years, I pointed out actions by citizens and inaction by the police. Is that conservative or liberal?
Is it liberal or conservative to point out that the general images of welfare don't always match the reality? Is it liberal or conservative to point out that there are Black students who do want to do well in school? Is it liberal or conservative to point out "Black civil rights groups" as well as other groups who helped tutor kids?
In the parent years, is it liberal or conservative to point out actions taken for the benefit of my child? Is it liberal or conservative to point out that as a parent, I tried to do what was best for my child? Is it liberal or conservative to point out that other parents made sacrifices for their children?
Is it liberal or conservative to point out a high performing majority Black high school, sending most of the kids to higher education, still being short on books and getting cuts in funding?
Or, is it just plain silly and stupid to assign a political label to a person because they may argue "one way" on a topic?
I said before and I'll keep saying, Blacks can't afford to get caught up in this "conservative" vs. "liberal" nonsense.
It's crap.
Both sides stink. Both sides are too damned self absorbed.
Again, a pox on both camps.
My kid was born and life did a major flip.
I had a chance to work a few years in Spain and turned it down because I didn't want to miss her growing up. Same for a chance to work in England for 3 years. The same for a chance to lead a team of Indian software programmers, in India, before the software outsourcing really became an issue.
But I'm skipping ahead.
She was born. Within a few days, I set up to have money taken out of my paycheck to purchase U.S. Savings Bonds. From my upbringing, that was the smart thing to do.
Years later, I learned about mutual funds from a co-worker. After doing my homework, I decided to invest money for college into a mutual fund. The company even had a plan that would keep the funds in a small-cap, large-cap blend until I stated and then would start to transfer the money into a money market account.
SWEET!!!!!!!
[ As an aside, later, a family member who I looked up to, mentioned mutual funds in passing. "Mutual funds! Can't beat 'em! Been doing it for awhile now!"
He told me, then! Not before... Anyway...]
I told my friends with children the things I was doing to save money. Hopefully, hey are doing what they can. I know in one case, they didn't. But the parents can be trifling.
When it was time for her to attend school, she went to a private school. After 2 years, she was placed into another private school. She had a well earned reputation for talking too much. But a teacher suggested that she be put on Ritalin and that was enough.
She couldn't handle the class, in general, and she wanted more than just one kid put on that crap.
My daughter stayed in the second school through the 8th grade. During that time, I meet many Black parents, some single, who made sacrifices to send their children there. Some parents had no problem affording the school. One set of parents won private voucher money and was able to send both of their kids to the private school.
Before, they wanted to send both kids to school, but even with the father working 2 jobs, they couldn't afford to send both kids, so instead of making the hard choice, neither kid went to private school.
They did poorly in school and got into a lot of fights. Within 4 weeks at the private school, the daughters grades went up and the behavior improved. By the end of he first quarter, the boys behavior improved and his grades shot up. That's why I support vouchers.
Then came high school. We visited many private high schools, but my daughter wanted to attend a "academic magnet" public school. The school had 90% of its graduates continuing their education. Of the 90%, 95% attended 4 year accredited schools or military academies. This is a school that has a graduation rate of 97.5% for Black students. The attendance rate for Black students is 94%. The dropout rate is 0.9% for Black students.
I let her talk me into it, but I believe it was a mistake. She got a decent education. She took AP and IB courses. She encouraged other students and they encouraged her.
But the first day of school, she told me that I should show up to support the school because they wanted to cut the school budget and give the money to other schools. Why? Because the school performed well on the state assessment tests. She also didn't have an English book her first year because there were not enough books to go around.
The second year, on the first day of school she told me that the students are being asked to bring reams of copy paper to school because the school doesn't have enough. She also didn't have enough English books.
The third year, on the first day of school, again, not enough English books. The class size was increased. Plus there is talk of the school losing more money.
The fourth year, we battled the school board because they wanted the academic magnet schools to retain students who had not performed well in school. When that happened, the students were "sent back" to their zoned school.
We went to the school board meeting where the zone school representatives made speeches saying that the money for kids "sent back" does not come with them, so there is a strain on resources. The representatives of the academic magnet schools said it is unfair to keep failing students in the schools when the zone schools could do a better job educating them and getting them back on the track to graduate.
Then, the students who were "sent back" came up to speak. Wouldn't you know it, each student said they did well in middle school, went to the magnet schools and didn't do well because they didn't do the work required to do well.
My daughter was told that to get a C, you had to do about 2 hours of work a night. To get a B, you had to do about 3 hours of work a night. To get an A, you had to do about 4 hours of work a night.
She graduated with a 91.5 average. But her mother and I had to place our foot up her butt one quarter a year to keep her in line.
The U.S. savings bond money was used to purchase a very nice laptop. She has a partial scholarship at a HBCU. The money saved comes in handy.
She has friends who are in the military because they needed to get out of the city and they had no desire to go to college. She has friends in the military to "get money to go to college." She has friends in 4 year schools. She has friends in junior colleges.
I've asked and she's never been accused of acting white. She has been told that she's boug-hetto. (Bougie and ghetto).
She is still a work in progress.
"Running the street" is what my family calls it when single men are living the single life. It's also what they call it when men are up to no good.
The area where I hung out, we called it "The Way". "The Way" came from "around the way". So, instead of "The Hood", we had "The Way". The group I hung out with was called "The Fellahs". That came about because we were walking up a friend's steps when his mother said, "Here come the fellahs!"
The "inhabitants" later took down the boards and went back in. Some time later, an old woman who lived across the street from that house, was raped by people in that house. The woman hurt no one, was nice to every one, and seemed to have no enemies around The Way.
As word spread, a teenage girl came forward and said she had been raped in that house before.
People around The Way had complained about that house before, but the police and the city did nothing about it until after the rapes. They tore down the house.
They bragged a lot and claimed they were hard core. Then the Jamaicans came and told them that they would sell the dope provided by the Jamaicans, or they would be killed.
They sold the Jamaican dope. So much for being hard.
One of The Fellahs confronted them about it and said that he hoped they all got killed because they destroyed the neighborhood.
The tutors were women from 100 Black Women, men from Concerned Black men, people from the D.C. Urban League, people from the D.C. NAACP, and others.
Another family rented another house. They also received section 8 vouchers. They sat outside on the summer evenings, being very loud and rude. The home owners association put up signs saying sitting outside was not allowed. I lived in a town home community where the town homes shared a common entrance walkway. The chairs tended to be in the common entrance walkway. They got thrown out of the home. The signs came down. They were Black.
People tried to get the home owners association to restrict home owners from accepting section 8 vouchers. The language used by proponents was racially tinged.
Allow me to ramble for a bit.
Now I'm about to enter college.
Some of my friends went into the service, either enlisted or military acadamies. Some went directly into the work force. Most of them had no desire to go to college because, for them, it wasn't a good fit. Some went to college and dropped out because they realized it wasn't there thing. Some dropped out because of funding. In fact, one friend dropped out because it came down to him or his sister going to college, and he decided to give her the shot.
Now...
It's now my 3rd day of my first year in college when I get the list of classes I'm supposed to take. I compare my classes to other engineering students when I see that I'm taking pre-101 level classes. I go to my advisor to find out why I have such an easy load when I find out that because I'm from Baltimore, whose students have not done well historically at the school, I'm in a "transition program." Simply put, I'm in a program to ease my way into the college life.
If I had attended any public school in Maryland, I would have qualified to go in at the sophomore level. If I would have attended RIT or Virginia Tech, I would have qualified to go in at the sophomore level.
And now, this school wants me to go in at a "pre-college" level. My SAT score exceeded the average score by more than 100 points. My senior year of high school was, essentially, a freshman level of college work except for English. In fact, some students in the A course, took an English class on Saturdays for their entire junior year, so that they could graduate a year early!
After discussing things with my advisor, I was told that the only way out was to get the approval of the transition program head. She told me I had to do exceptionally well on a placement test that all transition students had to take.
I was paired with a Black room mate. I was one of the very few Black students who was paired with a Black room mate. It turned out that he was also a transition program student. I told him about the situation and he said I should just go with the program. But I wasn't about to spend an additional year at that school if I didn't have to do so. I was paying for my schooling and I worried about my funds.
He studied hard for the test. I didn't study. We took the test. I finished the test in under 1 hour. I was the first one to finish. The proctor, who was the transition program head, asked me how I did. I told her I got every question right. She laughed and said we'll see. I was wrong. I got a 98 out of 100. I was let out of the program and scrambled through the ADD/DROP process to get a full load.
At the end of my first year of college, I chose to major in computer science, as did many other students. By many, my guess was that it was greater than 30 students, with a fair number being Black students. By the end of the first semester of my second year, about half of the computer science majors switched majors. By the end of the second year, most had switched majors. That means, most white students and most Black students.
I recall one major computer science project in the 2nd semester of my second year. One woman cried because she couldn't get it right. One man kept cursing and banging on the table. Another man just looked, stood up, flicked off the computer terminal, smiled, said he quit, and walked out of the computer lab.
I was an engineer. I was an athlete. I graduated in four years. I was the only Black person to graduate with a computer science degree from the engineering school that year.
My first full weekend at the school, I found out which frats were known for having drug parties. All frats had keg parties so that was no big deal. By the end of the first year, I found out that the police raided the Black "townie" area on a regular basis for drug raids. Meanwhile, one particular white frat was known for marijuana, mushrooms, and speed. But it wasn't raided until the year after I left. It took 4 years, and federal funding, for them to go after college kids. In the end, some college kids did time, one who was well known and later had a pro football career, and a national frat lost a frat house with the frat being kicked off of campus.
There was a house on campus that housed the Black student union. Near that house was a college bus stop. "We" knew it as the BBS -- Black bus stop. One day, someone decided to spray paint "NIGGER" on the sidewalk of the BBS.
The school has an honor code system. Black students were being disproportionately charged with honor code violations and many believed that racism played a part. A Black professor stated that Black students should sit as far apart from each other as possible when taking tests. They should not look at each other during tests or look at someone else's direction during tests. Years later, one student was thrown out of school for an honor code violation. His parents sued the school over lack of due process. They won in court but by the time the case was one, the student had attended another school and graduated. He was vindicated and the school's honor system took a hit.
The school responded by re-evaluating the honor system and how it functions. The student run re-evaluation, one where white students dominated the process, suggested changes which made the system MORE unfair. For example, they suggested that those accused not be given the chance for defense! The school ignored the recommendations, and made other changes.
Close to 10 years after I graduated, I attended a cookout where I met the mother of a student at the school. She told me she was trying to keep her son in the school, even though he didn't like the school. She, like I, am Black. I then listed the reasons why he didn't like the school and she shook her head in agreement. Things had not changed.
Four years ago, I was in the process of selling my previous house. The realtor, who was Black, had a daughter at the same school. In talking, she said that the daughter liked the school, but there were issues that bothered her. I gave the reasons and the realtor said I was correct. It was the same list that I gave previously.
About 5 years after I graduated, the school complained about high schools not properly preparing students for college work. They decided that the high school of students who needed to take remedial courses, would pay the cost of the student's remedial classes. About 2 years later, the school said the cost of remedial classes were too high. They were no longer going to offer the classes. It would be up to junior colleges to fill the gap.
The school graduates Black students at a similar rate as white students. It also has the highest graduation rate of Black students in the country.
Yet, Linda Chavez says that the affirmative action program at the school is unfair because white students, more qualified than the Black students, are not let into the school.
See the mixed bag here?
My mother had a friend who was a grade school teacher. After talking with her friend, my mother and father brought me a blackboard, magnetic letters, and instruction books concerning reading, writing, and simple math. On the first day of school, I was placed into the class of students who were already reading and writing.
This was a private school. My mother was a nurse at a public hospital, my father was a policeman. Gasp! Government workers!
At the start of the second grade, because of a family situation change, I was now in a public school in Baltimore. I was considered "smart", most likely because I was ahead of my peers.
At another school, in the 5th grade, some people said I was "acting white." But I recognized, even as a kid, that the people saying it were the FEW who were not doing well in school, so I ignored it. With very little effort, my grades were fine.
In the 7th grade in junior high school, I was placed into the "fast track" section. It was in the 7th grade that I discovered girls were nice in a different way. ;-) By the 8th grade, I was still in the "fast track," still getting good grades, and still doing so with very little effort.
We played spades at lunch, tried to flurt with the girls, and took life for what it was. One day, I noticed Tank and Billy talking about going to Poly. I owe Tank and Billy a big thank you because they said I was "too stupid" to get into Poly. Well, I got in. We all applied for Poly's "advanced college prep" course. We all got in.
In high school, we were in the "higher section" of the A course 9th grade, which meant we had a high probablity of leaving the A course. I faced a Spanish teacher who, really, just chose me to make an example of. I faced a self-professed redneck pig farmer who threw me out of class for responding "yeah". I faced a counselor who insisted that I wasn't capable of doing the work and should "fall" to the B course, which was the college prep track. Billy and Tank dropped, but I refused.
We were already behind when we entered Poly. Some had already had alegbra and geometry in jr. high. We had "pre-algebra."
To get up to speed, which took 1 1/2 years, my mother enlisted the aid of family members who were engineers. There was also the help of the counselor, who hated the "pig farmer" because he didn't like her son, who was Jewish. There was the help of 2 Black teachers, one in math the other in history. Mrs. Wade, the history teacher, had her son, a Naval Acadamy attendee, tutor me.
I caught up and, in my senior year, was taking advanced calculus, electrical engineering, and thermodynamics.
I took the SAT test. After the test, I noticed some people leaving the test shaking their heads, literally, in dispair. It turned out that I knew some of them from elementary or jr. high school.
