Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Believe It or Not, Bullying May Come from the Top-Down

In national politics, bullying works. Right now as I write this blog posting Republicans are purposefully tanking our economy. Yes, I said it when the politicians won't. REPUBLICANS ARE DELIBERATELY TANKING OUR ECONOMY. Ever since President Obama placed his hands on that Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, they have done nothing but bully, bully, bully with obstructionism, threats of filibustering, and an absolute refusal to compromise. In fact, they've given the word "compromise" a dirty connotation, and refuse to utter it.

Now, I would never utter such a ridiculous accusation unless I had some substantial theory behind it. Have any of the four people reading my blog ever heard of the term "starving the beast?" This is a political strategy that involves revenues, spending, and taxation. Well, the beast refers to the federal government and the domestic welfare programs it spends money on such as Medicare, Social Security benefits, food stamps, and public schools. During Reagan's time as president teachers, firefighters, and law enforcement were normally excluded from the "beast" category. However, as the country has been pulled further to the right, even they have been lumped in. Now, the way to "starve" this beast is to decrease taxes thereby causing a reduction in revenues for the federal government. A decrease in revenues forces the government to severely cut spending to domestic programs. Without saying so, Republicans have been using this bully tactic to remove President Obama from office and all the while telling us that government workers are the problem and they need to be fired.

Really? How did this country survive the Great Depression? Government spending through providing jobs to millions of unemployment through work relief programs. And every other deep recession that we've experienced has been broken by government stimulus. Republicans in Congress know this. So why are they deploying the "starve the beast" strategy? It is bullying at its covert best. They'd sooner see the whole country return to the times of Herbert Hoover in order to get what they want. The problem with that thinking is, though they're in Congress with a cushy $84/hour salary, they're not immune to their own tactics. Sooner or later it will hit them. And sooner or later, the public will realize that this "starve the beast" strategy raises the deficit.

I wouldn't call this Congress a "do-nothing" Congress. They're very active indeed. They're busy being bullies. Historically, we have seen our economy take drastic downturns when the "starving the beast" strategy is deployed. Currently, the Euro-Zone countries who are practicing similar measures are continuing to face a terrible recession and economic downturns. Republicans know this and being the bullies that they are, continue with their policy so that President Obama will take the blame for the sluggish economy and lose the upcoming election.

But at least we can see them. This country's biggest bullies remains hidden behind the scene quietly driving his "starve the beast" policies, and he has been doing it for the past 30 years. Grover Norquist is founder of Americans for Tax Reform. He is one of the most powerful lobbyists in the world. Over 95% of all Republican lawmakers sign his pledge not to raise taxes (increase revenues), and they remain loyal to that pledge. So, while the rest of us pledge allegiance to the flag and other lawmakers pledge to uphold the Constitution, those lawmakers pledge to Grover Norquist and his idea of what government should be. And these same people accuse Democratic lawmakers of near treason?

And for the most part, Republicans have been getting what they want for the past 30 years. The country has been pulled further and further to the Right since Ronald Regan's presidency. The Republicans go more and more Right and so do the Democrats in the name of compromise. So for the Conservative lawmakers, bullying is a tactic that works. Even President Obama is currently chasing the bullies further and further to the Right as he tries to get anything done. And it's scary. Very scary. Everybody knows that when a bully is validated for his behavior, it becomes much much worse!

Sunday, June 3, 2012

The Collective American Psyche Cannot Understand “Equal” Rights

For the past few months I have been making cultural comments. At this time, I would like to shift focus to American life and how it nurtures and perpetuates bullying. Almost every week we see a young person who has committed suicide because of bullying. I feel that collectively, we are all responsible for those precious lives that were lost. In many ways, the American way of life is liberating. We live in a competitive, supposedly meritocratic society where anybody with dreams, gumption, smarts, and a will to succeed can –well – succeed. That is the dream that America sells its own people as well as the millions who come here every year. In reality, America is driven by a race/sex-based economic system that thrives on exploitation of others at some level. To paraphrase Ishmael Reed, if the motto for Britain is the “sun never sets on the British empire,” in America that motto should be “there’s a sucker born every minute.” Historically, America was built by rebel forces and simultaneous exploitation. The Founding Fathers decried the tyranny of British colonialism while holding Black slaves at home. As Washington crossed the Delaware, some slave prepared for a long day in the fields building the country with manual labor. Following slavery, almost 100 years of Jim Crowism, exclusionary immigration policies, and heavy-handed militaristic tactics with Native Americans, America’s economic system remained meritocratic for some –mainly white men –and oppressive for others –everybody who wasn’t a white man. To date, this unevenness in our wealth distribution as well as our very skewed notion of who should participate equally in our government and economy block any deeper understanding we should have of Civil Rights and equality. In Thomas Jefferson’s Notes, he was very afraid that one day the tides would change and God would punish white people by one day making them the slaves and Africans the masters. I can safely say that during the presidential election, that fear still lingers and was made manifest by the proliferation of disrespectful and violent rhetoric aimed toward this president. I have never in my life witnessed so much disrespect towards the office of the presidency. The white supremacists have come out of the woodwork, and they are armed and dangerous. But I could feel this brewing ever since the 1990s with the arguments over affirmative action. In Americans’ haste to label, fight, and exploit, we boiled affirmative action down to a struggle of hierarchy, and the media stoked that fire. Some media personalities outright said that affirmative action would give minorities –especially Black people –unfair advantages over qualified white people. And when Obama got elected, personalities like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh all but stated that Thomas Jefferson’s worst nightmare had come true! They accused civil rights activists of being reverse racists, and declared that President Obama would seek vengeance for the slaves using the office of the presidency. I have often wondered why Americans simply do not understand the notion of civil rights and equality –especially in a land that boasts of itself as a land of opportunity for all. It is because we cannot think outside of competitiveness and exploitation. The notion that one group simply wants to be on equal footing with the other and not on top does not register in our collective psyche. For instance, most feminists have never requested that women rule the country or that women be in charge of every job. Feminists simply say that if a woman lifts 50 pounds and a man lifts 50 pounds, the woman should be paid the same amount of money and given the same opportunities for advancement. After all, 50 pounds of cotton and 50 pounds of lead weigh the same. However, most conservative men have looked upon this demand for equal pay for equal work as an infringement upon male authority. Here’s another example: African Americans who fought for Civil Rights have never asked that African Americans be given a free pass for committing crime. We’ve only asked that the punishment be meted out equally. Why are Black men frequently given harsher sentences than their white counterparts for the very same crime? African Americans have also never asked that underqualified students be given college admittance and scholarships for subpar work. We’ve asked that qualified students’ application should be reviewed and not immediately thrown in the paper shredder because of the color of their skin.
When it is written out, the notion of equality doesn’t seem too difficult. It almost seems absurd that people have marched, died, and protested for the right to be treated fairly in the land of opportunity. But until Americans understand that not everything in life can be about competitiveness and exploitation, we’ll continue going around and around in a never-ending psychological boxing match for something as decent, simple and grand as equal opportunity.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Gay Marriage? Really Pastors? Part II

