Swanee – George Gershwin
Ode To Billy Joe – Lou Donaldson
Millenium – Outkast
Everybody Is A Star – Sly & The Family Stone
Brooklyn – Mos Def
One Thing – Amerie
Dreams – Earth Wind & Fire
Yes To The Lord – The Stovall Sisters
Short Change – Ohio Players
Takeover – Jay-Z
Ooh Child – The Five Stairsteps
Licking Stick-Licking Stick – James Brown
Ether – Nas
Moonshine Heather – Parliament
You Gotta Believe – Rose Royce
I Spend My Life – Ramsey Lewis
Peace and Love – Movement IV – Mandrill
Only One Way Out of This Mess – Sly And The Family Stone
Dat Dere – Cannonball Adderley
!!!!!!! – The Roots
Archive for April, 2008First up, of course, is the Sean Bell trial. Police brutality – or suspected police brutality concerns me a lot. Even as somebody who has worked closely with policemen in the past, and as somebody whose longest friendship is with a police officer, I’m still always disconcerted by the death of a civilian at the hands of police. When the civilian in question was not in the commission of a crime, I’m even more disturbed. Nahmeen, I have all the respect in the world for police officers, but I don’t think that respect demands a blind loyalty. I couldn’t care less about the race of the police officers doing the shooting, either. It just worries me. And I’m sayin’ – the days when I’d be at a strip club at 4 AM are long gone, but I still can’t shake the idea that I could be the victim of some type of “accident” at some point. More bothersome to me than the actions of the police officers in question is the attitude of the police union. While I appreciate the fact that a union exists to support its rank and file, I generally like to feel that police unions are there to protect the citizenry as much as they are there to protect the police officers. Kinda like if the mission of police officers is to protect and serve, the police union should have the same objective. When I look at he statements of the official police unions on this case, I’m not really left with the impression that I’m protected. Not even in a casual, lip-service sense. Having said that, while I think the judge was probably legally correct, this verdict leaves much to be desired. And borrowing from McWhorter, this is exactly the type of case where name-brand Black conservatives (or conservative Blacks, imo) lose their credibility with lots of Black folks. There’s lots of space between riding intractably hard for the law enforcement and running down the street yelling “eff the police!” A simple, “we applaud the job that the police do, and we appreciate the difficulties of making split-second life-or-death decisions, but the fact that yet another unarmed Black man who was not in the commission of a crime has died at the hands of police is cause for concern” might do wonders for their position. But then again, I’m not even sure I want any of those name brand Black conservatives (cuz a conservative Black, e.g., Massie, Peterson, et. al) to gain any traction in the community. The Sixers could’ve gone up 3-1 on Detroit. I think game 4 was the key to the series. While I’m pleased that they made it this far, I don’t think they’re gonna win 2 of the next 4 games. I’m not even sure what to make of the Eagles draft. It would be nice to be headed into the summer thinking that they’re all set and stocked to make one last run for the goodies, but I’m not sold. I know the NFC East is gonna be the best division in the NFL this year. Who knows, the Cowboys might actually make it out of the first round this year. Your Madden 2009 cover boy? Brett Favre. Not that he’s necessarily crazy about it. The Flyers are for real, too. So I’ve been growin my beard in for about a month. The joint’s pretty thick. I really look like I’m from Philly now. But what’s funny is that people who see me on the street are starting to address me with, “As salaam alaikum.” I don’t correct em, but it’s funny. Is there some unwritten that any Black man with a full beard is probably a Muslim? Speaking of Muslims, ever wondered where the so-called “curse of Ham” as it relates to slavery originated? Well thanks to Jeremy at Parablemania, we have an answer. I can’t wait to use this information. Not that I support that player’s suspect gamesmanship, but I may hafta get a NY Rangers #16 jersey. For obvious reasons. So we’re reading Romeo and Juliet and I’m having trouble deciding whether I’m gonna hip the kids to all the double entendre in Shakespeare. I’m sure it would pique their interest and get them to read a lot more carefully, but I’m not sure that’s really the route to go. Iono yet. Couldn’t make this up on my best day. S.J. cop charged with barnyard sex. Just thinkin about it, Obama-Clinton is going down a lot like Calzhage-Hopkins, including the arguments each “fighter” is gonna make to the judges. Just like Hopkins had the more forceful punches, Hillary’s gonna claim that she’ll do better in the big states. On the other hand, Obama will have more wins – more rounds, with a greater margin of victory in the rounds he won. The only question is what style the judges are gonna ride for. I’m thinking Obama-Clinton is gonna end in a split decision, too. Right now, I’m suspecting it’s gonna break for Clinton, though. Nothing solid, just a hunch. Lovin’ It – Little Brother Something told me Hopkins wasn’t gonna get it done last night. That knockdown