Archive for April, 2008

Fame - David Bowie
Colors - Ice-T
You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks - Funkadelic
Rising To the Top - Keni Burke
Help Is On The Way - The Whatnauts
Get A Life - Soul II Soul
Gittin A Little Hipper - James Brown
Free Your Mind - The Politicians
Take Up A Course In Happiness - Isaac Hayes
Blue’s Crib - Isaac Hayes
You Are The World - Donald Byrd
Golden Lady - Stevie Wonder
The Root - D’Angelo
When The Lights Are Low - Oscar Peterson

Here’s a video of the rap battle that’s been burnin up the internet all weekend. I…man, I ain’t even gon’ comment on it. It speaks for itself.

I’m thoroughly intrigued by what Ta-Nehisi Coates describes as the “organic Black conservative” tradition. He points it out both in his blog and in his article on Bill Cosby in the Atlantic Monthly. In looking to bridge the not-as-big-as-we-act-like-it-really-is gap between Black liberals conservatives, Coates identifies himself as a “left-libertarian.”

I do believe that black folks are ultimately responsible for their own fate. I do believe that the greatest problem we face, right now, is putting black fathers back in the home. I am wholly uninterested in the grieve-a-thon between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters which seeks to determine whether it’s harder for a white woman or black man in America. I just really don’t care, and think it’s utterly counterproductive to sit around and try to figure it out. Ditto for “coalition building.” I’m not interested in building bridges to Latino or to Jewish communities. Beyond attending a few panels populated by professional talkers (like yours truly), I don’t even know what that tangibly means, nor do I know what relevance it has to the average brother here in Harlem. I support the rights of virtually anyone to come to this country and work the crappy jobs that Americans won’t work, and the better ones that most of us are too stupid to work. I support tangible things which I can feel, touch and see, and broach no quarter for intangibles like “patriarchy,” and “white supremacy.” I don’t really care if Don Imus is on the air or not.

Sound conservative? Meh, I don’t know. I’m green as all get-out. I believe that government needs to–specifically–look at ways to help black men. Let’s start by expanding the EITC to noncustodial fathers, ending the drug war, and reinventing the criminal justice system. Let’s look at the creeping epidemic of obesity and get government involved in convincing people to eat right and get off off thier asses. Know why? Because government is gonna get the bill anyway when they’re laying up in the public hospital–only then it’ll be with interest.

I’m probably right in there with him, or at most, maybe a block over. Because I’ve spent so much time in school, I can’t help but acknowledge the impact of structural forces on the Black community. I would hafta be downright ignorant to act like white supremacy hasn’t been a factor in the way things have happened throughout American (and world, but I tend to focus more on America, cuz this is the here and now that can be impacted) history. Likewise, I’d hafta be blind and dumb to believe that racism has somehow been magically ameliorated because a Black man finally [insert action here]. At the same time, to act like white supremacy as an ideology or racism as an action or set of structures based on that ideology is the biggest factor determining Black folks’ fates seems to me to be robbing us of any sense of agency. Has racism been an obstacle? Yes. Has it been insurmountable? Rarely. That means that, as I’m wont to say, the onus is on us.

Where I tend to veer rightward (to the extent that I actually do, which is another question for another day), it’s in my belief that the government is not the cure for what ails us. (Not in every instance. I agree with Coates that the EITC should be extended to non-custodial parents and that the drug war has been a miserable failure, both in terms of its intended objective and its externalities.) One time I wrote,