On May 17, 2012 the Coalition of African American Pastors had a meeting in Memphis, Tennessee in order to condemn both President Obama and the NAACP for their decision to support gay marriage.

On May 18, 2012 all of the local news stations as well as the national venues broke the story of Desmond Hatchett, a 33-year-old Black man from Knoxville, Tennessee who fathered 30 children. Please see the story on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/desmond-hatchett-30-kids_n_1528850.html. I have one question: where is the church conference on that?

First, as a citizen, I'm concerned for Mr. Hatchett. Anybody who has that many children doesn't seem to mentally stable. What normal person would want that many children? And then to ask the state to be lenient. He wants the state to be lenient when he has behaved recklessly and irresponsible. He wants the state to be lenient when he acts as if he has never heard of a condom or even the withdrawal method. Where is the church conference that would teach this young man that his identity as a man does not lie at the tip of his penis? Where is the church conference that would teach a young man like this what being "head of household" actually means? Where is the church conference that would teach a young man that children are not trophies? And that even if he didn't have a father in the home and was torn apart by that, he should try to be the father he always wished he had and that being a father is about more than being a sperm donor?

Second, as a woman, I'm concerned for the young ladies who would give Mr. Hatchett their bodies and continue to have children with him. Previously, Mr. Hatchett had already asked the state for leniency when he had 21 children. He had nine more in less than a decade. He now has 11 baby-mommas. What about these 11 women? How do they view themselves? Do they think they deserve better than a man who earns minimum wage with a seeming sex addiction? Did they ever stop to think that a man who has so much sex could possibly give them an STD? Where is the church conference that would teach young ladies that they are more than what lies between their legs? Where is the church conference that would teach young ladies to stop viewing and accepting Black men as nothing but dogs? As I was taught, if you lay down with dogs, you get fleas. And if you lay with a dog, what does that make you, my dear? I'll answer. If you are saying that a man is a dog and you lay down with him, you are calling yourself a bitch in heat. Where is the church conference that would teach young ladies differently?

When it comes to homosexuality, I wonder where all of the zeal in the Black church comes from. The case with Mr. Hatchett is a very sad demonstration of the depravity that is eating away at the very souls of young people. Pastors, preachers, and bishops can have all the meetings they want about gay people, but how will their homophobic activism help people like the 11 women who sleep with men like Desmond Hatchett?


 


 

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Gay Marriage Pastors? Seriously? "Proof" of Why Young People are Leaving the Black Church!