in the first round almost made me change my mind, but in the end, the fight went about like I expected it to. Now understand, last night I went against two of my most important sports picking rules: I picked against somebody from Philly and I picked the white dude over the Black dude. But knowing that Hopkins throws punches one at a time, I really didn’t have a choice. I wouldn’t have made a bet, like I did with Mayweather, but I told everybody at the party that Bernard wasn’t gonna do it. I wouldn’t have minded being wrong on that one. Tagging Cobb back, I see a line that reminds me of an interview I did of my mother back when I was in undergrad. It’s a standard black cliche where I come from: “We didn’t realize how poor we were.” We didn’t feel poor, we didn’t act poor, although we probably should have after a manner of thinking. Only difference is, when my mom was talkin about it, she was talkin about how literally poor they were – they didn’t even have indoor plumbing at that time. What I’m thinkin about, or wondering really, is how much of an impact the consciousness of poverty has, versus poverty itself. Back when I first started blogging, I was always quick to point out the difference between what we call poverty in America and absolute poverty. It’s kinda like looking at 0 on the centigrade scale and 0 on the Kelvin scale. What we call “poverty” is really just “brokeness,” in an absolute sense. American poverty is the inability to have the niceties we expect and are accustomed to having as Americans. For instance, I usedta have a friend back in the day that always said that if he ever got elected to some political position, he’d try to make it so nobody on welfare could have cable. Even back 15 years ago, cable television had ceased to be viewed as a luxury. I mean, given that I live a 99% tv-free lifestyle (okay, 97.67%. I do watch sports.) cable is still a luxury for me, but most people can’t even imagine watching TV without cable. If I watched all the time, I’d probably be the same. All that’s just to say that for some people, the expectation is to have cable, so the lack of cable would indicate some level of poverty. It’s really not, but some folks might think so. Which kinda gets at the heart of my question. What is it that poor-but-don’t-know-it people do that ain’t-poor-but-think-so people don’t do? Working off my favorite model, I think this question is small enough to yield some workable results. What I don’t have is a complete answer. What I think, though, is that ignorance of poverty lends itself well to a sense of agency. I think the sense of lack can be quite debilitating. For some folks, it can be a motivating factor, but I think that there are many more who see it as a reason NOT to do a thing. I know that I thought we were poor for most of high school, so I almost never invited people from school to the crib. Then I saw some of their houses and realized that we weren’t as bad off as I thought. My guess, though, is that it can be a lot more significant than that. In the Bible it says, “As a man thinks, so is he.” I think that definitely applies here. Whether I vote or not, I’ma tell you the truth: the 2008 election is WAY more interesting than 2004. My man, Chuck’s good for pushing my buttons and makin me write hard. So when he writes, I think what a lot of Conservatives unfairly, ignorantly dismiss is the idea that people rarely do things in a vacuum. There IS often enough a lot of luck in who you are born to, where you’re raised and the people who influence you (peers, etc). You can’t tell me, Ave, that if you were born into the households of some of your old friends that you’d still have wound up the educated, non-record-having writer you are today. There IS some luck in getting the right kinds of encouragement and the right kinds of support along the way. Not sayin you need a whole village, but the vast majority of us need at least one Gandalf here and there at the right time/place to help inspire, encourage and point the right way. The completely self-made man is a unicorn-rare individual., I hafta pay attention. Or at least address it. I don’t think there’s any question that luck, good fortune, blessings, providence, or whatever term you wanna use plays a significant role in what happens to a given person. I’m quick to tell people that I’m not sure what would have become of me if I had been born to another mother. Yahmeen, would I be as quick to pick up a book if I had grown up in a house where reading was uncommon, or not valued? Probably not. Would I necessarily have been a hardhead, out there on the street? (Cuz I’m still hardheaded.) Not necessarily. But suggesting that it’s all, or even mostly about good fortune means that the individual person has absolutely no agency. If everything is the result of a certain roll of the dice, for lack of a better term, then the individual has neither control, nor responsibility for what happens in his life. Even I know better than that. I’ve been pretty forthright about the fact that I usedta hang out with some rough customers a few years ago. Again, my own personal belief is that if you put anybody else in my place, he’s gonna get similar results. Not exactly the same, because we all have different temperaments, and we all have different triggers for our actions, so a person who’s more Type-A