This is pretty much where I draw the line and why I stand on the side I do. I can’t really watch movies like Rosewood because they make me want to put on a black leather glove and start smacking people upside the head, but when I read about what happened in places like Rosewood or Black Wall Street in Tulsa, I’m reminded that those people were about getting it done. Forget about the governments refusal to grant them reparations, even though many of them had actually lived during physical slavery, the government was openly hostile to them and actively denying them justice. So what did they do? They got out there and did. I’m right with the activist on some things, but I step to the right when it comes to the solutions. The government is not going to do it; most things, the government couldln’t do, even if the willingness was there. I mean, I can understand the thought process that says “since the government was complicit in doing things to the detriment of Blackfolk, the government should put forth the same effort in redressing those wrongs.” For some folks, affirmative action and welfare (?!) represent that government redress. (Being that Blackfolk aren’t the majority beneficiaries of either one of those, I don’t see how that can be the case.) Whatever. Whether you think it’s owed us or not, we ain’t gettin’ it. And this is not an ideological capitulation, it’s just being pragmatic. Look, racism isn’t going anywhere. Hate to say it, but that’s just a part of our national fabric. And even at that, it’s certainly not what it used to be, but as long as there is material gain to be had by using race as a factor in some decision-making process, racism and all those other -isms will remain. So if Black folks are supposed to wait for the last vestiges of racism, individual or structural, before we make a major move, we might as well quit now. Of course that’s not the solution, and my activist friends know that too. It’s the brothers and sisters with the PhD’s that give the worst reports. What kills me is, they do one thing but say something else, dismissing their own accomplishments as atypical; “I’ve been more fortunate than the average Black person.” Yeah, and you made some better decisions, too. Racism and the legacy of slavery and jim crow and whatever other historical events we’d like to point to can’t explain away everything. My kids didn’t not-know 12*12 because of some unseen link to their ancestors, they just didn’t study. Instead of running off a list of why “the rest of us” can’t, maybe it’s time for us Black folks who have achieved something to focus more on why “we” did and try to break down the barriers between the two.

(are you supposed to blockquote yourself?

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. I’m thinking that Coates is also right about there being some middle ground between Black liberals and conservatives. Actually, I don’t think there’s really a middle ground, because I don’t know that, for most of us, there’s actually any chasm. I think there’s a continuum, but because until recently there has been no overtly political expression for emphasis-on-Black conservative ideology, folks tend to react viscerally to the term “conservative” because of its association with certain white folks. And that’s a tragedy, because I think there’s a whole lot more we can do working together than we can do sitting on our “sides” and pontificating about who’s way is better. (I think this problem is particularly egregious on the internet, but again, that’s a whole nother post.)

Due to the developments we mentioned a couple weeks ago, my daughter will be going to a different school in the fall. Only thing is, she’s nervous about going. That, in and of itself is no cause for concern, because everybody’s nervous when they start a new school. Just about everybody I’ve ever known, at least. Naw, what’s got me concerned is the reason that she’s more nervous than normal. This is going to be her first time going to a school that’s not almost all-Black.

It’s weird for me to even be considering this question, because it wasn’t until college that I even had any classes where all the students were Black, and I think there were only one or two of those. And they were Af Am Studies courses. So in a very real way, her concern is kinda foreign to me. At the same time, I know exactly how she feels, because the only times I’ve ever been in situations where I was the only brother in the room have been involuntary. If you were to tell me ahead of time that I was gonna be a fly in the buttermilk, I would probably be decidedly less-than-enthusiastic. Or at least, less enthusiastic than I would be with a different demographic ratio. But the thing is, I’ve never talked to her about that. I’ve never talked to her about race at all. (Now in the interest of full disclosure, the fact that I’m the non-custodial parent limits my influence somewhat. The fact that she lives a pretty good distance away limits my influence even further, but based on what I know of her mom, it’s still highly unlikely that she’s having “watch-out-for-the-white-man” conversations.) So given that, I’m curious about how her racial ideas formed. Since I’m pretty sure they weren’t implicitly taught, she must have picked them up on the side somewhere. I’m wondering where.

Even more than I wonder where she got them, though, I’m wondering what to tell her. See this goes directly to what I was talkin about in my last post. Do I believe that most white people are personally racist? Of course not. Do I believe that some are? Absolutely. The question is, how do we inure her against the latter without making her suspicious of everybody else? But even aside from that, how do we make sure she understands that some people who are white may not like her, and it may have nothing to do with that fact that she’s Black? That second one, that’s the big question. I know a lotta grown-ups who have yet to figure that one out.

I guess we’ll figure this one out as we go along.

I think I liked it better when people couldn’t comment on newspaper articles. Seeing what the readers had to say on this article about ministers who want the Chicago Police Department to hire and promote more Black officers makes me really question some of my assumptions about people, like whether we all really want the same things. But then, when I think about it, that idea hasn’t changed. Everybody wants to get his fair share…and if his share is a little more fair, then no harm there. Reading some of these comments, though, it’s like, there is no such thing as civility. But that’s the price of anonymity.