Earlier in this year, I posted a very lengthy explanation of why a certain age group is leaving the Black church. Young, Black people simply view the Black church as an ineffective institution bent on sucking in money and keeping people in spiritual bondage. We no longer see the need for it since these megachurches rarely speak on what's really going on in Black communities. People are really hurting. And they are not finding that soothing balm in the pews where our grandparents once found it. This may be hard to read, especially for some older people. But it is the truth. Want "proof" of what I'm writing? Look no further than television. Today, some influential Black pastors are holding a press conference to tell President Obama that they cannot support him on his gay marriage views. Gay marriage? Really? I can name you at least a dozen issues that are ravaging Black communities all across America and to date, the Black churches have been absolutely silent on them. I could do a dozen, but for now I'll limit myself to four. 1. The crack epidemic is now at least 32 years old. What is the Black church's stance on that? We don't know because they never officially took one. Anybody remember that scene in Jungle Fever when Flipper went to find Gator, who was at the Taj Mahal getting high? The crackheads were in there getting high and one lone woman was standing outside preaching ineffectively with her Bible. Remember that? Yeah. Remember how the overly-religious father lost his church once it moved from Georgia to the city, and how he killed Gator because he simply could not deal with Gator's addiction? Remember how he laid the gun in the Bible? This scene is less about the antics of Samuel L. Jackson and more about the Black church's inability to deal with or lack of concern about the new crises facing an urban Black population. While we wait on them to care a new drug, methamphetamines, has replaced crack as the recreational drug of choice. Communities are being destroyed by the violence of drug turf battles and Black families continue to be torn about by drug and alcohol abuse. Where is the support for them? Though there is no crack in the Bible, the Word speaks extensively about the dangers of strong drink. Yet, in my years of attending church, I never heard one sermon about it. 2. The AIDS epidemic is now at least 35 years old. Most Black churches didn't touch it, won't touch it, and still stigmatize people with the disease. Some churches didn't even allow AIDS victims in their congregations, and they remain relatively silent on it to this day. Some still don't allow AIDS victims there. AIDS advocates in the Black communities are really fighting a losing battle. They are trying to get pastors to educate their flocks on AIDS and to allow AIDS advocates to speak to congregations. Though some pastors are finally allowing in the activists, many do not. 3. Why don't Black pastors speak to the rising incidents of domestic abuse in Black communities? Why don't they tell young, Black men that using a fist is not showing love? Why don't they tell young, Black women that receiving love does not involve taking punches? Oh, you know why? Many churches are still involved in placing women in spiritual bondage. They love telling women how they should behave...down to what color lipstick and makeup to wear. They often don't counter this with sermons to men. I wonder why? Oh, because most of the clergy is men while over 75% of the church is women. No wonder the spousal abuse flies under the radar. I've known pastors and deacons personally who beat their wives and then pray and preach as if they are looking Jesus in the face. I could go on and on about this, but I'll just post a link to the Juanita Bynum incident and let that be enough said: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294167,00.html I was really shocked and hurt when church officials, some of them women, blamed her instead of calling out this insecure man on his violent behavior. What's going to be the excuse if he beats his new wife? Who is to blame for the preacher in Arkansas who threw his wife out of a moving car a couple of years back? 4. In 2004, Bush won the state of Ohio with the help of Black pastors. They told their congregations to vote for Bush based on his stance on abortion. Now, I personally believe it's a woman's choice. And I'm also very concerned for the babies and children who are already here and subject to gun violence every day. What about Bush's stance on hand gun control? We don't need any statistics to tell us what communities are affected the most by hand gun violence. Turn on the morning news and get the homicide count with your morning coffee. Every day, I see one or several young Black men killed by one or several other, young Black men. Where is the damn press conference on that? One of my worst fears is that some young, Black man will try to prove his manhood by shooting and killing my son, husband, or my brothers. Nobody should have to live in this kind of fear. Yet, our pastors remain silent on handgun control. Gay marriage? Really pastors? Come again. Picking on gay people isn't solving a damn thing in our communities. It's time you all stop hiding behind the pulpit and the collection basket and do some real social work and try to solve some real problems. I love God. I really do. But I can't stand this hypocrisy!

Monday, May 14, 2012

African Americans Must Learn to Learn

Okay. So the past few postings that I have done have been focused on articulating problems. However, I never like to articulate problems without offering a plausible solution. Since I am a teacher, my solutions usually revolve around teaching. This time, though, it’s different. Today, I believe our solution is to learn and to learn from others. Americans believe in American exceptionalism…that we are somehow special and unique and therefore suitable to teach others. Africans Americans are Americans, and we, too, hold on and cherish our exceptionalism. Americans, African Americans included, do not always take kindly to being led. We are leaders and not followers. We are the teachers and not the pupils. But, as a formerly enslaved population within exceptional America, that attitude of exceptionalism does not always work for us. First, we have been kept horribly ignorant of who we are. Second, America presented itself as a land of plenty to all while denying African Americans and other minorities very little of its abundance. Racism and discrimination created islands of poverty in an ocean of material wealth. Ghettos and Indian reservation that looked like underdeveloped nations existed alongside the suburbs and millionaire’s rows. In creating those conditions, America created peoples who also longed for wealth and material comfort. And nothing is more evident of that than the behavior of African Americans in Detroit before the car industry crashed (that’s a whole other posting). Now, African Americans face many challenges in a global economy that seems to be shrinking. Part of the problem for our crises is that somehow, along the way to material success, we forgot to teach. Nothing is more telling than the food desserts that exist in larger cities where African Americans reside. Most of the people in Detroit are from the South. You mean to tell me that not one person up there knows how to stick a tomato plant or tree collard plant in the ground? There is simply no excuse for this. However, part of our problems can be solved not only by teaching, but by learning to learn from others. Not only can we learn noncriminal survival skills from older African Americans, but we could also stand to learn from other Black and minority populations. For instance, I saw some Fulani women do something amazing. They simply wrapped the baby on their backs in a large piece of cloth and kept on braiding hair. That sure beats the $25 I spent on a baby carrier that hurt my neck because my large baby was pulling me forward. I would like to learn this technique for the next baby I have. I learned to breast feed from an older white woman who proudly told me that she was poor but raised healthy babies. She taught me what herbal supplements to take to make more milk come for my son. From Mexican Americans, I “discovered” that cooking with fresh herbs like cilantro and parsley diminish the need for salt to season food. So, even if we can only afford to buy chicken, we can still prepare it in a healthy manner. From Jamaicans, I learned how to blacken fish, a healthier alternative to frying. African Americans are to begin to solve any of the problems that ail us, not only must we teach, we must humble ourselves and learn from others. We must open ourselves up to fresh ideas to find solutions. We can’t fix new problems with old ways, and cliquing up and excluding others is not the answer, either. When we exclude others, we exclude ideas. And when we exclude ideas, we miss out on enrichment for our own lives.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Patchwork Quilts and Other Cultural Jewels

This post is dedicated to my mother, Dr. JoAnn Nickelberry, and all the other mothers who create works of art for their families. Between your sewing, quilting, cooking, and gardening you all have given me a sense of pride in creativity and confidence in the work of my own hands...