One girl who I knew from jr. high was crying. She kept saying she was never taught most of the things on the math test, nor were the words on the verbal portion familiar to her. She was just getting into a harder form of algebra. She was just taking geometry. Meanwhile, I had had algebra and geometry in the 9th grade. I knew she was smart. She just was not educated as well as I was at that point. We had taken the PSAT. Before that, we were given practice PSAT and SAT tests. We. Were. Prepared.
Tank, Billy, and I all attended a major four year college. I don't know what happened to the girl who was crying.
Again, Tank and Billy, THANK YOU. My grades were good in jr. high school. I was in the "fast track". When my mother checked with other parents concerning what their public school children were doing, I was doing well. But Tank and Billy teased me to going to an engineering and science high school. At that time, I had no such desire to go that route. Your teasing made a difference.
During this time, I happened to attend a speech given by Jesse Jackson, Sr. It was during this time when he was famous for his "Keep hope alive!" speeches. During this speech, he told us to stay in school. He told us to do the best that we could do. He told us to study. He told us to stay away from drugs. He told us to not give into crime. He told us to stay away from drug users and dealers. He told us to not be sexually active until we are married. He should have took his own advice on that one. Well, he should have only been with his wife.
Next, the college years.
Many times, the "Black left" presents an image of Black America that is one of poverty and near hopelessness that cannot be overcome unless outside intervention is made.
Many times, the "Black right" presents an image of Black America that is one of poverty, laziness, and mired in self-induced hopelessness. A Black America that is incapable of thinking unless one of the appointed "leaders" tells Black America what to think.
That's what I get from much of the commentary by the elite "Black left" and "Black right" media figures.
"Both sides" are full of it. "Both sides" are negative. Both sides, for the most part, push negativity, in my opinion.
It's my strongly held belief that the "Black left" dwells too much on the plight of Blacks who are not achieving instead of also highlighting those Blacks who are achieving.
It's my strongly held belief that the "Black right" dwells too much on the plight of Blacks who are not achieving, instead of also highlighting those Blacks who are achieving.
The only difference between the two is how they go about their hyper-criticism. And, frankly, it's to the testimate of Black America that Blacks, as a whole, aren't more mind scrambled.
I had the opportunity to be a part of a "Black conservative" email list for a time. There were conflicts among the "Black conservatives" that took me by surprise because at the time because all I read from "Black conservatives" seemed to indicate a "Black conservative unified front."
All "individual thought" but thinking as a unified group. But, that wasn't group think...
But on that email list, I read Black conservatives calling some other Black conservatives "sell out" or "Black CON-servatives".
From that point on, you couldn't tell me nuthin' about the so-called "Black left" vs. "Black right" debate. From that point on, I've been convinced that it's all a bunch of useless nonsense that Blacks shouldn't be taking a part in.
Seeing that debate solidified the idea that I had in my mind at the time: the view of the Black community, be it from the outside or the inside, was too simplistic and all of the noise from the "elite" members kept it that way. And the Black community as a whole should be ashamed because no one is calling "both camps" out on their foolishness.
This is a prologue. I intend to give insight to what I have seen in my now four decades of life. I hope that I'm capable of showing the mixed bag to which life in the Black community is. I'll touch on:
If I do my job well enough, you should be able to see that the "Black left" and the "Black right" media elite are selling a bunch of goods.
P.S.
One last thing, the major driver behind this series is the inability of people to take questioning of ideas (dogma?) without assigning a political label to it.
I challenge global warming support, anti-capitalistism comments, ultra-Black nationalism, the "definition of Blackness", the Black support of Democrats, the Black support of Bill Clinton, etc, and I get called a conservative.
I challenge the dogma that the support of Democrats is not based on Republican action/inaction, the idea of "victimology" in Black America, that Blacks are some how anti-American, that Blacks are sheep of "Black leaders", etc, and I get called a liberal.
Can't a person intellectually embrace both? Seems like many people don't think so.
It's my strongly held belief that the "Black left" dwells too much on the plight of Blacks who are not achieving instead of also highlighting those Blacks who are achieving.
It's my strongly held belief that the "Black right" dwells too much on the plight of Blacks who are not achieving, instead of also highlighting those Blacks who are achieving.
The only difference between the two is how they go about their hyper-critism. And, frankly, it's to the testamate of Black America that Blacks, as a whole, aren't more mind scrambled.
Please take the time to see the request I sent to the NAACP and the request I sent to Project 21.
So, besides the mental masturbation, what is this entry about? Read the title.
I'm requesting that you send to me any information about Black self help organizations that you know about.
I'm buying a domain that will be used to house this information.
Your help is appreciated.
A: The same folk afraid of uplifting interpersonal communion.
I've been struggling for the past several days with the problem of collapsing a huge number of (to me) interwoven threads on identity and authenticity. This morning, I chanced upon a critique of Stanley Crouch's "The Artificial White Man - Essay's on Authenticity" and the orchestrated objective reduction of these disparate threads finally jelled.
In my opinion, what Crouch and other deeply frustrated old school black public personae have been struggling to say about the tectonic shift in Black identity and nationalism in America - has been paralleled for centuries in the schism separating the authentic Church from the western catholic, protestant, and evangelical sickness.
Looking at the critique of kwanzaa and the threat of an apologetic for the so-called Christian Christmas as it is desecrated in America, only increased my sense of urgency for driving out the common theme which ties these disparate quests for authenticity together.
I believe the itch that the frustrated old-schoolers cannot scratch is rooted in nostalgia for a lost sense of interpersonal communion which formerly characterized segregated black communities. THAT is the secret *vitality* which formerly endowed black communities with a specialness which produced a distinctively black sensibility and aesthetic. It was also, I believe, a byproduct of the heroic collective interpersonal defence black folks maintained in the face of enforced and overt racist oppression. I'd go so far as to say that socio-economic necessity fused blacks in America into a therapeutic bond of interpersonal communion that has its closest socio-historic parallel in the orthodox Christian Church as an intentional therapeutic bond of interpersonal communion.
To get past the surface of identity and authenticity issues, it's fundamental to understand that racism is far more than simple ideological difference. In practice, it is a neurobiological weapon of mass destruction used by one human collective to sicken and parasitize another. Organization to defend oneself against racism is a biological imperative.
It is not my intention to argue the merits of one brand of Christian writing and preaching over another. Those arguments need not be recreated here, as they've been conclusively engaged on numerous scholarly fora. Not only that, but I believe that any such doctrinal argument here would be the equivalent of enacting the type of politicomedic theatre that Jon Stewart so aptly lampooned on Crossfire, IOW - the rhetorical posturings of public personae would quickly overshadow the possibility of serious and substantive exegetical engagement.
Any genuinely interested student of Christianity can easily explore the [hidden in plain sight] history and substance of Orthodox Christianity to their heart's content beginning at orthodoxinfo.com and make their very own determination of the respective doctrinal merits for themselves. No point misdirecting, anathematizing, or punditizing around doctrines that can be readily compared without the distraction of personal advocacy.
The other overarching influence for this collapse - is Earl Dunovant's piquant serialized essay on The Care and Feeding of White Folks. While I don't know whether Earl is familiar with the fiery writings of Fr. John Romanides who calls western Christianity a neurobiological sickness;
"The sickness of religion is caused by a short-circuit between the heart and the brain. This is what causes fantasies which distort the imagination and in varying degrees cuts one off from reality. The cure of this short-circuit has three stages which will occupy us in some detail later. They are: 1) the purification of the heart, 2) the illumination of the heart, which repairs this short-circuit which produces fantasies, of which both religion and criminality are by products, and 3) glorification, which makes one uncreated by grace and by which one sees the uncreated ruling power of God which is a simple energy which divides itself without division and saturates all of creation being everywhere present, though not by nature, and ruling all of creation. The Bible calls this the "glory" and "rule" of God and those who reach glorification "prophets" and "sent ones (apostles)."
Romanides and Dunovant share many themes in common.
My strong assertion is that the niggerati and negrotarian objective during the Harlem Renaissance was to ignite a separate, secular, and aesthetic mode of interpersonal communion using cultural production as the framework for glueing it all together. I would not be the first to make such a claim, Jon Woodson made a similar claim in his book To Make a New Race Gurdjieff, Toomer, and the Harlem Renaissance - and while his claims are on the right track, had he gone to the Orthodox root of Gurdjieff's teaching, he might have seen the deeper taproots undergirding the complete enterprise.
As time permits, I'll attempt to explore that in much greater detail over at niggerati.net.
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.
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?
It's late.
Gotta digest this one by Cobb.
( Baldilocks tracks back to it, so I do the same for her)
I have much to do outside of cyberspace.
Much respect to Cobb. Much respect. I'm not feelin' it though.
You see, "Black conservatives" as well as "white conservatives" say that instead of looking up to Jesse Jackson, et. al., other role models should be followed: Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, etc.
Actually, I'd rather, and do, look up to my mother, my aunts, my cousins, and a few of my friends. I take bits and pieces and build on their strengths. Anyway...
If I'm told to look at American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault as an example, why should I not include Earl Graves, Sr.? Both, to me, are impressive people.
If you take a good look, Graves is in more control of things than is Ken Chenault. Or, at least that's how I look at it. Both control companies, but Graves owns his. Chenault, is "just" the steward. You feel me? It's not a slam, though.
Right is right. Wrong is wrong.
If you point out when people do wrong and then take the time to point out when people do "right" when they agree with you on a certain topic, then be consistent in pointing out when they do right, in general. So, hence my points about Mfume.
And let's be real. What I do, in part, is in no way different from many of the columns that Larry Elder does, when he points out the inconsistancies of "Black leaders" and/or the "left".
I've spent the past 18 years trying to build up the self-image, self-reliance, drive, and confidence of my daughter. I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to pump her up over a rough patch of her first semester in college. It's cool, and rewarding to me, that she's exploring ways to help herself out after getting a little down.
Yeah. We get knocked down. But we g.t.f. up and battle again.
Yeah, let me brag a little more...
She was in the 10th grade, encouraging others in her class to do well. She was in the 11th grade, doing the same, even for the 12th graders. She was in the 12 grade, still encouraging others in her class, and below, to do their best.
EVEN THOSE IN COLLEGE WHO SHE KEPT IN TOUCH.
It's about self image.
And I don't do it out of some liberal self-image blather, I do it because of what I've seen growing up and learning that the people who pumped me up, helped me when people, of all races, tried to knock me down.
<Flashback>
Self image.
I quickly noticed in the 5th and 6th grades, that those who slammed me for trying to do well in school, were those who weren't doing well. They had more issues with themselves than with me. They didn't view themselves as being "good enough."
That's how I looked at it then. I ignored them. In Jr. High, I was put into the "fast track". Everyone in that class tried to do our best. Meanwhile, others in the "regular track" tried to get into our track.
I attended a college prep high school. I was in the "advanced college prep" track, the "A Course". I had friends in the "college prep" track, the "B Course".
The teachers pumped both tracks up.
"Those of you in the A Course will be the leaders of industry, thought, and innovation." Meanwhile the same teachers were telling the B Course, "Look. Most of the A Course are way over their heads. They will get low grades and get into lower level schools. On the other hand, you will get the good grades, get into the top schools, and are still well prepared. You will be the bosses of the A course!"
There was also a vocational-technical track, the "T Course."
I witnessed as teachers said that they just want them to finish high school, with a trade, because that's all they can do. I witnessed as some of them appeared to settle for the lower ring instead of going for the ring hanging off of the stars.
You can't tell me that low expectations had nothing to do with that! And if anyone says I'm biting G. W. Bush, Imma pimp smack you to the womb because "Black leaders" and Blacks of all stripes have been complaining about low expectations for years. Anyway...
Self image.
I tutored in D.C. for a bit. I tutored one on one for kids I knew. It disturbed and continues to disturb me that kids place limitations on themselves because people around them put limitations on them.
"You from the hood and gonna stay here in the hood. That's just how it be."
Bull.
</Flashback>
So, here we have "Black conservatives" who are saying they are positive about Blacks. They are saying that all Blacks can achieve if they follow the basic rules and don't let racism get them down. (I've heard that from "Black liberals" too, but never mind that for now).
But yet some of the more damning self-images of Blacks comes from "Black conservatives" themselves!
I've listened to Jesse Lee Peterson's 'net show. I had to stop because it raised my pressure and at the same time, left me wanting to shoot myself just because I'm Black!
I've listened to Ken Hamblin. Lawd... That's a Black man who said it's right for companies to ignore Black media, no matter what the demographics, because Blacks are undesirable clientile. OK, tell that to the cruise line Tom Joyner uses for his cruise. Tell that to the travel agencies and island businesses that made bucoup money off of Sinbad's old school parties. Or tell that to New Orleans who makes money, during the summer(!), off of the Essence Festival!
I mean, for goodness sake! How can Black conservatives, on one hand, point to the growth of the Black middle class, then on the other hand, say that Blacks aren't achieving?
Or that most Blacks are lock step behind "Black leaders" all of the time, yet it's also pointed out that Blacks diverge from "Black leaders" when it comes to vouchers or homosexual marriage?
And somehow what's being said from "the right" is better than those on "the left" giving the image of all Blacks being poor and down?
For the likes of me, I can't see how!
Really.
From Cobb:
But I believe that even when we say what we are all about and try to exemplify, we're never going to win the images battle. Nevertheless, we have the reality of individuality and truth on our side. That's good enough for me.
I'm in this for the image battle. I have a young relative that I have to help look out for. I have kids of friends and godchildren I have to help look out for.
If the image is rotten and coming from "Black liberals" or if the image is rotten and coming from "Black conservative" or if the image is rotten and coming from whites, or if the image is rotten and coming from rappers, ... I'm going to do my best to fight it with facts and positive imagery.
That's behind my "jabs in the ribs" of Cobb and others.
Cobb, in a previous incarnation, you called me a vanguard of Blacks of sorts. Well, I guess it can fit.