As technology shortens the communication cycle and makes the “viewer” more of a participant, it seems that so-called regular people display their worst communicative tendencies. Jokers go for loud and obnoxious over just about anything else. I mean, I can tolerate somebody expressing an idea that I don’t particularly agree with. I can even handle somebody saying something that I think is both asinine and flat-out wrong. But to go all the way off topic and say something inflammatory just for the sake of being inflammatory? I can’t deal with it. That’s that juvenile stuff. What’s more, it kinda makes me think that the militants might be right - or at least, more right than I want them to be.

Made me so mad, I couldn’t even concentrate on the fact that I think the preachers need to return to the main text. Cuz they do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for community policing, but what would help the police to seem like less of an occupying force and more like community servants might be to get them out of their cars, rather than simply assuming that a Black cop is gonna care more or be better for the ‘hood than a white one.

From Thomas Sowell:

Most people on the right have no problem understanding people on the left because many, if not most, were on the left themselves when they were younger. But many, if not most, people on the left find it inexplicable how any decent and intelligent person could be on the right.

For the most part, I agree with this quote. I also would believe the same about anybody on the left who had started out on the right. If you’ve been there, you understand, even if you don’t believe it. What concerns me is that people who completely don’t understand the “other” side are the ones who talk the loudest. After all, it’s not as if the great majority of the people aren’t interested in the same things. I don’t think there are very many people who want to see our societal problems go unsolved, I just think that people have very different ideas on how to go about solving those problems.

John Mark Reynolds has an extremely interesting post on politics vis a vis profanity. In it, he surmises:

To paraphrase Senator Edwards, there are two Americas. There is the America where calling your opponent a (insert profanity here) freak is normal and the Other Places where it is not. Vulgar America is a place where blasphemy, the real kind, is still considered “daring” and the only offense would be feeling offended by it. There are Other Places where using the Lord’s name in vain is still considered rude.

If you live mostly in one place, then the other seems weird to you. In the Other Places, a lady or gentleman might swear (though with apologies later) when very angry. The “frankly Scarlet” line of attack is tolerated, if not encouraged in extreme circumstances.

While Reynolds’ piece is primarily focused on the political ramifications of this cultural split, I’m more interested in the sociological implications. He notes,

Senator Obama is best understood as coming out of the blend of government and academic conferences and non-profits that often views itself as the best part of the nation. He “gets” that world . . . including the new rules of Vulgar America. As a result, the harsh words of Jeremiah Wright (”d- America”) do not sound so harsh to him and opposition to them must be all about race.

He repudiates some of the “ideas” of Reverend Wright, in good academic fashion with no clarity about which ideas he rejects. Even most Democrat primary voters don’t see how alienating these words are, because at least a big plurality of them live and work in Vulgar America.

Divorcing it from the explicitly political, I’d hafta say that I’m from Vulgar America. Not saying that I grew up with a bunch of people who cuss like sailors (I’ve heard that my mother cussed once, but I’ve never actually heard her cuss.), but the groups that he cites as being the constituents of Vulgar America have tended to be the circles I’ve traveled in my adult life. But then, I think there’s a degree to which he oversimplifies the differences in Vulgar America and Other America. Specifically, I think there are people in Other America who do (or would, if they heard the entire sermon) understand where Reverend Wright, for instance, is coming from, even if they disagree with it. In other words, I don’t know that the rhetorical devices of Vulgar America, for lack of a better term (pun intended), are as much of a disconnect as he supposes. While I am certain that there are people who shut off completely when they hear “vulgar” phrasing, my general impression is that cussing is not as off-putting as Reynolds would have us believe. But then, I probably wouldn’t know because I live in Vulgar America.