    One of my favorite books is So Long a Letter (1981) by Mariama Ba. In this short little book (less than 100 pages), Ba performs the very difficult task of cultural reassessment. In the book, she looks at all facets of Senegalese life: religion, cultural traditions, marriage, and government. Ramatoulaye, the protagonist, feels that in all facets of life, some things need to be kept and others should be promptly discarded. Anything that impedes the progress of Senegalese women should be discarded; the progress of the country, Ramatoulaye feels, is linked with the progress of its women. For instance, Ramatoulaye does not disdain Islam. She's a very devout Islamic woman. However, she does despise the way the mostly-male religious officials interpret the rules of Islam to benefit an oppressive patriarchal society. She doesn't hate the cultural traditions of Senegalese society. She hates those part of the traditions which declare a woman must be kept ignorant in order to be a good wife, and only certain ranks can marry other ranks…even if it means incest.

    Ramatoulaye's cultural assessment is very difficult work. It comes at the heels of her husband's death –after he totally abandoned her for a younger woman (her daughter's best friend). It is difficult to look at one's own culture and examine it. Quite frankly, most of us never question our own traditions or how we were raised. And at other times, we are so quick to enter into modernity and leave the past behind that we throw away cultural jewels without ever learning the value in them. African Americans have been guilty of the latter. After integration, we were so anxious to climb corporate ladders and amass material goods in America's consumer-driven economy that we left behind priceless jewels in our own culture. For instance, most of our grandparents could take scraps of clothes and make works of art for their families. These patchwork quilts, some of them containing scraps of slaves' clothes, were not only artistic, but practical. For African Americans, art is not something that we go to a museum to see. We live it. We create it. We are art. But no more.

    Because traditional avenues of artistic expression were largely closed to African Americans, we developed our own vernacular: in the way we talked, danced, created music, and wore our hair and clothes. We created America's only original literature (literature which did not imitate European literature); we played African music on European instruments and created new genres of music (jazz, blues, and even country); we harnessed our pain and cried out to God and created a brand of religious music the world had never known (spirituals); we took the scraps from the master's table and created a totally original cuisine (soul food); we didn't have much spare time, but when we did, we danced away our pain and created new forms of physical expression (the cakewalk and jazz dance); and with our homemade clothes and hair dos, told America what was cool and fashionable (Afros and bell bottoms).

    But somewhere, that ended. Rather than producers of creativity, we have become the biggest consumers of globalized sameness. Instead of creating our own worth with our own productivity, we have become ashamed of our mother's sewing machines, and look to department stores, labels, and price tags to tell us what we're worth. And in the process, we've lost some of our greatest art forms. For instance, most people are ashamed to admit they even own patchwork quilts. We haven't passed that artform along to our children and now those quilts have become treasures. On sites such as etsy.com or even amazon.com, a good patchwork quilt costs at least $250, and our grandmothers used to give them to us for free. Has anybody noticed that Generation X and Y have contributed absolutely nothing to the fashion scene? Everything that we do is retro –recycled things from the hey-day of our parents. That's because we are the first generation to grow up without hearing the sound of our mothers' sewing machines whirring in the night as they created for us. Most of our clothes were purchased from department stores. We've missed out on the power and pride of being able to say, "I made that. I produced that from my own mind." We were taught that store-bought is better because it symbolizes economic upward mobility.

    And has anybody ever thought to do a cultural assessment of our churches? It is no secret that even progressive leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. practiced a form of religious patriarchy that was oppressive to women. Civil rights leader Septima Clark had a nasty falling-out with the ordained Baptist minister because he absolutely refused to give her the respect that her age and years in the struggle accorded her. After all, she had been in the struggle years before he was even cognizant of it, but her sex was seen as a barrier for King. He felt that his maleness automatically placed him at the top of the hierarchy and that he had nothing to learn from a woman who was clearly the more experienced of the two. Fast-forward almost 50 years, and we still have these deep-seated gender divisions within African American culture both inside and outside the church. It doesn't matter that many women are just as called and sanctified as a man to preach. Many men and patriarchal women do not respect God's freedom to call a woman to the ministry. They'll tell anybody quickly that God doesn't call women to preach –as if God needs humans to tell Him how to do His job. And because many of us do not question our cultures, we allow these injustices to continue.

    It has been almost 50 years since the passage of most Civil Rights legislation. Since African Americans never stopped to do a cultural assessment like Ramatoulaye, integration and entry into America's consumer economy has devastated and decimated many facets of our culture. In these rough economic times, I think it's best that African Americans around the country take time to do just what Ramatoulaye did: sit down, assess our progress, examine what we consider "progress," seriously look at what may be impeding us as a people from within, and write ourselves "so long a letter." Sometimes, the first step to solving a problem is to acknowledge that we have one and then articulate it.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Are Africans and Black Caribbeans the Latest “Model Minorities?”

Since African Americans have not addressed the psychological chains that bind us, it is easy for the dominant culture to keep playing collective mind games on African Americans and other minorities. Let me explain what I mean. Briefly after slavery in the New World –North and South America and the Caribbean archipelago –many governments encouraged emigration from East India and other Asian countries like China, Vietnam, and Japan. In some places, especially in the Caribbean islands, these new immigrants were given contracts for their work whereas freed Black slaves were not. The new immigrants were given pieces of land and were allowed to open businesses that served mostly Black communities. These things were denied to most newly-freed slaves. In the Mississippi Delta, many Asian people were also allowed to vote and send their children to majority white schools –two things denied to Delta's large Black population.