than me might have achieved more – or he might have gotten caught up in some nonsense that my laid-backness kept me out of. Still, I’m thinking that in general, it’s reasonable to expect somebody who started where I started to be where I am right now. But see, it’s the conservative in me that makes that argument. While I readily concede that good fortune plays a significant role in what a person does, and I agree that the American “self-made man” narrative doesn’t leave nearly enough room for the consideration of good fortune, I would still say that the majority of a person’s life is made up of the choices that he or she makes. After all, it’s not like people don’t have choices. They may not recognize the choices that are available, or they may not choose to accept the advice of their counselor (whether they chose the counsel or not), but that doesn’t mean the choice wasn’t presented. Think about Menace II Society. Caine had options. He didn’t hafta die like he did. Obviously, him playing the girl out and then stomping out her cousin proved to be his ultimate undoing, but some might argue that he was headed towards that type of ending regardless. That just happened to be the incident that got him done in. No, the choices and guardians I’m referring to are his grandparents. Now obviously, he wasn’t feelin the way his grandparents were comin’ at him, lecturing him with the Bible and all. but did that make it any less relevant? Not at all. See the question of whether a person makes a given choice doesn’t change the legitimacy of that choice. In the same way that Caine wound up being a drug-dealing murderer just like his father, he could have chosen to be the church-going choirboy antithesis of his father. Same kid, same circumstances growing up, different choices, different results. But Caine’s an easy case. What about the dude, Shareef? He, I would say, was the unfortunate victim of bad luck. He had turned his life around. He was a good dude. He got killed while a dude like O-Dog came through unharmed. How’s that work? Beats me. Stuff happens. But see, even in his case, although we wanna let the redemption narrative play itself out and have him live happily ever after, since he actively made the choice to turn his life around, it’s still not inaccurate to say that his choices led to his demise. I mean, we only know the “good” Shareef, but given that he was hanging around Caine and O-Dog ‘nem in the first place, it’s not unreasonable to think that he was doin some of the same stuff they did. See ultimately, I think — no, I know — life is a combination of choice and chance. Some choices are activated by “luck.” But at the same time, some “luck” is brought from the potential to the kinetic by the active choices people make. I really don’t think it’s possible to parse it down further than that without actually being able to see peoples’ timestreams. However, the part of me that believes in people thinks that they have a great deal of control over their ultimate destination, regardless of the circumstances into which they were born, or even the ones they navigated themselves into. Yeah, a sundry word here and a pick-me-up there can make a huge difference. But it’s also the fact that the person allowed the pick-me-up to actually BE a pick-me-up as opposed to just some platitude somebody who don’t really know what I’m goin through was spittin at me. Or even better, when things DON’T go my way, is it time for lamenting my luck or changing my behavior, so if the same set of circumstances presents itself, I won’t fall for the okey doke again? That, I would argue, ain’t really about luck. And for real, I don’t know that there’s really any explicitly political label that belongs to this train of thought, but I do think that depending on the set of circumstances, those on the left are more likely to mention the things that are out of a person’s control — except when it came to them. And that’s what gets me. If you really came from the hard-luck side of town, shouldn’t part of your “giving back” be stressing the methods that helped you to get to where you are? That’s all I’m sayin. Cuz the minute somebody who has made it somewhere starts explainin why everybody can’t, I start thinkin they really ain’t a person of the people. Don’t tell me why I can’t, or shouldn’t expect to, tell me how I can and what obstacles I’ll hafta avoid. Chances are, I won’t get the exact same results, but with any luck, my results will be better than they would’ve been otherwise. According to some of my kids, Weezy is the best rapper out right now. I’ll concede that he has some pretty decent lyrics, but he raps like he’s constipated. Not constipated with rhymes, just constipated. That’s a minor drawback for me. Comparing him, then, to Ice Cube, well, there is no comparison. Cube had the lyrics, the delivery, and the voice. Especially the voice. As one friend said to me, you could already hear the actor. On no song is this more evident than Once Upon A Time In The Projects. Far from just being a song, this could practically be a skit on a comedy show. The only thing that separates this from a Niggas Bleed-level of excellence is that this doesn’t have the hook at the end that just totally blows me out. The eye for detail here, though, is magnificent.
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