Damn.
I gotta go to sleep.
More later.....
I'm not done.
Nope.
Not. One. Bit.
Done with respect.
Let me say from the start, I don't agree with saying someone who is Black, isn't "really Black" for some silly reason or another. That really makes no sense to me. But it also is asinine to say Blacks are prone to "group think." The fact is, if you take any amount of time to provide some thought to the idea, you realize "group think" is the standard of every society that is not in anarchy.
Think about the phrase "community standards". The people within the community, in some way, work to maintain the standard. When people step outside of those standards, the community works in some way to bring them back in, denounce them, or shun them. That's what the "not Black" charge is about.
When people use "group think" and apply it towards the Black community ( is it ever not applied to the Black community? ), it is always given a negative context. Then any "debate" from that point on is defending against "the negative" which is always harder.
Let's flip things just a little bit.
When J.C. Watts refused to back the anti-affirmative action package being developed in The House of Representatives, Wes Pruden, an editor at The Washington Times, wrote a column which stated, literally, that J.C. Watts knows why the Republicans need him to head the effort. Thus, he should get in line. When Watts refused to "get in line," Ken Hamblin used a segment of his radio talk show to denounce J.C. Watts.
As a side note: Did anyone else notice that for a short time, there were references to J.C. Watts being a pastor?
Then there is the saga concerning friends Shelby Steele and Glenn Loury. Those two, along with others, formed the now defunct Center for New Black Leadership. But guess what happened when there was a disagreement over Prop. 209:
http://phuakl.tripod.com/eTHOUGHT/Loury.html
A few days later, Steele phoned him. ''Where do you stand on race?'' Loury says Steele asked him. ''It's as if you're a racial loyalist here. I thought we all agreed.''''No, Shelby and I didn't agree,'' Loury says now. ''I was always aware that, whatever I thought about race, I'm still black. Shelby's position. . . . '' Loury starts to laugh. ''I was about to say, Shelby's position was that we had to completely transcend race, though I can imagine saying those words, too. But my heart wasn't in them, whereas he really meant it. How could it have been otherwise? His mother was a white woman. His wife is a white woman. When he looked at his own children's racial identity and wondered about an oppressive world that would say to those children, 'Choose sides' -- a dilemma I'd never faced -- Shelby's angle of vision was really quite different from my own. So in all honesty, it was I who betrayed him, not he who betrayed me.'' The two men have not spoken since that conversation.
What about the recent events of the current political season? Alan Keyes has mentioned his support for reparations for Blacks. After that, there was a mini-firestorm of opposition to Keyes for supporting such an idea.
"How dare he support reparations! He's gone off of the deep end!"
And then there is Clarence Thomas, who is known to surround himself with people who are similar in views to his.
Does it matter that the examples I used all involved Black people? Does it matter that the examples I used all involved "conservative Black" people?
I say it doesn't.
Let's be real!
The whining about "group think" isn't that people are thinking similarly, it's really about people thinking AGAINST what you are thinking and you don't like it.
The "group think" charge nothing more than a means of harassing people into thinking along your line of thinking, or at least not vocalizing opposition to your line of thinking.
And isn't that the complaint about "group think"?
I'll post more about this in a broader context. For now, I have real life concerns to take care of.
This appeared in The Washington Post. It's a story about a Black farmer who is part of the FDA discrimination case.
This story has a lot woven into it. It's a good read.
It has what, I think, most Blacks know about and do every day: persevere. Here's a man, facing some serious odds and family troubles, but still he keeps going.
At first, I thought he just over extended himself. And, in fact, he did. But he kept on going. His drive is what is familiar to me.
Some may say, "This is an example of not letting discrimination stand in your way." To that I say, most Blacks do that and by saying what you did, you demonstrate how LITTLE you think of Blacks, in general.
For a second I thought that Africana.com had added Crouch to its stable. Talk about old school. But this interview with Crouch about the paperback version of his novel. I haven't picked up the novel yet, so I don't know if he hit it...but at least he's aiming for it. And talking about his aim too. As I start writing my first academic book TODAY, this is helpful.
Subtitle: Checkin' a Fool IV...
Ehrlich stated that Blacks expecting Blacks to vote a certain way is racist.
Let's look at Ehrlich's and Steele's support for Maryland's MBE program. They revamped the program to get more participation of minority business in Maryland government contracts. Before they were in office, minority businesses received 1 or 2% of Maryland government contracts. They have set a goal of 20%, and the numbers of Blacks getting Maryland government contracts has already risen.
Wait....
MBE stands for Minority Business Enterprise.
Oh....
Wait...
A GOAL of 20%?
Don't your GOP peers call that quotas? Don't your GOP peers say that by supporting "quotas," you are "telling Blacks that they are not capable of meeting normal standards"?
Wait.... Don't your GOP peers call that RACIST?!?!?!?!?!?
You've been checked fool!!!!!!
WHAT!!!!!!
P. S. I voted for Ehrlich.
Subtitle: Checkin' a Fool III...
Ehrlich stated that Blacks expecting Blacks to vote a certain way is racist.
Welll.......
Isn't the GOP expecting Blacks to vote a certain way, also racist?
Isn't the GOP refusing to go after the Black vote, then racist?
If you say it's because the payback is so small, what about the fact that Jewish voters vote for Democrats 80-85%?
Booker Rising has another way to look at it. I think they are wrong, but here it is.
Why is the use of "guilty white liberal" not the same as the use of "Uncle Tom"?
The NAACP is not getting the younger Blacks to join their organization. That's the reason why they chose Ben Chavis to head their organization. He was said to have the ability to cross the generational divide. He couldn't do it, plus he drove the NAACP further into the red.
Skip to today and the NAACP still has the same problem. This, along with some of their own actions, is causing the NAACP membership to fall.
So I still wonder why "Black conservatives" feel the need to target the organization as the enemy. Let the "natural order of events" do them in.
Or is it something else that is feared?
Let's assume you have 100 of gidgets. Of those 100, 5 are purple. The rest of them are brown. For some reason, the brown gidgets start to turn purple.
At t0, there are 5 that are purple. At t1, there are 10 that are purple. That's a change of 100%.
At t2, there are 15 that are purple. That's a change of 50% over t1.
At t3, there are 20 that are purple. That's a change of 33 1/3% over t2.
Even though there is a constant increase of 5 units per unit of time, the percentage of change falls.
Remember that the next time someone says:
In fact, the growth of the black middle class was more rapid before affirmative action programs were put in place.
Ask more questions to determine how this is measured and what is meant.
By now, Agre's piece on Conservatism has made the rounds.
There is no doubt that he's right on the history. At every point in modern time European conservatives and their American progeny fought against the expansion of citizenship rights, and fought for the preservation of an aristocratic hegemony largely based on inheritance rather than merit. I think much of modern black conservatism fits here as well--definitely the works of Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and old Glenn Loury. The works of conservative blacks are much more amenable, as I believe they are about preserving what SHOULD be preserved--the best of black American tradition and culture. I believe this heritage to be "naturally" democratic. I place "naturally" in quotes because if Asians were enslaved rather than Africans we'd be making the same argument about "yellow" American tradition and culture.
But there are caveats here.
Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray for example would both drown hip-hop if they could--all comments about "I only mean gangster rap" notwithstanding. And even though Cosby has spent more loot on trying to help black people than most people with his wealth it is also very clear where he stands.
Reading the Agre piece though the one thing that really stood out for me was the following quote:
The spiritual leader of modern liberalism, Martin Luther King, taught nonviolence. This has been narrowly construed in terms of not killing people. But, as King made clear, it has other meanings as well. You have to love your enemies. This is difficult: the reality of conservatism is so extreme that it is difficult even to discuss without sounding hateful. There is also an intellectual dimension to nonviolence. Nonviolence means, among other things, not cooperating in the destruction of conscience and language. Nonviolence implies reason. Analyze the various would-be aristocracies, therefore, and explain them in plain language, but do not stereotype them. Nonviolence also has an epistemological dimension. Few of us have the skill to hate with a clear mind. Conservatism is very complicated, and you cannot defeat it by shouting slogans. This is the difficulty with Michael Moore. He talks American, which is good. But he is not intellectually nonviolent. He is not remotely as bad as Ann Coulter, and liberals have criticized him much more thoroughly than conservatives have criticized Ann Coulter. But he is not a model for liberal politics. There is no doubt that Martin Luther King would be in George Bush's face. But how? That is why liberals need a language.
I used to slit throats for a living. Some people think I still do. My students mainly. But while I still believe in wrecking fools, I have grown more and more interested in what Agre calls the epistomological dimension of nonviolence. What does it mean to disagree with someone without being disagreeable? To FORCEFULLY disagree without slapping the shit out of somebody, physically or intellectually? It's one thing to fight back in the spirit of self-defense. I haven't gone King in the face of someone trying to take me out. But it's a totally different thing to purposely go on the attack to demean and dehumanize someone.
I still maintain the option of pulling the Ginsu out. But I'm not trying to use it anymore unless I really have to. Our goal isn't to eradicate the enemy. Our goal is to convert the enemy. Because we all live here...and we aren't going anywhere.
Doing a lot of reading for a paper I'm writing on The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Pulled out an old Saul Alinsky book, Rules for Radicals:
"I detest and fear dogma. I know that all revolutions must have ideologies to spur them on. That in the heat of conflict these ideologies tend to be smelted into rigid dogmas claiming exclusive possession of the truth, and the keys to paradise, is tragic. Dogma is the enemy of human freedom. Dogma must be watched for and apprehended at every turn and twist of the revolutionary movement. The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice. Those who enshrine the poor or Have-Nots are as guilty as other dogmatists and just as dangerous. To diminish the danger that ideologywill deteriorate into dogma, and to protect the free, open, questing, creative mind of man, as well as to allow for change, no ideology should be more specific than that of America's founding fathers: 'For the general welfare.'" (Alinksy, p. 4)
My name is Ed. If you've been around the Usenet for a bit, particularly soc.culture.african.american or soc.culture.african.american.moderated, you will "know" who I am. I go by the nick of DarkStar.
Why DarkStar? 'cuz I'm dark skinned (and no longer "burdened" by the issues associated with that) and a star (queue Prince, "Baby I'm A...").... Alternatively, it's because I used to be interested in space and was drawn into the theory of black holes; dark stars. Get it? :-)
I'm a husband, father, software engineer, growing individual. It appears my personality type is to "cut to the chase." So, I tend to be brief, or as I've been told, "economical with words."
My purpose here? Well, long story short, I "challenged" a few bloggers known as The Conservative Brotherhood. In email, I really "brought it" -- kinda sorta -- and then the firebrand Ambra gently called me out. DCThorton then got her back and brought some heat, so here I am.
First off, let me say I miss s.c.a.a. and s.c.a.a.moderated. s.c.a.a. is now a wasteland. s.c.a.a.moderated is a shell of it's former self.
So, while I'm here, I think I'll go about blogging about the "liberal" vs "conservative" foolishness that Blacks have allowed ourselves to become a part.
I'm sure I'll rant about the inaccuracies of media perceptions of Blacks.
And I'm sure I'll blog about "nothing" and may not blog for a bit.
That's who I be.
The other day, I was listening to some old comedy routines. One of them is entitled 'Boot to the Head', in which a mystical martial arts instructor teaches urban wise-asses a lesson in patience. One of the urchins, challenging the ancient Chinese secrets of the master quotes the character Mel from the old TV show Alice. For his insolence he gets a boot to the head. This illustrates a theme in my writing, or something that should be a theme in my writing, which is the sustainability of black culture.
Simply stated, one hundred years from now, people will forget Nelly, but they will still be playing Thelonius Monk. In the words of Stanley Crouch, there is some music which seeks to 'elevate with elegance', and then there is music to shake your ass to. Seeing as men and women will always have reason to shake their asses, it won't really matter if it's Nelly or someone who has yet to be born, rise to pop stardom and then fall into obscurity. The asses will be shook, the tune forgotten. But for those cultural productions which are part and parcel of the will to reach excellence and perfection, for those which sustain the spirit, the memories will be strong.
Yet one could argue that the baser and more vulgar instincts will also be with us forever and arts appopriate to those should be remembered as well. Perhaps that is true, but as I look to culture in regards to the strength of a nation, there are clearly things that build us up and those that tear us down. There is nothing I find redeeming in such bling hiphop as Nelly's, no matter how clever and artful he may be. We should remember that our churches are hundreds of years old, and songs of faith are known by heart and will be sung through generations. Try singing "Its Getting Hot in Here" in church. You won't be there long.
This underscores my point. Black culture which is sustainable is so because it is superior. Those things which lead in the paths of righteousness will be clung to and revered. They give us strength to carry on, they bring us through the pain, they remind us of our value. These are the things that deserve to be called black culture. But the cult of the sagging pants, aping the ways of the jailhouse, do not deserve to be called black, no matter how many African Americans are living that nightmare. We are not sustained by the life on the inside. That is the way of death.
I hold out a great deal of hope that America can and will sustain a variety of classes. We already do with much success. And in that context there will always be some contest of authenticity over which whose preferences will mark African American culture. It might be the sonservative suburban black of Atlanta's Cascade Road. It might be the urban blue collar of Detroit's Belle Isle picnicers. It might be the hip cool mix of Brooklyn's bohos. America will help those who help themselves. But it cannot and will not be the culture of hate, despair, thuggery, and other social dysfunctions that are often called 'black' today.
There are many legitimate reasons why African Americans suffer in this nation. We are right to give our aid and comfort to those who have fallen off track. But we cannot afford the luxury of cosigning with those who settle for diminished and degenerate expectations of themselves. That is not a black thing. It is a thing of despair. Chuck D said it many years ago "You're headed for self-destruction". And we who have enough family to know ourselves should wave those people goodbye and not let them appropriate black culture. Let our warning be clear.