In exchange for their privileged minority status, many Asians and Indians were told simply to work, earn money, get a good education for your children, shut up, and above all, don't mix with Black people socially. And in many places, this worked. However, it often created tense situations in these communities: Indians and Asians stayed away from Black people socially. Newspapers like the Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tennessee dangled images of industrious Asian populations before African Americans as if to say, "Why can't you be more like these people? They know how to work for peanuts and shut up" (I'm not sanctioning this. I've always said that instead of punishing immigrants, we should craft policies that would go after and punish those businesses who routinely hire, abuse, and underpay them).

Meanwhile, especially in the United States, Africans were not allowed. African Americans and other Black populations could not travel to Africa, either (especially during the Cold War). Once the immigrants got here, however, Black Caribbeans and African Americans did not experience much tension. As a matter of fact, many of the people who we think of as African American activists had West Indian backgrounds: for example, W.E.B. DuBois, Stokely Carmichael, and Marcus Garvey (DuBois's and Carmichael's parents were from the West Indies and Garvey was from Jamaica). During Jim Crow and segregation ALL Black people in the United States experienced the same oppression. Those people from Africa and the Caribbean, many of them living under colonialism, experienced direct white racism for the first time in the United States. Black Caribbean writers like George Lamming and C.L.R. James wrote about it. They began to make connections between the situation in the United States and their colonial states at home. They eagerly joined their African and African American brothers and sisters in the fight for equality for Black people the world over.

That was BEFORE the Civil Rights Movement. Post-Civil Rights Movement…what in the Hell happened? It seems that African Americans hear a type of condescension coming from our African brothers and sisters that quite frankly chaps my ass. I get so tired of hearing about how we African Americans waste our opportunities and how we are lazy, dumb, and ignorant. What is even more insulting is they don't even seem to know anything about us our struggles. Nor do they want to. Most of the Africans and Black Caribbeans who come here arrive with their eyes wide shut, and make no effort to talk with African Americans on a more intimate or academic level. They let it be known that we're not their brothers and sisters. I once went into a braiding shop where I tried to speak to the young lady who was braiding my hair, and she ignored me. I have never been back and for now, I refuse to patronize any African or Dominican shop. They don't respect me so why should I hand them my damn money?

For our part, we shun our Africanness and can be really rude to African and Black Caribbean brothers and sisters. We often make fun of Africans, talk about how they smell, and ask them silly questions about wrestling tigers and running around Africa naked. Most of us thank God we're not African and we proudly say that we're not African. Often, we don't understand that our Caribbean brothers and sisters have color issues. Period. It's nothing personal against African Americans. Most of us have never heard of the Parsley Massacre, and we certainly don't know of Puerto Rico's long and twisted history concerning Black people. And when African Americans think of slavery and suffering, we want to be unique. We ignore the brutality of slavery in Panama or Jamaica, and are completely unaware that slavery lasted in Brazil until 1889. We suffer from American exceptionalism and refuse to hear anybody else's story.

Now, I'm not writing this to start anything. ALL SIDES ARE WRONG! There's a divide and conquer strategy at work here, and after centuries of enslavement and second-class citizenship, we can't see it. Sadly, many of these tensions begin with ignorance. What do most African Americans know about Africa? Years after the end of the Civil Rights Movement proper, we know less about Africa than our parents. And where do Africans and West Indians see stereotypes of African Americans? The same place other folk learn them from: tv. On television, America is shown as the land of opportunity. If African Americans are not rich, it's our own fault. For some reason, tv fails to mention poverty in America or its long history of discrimination.

Before many African and Caribbean groups come here, they are often required to take an orientation class. Various organizations offer these classes and material is available at websites such as http://www.cal.org/co/index.html. These videos and classes teach groups, before they enter the United States, how to be good American citizens: make money, work hard for less money than your African American counterpart, get a good education for your children, stay away from American politics, and shut up. They also show them the types of citizens they don't want to be. Take a wild guess at what ethnic group is shown as undesirable for imitation.

Sadly, divide and conquer is very effective. Instead of Black beauticians learning the blow-out technique from the Dominicans, they say we shouldn't patronize their shops. Instead of many African braiders and Caribbean beauticians actually getting to know more about the African American clients they serve, they don't say anything to us. Even in my personal life, when I tried to explain some African American history to an African from the Ivory Coast, she said I was being negative. So, here we are in the 21st century divided. And as long as we're divided, we'll always be conquered. Will I ever patronize African or Caribbean businesses or beauty shops again? Maybe. But right now, I'm just nursing my hurt and wondering why Black people can't do something as simple as talk to one another and share our expertise.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Watch Your Mouth


 

When I was little, and someone would insult me, I was taught to say, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Well, if that wasn't the biggest lie. Words do hurt. And long after the bones heal up and the bruises disappear, the hurt and pain inflicted upon me by words linger. As a matter of fact, I still feel the pain from certain things that have been spoken to me, no matter how much I try to "get over it" and move on. The fact is, words do hurt us as individuals, and as a collective body.

In my African American literature class, somebody always makes the statement, "Man, I couldn't be no slave. It was more of us than them. How could folk just let themselves be slaves?" First, I tell my students that it is very dangerous to judge the past based on present-day standards. Second, while African Americans have done a wonderful job of attacking the external injustices of slavery and racism, we have NEVER attacked the psychological. Not only have we failed to addressed the psychological, we don't even mention it. The chains that bound slaves were not that strong, but certain slave narratives describe the psychological horrors and traumas which kept them enslaved.

If we recall, the case Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas was won on a psychological test case. Lawyers presented little Black girls with two dolls: one white and one Black. The little girls overwhelmingly responded that the little white doll was prettier and just all-around better than the Black boy. Though this evidence was used to win the case, actual work to reverse this type of thinking was never done. So, we had the 1970s where we said it out loud, "I'm Black and I'm proud." We had bell-bottoms, Afros, dashikis, and African-inspired names. But, there was no real work behind all of that, and all of it boiled down to nothing but a few catchy phrases, a new Hollywood movie industry, and fashion fads.

