I Can't Leave, a Reminder

Given all of the craziness that happens in politics nationally, I felt I had to remind myself. I know that some of you have read this once before. But for others, this is new. Yes, I'm suffering through Haley Barbour's idiotic budget plan right now, and sometimes, I just don't know. Perhaps this can help me and you weather the Republican storm.
I have decided to stay in the South to help bring about change here. I know the South is often pigeon-holed as America's "third world" section of the country. Being from Mississippi, no one feels and lives this myopic perception more than us. However, there are some good reasons for staying in the South. I'm not saying that these reasons apply to everyone. This is my South as I see and live it.
1. $250,000 will get you a nice home (a home, home. Not a condo), some land, and a house full of furniture in a nice neighborhood in the South.
2. $100,000/year is still a better-than-average salary in the South. Getting a college education is definitely worth the sacrifice here.
3. Gaining 5 to 10 extra pounds will not ruin your social life in the South. Unlike our Northern counterparts, Southern brothers are still into thick chicks (I said thick not flabby).
4. Food is plentiful. Most of my cousins from the North think it is horrible the way we just go into each other's refrigerators to help ourselves. Why not let one person fix the food so that everybody gets something to eat? Well, everybody always has something to eat. Food is plentiful here. I know many, many Southerners that will let a credit card bill slide to put some extra food on the table. Do you remember coming home to grandma's. Did she ever limit your food? No. Even though she lived on a fixed income, there was always plenty of food on the table.
5. The rat race is slower here. Work is important, but a worker can be replaced. A mother or a father cannot. Southerners work hard and play hard. Life and family are to be enjoyed -which explains the scarce amount of boarding schools in the South. There's always time for family.
6. Children are not inconveniences. Yes, they get on our nerves. They make us mad when they are being hardheaded. But in the South, you still see Mommas walking into churches with switches. You see Momma's taking their children to the dressing rooms with belts. And it's okay. Everybody knows what that Momma is trying to do. She's trying to raise her children to be productive citizens. And sometimes, they just need a little heat put to their bottoms. As we say in the South 'Sip, "a little heat to the bottom will make the top percolate!"
7. In the South, it's just easy to chill and let it all hang out. I love throwing on last year's fashion with some flip flops and going to the store with no makeup. It's too hot for all that!
8. In the South, you know where you stand. Racism tends to be covert in the North. I love knowing where I stand down here so I don't have to wonder and blame myself for another man's prejudices.
9. The beaches of Texas,Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, New Orleans, Atlanta, Hot Springs, Arkansas, can be reached in a day's drive...sometimes in as little as three hours, depending on your location.
10. In most places, the Spirit is still alive here. Whatever that Spirit is for you, you can always drive to the country and feel it. We still chill real hard in the South. Want an instant party? Put the radio outside, get the coals smoking, and before you know it, somebody shows up with some beer, sodas, dominoes, spades, cigars, and jokes! There's a spirit of unity there...even if a bunch of old women just get together and shell peas on the porch together.

The South is no Utopia. The cities here have many of the same problems and issues of our major Northern Counterparts. But I love this South. I was born in this South. My folks made this South. It's my South, and I can't leave her. I'm staying

Some Things Really Are Priceless, a Response to Taylr Mayd

a. Last week, I tuned in to Taylr Mayd's Chopped and Screwed Show, and I must say, it was hilarious. You can hear it at wwww.chroniccast.blogspot.com. He made me think twice about biting into a fried chicken leg. I'll never do it on camera! Taylr Mayd, in a round-about way, made some very important social commentary concerning stereotypes of Black people, and how the media plays with those stereotypes. Let me leave off here, and I'll come back to that later.

b. Yesterday, Governor Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia declared April Confederate History Month. It can be read in its entirety at http://www.governor.virginia.gov/OurCommonwealth/Proclamations/2010/ConfederateHistoryMonth.cfm. The language is very beautiful. The imagery is heroic. The tale is stuff of legend.