There will come days, when we are called to instruct, that we will be challenged by our students. They will try to take shortcuts and they will bring all types of ghetto philosophy to bear. Remember what your mother said when you got fresh. "Who do you think you're talking to? I'm not one of your little friends."
Boot to the head.
From the archives. Back in 92 or something, before the Web happened, I discussed race and multiculturalism on Compuserv. A Couple Exerpts.
Illegitimacy! O'Rourke you crack me up.
On a non-serious tip, take this racist argument. White women are 3 times as likely to have abortions than black women. It's because white women are not smart enough to raise children on their own. White people can only survive in nuclear families and thus have invented the words 'bastard' and 'illegitimate' because they are actually jealous of non-whites who can be successful single parents.
You obviously go for that dysfunctional stuff to pin on blacks, but who can blame you. You have lots of company. Of course I am sure that you have the intellect to rise above such pettiness so I'll give you a more reasonable opinion on the subject.
First to the data. I'm sure you could guess that to support your argument about 'illegitimacy' your data needs more precision. How does "illegitmacy" break down? What portion are married women who divorce and keep the children? What portion are widows? What are the comparative figures for whites? What are the income levels of these single parent families? I heard an interesting argument that the reason that proportionately more children are born to young black mothers is precisely because more black women are becoming college educated and are having fewer children, later in life.
A good book that I think you would like (It is absolutely packed with statistics) is "The Black Power Imperative" by Theodore Cross. (Basic Books, 1988(?)) He outlines an exhaustive strategy about all the things that can be legally done within the purview of American democracy to get blacks to catch up to the American mainstream, demographically speaking. I thought it a bit boring because they are mostly things I've heard a million times and who cares about demographics. The numbers can be highly illuminating for people who dig numbers.
This argument brings to mind June Jordan's essay "Don't You Talk About My Momma!" from "Technical Difficulties" (Pantheon, 1992). You seem to be repeating Daniel P. Moynihan's 1965 argument, but he's been discredited. Cultural differences make for different family arrangements. "Illegitimacy" is defined from a distinct point of view. At the Columban parish Holy Name of Jesus (all black) where I schooled for two years, most of the young women were married before the age of 20 and took their vows quite seriously. "Illegitimacy" was a very real to them. Despite the fact that many of them married poor men, they refused to work. A perticular kind of family life was most important to them. I was shocked to see that one of the brightest women I knew from that parish never went to college, but taught Sunday School. On the other hand, my cousin who got a full scholarship in Arts to Brown was raised by my aunt and all of us. He could likely be counted among the "illegitimate" but that's a word I never hear black people use against each other. I know all this must be boring you because you probably want me to explain the 'millions' of blacks who live in 'dysfunctional families'. I mean who even heard of black Catholics in Los Angeles and who really cares about one black Sunday School teacher? Who cares about how my cousin was raised? I guess that's the point. You are right about white folks not being in delicate positions. They shouldn't be. Family matters are personal and black folks ain't leaving it to Beaver.
"Illegitimate" "subhuman" "lazy" "irresponsible", whatever.
"slavery" "poverty" "racism" "unemployment", whatever.
THE BLACK FAMILY PERSISTS!
deal with it
When it comes to principles, I would wager that we are in very close agreement. I beleive most Americans are. When it comes however to practice, we are a bit off. Exactly where 'practice' comes in to play is something I beleive we are both experimenting. So conflict here is OK, though competition is not.
What makes us unique in America is our intellectual and physical mobility. We have, as individuals within certain broad limits, the opportunity to 'shop' for principles. It is the nature of our modern society which isolates us from the demanding skills of self-preservation. Therefore we can be successful Americans (given middle class status) in the military, in the professions, as skilled labor, in the clergy etc. Relatively few of us in the middle classes join our parents business, live in the same town from birth til death and identify primarily with the land. We then mark our passages through life as bourgeois individuals identifying with whatever groups we spend time with. We operate on certain sets of principles appropriate to the times and places. Why else would we talk about the 50s 60s 70s and 80s? What's the real difference? We change fashions and revise our ideas and politics in response to the changes we perceive, because we can. In short, we are not Amish.
This fluidity is something specific to large, literate, modern populations. It empowers individuals to do things once only monarchs could do, have personalities and choose lifestyles. In addition, modern conglomerations of power, for example international media, multinational corporations, and globally operating proprietaties accentuate this ability. I believe it was impossible for early philosophers to judge the import of such developments. If there is one thing so many of us admit, a scorn for government control, it is because of the benefits (or rights and privileges if you will) one can get from loyalty to these modern power structures. So again our sense of duty to principles is up to us based on our individual bourgeois panaply of choices. Of course there are real limits to this choice, but not in the American Dream.
Its nice to think about rights as the Enlightenment thinkers portray them. Fixed. Inalienable. But rights are nothing more than privileges. The defense of individual rights/privileges is entirely dependent on the individual loyalty to the defender and the defender's willingness and ability. Freedom isn't free means exactly that. It's a bargain. "To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed." The African American experience teaches the temporal nature of such bargains as a very basic lesson. If you claim loyalty to anything other than America, whites will inevitably work to deprive you of your "inalienable rights" and if you claim more than they think you deserve, you will quickly find what they think of your ability as a human to seek justice. Derrick Bell makes a brilliant case for this in "Faces at the Bottom of the Well". But the black experience notwithstanding, the very conceptualization by any human being, finite as we are, to delineate the full scope of defensible rights in absolute terms is quite a conceit.
The work of successful modern governments is striking a balance of those priveleges it seeks to defend for its citizens and limits to its own authority. A literate population will be demanding. Jefferson and company deserve their share of accolade for striking the 18th century post-colonial/pre-industrial/ agrarian/slave labor ecnomic balance (Im being historically specific). It proved successful. What is interesting is by what right Jefferson and company took it upon themselves to declare and define those rights by fiat. I grant them that simply by reason of their complaints which I see as legitimate. We would all to well to recognize this motivation in all political opposition movements and the liberating aspects of fights against tyranny in political thought. Yet today we harken back to feudalism as the lords of capitalist industry, whether state lords, corporate lords, or private lords exercise their privilege with sovereign spirit. It is convenient for these leaders to claim the rights and privileges of individuals for themselves and consequently for the enterprises they control (Richard Secord comes to mind). The point is that what intelligent people might conceive as rights/privileges for their own justification is slippery and has slid far beyond the control of Religions, Kingdoms, and now even Governments. That's OK. The proof is in the sanctity of the bargain.
Many Americans, have come to find little hope in fealty to the Federal government. Alexis deTocqueville was wrong. We haven't chosen to vote ourselves comfort, rather we have switched loyalties from the central government to organizations of our own choosing. American democracy doesn't give us the privileges we want and it costs too much. I beleive that unless there is a radical change in the nature of our representative government, that American citizens will abdicate federal loyalty in greater numbers. I don't particularly like that. Good government is a relatively cheap way to defend rights and privileges. I wonder how we will reconcile a decline in patriotism to our need for public spirit as this trend continues. We need serious political reform.
As for Rand's lack of specificity. I want to know (but not really) beyond her abstract declaration and repulsion to racism how she expected people to combat it. Go hide in some happy valley behind an electronich shield where the racists couldn't find you? Where did she write to the New York Times and call for changes in government policy? How could she interpret history as simply a great struggle between brave individuals and shuffling masses when she took so little time to understand the validity of political struggle. I still agree that "No concept man holds is valid until it is fully integrated into the sum of his knowledge" but Rand strikes me as one particularly detached from integrating her concepts into the sum of humanity. Objectivism is hamstrung by its inability to realize that over time and space, peoples methods to power change. Modern society as we know it is not absolute and the dichotomy between good and evil will not always be defined by the suppression of individuals. But I really don't want to belabor the point about crediting or discrediting Rand, which I think indicates something important about culture. All of us in this forum may agree, as I said up top, about principles of individual liberty but for me the person who best exemplifies that might be Frederick Douglass, for you 'Solzienitzn'. The point is that each moved under very specific conditions with courage against very specific oppressions bringing along with them very specific followers. It is these actions in history which demonstrate the actuality of these abstract principles which in themselves have no power to liberate humans nor to defend such liberties. To evade the facts of history is to create a moral video game in mental hyperspace. To me, Rand is such a player.
re:Now, you mention the Declaration of Independence. It should be noted
that the principles in that document were the source for the eventual removal
of slavery. The prinicple of individual rights is the reason you have an
inkling that men should be free.
Aww come on John, mentally retarded children from preliterate roving bands of cannibals captured as slaves would have an inkling that they should be free. It should be noted that in Haiti, slave revolts freed the slaves. They had no constitution. They may not have created an admirable government but slavery was ended and the French hit the road. Though my knowledge on the history of slavery is thin, I do know something about the Fugitive Slave Act which gave license to bounty hunters to return escaped slaves into bondage. And the only reason I spend a lot of time quoting the Declaration is because it's something lots of folks respect, plus it's real easy to understand and supports a great many arguments. I would wager that John Brown and most abolitionists were motivated by Christian principles rather than Constitutional principles. I would similarly wager that about Nat Turner. But I do agree, in principle, that a constitutional framework against slavery would work best starting with a declaration of rights. Peter Suber would argue in "The Paradox of Self-Amendment" (Peter Lang, 1990) on a purely logical basis that any constitution with an amendment clause can be amended to say anything. To attribute modern freedoms to original intent given our history of amendment is logically inconsistant.
mbowen
ps. having watched charlie rose this evening on pbs re: thurgood marshall (a frat bro of great distinction) it came as a pleasant surprise to hear from one of the interviewees, a certain circuit court judge from philadelphia, say that in a bicentennial speech marshall commented that the constitution wasn't all that hot when it started but it had gotten a lot better and was destined for better days. amen! but as we know in the final dissent of old man marshall "..the currency of the Court is now power, and not reason"
Lisa Gay Hamilton has much more depth than her brief appearances in The Practice give her credit for. She recently produced a documentary entitled BEAH RICHARDS: A BLACK WOMAN SPEAKS that appeared on HBO on Feb. 25. I caught this interview on HBO.
There is a deep and timeless wisdom encapsulated in many of our older black men and women. "Timeless" is probably the wrong word, largely because the wisdom they accumulated was the product of a very specific time--one of great tyranny and bloodletting. While Richards didn't get the cudos she would've gotten if the world were right, I think Hamilton's work is testimony. Much like Cobb's own words for his grandfather.
An old professor of mine was supposed to be working on a book documenting some of the wisdom of the elders. I'm not talking about some new age Mitch Albomic tome that can speak to all people at all time about pretty much any and everything. I'm talking about a very specific type of wisdom that speaks to the role of truth in a society that is much more concerned with the hollow sheen of gold rings. I don't know if that book will come out, but for now Hamilton's project will do. Thank heavens for a research budget. This one is a keeper.
(From a recent online interview, I talk about my current focus and expectations).
I'm trying to see my way through to the critical mass of upper-middle class and rich blackfolks doing something. I'm not sure what it will be, but I believe it will be tremendous. I recall the adjudication of the Taxman case in New Jersey. I seem to recall that some wealthy unnamed black individuals raised a small fortune and settled this Affirmative Action case out of court. This among other things alerted me to certain possibilities. Since I've done the Silicon Valley thing and proved myself capable of doing business way above the merchant level, I'm doing what I can to make a small fortune myself. I think that as black businessmen such as myself become more numerous and visible we will see a real change in American politics. The way I see it, there are millions of African Americans sitting on the fence because nobody is really in tune with what their lives are like, yet they bear the brunt of an interesting type of backhanded regard. It's the suburban middle-class black kid who everybody likes to say should never in a million years get Affirmative Action. All of those kids are in their 20s, 30s and 40s now. There is no name for them that anyone in the popular press can toss around, but I think I know who they are and I think I know their political pulse. Black new money and black old money are going to do something. I'd like to be in the middle of that.
Specifically I want to see the ways black businessmen will interact with the political parties which is substantially different than today's status quo. It might not be different at all, but I don't believe that. I think there is this presumption that 'the dream' of African Americans stops at the suburban middle class, and people ought to know that there's a lot more ambition out there. When you look at somebody like Ice Cube and his Barbershop movies - this is the working class blacks vision that America buys into - those blackfolks with a down-to-earth attitude on the verge of dysfunction and survival by motherwit. But there is a class of African Americans whose parents already are what Ice Cube's son promises to be. I believe that America keeps treating those people as isolated exceptions, but that they will network and begin to turn heads.
Attendant to that, I want to facilitate African American bipartisanship. That means Republican husbands and Democrat wives, playing both parties to feed the family which survives good times and bad. We're still breaking up monolithic visions. This is more about politics for social power as contrasted with liberation politics and the politics of civil rights and human rights. That means creating and sustaining places on the web where folks can talk about that kind of thing. That's what Cobb is from the personal perspective and that's what VisionCircle is from a more collaborative and serious perspective.
All that is avocation. I'm not a politician or a political science professor. I'm a businessman in the software industry. I think my business ambitions are fairly conventional, except that I'm a lot more in tune with the global marketplace than most small businessmen have ever had to be.
One day after I make enough money to stop worrying about making money, I'd like to build my XRepublic system. That's the deliberative space that the internet has yet to create. It, or something like it, will gather all of the Boohabs in the world into a virtual parliament and representative democracy will never be the same.
I was talking to my mother last night after I got back to St. Louis. She was talking about John McWhorter. McWhorter's doesn't even come close to being Old School....or being a Bastard. Of course I didn't tell mom this, I just gave her the cleaned up version. "McWhorter's no good," I say. Moms is like "you say that about everyone I bring up." She's right. I get more from reading what people like Cobb, or Jelani have to say here than most popular folks in print.