Fast-forward to the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and we're right back where we started from psychologically. Every day, young, Black people say things to indicate that we're still shackled mentally by the chains of slavery. For instance, I went to an all-Black elementary and high school, and the children teased me about my "soup-cooling" lips from kindergarten to senior year. And looking back, I can't help but wonder where these Black children learned so much self-hatred. Even when I'm teaching at the community college, I still hear statements like, "She's pretty cute for a dark-skinned girl." Well, that's what the mouth says. What the world's ears hear is, "By default, all dark-skinned people are ugly, but since this girl looks good, she's an exception to the rule."

One of my students even "testified" in class that she had to go to court because another girl vandalized her car. The girl painstakingly etched in the words, "Pretty Bitch," "White girl," and "Bitch" into my student's car. According to my student, once inside the courtroom, the judge asked this girl what would possess her to do such things. The girl replied, "She think she better than us. She's trying to be white." If I had a quarter for every time I've heard that, I'd be a millionaire. When African Americans try to change our lives, or to better our economic situation, we get charged with being "bourgeoisie" or "acting white." So, that's what the mouth say. What the world's ears hear is, "By default, white people are better than us, so when we try to better ourselves, we aspire to whiteness." Or, "Acting a like a low-class trollop signifies Blackness, so when I act as if I have some home-training with common manners, that signifies whiteness."

The last two and the ones which chap my ass the most are "good hair," and the way we use the word, "Black." When we say "good hair," many of us mean that our hair resembles that of Europeans. But in order for something to be "good," another thing must be "bad," and the "bad" in this case is African-textured hair. Just because the hair is not straight or is more like yarn than silk, we label it as "bad." As a consequence, African Americans are the only people in the world who have a label for the hair God gave us. The chemically altered hair has become our default. To wear our hair the way God intended is considered out of the norm, so we have a label called "natural." We are the only ethnicity who have labeled hair products for "natural" hair. We are the only people in the world who use our skin color as an insult. We all grew up hearing stuff like "Get your Black ass in here." One common insult in my hometown is, "Black bastard," or "Black dog." I have never heard Asian Americans tell their children to get their yellow asses somewhere or call someone a yellow bastard. Just us.

Because America does not value the lives of Black men, neither do we. Yes, the Trayvon Martin case is a tragedy, but I'm upset any time a young, Black man is shot in the street. Why does the color of the finger pulling the trigger have to be white for us to care and get upset? Last week, Chicago had 40 homicides, most of them Black men. If we don't care about our lives, why should anybody else value them?

How could I make such a broad assessment? I've already demonstrated to you. The language that we use speaks volume. And it says to me and all who listen with the mind's ear that African Americans are psychologically stuck on the plantation. When I hear such insults and read such stories as the one in Chicago, I think it's safe to say that we never left…at least that's what our mouths say. And the sad part is, my students tell me all the time, "You thinking on it too deep. We don't think about it that deep." I always respond, "Maybe that's the problem. We're not thinking before we speak."


 

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Republican Political Strategy Hinges upon the Ignorance of Their Voters


 

What is Socialism? What is a social conservative? What is a fiscal conservative? Are social liberals and economic liberals one and the same? What is Fascism? What is regulation/deregulation? Are tax policies and a budget one and the same? What are entitlements? What is discretionary spending? What is Dodd-Frank?

To the five people who read my posts, I know those questions sound a bit elementary. What's even more elementary is that I can't tell you what any of it means in a simple sentence. I'd have to sit down, have a few drinks, give a brief history lesson, complete with examples, and hash out paragraph-long dictionary definitions as well as political science ones. In short, there is no way we could understand these concepts without an in-depth discussion. We darn sure wouldn't learn these things from a five-minute campaign speech.

That's okay, because what I'm seeing in this very long, excruciating Republican primary is that Republican candidates really depend upon our ignorance. They often conflate entitlements with socialism, and social conservatism with fiscal discipline. Actually, these are false relations, and nothing is further from the truth. The people who are the most socially conservative are actually the most economically liberal. They believe in social conservatism, but want a laissez-fare economy. So, it is actually okay to regulate what kinds of birth control women get, but not a Republican policy to regulate the companies which make the birth control pills. Sounds crazy? Even hypocritical? That may be true, but it's one of the many examples of how conflated the political rhetoric actually is, and how confusing it can be to disentangle it.

Fiscal conservatives, however, believe in regulating the markets, and not letting them run free. We must regulate for the safety of our citizens. These people are also more than likely support freedom for individual's personal choices, and stay away from social issues like women's birth control pills. Again, sounds confusing? These are the tenets of the Democratic Party.

I heard a Romney supporter say this morning that they're going to have to appeal to more social and fiscal conservatives. Does she mean they need to appeal to more Tea Party members and liberal Democrats? Republican rhetoric is so confusing, that sometimes even they get crossed up. For instance, Republicans speak of taxes as a way to stimulate the economy. What they give us is a tax plan. This is not an economic platform, but they conflate the two so much that even their base does not know the difference. Trust me, I've painfully sat through Fox and Friends.

Here's my concern: where are the smart Republicans who will ask them to clarify themselves? Who will ask the Republican Party to stop treating their voters like idiots? I'm guessing that no one would risk the challenge to Rush Limbaugh, first. And second, it just wouldn't be good tv.