c. Last year, Governor Rick Perry of Texas played to his base by campaigning on the right to seceed from the union. Texas is a sovereign state, he claims, and can seceed from a tyrannical government that would impose its bigness on the great state of Texas.

d. About three decades ago, Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign by talking about states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

The genius of Taylr Mayd's commentary is that he asks a simple question over and over again, "What's up with people giving all this chicken away?" He goes on to ask, "What's up with Black celebrities endorsing stereotypical commercials that feature Black people laughing and singing about chicken?" By now, my very expensive liberal arts education is causing me to sit up and take notice. The chicken, the declaration from yesterday, Rick Perry's crazy secessionist talk, Ronald Reagan kicking off a "states rights" campaign at the site where three Civil Rights workers were brutally slain, these things are very symbolic.

They symbolize the fact that America is definitely not post-racial. America is still steeped in white Supremacist rhetoric and culture. A bunch of Black folks laughing and singing and biting into a juicy fried chicken leg is exactly what white supremacist culture needs to comfort itself in the wake of America electing an Ivy League educated Black man to lead the free world. It is a way, if I may say so, to put Black people, "back in their places" behind the fried chicken counter, Taylr Mayd.

Reading the declaration by Virginia's governor is stunning because it does not mention the long nightmare that lasted over 400 years in a "free" country. Civil War apologists have been touting "states rights" for almost 150 years since the war ended. They simply do not finish the sentence. The war was over "states' rights to enslave other human beings and treat them as chattel property." Rick Perry's secessionist banter, in no way, mentions the over 600,000 dead because rich, Southern planters convinced many poor, white boys that they were better than Africans simply by virtue of their white skin. They neglect to mention that most white people of the South were lower-classed white who were either ignored or scoffed at by the plantocracy. And when the plantocracy lost the war, they had no more time to waste on their poor, white brothers who died to maintain their wealth. Ronald Reagan's bid for presidency, based upon smaller government and "welfare queens," began at the site of one of America's most heinous acts during one of its darkest hours. Taylr Mayd, I think the message is clear.

The state of Texas has even demanded textbooks for innocent school children based on this sanitized version of history. Attending school at Ole Miss, I've met people who were honestly brainwashed enough to cry and become angry when they learn the real truth about the South. I've heard people, barely over 20, scream very fervently that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of all time, and I know damn well they were not even alive when Ronald Reagan served as President! Oh, the horror the horror they experience when they say these things in front of Vietnam veterans and suck up that first ass whipping in the name of Ronald Reagan!

What damage will this type of misinformation do to a new generation? It won't be harmful for the richest 1% of America that propagates lies about itself. It will produce of generation of sheep who vote how they are told, become angry when they are told, and hate who they are told to hate...regardless of the facts.

Taylr Mayd, I have one question for your thoughts: I wonder what would happen if the true builders of the South, my ancestors and your ancestors, begin to fly the Confederate Flag? It should be ours. Our ancestors were killed, raped, and worked to death for it. Would all of these people then yell about tradition and continue to sanitize history?

Some Things Really Are Priceless

"English? English? Shit, I thought you went to school for something. English ain't nothing."

The above quote is the response I get from people 90% of the time when I tell them that I am a Ph.D. candidate in English. In addition to that quote, I work with a gang of Education professors who look upon my graduate work with condescension because, as one Education professor put it, "You never have to do any quantitative studies. You just read and write, and what you all read and write really aren't pragmatic at all." Well, I can't argue with that. Anybody who has ever tried to read Lacan or Spivak knows that the obfuscate nature of their writing is difficult enough to read, let alone apply them to real situations.