One exception though is Ralph Wiley. It's both a testimony to Wiley's skill and an indictment of popular nonfiction writing that he lases with uncanny accuracy time after time again from the damn pages of Page 2!
One of the many goals of this space as I understand it is to jack previous notions of what it meant to be conservative and reframe it in a much more humane (and correct) manner. To envision conservatism as an old school mode of being.
I claim the old school...or at least attempt to (if you're old school you don't run around saying "I'm old school damnit!" ...that's indiscrete). While not a conservative like Bowen, I do believe that at an individual level whether we want to be a professor, or a pipe fitter, or an MC, you've got to work hard and exert discipline.
But thinking about conservatism as an American ideology, I've had the same problem claiming it as I have claiming the American flag. And while I've gotten to the point where I now claim America as mine, claiming conservatism has been a harder road to hoe.
The central reason is simple. For me it's been exceedingly difficult telling the conservatives apart from the racists. Specifically when it comes to policy preferences. I know I know...not all conservatives believe (for instance) that black people are inherently inferior, or that they are unAmerican, or that they are genetically predisposed to criminality. While I can't say that my best friends are conservative, I can say that I know a number of conservatives personally, and that many of them are good and decent people.
But when it comes to policy preferences, being good and decent doesn't really count for much to me.
To get a sense of how intertwined conservatism and white supremacy has been historically check this story out. I've always thought William Buckley to be eminently respectful and well-spoken. And I suppose there is a subtle argument that can be made against Brown v. Board...or giving black people in the South the right to vote. But if you're making that argument, no matter how subtle, no matter how nuanced....you're on the other side as far as I am concerned.
Now the American Renaissance suggests that the tide is shifting...and given the modest efforts of moderate black conservatives (here I'm thinking Fletcher rather than Sowell...the new Loury rather than Armstrong) perhaps this tide will come sooner than we think. But probably not quite soon enough.
As an aside I am currently grading, juggling all types of postdoc applications, and quite a few other things. I'll be in the city (translation: Detroit) next week on vacation, so I'll probably try to stuff a few pieces in before I jet. We'll see.
Tavis' Pass the Mic Tour is about to start very soon if it hasn't already. Smiley's already been critiqued among some circles for the cost of his event. To see Smiley, West, and Dyson "pass the mic" it costs $50 (and if you pay $60 you get a copy of one of Smiley's, West's, and Dyson's books). He responds to his critics in two parts. Part one. Part two.
Now I've already said my piece. While I think all three of them are pretty trifling for different reasons, if you're willing to spend the same loot on Stevie Wonder or on Prince or on JayZ, then spending the loot on these guys should be comparable. I don't think the mileage will be the same because the level of artistry required is different in the case of comedy or musical performance. But let's say for the sake of argument that it is similar.
But in defending his pricing structure, Tavis ends up buying into some very problematic notions about black culture and black life.
Tavis argues for example that black people overspend as far as entertainment, but underspend as far as empowerment.
What exactly does that mean? The entertainment thing is straightforward. Black people spend a whole lot of money on music. Now I don't know where he got his figures from...and this isn't on him necessarily. I can't remember the last time someone footnoted a radio commentary. But what the hell is "empowerment spending?"
If I recall correctly, Tavis himself sponsored a series of talks with economic and political leaders that was then broadcast on C-SPAN. I don't think those events were free....and I think they were standing room only. When Minister Farrakhan would make his various tours, he'd speak in basketball stadiums to standing room only crowds. And I know black people love some self-help books.
But this is besides the point.
One of the central problems I've had with speakers since about second year in undergrad is that they seemed to be in the entertainment business rather than the education business. As speakers they would give you JUST enough to want to bring them back again...and you would be left on a serious high that would last about three days. Then you'd be back where you started, until you shelled out the loot for the next speaker.
Empowerment IS entertainment. It just has an educational shell. Come on. You ever SEEN West or Dyson talk? It isn't like either of them plays the role of a staid traditional professor, no matter how nice their suits are. Even though Dyson is pushing 45 or so he isn't afraid of quoting Nas (at length) to show his street cred. BOTH West AND Dyson are ministers remember.
Tavis starts with a reasonable take. They are travelling, and appearing in some nice venues. These venues aren't free, and aren't cheap. So in order to have the event in the FIRST place, someone's got to pay. West is about $20 grand a speech. Dyson is probably $10 grand a speech. The venues probably cost around $25 grand...and then there are other incidentals....
Hmm.
If those numbers are anywhere near right, that leaves a substantial profit for what is basically three men talking--without rehearsal--for a few hours with a mic in their hand.
Maybe Tavis SHOULD stick with the arguments basically saying that black people don't know how to spend their money.
For those who have read my pieces, I'm something of a contrarian. Black leaders? Against them. Black churches? Strong critiques of them. Black Public Intellectuals? Most of them I can't stand.
But you know what?
I like Tavis Smiley's Pass the Mic tour. Now I don't really like Tavis (gives soft shoe interviews particularly with brothers and sisters), Michael (there's something about a 45 year old full professor busting a rhyme and posing like a b-boy that i find distasteful), or Cornel (Don't get me started). And at first I thought this was just another hustle.
But Barbara Streisand changed my mind.
Remember when Barbara was doing her farewell tour? I think tickets ran about $1000 a pop at LEAST. I think Streisand is ok...but people who most likely had all of her cds ALREADY were willing to shill out massive loot for her supposed final performance. If folks are willing to shell out that type of loot for a singer...why not for a set of public intellectuals?
Another way to think about it. For those of us lucky enough to even live NEAR a college campus, we can see these cats on a regular basis. I was just on a panel with Michael Eric Dyson on hip-hop last year (best lecture on the subject I ever heard to give Dyson his props, but why did he have to leave in the middle of the panel discussion to give ANOTHER lecture all the way in Boston?!?). Cornel has fallen through the University of Missouri at St. Louis a few times, and I just didn't fell like seeing him. But what about those of us who aren't as lucky? Shouldn't they have access to these cats (for what it is worth) as well? As much as I can't get with Dyson or West NOW, they were very influential in my own decision to pursue the life of the mind (no...they aren't the knuckleheads I refer to...though they DO fit the bill). I'm thinking they are going to give those in attendance something to think about.
A third way to think about it. What would you call the intellectual version of the Kings of Comedy?
I had a chance to glance through NO EXCUSES by Abigail Thernstrom. I also heard an interview she gave on NPR last night. I agree with some of her prescriptions. I believe for example that teachers and staff should be held accountable for outcomes--if they are given the resources in order to make change happen. I do not believe vouchers are the solution, but I do think charter schools are a step in the right direction. And while I am a union guy, I also believe that communities should have more power to determine what does and does not go on in their schools.
But Thernstrom's argument falls apart in at least one place theoretically and there are a number of flaws methodologically.
Take her interview for example. The interviewer asks her whether she thinks teachers should be paid more--perhaps money is part of the problem. Thernstrom acknowledges that people who tend to go into teaching are--with some exceptions--usually not the brightest or most powerful of students. However, she then argues that the reason this is the case is NOT because they are underpaid, but rather because of all the paperwork that education schools foster upon students. Her solution is twofold: increase the pay differential between good teachers and bad teachers, open up teaching to people without education degrees.
I don't know about you, but this argument doesn't quite cohere well. It seems to me that the reason why the best and the brightest now tend to pursue law and business degrees is at least partially because of a combination of interest, and the monetary incentive structure embedded in higher education. The best and the brightest tend to turn away from education not because most of them are uninterested in being teachers, but because of the monetary DISINCENTIVES that turn them away from being educators. Compared to the fundamental question of loot, I think paperwork is a distant second.
While I can understand the second solution--the educational bureaucracy is stifling change so we need to bring in change agents from the outside--I'm not sure I buy this either. Even if it were possible, would you want a lawyer without a license representing you? A doctor without an MD? How would opening up the teaching profession to people who have never stepped into a classroom actually raise performance levels?
The methodological flaws are serious, and severe. In order to properly model the racial achievement gap, you have to account for all significant theoretical variables. For example we know that the education of the mother has a strong impact on the achievement of the child. We also know that material resources are also meaningful. We know that region has an impact (living in the south as opposed to the rest of the country), that urban/suburban distinctions are important, that ethics of care are also crucial.
But with one exception, all of the Thernstrom's tables simply compare educational achievement by race. Now I'm not actually sure whether the Thernstroms actually KNOW multivariate regression, nor do they appear to know the literature on race in education. Finally they don't appear to really understand black culture. In the interview, Thernstrom notes that some people are simply "culturally lucky." Black people just don't happen to be lucky in that way.
When Thernstrom thinks of black culture what exactly does she think of? Even taking the concept of "oppositional culture" there is a strength there that is highly portable and beneficial for blacks (and Americans) of all backgrounds. Like I said before, I have my PhD BECAUSE OF (not in spite of) the knuckleheads.
So while this work is an important one to grapple with for those of us interested in old school solutions to higher education, it is in many ways a work of ignorance. And while I can understand why they might be ignorant about black life, black culture, and the literature on educational outcomes ignorance is NO EXCUSE.
I talked about class as behavior. Thinking about class in this fashion is meritocratic in one sense I guess, in that the barometer isn't how much money you have (income or wealth) or what type of gig you have. The barometer is character. Pure and simple.
The content of one's character SHOULD determine one's worth.
But let's take a look at this further. When I asked my Race and Politics class to determine what is and is not "lower class behavior" this is what they came up with: talking loud at the movies, criminal behavior, drug use, disgusting eating habits, bad manners, kids that cuss (i came up with that one). There are a lot of other indicators...but let's be real. We know what ghetto is when we see it. A single mom on welfare is ghetto.
Or is she?
I am a professor at one of the top ten schools in the country (whatever that means). I remember talking to one of my former students about a project I was working on involving hiphop. He told me that he could help me if I needed tracks, because he had a lot of them downloaded.
"How many?" I asked.
"About 5 or 10 thousand."
My jaw dropped. If that isn't criminal behavior I don't know what is. Kids on college campuses routinely download not only full albums, but full-length movies, and entire seasons of shows like the Sopranos.
But that isn't "ghetto" is it?
A lawyer decides that she does not want to wait to for marriage to have a child. What does she become? She becomes a role model.
So there's an obvious double standard that goes on.
Now one counter-argument coming from the old school would be that these lower-class folk are bringing down the race by touting negative images. But we've been down
Thinking about Cobb's Old School Values, I argued that discretion should be added. Knowing when to speak, and when to shut the hell up, automatically gives people with that skill a leg up on people without that skill. Even in the rap game. But there's another value that should be added as well--tenacity. The ability to fight and fight and fight and fight.
Then fight some more.
I believe that folks like Allen Iverson, Warren Sapp, and 50 Cent, have that in SPADES. And without that value, where exactly would we be?
I'm going to apply this directly to education next time around, in a piece called "How knuckleheads got me my PhD."
One of the reasons the idea of "old school values" resounds with me so much is because it is one of the organizing principles upon which my fraternity, and much of black college life was (and probably still IS) based. Being old school was to a certain extent about time served, and about experiences acquired and applied. If you had to say you were old school....most likely you weren't. (To reiterate: discretion is a virtue.)
So when Cobb noted that he wanted to create kind of an intellectual old school family tree, I looked around (as an aside if i were to designate a triumvirate, it'd be coterminous with the contrarian school--Adolph Reed, Harold Cruse, Albert Murray) and came up with the following treatise I wrote. The original list was about 75 deep, but I culled it a bit. The concept of the basics again goes back to my fraternity, and is very much related to the idea of the old school.
In 1998 a number of individuals interested in preserving and propagating those principles upon which the pursuit of the noble and the just is founded, began the Basics Institute. An institute designed to study and propagate those self same principles. Given that any life truly worth living must be based, at some level, on understanding history, we have presented this book list in the hope of generating discussion, and similar efforts on other levels.
The Basics Institute has taken the stance that the history and life of the descendants of enslaved Africans stand at the center of the American experience. As such, classic works which illuminate various aspects of the lives of this community are truly universal in that they deal with aspects of all members of the American family. Though an individual may not be African American, there is undoubtedly something she can take from The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Furthermore, there is something that African Americans—even Christian African Americans, can gain from The Tao Te Ching. These works are truly universal and speak to not only the grand, but also to the tragic as well. Books such as Political Ideology are included precisely because they speak to the reasons why some members of the American community seek to foster beliefs which are spiritually underdeveloped. And given that some of the greatest American philosophers, such as Martin Luther King jr., or Anna Julia Cooper, received some of their ideas from their European American counterparts, the Basics Institute has also chosen a few works such as Walden. We hope that you would disseminate this list to as many as you see fit, and create similar ones for yourselves. (The works are not listed in order of importance.)
1. Tao Te Ching
There is a subtle rhythm captured here that represents the essence of what it means to capture God in text. Kind of like trying to catch mist.
2. The New Testament
The tension between Jesus on the one hand, and Paul on the other is stark...wayy too stark for my take (I think Paul was a bastard). But the lesson of Jesus is a powerful testimony.
3. The Apocryphal Gospels
Some Christians may not agree, but I believe that the selection (and rejection) of text is a political act. The Apocryphal Gospels represent a vision of Christianity that was suppressed. Christians would do well to read it in order to get another perspective on what God (and Jesus) meant to those professing belief.
4. The Old Testament
Man. Reading the Old Testament one can understand how enslaved Africans were able to take what was essentially a religion used to subjugate them, and find something powerful and majestic in it.
5. The Book of Emanations of Ra
Referred to as "the Book of the Dead." Karenga translates it as "The Book of Coming Forth by Day" but my brother Dr. Caurnel Morgan thinks the above title is more correct. I believe that the true old school lies in the wisdom of the Ancients. The 42 Negative Confessions alone are worth the price of the book. Remember my ideas about discretion? I don't know which number it is, but the Ancients were thought to have violated the right order of things by "speaking too much."