 

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Being Reactionary Isn’t Exactly Solving the Problem

On September 20, 2006, a report aired on abc, which is still available at www.abcnews.go.com that detailed how people's resumes that contained "Black-sounding" names were promptly discarded –no matter how qualified the applicant. What was Black people's response? I distinctly remember picking up a Commercial Appeal, and reading a Black opinion columnist who suggested that Black people should stop naming their children such ghetto-sounding, ethnic names. That seemed to be the general, reactionary, solution to the problem among Black people in the Memphis area. When I started showing in my pregnancy, people would casually walk up to me and say, "Be sure to name your child something white so he can get a job when he grows up." And in anger, I would respond, "I'm fool enough to believe that his father and I did not make all of those sacrifices to become an electrical engineer and a Ph.D.-level, respectively, for my son to have to go begging white folk for a job in 25 years." People could not understand my anger, because they thought they were giving me helpful, though unsolicited, advice.

Here was my thought process on this. Every day, I see people from other countries with Arabic, Latino, East Indian, Samoan, and etc. names. Nobody asks those groups to change their names so that they may obtain better employment. Yet, due to discrimination and also America's long history of taunting African Americans with the "model minority," they can get better jobs and small business loans than the average African American who is out there really struggling to make upward, vertical economic advancement. It is assumed that someone with the last name Ly is simply smarter, and therefore, more deserving of college admission and scholarships than Jamal Anderson.

Now, I'm not writing this to start animosity between Asians and African Americans. The story of Jeremy Lin demonstrates that stereotypes and "fixed pie" mentality can be harmful to many groups. The current animosity between Africans and African Americans or Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans demonstrates the effective nature of divide and conquer discourse. What I am trying to say is that there is something wrong with our system. There is something terribly wrong in a place where a name gets a resume shredded before even reading it. And simply changing names won't fix those kinds of deep-seated biases and prejudices. If not a name, it would be something else.

About 100 years ago, it was skin color and hair texture. White employers, at the turn of the century, would rather hire olive-colored European immigrants who could not speak English than ex-slave African Americans. The solution: Madame C.J. Walker and her line of hair straighteners and skin bleaching creams. Go back and look at old issues of an Ebony precursor, Colored American Magazine, which is available online with a quick Google search. Read the advertisements. You will find that African Americans began straightening their hair and bleaching their skin for the same reasons why people say we should name our children "white-sounding names," for upward economic mobility. Did it work? Hell no. But it did create the first Black millionaire in America and begin a process of making straight hair in the African American communities the norm.

But, in the wake of a horrific tragedy, I have gained a sense of hope about African Americans. Trayvon Martin was shot down in February 2012. His shooter alleges that he looked threatening simply because he was a young, Black man who wore a hoodie. African Americans are outraged, and rightfully so. African Americans and Americans in general are screaming that a teenager shouldn't be dead simply because he wore something to keep the wind off his head. In years past, African Americans would have advised one another to simply stop wearing hoodies so that we appear less threatening. But this time, it is different. This time, African Americans realize that it is not us who need to change, but the system of racial profiling and discrimination that would allow someone like George Zimmerman to gun down a young, Black man without even being arrested. So, African Americans have come out in their hoodies, screaming for a change to the system, and demanding justice for the family of this young man. There is growth at last, but I'm very, very sorry that a young man had to die for us to reach this point.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Problems are Solved beneath the Surface

For the past two postings, I've talked about problems within respective African American communities in our churches and in our schools. However, I don't like to talk about a problem without offering a solution or even multiple solutions. One major solution to a myriad of problems in respective African American communities is to simply care about things that go beyond our surface vision.

As a minority group in a very wealthy country, I most certainly understand why African Americans would be attracted to seemingly unending material wealth of white Americans. I can most certainly understand how all of the legal and extralegal attempts to deny African Americans access to that material wealth would endow it with something like holy characteristics. I can understand how typically poor people, as a group, would think something like, "If I could just get out of this ghetto and go over to the suburbs in the nice homes where white people with all of their money live, I'll be somebody." I can understand how we would think something like, "I have a college education, a nice home in the suburbs, and two cars. I'm equal standing with white folk. That means I'm somebody now." I understand that.

And so, like most immigrants to the country, Black people have been sold on the American Dream –lock, stock, and barrel. Ever since the earliest slave narrative accounts, we have been trying to gain the material wealth that our free slave labor helped to create. We've struggled. We've strived. We've marched. We've protested. We've demonstrated. We've moved. We've spend. We've killed, and we've died. We've applied a pound of topical ointment to a gaping wound when just a gram of caution would have prevented that in the first place. In short, like most Americans, we've become surface dwelling creatures. We hope for material things and quick, visible improvements while failing to study and strategize for longer, often unseen, real change for the better.

Even African American faith, which is supposed to be the strongest in the world, is fastly becoming based on what we can see. For example, every day I see little girls wearing clothes that are much too mature, carefully manicured nails, shoes with little hills on them, bangles, and hairstyles complete with weave. These little tweenies easily best me, and I'm in my early 30s. Yet, I hear parents continue to tell little girls that they cannot wear red because red is the spirit of Jezebel. So, it's okay for them to wear those revealing clothes, sometimes as early as elementary school, and show the world their half-naked asses as long as those skimpy clothes are not red…..Our girls are walking around looking like little video vixens, but they're not wearing red! And I don't even want to talk about the people who tell me to dress up for church so that I can show how the Lord has blessed me. Oh! My! God! I told this one lady that I spend less money on clothes so that I can give more of my money to charity. That's how I show how the Lord "done blessed me." That's also what God commanded Moses to do. God said He would bless Moses so that he could be a blessing to others: not to go out and buy an Armani suit.