But thinking about it a little more, and perhaps from a dramatically different angle, I’m curious about how Black “Vulgar America” is. Now what I’m not suggesting is that all Black folks cuss regularly, or even abide cussing in their presence, because ultimately his point is not about the specific vocabulary of vulgarity. While Reynolds is careful to make academia the central locus of Vulgar America, thereby allowing it to influence pundits on both the left and right, the way he describes Other America …They will tolerate a dismissive McCain vulgarity in [terrorist fascism's] direction, but they don’t want to hear their sacred things (God, duty, honor, country) dismissed that way. For some reason, that line fills me with a very specific image of what Other America looks like, and the picture I see looks a lot like the crowd at a tractor pull, a NASCAR event, or at Graceland. Now, this may not at all be Reynolds’ intent, but that’s kinda what I’m seeing. I see superimposed flags and crosses. I see people with a “love it or leave it” mentality, which is not where most of the Black folks I know come from, regardless of their political bent. See, most of the Black folks I’ve known in my life (which means the overwhelming majority of the people I’ve known in my life), Democratic, Republican, Independent, and other, have no problems understanding that loving America, or being proud of it, is not the same as uncritical acceptance of everything that goes on here. In fact, if I’m honest about it, the only Black folks I’ve ever “known” who have intimated otherwise are ones I “know” only via their writing. (And for real, I personally believe that the timbre of their arguments is amped up a bit to elicit reactions. My guess is that if I actually knew those people, the ideas I’d hear expressed would be quite a bit more nuanced.) And again, I’m not saying that the “God, honor, duty, country” set can’t include any Black people, but my guess is that if it does, there aren’t a whole, whole lot of us in there. Not if those are the main criteria.

To take it a little further afield, I think that the designation of “vulgar” is very much class-based. I mean, if you do the etymology, there’s no question that certain words got acceptance by “cultured” folk because those were the words the “cultured” folks used. I mean, for real - the word “vulgar” itself is rooted in the idea that “there’s a lower class and we ain’t it.” Now for much of American history, the “we ain’t it” class has been Us. Commensurate with that, many of our cultural products have been regarded as “vulgar” (at least at their inception), even when they reflected high artistry. (Hello, Jazz, et al) Hence, while I’m fairly sure that Reynolds’ by no means intended to automatically include Black folks in Vulgar America, I wonder if his description of Other America inadvertently excludes us.

But then at the same time, I’m also thinking that what he says about Other America, “they don’t want to hear their sacred things dismissed…” is true of any group, even Vulgar America. The only line of demarcation between the Other America he describes and another Other America is what constitutes the “scared things.” Cuz my guess is that for even people who cuss all the time, there are certain people/things/ideas/institutions for which certain words are always inappropriate. But that’s just me guessin’. I probably don’t know, because it’s pretty much a lock that I don’t live in Reynolds’ Other America.

Not that I necessarily want Condoleeza Rice to run as McCain’s VP, but I can definitely co-sign with Eugene Robinson.

I can’t help but imagine having another controversial, larger-than-life character wade into the fray, one who not only raises McCain’s big wager on Iraq but also takes us further into terra incognita on issues of race and gender. Whatever you think of Condoleezza Rice, she’s a formidable woman with more qualifications than almost any other vice presidential choice I can think of. We’d get to watch another brilliant political novice try to take the country by storm. And, as a bonus, there would be the piano recitals, the early-morning workouts, the skybox appearances at football games, the impromptu lectures on Russian history (in Russian), the daily fashion show. . . . Pleeeeeease?

I Know - Jay-Z
Changin’ - Brass Construction
Soaring (At Dawn) Pt. 1 - Les McCann
Thoughts and Wishes - Bohannon
Sweet Lorraine - Art Tatum
The Hook - Queen Latifah
Jonz In My Bonz - D’Angelo
Slide - Slave
Get Down Tonight - KC & The Sunshine Band
Dazz - Brick
Spinning Wheel - Wade Marcus
Lord Help Me - Donny Hathaway
Love No Limit - Mary J. Blige
If You Want Me To Stay - Sly & The Family Stone
Rags To Rufus - Rufus
Good Thing We’re Rappin’ - Digital Underground

Last week, my roommate was watching some television show on some channel where they were trying to determine who makes the best cheesesteak: Pat’s, Geno’s or Jim’s. I told her that was a false question because even though those are the three most famous cheesesteak joints in Philly, none of them anywhere near the best. Enter the list by WIP’s Glen Macnow.

He got my favorite, Dalessandro’s listed at #10, but I guess that’s acceptable. Although for what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve ever had a beef cheesesteak from there. I’ve been eating chicken cheesesteaks for years, so it would be interesting for me to see how the cheesesteak joints ranked according to their chicken cheesesteaks.