6. The Wisdom Literature of Ancient KMT
See above. The Ancients got it right.
7. Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Harold Cruse
Cruse was/is one of the most insightful intellectuals produced on American soil. Writing in the sixties he recognizes many of the pitfalls of both black nationalism on the one hand and black integrationism on the other. He calls for an agressive "Negro cultural nationalism" that would take the best of black AMERICAN culture and place its material products in the hands of black communities.
8. Shadow and Act Ralph Ellison
A book of Ellison's essays. Invisible Man is below, but Ellison's non-fiction work is important as well. As I think about it Trading Twelves would also be an excellent addition.
9. Plural But Equal Harold Cruse
In this work, Cruse moves away from the cultural dynamic and addresses the political sphere. Arguing that Brown v. Board was a failure (the first person I saw make this argument), Cruse calls for a political movement that recognizes the unique caste position of black folk in America. I am not doing the work justice, but you should really see how he skewers Thomas Sowell in about a paragraph or so.
10. The Miseducation of the Negro Carter G. Woodson
Classic. But miseducation isn't just for blacks anymore...if it ever was in the first place. Woodson and Gramsci deal with some of the same themes of hegemony, of the media, and of the role of organic intellectuals.
11. Class Notes Adolph Reed
Reed is an old school Marxist, fighting the good fight in both academia and on the street. Class NOtes is a compilation of columns written for the Village Voice and for the Progressive. Most of the ideas I have about the way black politics should be analysed (and practiced) come from either Reed, Cruse, or Albert Murray. The pieces I've been writing about Dean? I'm channelling Reed.
12. Beyond Good and Evil Frederich Nietzsche
There's something to be said for setting standards and pursuing them aggressively, and going whereever that path takes you. Nietzsche is lightning in a bottle.
13. Up From Slavery Booker T. Washington
I don't like Washington much to be honest, but there are a few texts that you have to read to really get a handle on the deep south. This is one of them.
14. The Souls of Black Folk WEB Dubois
Dubois wrote this when he was MAYBE 28. Hasn't gone out of print in 100 years. Enough said.
15. Black Reconstruction WEB Dubois
Black Reconstruction represents an attempt to on the one hand grapple with the most important era of our history--the post-Civil War era--and on the other place black men and women firmly within American history as agents of their own destiny.
16. The Philadelphia Negro WEB Dubois
With this piece--an extended exegesis on the way that urban context impacted American life, using the Negro in Philly as the focus--Dubois drags sociology (a baby at the time) into the 20th Century. He PERSONALLY interviewed several hundred men and women in Philadelphia for the study.
17. The Omni American Albert Murray
I've said it before. Before I read Murray I was a nationalist with a capital N. Didn't think an American flag was good for much more than wiping. Murray's work here changed that.
18. Democracy in America Alexis DeTocqueville
Some say we are foreigners even though we've been here since 1619. As noted directly above, I thought this as well. But for insight into what a real foreigner thought, check out DeTocqueville--who travelled around America in the 19th century to get a feel for the new American experiment. The second volume isn't as interesting as the first, but this work is remarkably prescient.
19. When and Where I Enter Paula Giddings
Writes American history from the standpoint of black women. I learned the real story about Rosa Parks here.
20. Testament of Hope Martin Luther King Jr.
It should be made law that no one should quote King without reading this work--a compilation of most of his major speeches as well as his three books (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Why We Can't Wait, Where Do We Go From Here?).
21. A Voice From the South Anna Julia Cooper
A forgotten voice from the beginning of the twentieth century. While in many ways Cooper's viewpoint on black Americans was mired in uplift ideology (if black people acted right and carried themselves right they would be treated right) she still developed some of the themes that would later appear in the work of prominent black feminists and womanists.
22. Conversations in Maine James and Grace Boggs
The Boggs' are old school organizers from Detroit. James passed away a few years back, while Grace is still kicking. They, like Murray, have not only helped me to recognize that this land really IS my land, but that our struggle isn't simply a struggle for black people. It is a struggle for the WORLD. Not just today, but 1000 years from today. Conversations in Maine represents an attempt to grapple with the fundamental political and social questions of the early seventies. They met once a year during the summer, in Maine, with a few other old school activists, for the purpose of theorizing from practice.
23. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom Charles Payne
If the Old School concept existed during the Civil Rights Movement, few figures would be more worthy of the moniker than those who fought outside the spotlight, doing political organizing in places like Mississippi and Alabama while King was on tv. Payne's work tells the story of the real Civil Rights Movement.
24. Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
The American novel. Period.
25. Radical Equations Robert Moses
Want to change the schools? Want to REALLY change the schools? Want to change the schools AND build citizens too? READ THIS BOOK. NOW.
Ok ok. There are some serious intellectual/academic problems with projecting political positions onto dead folk. It's all well and good as a political strategy, but I wouldn't touch that project for an intellectual conference with a ten foot pole.
But in this case, I'll wade into that pool quickly, then take my black ass out.
My boy Bowen thinks that Malcolm would be a Republican if he were alive today.
I actually don't think it matters much what Malcolm WOULD be, given that he isn't actually HERE to engage in practical political engagement NOW. But for what it's worth while it is easy to point to Malcolm's pro-self defense stance, his stance on black life, and his stance against the government, the central reality is that Malcolm X was an anti-imperialist at the time of his death. And it is very difficult for me to imagine the brother who spoke highly of the Bandung Conference being willing to step arm in arm with the son of the former head of the CIA. Don't get me wrong, Malcolm was old school. Not South old school like the heads in Alabama (who kept quiet until it was time to pounce), but Detroit old school. But just as Farrakhan and his ilk are extra conservative on social matters, they all supported Jesse when push came to shove.
It came to me that rather than fight for emigration to a country in Africa, or for a few southern states, that the best move black people interested in their own state could really make would be to emigrate en masse to Rhode Island. Looks like the Libertarians are trying to do something very similar. Doubt it'll work...but it should be a very interesting failure to say the least.
I don't remember William Thomas, even though I used to have many discussions with him. But now as I read him, I find myself amazed to agree with everything he says in this essay.
The reason I, at that time, continued to believe in liberalism and that voting Democratic was in my best interest was because I thought I could find no alternative. Although I disbelieved most of the liberal agenda, often the only time I would hear from conservatives on issues like affirmative action was when there was an aggrieved White fire fighter complaining about reverse discrimination. At least the liberal Democrats would try to court my vote, even if they attempted to court my vote with nothing more than tired, old shibboleths. For the most part conservatives would simply ignore my concerns. When faced with the apparent choice between those who have the wrong solutions but express concern on the one hand and those who may be knowledgeable but seem completely indifferent on the other, the natural choice for most people will be to choose the incompetent but caring. As Jack Kemp would say, "We conservatives have dropped the ball on racial issues."
I find this crossing of paths without recognition rather amazing, striking even.
Forty years ago this week, over 250,000 men and women descended upon Washington as if from Heaven and transformed DC into a light so bright it could be seen from Alpha Centauri. I'm certain that if the first radio waves intelligent lifeforms receive from the planet Earth contain the phrase "I have a Dream..." then we will be blessed indeed for we will be recognized not only as intelligent, but as CIVILIZED.
I think it was Langston Hughes though who asked what happens to a dream deferred?
By continuing to celebrate dreaming and a mass spectacle that occurred over forty years ago, aren't we deferring that dream even further?
Some historical perspective is in order. Many of us who are familiar with the history of the original March on Washington recognize that there was a great deal of conflict over the minutiae of the March. Who would speak first, how long would people speak, would King speak longer than anyone else? On one level these conflicts were utterly unimportant. I'm sure that your average elderly couple from Detroit didn't care at all whether the NAACP representative or someone from CORE hit the mic first. But on another level this was life and death, because the "black leadership kitty" was at stake. If King spoke longer (and more eloquently) than the others it would signal that HE was the black leader that people had to negotiate with, and by fiat the SCLC would be the organization that would have the requisite legitimacy needed to garner resources from fat cat donors.
What? You didn't KNOW?
There was also a conflict between the kids from SNCC (those damn kids again!) and the old heads. John Lewis, now Congressman Lewis thank you very much, had a speech already to go that was so hot geiger counters went off. No We Shall Overcome...nope. More like We Shall OverTHROW. As soon as some of the liberal whites heard it they were like..."listen. He says THAT right THERE? I'm OUT."
So they toned the speech down.
But there was another conflict that superseded all of this.
Michael Thelwell, one of the founders of SNCC wrote a piece called THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON--THE CASTRATED GIANT. You can still find it in vol. 2 of Gerald Early's SPEECH AND POWER. According to Thelwell, the original plan for the March was as follows--people would go to Washington, but rather than congregate at the Mall they would instead go to Congress and sit-in. Sitting on the floor of Congress was of course illegal. So as waves were sent to the joint, new waves would replace them, to the point that the jails were full.
And the seat of the free world would be rendered impotent.
As soon as word filtered out of THIS plan, folks stepped in to head it off at the pass. Instead of a protest and a sit-in, we'd have...some nice speeches. Organizing for THIS event rather than for the protest basically hamstrung local efforts. Folks were dragged away from boring tasks like say, registering people in Mississippi to VOTE, and instead placed on DC detail.
According to Thelwell the March basically sapped the spirit of the movement.
So here we are, forty years later, and that story has pretty much been expunged from the record. Malcolm X alludes to it in one of his speeches (real quick...isn't it strange that the NOI dogs the March, then has one of its own some 30 years later?) but that's about it. Because we don't really know the history, we're doomed to repeat it. Celebrating false victories, and engaging in the politics of mass spectacle instead of organizing folks around the here and now.
(thanks to the Nightstalker for the "Looking for Moses" angle...)
A cat called me up the other day from the Columbia Missourian. Asked me about the legitimacy of ebonics. It's been six or seven years since the Oakland school board passed its resolution on the issue, and I think the reporter wanted to write an update.
The question didn't really seem right to me. "Is ebonics a legitimate language?" How do you define "language" as separated from "dialect" for example? And what does it mean to be "legitimate" in this case? I know the reporter wasn't thinking of it in the "Hammerian" sense. As far as I'm concerned black culture is the standard-bearer of American culture...it represents the best of what America has to offer. Someone asking me if ebonics is a legitimate language in that context is just like someone asking Phil Jackson if Shaq is a "legitimate" center.
The answer I ended up giving him probably won't make it in the story. Not because the reporter is shaky, or anything. But because it wasn't neat or clean...it wasn't a tight enough soundbite. What I told him was that in a very important sense what we think of as "ebonics" is ALREADY legitimate. Anytime you've got a computer chip maker selling computers on the phrase "play that funky music white boy" you've got a context in which ebonics is legitimate. Anytime you've got a major sports association using "We got next" as their marketing slogan, you've got a context where ebonics is legitimate.
Now here is where you have to put Ralph Ellison in the mix.
Where it is ILLEGITIMATE is straightforward. Ask blacks and whites whether they should teach ebonics in school, and I'm certain the answer would be a resounding NO. With blacks...a resounding HELL NO! Ask them whether ebonics should be thought of as a "legitimate language" you'll get the same answer.
When you NAME ebonics you get one answer. But when you ask them instead "what do you think about that Intel ad campaign?" or "What do you think about the WNBA marketing slogan?" or even better "How does MLK's 'I Have a Dream Speech' make you feel when you hear it?" you get another answer totally.
"Oh I love it!"
"I think King is a communist...but that speech sends chills down my spine."
"I think it's cool. That intel ad is the reason I bought my first Dell!"
Black language is the language of modernity, the language of the sophisticate, the language of cool. Always has been. Now it is the language of commerce. We should start telling little Dontay and Latisha that they might not be able to get a job with ebonics, but they CAN get paid.
If you recall the Dilbert series on television, you may remember the chicken man episode. The pointy haired boss has gathered together a dreaded committee to launch a new product, and one of the office dweebs is nominated to name the committee. This is considered the most difficult job of all as it causes the person assigned no end of confusion. He stood to give a name and nothing but clucks came out of his mouth.
I encountered the same kind of dyslexia a few moments ago in trying to describe what manner of black conservative I am. So I know better. Don't ask.
But having given it the old college try, I could say what kind of black conservative I am not. These things seem to fly right off my lips, despite the fact that there are certain qualifications. Exactly what those qualifications are become a bit more difficult to specify when one of the people mentioned is Clarence Pendleton. You remember Clarence:
As chairman of the Civil Rights Commission, Pendleton provoked criticism by taking stands against several established tenets of civil rights reformers. He opposed school desegregation through busing and believed that affirmative action programs detracted from the achievments of those who could have succeeded without them. During his time as chairman, congressional funding for the Commission was greatly reduced and many top staff members either lost their jobs or left in disillusionment over the direction of the agency. Pendleton was known to respond sharply to his critics and was unwavering in his approach. William Bradford Reynolds, Assistant Attorney for Civil Rights and a close friend of Pendleton's, characterized him in the New York Times as a man of candor who "felt very deeply that the individuals in America should deal with one another as brothers and sisters totally without regard to race and background."
Scouring the net (for 10 minutes) I found very little on Pendleton other than a half dozen copies of the above paragraph which was excerpted from his 1988 NYT obituary. The only thing of substance seems to be this paper on Affirmative Action, which is available for $5 from the William Monroe Trotter Institute in Boston.
It's certainly a remarkable thing that the intense feelings people (who remember) have or had about Pendleton have remained far longer than any concrete example of what he did or said. Once things get beyond the grasp of Google, and become the province of Lexis and Nexis, those of us in the general public are left simply with vague memories and emotions. We are left to the mercies of vituperous spin-dogs like Ann Coulter and other disingenuous ideological fanatics. We depend on the deadpan aloofness of librarians and the pedantic obfuscations of scholar-squirrels. Do you get the feeling I'm unsatisfied with this situation? I am.