It is true that since the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and other hardline conservatives painted humanities and social science professors as a bunch of ex-hippies looking to badly influence students with their Communist-inspired ideology, these majors have been on a steady decline. It seems that everyone who was anyone who went to college ran to the MBA programs. Those who really wanted to major in something that mattered took hardline sciences such as Biology, Physics, or Chemistry in order to obtain entrance into medical or nursing schools. Still others who wanted a quick, guaranteed job after college majored in elementary education. For the most part, by the time I enrolled in college in the late 1990s, people only majored in other Humanities/Liberal Arts courses to help them pass their LSATs and enter into Law School.

Thus, at this late date in the year of our Lord, most people ask me, "What in the Hell did you major in English for?" My answer is simply, "I like to read." Most people do not understand the purpose behind a humanities/liberal arts major because they cannot easily translate these majors into six-figure jobs. Most college undergraduates attend college to make money. The formula goes: 4 years of college + self-deprivation of the college life = big bucks, authority, and prestige upon matriculation. Since the 1980s, fewer and fewer jobs have been awaiting Humanities/Liberal Arts majors -even at the Ph.D. level. The degrees are equally difficult to obtain, since theories relating to human culture are never as simple as even the most difficult calculus equations. Humans just aren't that predictable. The purpose of a humanities/liberal arts education is to expose students to other cultures and other times in the human famiy through art/literature/anthropology/music/theatre/dance/philosophy/psychology/history, etc. And hopefully, along the way, we learn something about ourselves. We learn, through an engaging study of history, that it does not have to always repeat itself, and that people do not fit into neat little labels. But most of all, a degree in the humanities/liberal arts teaches us how to think about our world. LIBERAL ARTS AND THE HUMANITIES TEACHES US HOW TO THINK.

And seriously thinking about problems before we try to solve them really is priceless. If I have any criticism of American culture at large is that it is anti-intellectual. We continue to be the dumb jocks of the world -all muscle and no brain. Our current political discourse encourages all emotion and no reason. Other countries laugh at us because they can. Let me provide some prime and contemporary examples of where more liberal arts/humanities course would help our world reputation.

1. During last year's Presidential election, the Right accused Barack Obama of being a "Muslim/Islamic terrorist," and then proceeded to play clips of a very militant sermon from his long-term pastor, Jeremiah Wright. People were calling and twittering in to various political pundit shows saying how they were afraid of this "Muslim terrorist" who sat in church all of those years and listened to hatred from that antiwhite pastor. Sigh. When was the last a Muslim regularly attended your local churches? I've never known a Muslim to attend a Christian church regularly, seeing as how they have mosque sevices to fill their spiritual needs.

2. Not simple enough for you? Let's look at the healthcare debate. Why should we listen to people who use government/tax-payer funded healthcare tell us that government/tax-payer funded healthcare is bad? In case you don't know, all government workers/Congressmen use government/tax-payer funded healthcare...including Republicans. I was so embarassed for old people when they said, they don't want government-funded healthcare and the government had better not touch their Medicare. I can hear the French and Canadians laughing even in South Mississippi.

3. It's not American to pay taxes, but it is American to send soldiers to foreign countries to take natural resources. If not for taxes, who pays for wars?

4. Somehow, being gay has become a cardinal sin in America, but we're the fattest country in the world. Do I have the only Bible in the world that lists gluttony, not homosexuality, as one of the seven abominations before the Lord?

5. Celebrating Halloween is fine, but Harry Potter is witchcraft? How are the two different?

6. Wow, here's a good one. Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin tell people to watch out for liberal news bias and liberal news agendas. Those poor conservatives are always under threat, even though 91% of all talk radio is conservative talk radio and they have an entire news network devoted to their agenda. I guess the other 9% is REALLY dangerous.

These are just a few examples. I could go on and on. But hey, I'm writing to Americans, and you're tired of reading by now. Thanks for sticking around this long. Think about this, most of our greatest leaders, presidents, and thinkers were liberal arts majors. However, George Bush II had an MBA from an Ivy League school. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, studied in three liberal arts areas before attending law school: Philosophy, Economics, and Political Science. One left a surplus. The other left a deficit. THINK about it.