It's easy enough to say that I find a number of reasons to support Affirmative Action, but I too am against bussing of children. The devil is in the details of course, and Pendleton's details cost a five spot. Is it worth five bucks to get the damned paper and make a judgement? I'd say so, but apparently the Institute doesn't take Visa. Please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope and allow six to eight weeks for delivery. I thought we got beyond all that.
The larger issue involves the parsing out of policy positions which is a crafty business. Is it useful to bother with what Clarence said way back when. Absolutely. But whether or not I research this particular issue, I am always interested in seeing this kind of work happen 'open source' on the internet. If I could be so bold as to suggest that I want the be the Linus Torvalds of open source political deliberation, you might get an idea of where I'm headed. I don't want to pay some hidebound institution to remember for me, I want people who think it's important for everyone to know to come to my site (or some site I could link to) and tell us materially what Pendleton was all about, not just that his father was a swim coach. Furthermore I want to host discussion so that Joe Doaks can determine whether or not Pendleton matters today for reasons other than my needs for an intellectual pedigree in shorthand.
There may be no easy way around disintermediating academia's stranglehold on research materials. Some people are trying to fix that problem. DSpace and PLoS are leading examples. It's really a trip because my original concept of the internet project which has become VisionCircle and mdcbowen.org was called 'bSpace'.
Everything I do here will continue to be free via Creative Commons. If I spend the five bucks, I'll let you know the deal.
Ward Connerly suggests something I can't agree on, and that is that the State's recognition of my racial identity of necessity changes the way that it regards me, and in particular that it entails an unjust discrimination. As the champion of the colorblind ethos, he is trying once again to summarily deracinate California through the initiative process.
The Coalition for an Informed California, have a number of contra arguments on their website. I'm glad they are there, and I suspect we'll all be hearing a good deal about it in the weeks to come.
I'd like to throw my two cents in right about now. I'll start with James Baldwin.
All you are ever told in this country about being black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. Now, in order to survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and re-create yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose, in fact - this may sound very strange - you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you
--James Baldwin
Part of representing the Old School is conservative, well maybe it's mostly conservative, but I am convinced that there is some wisdom that African Americans have been unable to communicate effectively to their own folks as well as the nation at large. There isn't much debate about the fact that Ward Connerly himself did not hear the beat of that drum. But what we are about is sounding it.
Connerly is talking about race, I am talking about identity, but something interesting happens.
Those of us who have been invested in re-creating black identity, as Baldwin rightly suggested we should, have not done so in a vacuum. We understand, as he did, that undoing the Man's version of what we were supposed to be required some thought. So we scoured the planet and came up with some answers. In the end we found ourselves not to be what the Man was saying and we could prove it. But if the Man was wrong about who we were, he was also wrong about who he was himself. It was in investigation of this duality of black and white that the contradictions of white supremacy became evident. Many people wrongly assume that all of the thinking of the 50s and 60s was done just in terms of civil rights. It was much more than that.
But not everybody came to consciousness at the same time. There are still many lessons that remain to be taught. It may be hard to believe but even today, after all the showing and proving that was done to show how wrong white supremacy is, there are still people in this nation who are attracted to being considered white. There are a lot of explainations for that which you are bound to hear, but not from me. What I'm saying is that it took Negroes changing themselves to black, having investigated the black/white dualism, that changed what America could be and what identities were valid here. That was all good.
You cannot come to understand your value as a human being without knowing what strengths arise from your history. It sounds cliche, but one really has to accept the pain of the past in order to transcend in the future. And when people overcome, as Negroes did in becoming black, they recognize how important and fundamental liberation is. Liberated people share their liberty. They recognize how close they had been to losing sight of their own humanity, and they refuse to allow it to happen again. They look in other peoples faces for the signs of pain they once suffered, they beat the drum and lead the way. This is what will always remain inspiring and grand about the Black Arts, Black Consciousness, Free Speech, Women's Rights, Gay Pride, Civil Rights and Chicano Movements of 20th century America.
So we started counting noses. You can't look into peoples faces without doing so. The liberated people demanded that they be counted, and that the government of the people started recognizing the people for whom they wanted to be. The census form doesn't say 'Colored'. It doesn't say 'ex-slave'. It doesn't say 'dark complected'. It says black and African American because that's who we have decided to be.
They said things like "My mother had diabetes and lived in a black neighborhood all her life, there was no hospital in that neighborhood. So the next time the government builds a hospital, it better take care of black women like my mother." And you will find at the bottom of reasoning for everyone who wants to be recognized that there is a need for service where there was no service before. Where people are outside of the mainstream of America and they know one of the reasons is race or ethnicity, they will demand recognition of that race or ethnicity for the purposes of social justice. People who have been liberated and people who await their due are on the same side in this matter.
There are many things for which no need exists to talk about racial or ethnic identity. I think that multicultural ethics has won and we are much better prepared to talk about Gay issues or latino issues when we need to. But we are also much better at knowing when ethnicity and preferences are not useful and get in the way. There aren't black and white lines at the movie theatre. Nobody is asking for Affirmative Action at the supermarket, despite the fact that was where it started.
Where the extraordinary needs and the demands remain are for services outside of the mainstream. This is where the burden of proof lies for those who would suggest that a blinded government provides best. Where there is uncontroversial equality, Americans won't stand for resegregation. But whereever race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual preference, religious creed or primary language is a barrier to mainstream goods and services, people will continue to demand that they be served and recognized, and a government of the people best be about that in the form the people demand.
As the political spin starts up, I expect the Old School to be disrespected and the notions of mainstreaming and liberation as I describe them to be cast aside. I expect majoritarian sentiment to be fueled by real white bigotry. I expect minority resentment to forget their independence from the Man. I expect a befuddled middle to guess without thinking outside of whatever boxes are drawn by partisans. Quite frankly, I expect that the wrong things will be done for the wrong reasons, just as was the case in support of Proposition 209. I expect that the money behind Connerly will make a complete mockery of the English language.
What I don't expect is for the need to make special recognition of special circumstances to go away. I don't expect to shut up about it either.
I came across one of those old black men that give people fits, honest to a fault, unsympathetically political and conservative. His name is Clark and he's 73. He has a long memory. We talked politics.
I spent a great deal of time with him on this hot afternoon. We talked about, or more accurately he railed on about missing weapons of mass destruction, Colin Powell's great lie to the United Nations, voter apathy, Gerald Ford, the difference between GWBush and Ronald Reagan, MoveOn.org Affirmative Action, Harold Ford, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, black conservatives and the politics of the northeast, Pennsylvania in particular.
His father, he told me with his eyes fixed on mine, was born in 1895. He had something that was rare for black men who worked in the coal mines at the time, a sixth grade education. He could both read and write. This made him very attractive to the Republican bosses of the day who were agitating to weaken unions and wished to convince blacks that they shouldn't join white unions. The elder Clark refused and stuck with the pro-union Democrats. For this, the Clark house was firebombed.
He continued on and told me how much he loathed the passing of the Taft-Hartley Act, which he saw as nothing more or less than an excuse for union busting. I've never thought of it in any way, to me it's one of those vague memories - some bit of trivia to recite at games parties. It occured to me that his conviction is a bit stronger than mine, I possess the more optimisitic direction, he bears witness to the destruction of hope and the venality of party politics. I have always wanted to be one of those gruff old men who has no difficulty whatsoever in brazenly stating his opinion. In that future I will be talking about the past.
We seemed to converge on a point, I think. It's hard to digest two lifetimes of political lessons into an afternoon, but it was an odd one. We agreed that Jesse Jackson's infamously overblown 'hymietown' remark marked the beginning of the end of the Democratic party. He hopes for General Wesley Clark to announce his candidacy, I hope the Colin Powell will shed some light on what is going on behind the scenes between Defense and State. We both agree that Bush shouldn't and won't survive 2004. He believes that Bush would jettison Rumsfeld in order to try.
At the end of the afternoon, we embraced. He hollered out that he had hugged a Republican and we chuckled about it.
As I review the pace of change and growth here, I am finding that I bought a size 44 jacket for a 36 inch chest, and the miracle drug of the web is not making my muscles bulge.
So I will be shutting down the BBS section over the next few weeks and limiting discussion to the comments sections of the editorials. This will allow me to consolidate my websites to one location as I let my trial lapse with the current host.
Thanks go out to the brave souls (and personal friends) who have signed up for the BBS. OSR, downsized will continue. And, truth be told, it might even continue as OldSchoolThought. Just a thought.
One of the platforms of the new Republican Party (post-Goldwater) is State's Rights. When Ronald Reagan first announced his presidential run in 1980 he did it from the poor town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. THIS Philly wasn't known for Moses Malone, cheesesteaks, or even MOVE.
THIS Philly was known for one thing--the brutal murder of four civil rights workers. ONE thing only.
Reagan's speech? Focused primarily on state's rights. Think the two are related? Of course they are.
I've pretty much thought state's rights was synonymous with a neo-confederate platform. Didn't think it was possible at all to use the idea for a cause beneficial to black people. Until now.
In a climate where regressive conservatives run all aspects of the federal government as well as the national media...the states might be the only option. If even Alabama's governor can decide to raise taxes...then perhaps our best hope lies there.
SHARPTON ISSUE WATCH
I think I've been looking at the wrong website. Here is where I should've looked. And Al DOES have a couple of issue platforms. One dealing with statehood for DC, the other dealing with positive rights and the Constitution. And that's it. I won't go too much into depth, but suffice it to say that he didn't need Cornel West at all if all he was going to do was steal ideas from Jesse Jackson jr. and Jesse Jackson sr.
Celes King III died this week. An icon in Southern California, this black Republican is best known for his bail bonds business. But his is an interesting story.
He was a Tuskeegee Airman, he helped found the Los Angeles Brotherhood Crusade. He was an assistant professor at the State U. Amazing man, never fully appreciated in his time.
They're at it again. Elected officials in Georgia are about to vote on yet another referendum for the state flag. Republican Governor Sonny Purdue re-ignited this controversy with his campaign "Boot Barnes", the former Democratic Governor who had rid the segregationist emblem from the former state flag.
Purdue's legislative agenda is in all kinds of trouble as it stands. This can't help.
Debate on Gun Rights In House Turns Racial
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A03
A House debate over gun rights legislation erupted into a racially charged dispute yesterday when a Republican lawmaker from Wyoming seemed to equate African Americans with drug addicts or people undergoing drug treatment.
Rep. Barbara Cubin's remark -- which triggered a vote on whether to strike it from the congressional record -- nearly overshadowed the House's approval of a measure to protect gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits resulting from the criminal use of firearms. One independent, 63 Democrats and 221 Republicans backed the bill, which could block several pending lawsuits by counties, cities and individuals stemming from gun crimes -- including last year's sniper shootings in the Washington area.
" Mrs. CUBIN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to this amendment and all of the other amendments which have been offered today on this bill, and I encourage Members to vote against the amendments and for the bill. I am the mother of two sons. One time when they were young, little boys, the boys and I were alone at night and we had a burglar break into our house. The fear that caused me to find out that someone had been in my house, rifling through my house, really made me take a look at self-defense and my right to own and bear arms. I became a big advocate of that at that time.[ . . . ]
My sons are 25 and 30. They are blond-haired and blue-eyed. One
amendment today said we could not sell guns to anybody under drug
treatment. So does that mean if you go into a black community, you
cannot sell a gun to any black person, or does that mean because my--- "
Competition does not improve every human endeavor, nor is every human endeavor a zero sum game. This is a load of outdated thinking that the Republicans are behind the curve in understanding. I just happen to know that because I’m in the computer field which includes the cognitive sciences and game theory. But I don't want to get into that here. Still anyone with a bit of common sense (or with kids in little league) knows that all competition all the time destroys the fabric of society. If one claims to be conservative, then one wishes to preserve what is good about the social order. One cannot wish to preserve the social order and always seek innovation and competition at the same time.
Should gays compete with hets for marriage rights? Is that a good thing? Should Catholics compete with Baptists for the attention of God? Is that a good thing? Should Muslims and Jews compete over living space? Is that a good thing? Should your HMO compete with another HMO to cut costs? Does that improve health care? Every problem in human life cannot be answered by market logic. These are social areas in which it makes more sense to cooperate than to compete. There are new studies out which show that cooperative strategies and tactics are superior to competitive ones in certain areas. We should get ahead of the curve and learn these things.
Republicans make good points in addressing the concerns of the somewhat lower middle class by encouraging them to apply competitive strategies to improve their lot in life. This is reasonable. But it is reasonable not because the principle works under all circumstances, but because America is a wealthy nation with plenty of headroom to grow if you are in the lower middle class. But we should not let competition become a fetish and try to apply it to every aspect of life. It simply doesn't apply everywhere doctrinaires would like it.
I thought it was a good idea to reiterate this message that made the rounds while Americans were reeling from Anthrax attacks.
A Soldier's Viewpoint on Surviving Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Attacks
From: SFC Red Thomas (Ret)
Armor Master Gunner
Mesa, AZ
Unlimited reproduction and distribution is authorized. Just give me credit for my work, and, keep in context.
Since the media has decided to scare everyone with predictions of chemical, biological, or nuclear warfare on our turf I decided to write a paper and keep things in their proper perspective. I am a retired military weapons, munitions, and training expert.
Lesson number one: In the mid 1990s there were a series of nerve gas attacks on crowded Japanese subway stations. Given perfect conditions for an attack less than 10% of the people there were injured (the injured were better in a few hours) and only one percent of the injured died.
60 Minutes once had a fellow telling us that one drop of nerve gas could kill a thousand people, well he didn't tell you the thousand dead people per drop was theoretical.
Drill Sergeants exaggerate how terrible this stuff was to keep the recruits awake in class (I know this because I was a Drill Sergeant too). Forget everything you've ever seen on TV, in the movies, or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a lie (read this sentence again out loud!). These weapons are about terror, if you remain calm, you will probably not die. This is far less scary than the media and their "Experts," make it sound.
Chemical Weapons
Chemical weapons are categorized as nerve, blood, blister, and Incapacitating agents. Contrary to the hype of reporters and politicians they are not weapons of mass destruction they are "area denial," and terror weapons that don't destroy anything. When you leave the area you almost always leave the risk. That's the difference; you can leave the area and the risk but soldiers may have to stay put and sit through it and that's why they need all that spiffy gear.
These are not gasses, they are vapors and/or air borne particles. The agent must be delivered in sufficient quantity to kill/injure, and that defines when/how it's used. Every day we have a morning and evening inversion where "stuff," suspended in the air gets pushed down. This inversion is why allergies (pollen) and air pollution are worst at these times of the day.
So, a chemical attack will have it's best effect an hour of so either side of sunrise/sunset. Also, being vapors and airborne particles they are heavier than air so they will seek low places like ditches, basements and underground garages. This stuff won't work when it's freezing, it doesn't last when it's hot, and wind spreads it too thin too fast. They've got to get this stuff on you, or, get you to inhale it for it to work. They also have to get the concentration of chemicals high enough to kill or wound you. Too little and it's nothing, too much and it's wasted.
What I hope you've gathered by this point is that a chemical weapons attack that kills a lot of people is incredibly hard to do with military grade agents and equipment so you can imagine how hard it will be for terrorists. The more you know about this stuff the more you realize how hard it is to use.
We'll start by talking about nerve agents. You have these in your house, plain old bug killer (like Raid) is nerve agent. All nerve agents work the same way; they are cholinesterase inhibitors that mess up the signals your nervous system uses to make your body function. It can harm you if you get it on your skin but it works best if they can get you to inhale it. If you don't die in the first minute and you can leave the area you're probably gonna live. The military's antidote for all nerve agents is atropine and pralidoxime chloride. Neither one of these does anything to cure the nerve agent, they send your body into overdrive to keep you alive for five minutes,
after that the agent is used up. Your best protection is fresh air and staying calm.
Listed below are the symptoms for nerve agent poisoning:
Sudden headache, Dimness of vision (someone you're looking at will have pinpointed pupils), runny nose, excessive saliva or drooling, difficulty breathing, tightness in chest, nausea, stomach cramps, twitching of exposed skin where a liquid just got on you.
If you are in public and you start experiencing these symptoms, first ask yourself, did anything out of the ordinary just happen, a loud pop, did someone spray something on the crowd? Are other people getting sick too? Is there an odor of new mown hay, green corn, something fruity, or camphor where it shouldn't be? If the answer is yes, then calmly (if you panic you breathe faster and inhale more air/poison) leave the area and head up wind, or, outside.
Fresh air is the best "right now antidote." If you have a blob of liquid that looks like molasses or Kayro syrup on you; blot it or scrape it off and away from yourself with anything disposable. This stuff works based on your body weight, what a crop duster uses to kill bugs won't hurt you unless you stand there and breathe it in real deep, then lick the residue off the ground for a while. Remember they have to do all the work, they have to get the concentration up and keep it up for several minutes while all you have to do is quit getting it on you/quit breathing it by putting space between you and the attack.
Blood agents are cyanide or arsine which effect your blood's ability to provide oxygen to your tissue. The scenario for attack would be the same as nerve agent. Look for a pop or someone splashing/spraying something and folks around there getting woozy/falling down. The telltale smells are bitter almonds or garlic where it shouldn't be. The symptoms are blue lips, blue under the fingernails rapid breathing.
The military's antidote is amyl nitride and just like nerve agent antidote it just keeps your body working for five minutes till the toxins are used up. Fresh air is the your best individual chance.
Blister agents (distilled mustard) are so nasty that nobody wants to even handle it let alone use it. It's almost impossible to handle safely and may have delayed effect of up to 12 hours. The attack scenario is also limited to the things you'd see from other chemicals. If you do get large, painful blisters for no apparent reason, don't pop them, if you must, don't let the liquid from the blister get on any other area, the stuff just keeps on spreading. It's just as likely to harm the user as the target. Soap, water, sunshine, and fresh air are this stuff's enemy.
Bottom line on chemical weapons (it's the same if they use industrial chemical spills); they are intended to make you panic, to terrorize you, to heard you like sheep to the wolves. If there is an attack, leave the area and go upwind, or to the sides of the wind stream. They have to get the stuff to you, and on you. You're more likely to be hurt by a drunk driver on any given day than be hurt by one of these attacks. Your odds get better if you leave the area. Soap, water, time, and fresh air really deal this stuff a knock-out-punch. Don't let fear of an isolated attack rule your life. The odds are really on your side.
Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear bombs. These are the only weapons of mass destruction on earth. The effects of a nuclear bomb are heat, blast, EMP, and radiation. If you see a bright flash of light like the sun, where the sun isn't, fall to the ground! The heat will be over a second. Then there will be two blast waves, one out going, and one on it's way back. Don't stand up to see what happened after the first wave; anything that's going to happen will have happened in two full minutes.
These will be low yield devices and will not level whole cities. If you live through the heat, blast, and initial burst of radiation, you'll probably live for a very, very long time. Radiation will not create fifty foot tall women, or giant ants and grass hoppers the size of tanks. These will be at the most 1 kiloton bombs; that's the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT.
Here's the real deal, flying debris and radiation will kill a lot of exposed (not all!) people within a half mile of the blast. Under perfect conditions this is about a half mile circle of death and destruction, but, when it's done it's done. EMP stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse and it will fry every electronic device for a good distance, it's impossible to say what and how far but probably not over a couple of miles from ground zero is a good guess. Cars, cell phones, computers, ATMs, you name it, all will be out of order.
There are lots of kinds of radiation, you only need to worry about three, the others you have lived with for years. You need to worry about "Ionizing radiation," these are little sub atomic particles that go whizzing along at the speed of light. They hit individual cells in your body, kill the nucleus and keep on going. That's how you get radiation poisoning, you have so many dead cells in your body that the decaying cells poison you.
It's the same as people getting radiation treatments for cancer, only a bigger area gets radiated. The good news is you don't have to just sit there and take it, and there's lots you can do rather than panic. First; your skin will stop alpha particles, a page of a news paper or your clothing will stop beta particles, you just gotta try and avoid inhaling dust that's contaminated with atoms that are emitting these things and you'll be generally safe from them.
Gamma rays are particles that travel like rays (quantum physics makes my brain hurt) and they create the same damage as alpha and beta particles only they keep going and kill lots of cells as they go all the way through your body. It takes a lot to stop these things, lots of dense material, on the other hand it takes a lot of this to kill you.
Your defense is as always to not panic. Basic hygiene and normal preparation are your friends. All canned or frozen food is safe to eat. The radiation poisoning will not effect plants so fruits and vegetables are OK if there's no dust on em (rinse em off if there is). If you don't have running water and you need to collect rain water or use water from wherever, just let it sit for thirty minutes and skim off the water gently from the top. The dust with the bad stuff in it will settle and the remaining water can be used for the toilet which will still work if you have a bucket of water to pour in the
tank.
Biological Weapons
Finally there's biological warfare. There's not much to cover here. Basic personal hygiene and sanitation will take you further than a million doctors. Wash your hands often, don't share drinks, food, sloppy kisses, etc., .... with strangers. Keep your garbage can with a tight lid on it, don't have standing water (like old buckets, ditches, or kiddie pools) laying around to allow mosquitoes breeding room. This stuff is carried by vectors, that is bugs, rodents, and contaminated material. If biological warfare is so easy as the TV makes it sound, why has Saddam Hussein spent twenty years, millions, and millions of dollars trying to get it right? If you're clean of person and home you eat well and are active you're gonna live.
Overall preparation for any terrorist attack is the same as you'd take for a big storm. If you want a gas mask, fine, go get one. I know this stuff and I'm not getting one and I told my Mom not to bother with one either (how's that for confidence). We have a week's worth of cash, several days worth of canned goods and plenty of soap and water. We don't leave stuff out to attract bugs or rodents so we don't have them.
These people can't conceive a nation this big with this much resources. These weapons are made to cause panic, terror, and to demoralize. If we don't run around like sheep they won't use this stuff after they find out it's no fun. The government is going nuts over this stuff because they have to protect every inch of America. You've only gotta protect yourself, and by doing that, you help the country.
Finally, there are millions of caveats to everything I wrote here and you can think up specific scenarios where my advice isn't the best. This letter is supposed to help the greatest number of people under the greatest number of situations. If you don't like my work, don't nit pick, just sit down and explain chemical, nuclear, and biological warfare in a document around three pages long yourself. This is how we the people of the United States can rob these people of their most desired goal, your terror.
Claude Steele has always been my favorite of the famous brothers. But nothing quite prepared me for his research into 'Stereotype Threat'.
When capable black college students fail to perform as well as their white counterparts, the explanation often has less to do with preparation or ability than with the threat of stereotypes about their capacity to succeed.
Significantly, I see that Steele has finally put into quantifyable terms the fairly well understood notion of 'stigma' asserted by opponents of Affirmative Action. Those who believe there are debilitating effects of Affirmative Action upon blacks who might otherwise succeed should be the first to recognize the import of Steele's research.
I've always believed that a proper sense of self, the kind arrogance known as a 'can-do attitude' laced with a casual elan is part and parcel of a strong black identity. But there can be no doubt that this is extra work. We of the Old School certainly recognize that theme, and our value for education certainly does not escape its burden. It is important, nonetheless to, recognize that tackling such tasks in a white world imply more than what they are on the surface.
It might sound ironic but I would suggest that some return to the good old days when Affirmative Action wasn't quite the political hot potato it is today might do black college students a world of good. While I don't want to get into whether or not standardized tests are appropriate (essays are always superior to fill in the blank), a counter-stereotype might be helpful, but a wholesale change of expectations of black students would be even better. Perhaps this is what is meant by diversity.
I've done enough, I think, to get off to an early start. I'm prepared to announce. I'm not going to go with a lot of fanfare, but I think I know where to go to get some response. Slowly but surely, we will build critical mass.
Sean-Paul, the Agonist, is blogging up a whirlwind. His war coverage is a stunning display of talent, stamina and resourcefulness.
I have been thinking about the peace, but my thoughts get crowded out by the periodic rants I direct towards the radio. NPR is rather single-minded about opening up every aspect of the negative aspects of the war, which annoys me for some reason. KFI, the local talk radio, indulges in blatant hyperbole and disgusting slander which nullifies the benefits of their common sense approach. A day of listening to the radio gives one the impression that all the intelligent and thoughtful folks are searching for every reason to focus on the pain and tragedy, and all the normal folks are solely jazzed about the superior technology that goes boom on the bad guys.
The question arises, "What is the worst thing that could happen?". The worst thing that could happen is that we could lose the war. Of all the handicapping that goes on, particularly that of the journalists who were wondering aloud what happened to the Shock and Awe (tm) on day one, nobody considers losing to be a real possibility. Therefore we all assume that we indeed will win the war, destroy the Iraqi regime and set up a new one. But few folks seem content with that desirable outcome. Instead of acknowledging the simple fact that the ends are very good, the focus of debate has become what's the worst way we can win, with the tacit implication that is the course we inevitably will follow. The nightmare scenario is thus, everything that upsets the delicate sensibilities of those 'intelligent' and 'moral' enough to criticize this war. So millions of folks will become instant pundits, using the neologisms of the Pentagon as a foil for their insights. Americans will be re-weighing collateral damage and re-assessing bomb damage assessments. It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. Since the game of removing dictators, by some lights involves diplomacy, we have already lost. Grotesque war details only add insult to injury. By the time peace is won, the self-righteous war critics will have already lost interest having made their case.
This is all interesting to me in the way that such opinions will be formed as people attempt to make sense of a thousand things they never before considered. Uhm Qasr. Bridge crossings, laser guided munitions, Ali Hassan al-Majid, and a thousand and one other terms must be wrestled to the ground in mounting a criticism of the prosecution of a war. During the war, when the Pentagon is briefing the world on a daily basis, the critics can only nitpick. When the Pentagon goes silent, the doves will have their way with the ‘real truth’.
I have said that truth serves nobody, and that justice is impossible during war. So I think it is a waste of time to make arguments in search of the truth during war. Now would be a good time to review the failure of diplomacy in the beginning or to think clearly about what is to come in the post-Saddam Iraq.
The Agonist’s play-by-play is as good as any I could hope for, without paying an arm and a leg for insider subscriptions. So I will watch the bombs bursting in air from there. I hope I don’t have to shout at my radio or anyone else who comes along moralizing about the cruelty of battle.
This afternoon, I and a couple of my workmates had a lunch about serious subjects, war and peace, religion and politics, all the things you are not supposed to talk about. While it has become a cliche to talk about how 'diverse' America is, it's always a pleasant surprise to poke one's head out of the shell every once in a while to find out where people are coming from. For me, that's the point, the origins and the evolutions, not so much the destination.
I tried to shut up long enough for them to teach me something and as usual, the effects of the experience will sink in sometime soon. Within the span of the hour, over Quizno's hot subs (hoagies? grinders? po-boys?), we hit on several interesting issues and ideas.
The issues I am sparked to persue further are with a simple literacy map of places and movements. It's always useful to break up the 'middle east' into different countries and factions other than "Israel and the Rest" as our idiot media often does. So look to me for a simple grid one of these days. Furthermore, I'm curious to watch Islam in post-colonial Africa. We shall see.