Many efforts to establish much-needed ministries in churches never get off the ground. As adults, we become embroiled in battles over who's going to get what credit for any positive improvements a ministry may produce. In many African American communities, there are churches on every corner. Yet, the churches cannot work together for the good of the community because pastors scramble over the spotlight and possible new additions to their congregations. There is no ministry without some sort of personal motivation for surface credit and added dollars to the collection plate.

Even in our schools, we dwell at the surface. First, we need to learn about the licensing systems of the schools in our communities. Most poor school districts, whether they are urban or rural, license teachers in a way that saves the district money. This is not the best thing for our students. And then, when our schools fail, we want to see improvements. Next, as parents, we rely on standardized test scores to tell us how well our teachers are teaching like most Americans. We look at the child's report cards, and according to what it says, figure everything is okay. We never visit the schools to check out the quality of instruction or even the conditions of the school grounds. We only show up when our children are in trouble, and even then, in some places, it's hard to get parents to take time off their jobs to come check things out. Many schools offer open houses, and maybe one or two parents may show at the last minute.

African Americans can do better than this. We used to do better than this. My mother has told me many stories about how the older people who populated the world of her childhood could not even read, but if the children stumbled over a word when reading aloud, the older people would "lick" them with a switch. Even if the teachers abused their powers, these illiterate and semi-literate people still went "over to the school to see 'bout they children."

I've heard over and over again about how the churches would get together and have competitions, church outings, and youth activities. One of the funniest stories I ever heard was about an usher board competition, and how the ministers swelled with pride as their usher boards showed their discipline and skill. I've heard how some of the deacons would get together and talk to a wayward husband about his lack of compassion for his wife and family. I was told that it was always up to that young man to straighten up, but if he didn't it wasn't because he didn't know how.

Am I saying that everything in the past was a utopia or some kind of paradise? No. What I am saying is that our lives today are comparably less morally and spiritually rewarding, but more materially comfortable than yesteryear because somewhere along the way, we ceased to look beyond the surface of material gain and care.


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

 

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Lack of Teacher Respectability in African American Communities

One of the successes of the Civil Rights Movement was its ability to convince the world that racism affected African Americans on even the most intimate levels. It gave the world a view into the real consequences of white supremacist patriarchal discourse on an entire people within a supposed free and democratic nation.

One of the failures of the Civil Rights Movement was that it was very outwardly-focused. During this time of seismic political and cultural change, African Americans should have looked within our culture and made a critical assessment of it. Some things should have been kept, while the things that impede our social, moral, cultural, and economic growth should have been discarded. This is why I love the book, So Long a Letter by Miriama Ba. This letter-form novel takes a view of Senegalese culture, and does that very hard assessment.

With that said, nothing displays this lack of critical self-assessment outside of the church like the current sorry state of education within African American communities. Teaching used to be one of the most respected professions an African American could aspire towards; it was one step below the calling to preach, and was almost seen as divinely inspired. Now, it is a joke. It's something you do if you want a guaranteed paycheck and a two-month vacation. Parents cuss teachers out, sometimes physically attack them, and all-around just don't give a damn about what's going on in the schools (Keep in mind I'm being very general here. I know that I sound like I'm stereotyping Black parents, but for explanation's sake, please hear me out).

And for once, I am not blaming Baby Boomers for this. Oh, no! That honor belongs to the generation before them. From California to Detroit to my hometown of Centreville, Mississippi to New Orleans, I have heard the horror stories. For instance, a Baby Boomer recently told me about a particular high school here in the Memphis area. If a young lady tried out for the dancing doll team, no matter how skilled or talented she may have been, if her skin color was too dark, then the coaches wouldn't pick her. Another Memphis alumnus told me of how the officials at her school mistreated a young lady who could sing. She could have been one of the most talented singers this country has ever seen; yet, she never led a song in her school choir because the teachers there and the choir director said she was too dark to represent the school.

Many people in our area heard of the terror unleashed on the county by one teacher, I'll call her Mrs. Pompous. When the Baby Boomers attended school, it was school policy that pregnant girls could not attend school (no such policy existed for the boys who got the girls pregnant. He could continue his education while the child's mother faced shame and expulsion). I was told that Mrs. Pompous reveled in putting pregnant girls out of school. Even if it were graduation day, and a girl were not showing, if Mrs. Pompous found out, she'd pull a girl out of the line, embarrassing the girl and her whole family in front of the entire community.

Mrs. Pompous's reign of terror didn't stop there. The Baby Boomer generation was one of the last generations to actually secure decent jobs with their high school diplomas. Many employers used the comments made by students' teachers to verify things such as good deportment. If Mrs. Pompous did not like a student or a student's parents, she'd simply write something unflattering on the student's record, ensuring that that student would never get a decent job in that area; thus, many Baby Boomers had to move away to bigger cities to secure employment.


 

Even though the Baby Boomers had many, many excellent teachers who were called into the profession and truly cared about their students, teachers like Mrs. Pompous simply seemed drunk on power. I asked one Alabama man, who is now deceased, why Black teachers had so much power and why they were allowed to truly terrorize the population in some communities. He sadly responded, "Most of our parents couldn't read and write, and almost all our school boards was white. So, what the teacher say went 'cause our parents just ain't want to argue with them, and what did the white folk at the school board care?" So, when the Baby Boomers began to have children, of course the memories of teachers like Mrs. Pompous lingered, and parents looked for any signs of abuse of their children. In fact, one woman from North Mississippi heatedly remarked to me, "If them teachers even thought about treating my children like we was treated, I'd be all over that ass like a hornet's nest. I'm glad they didn't touch my baby or talk down to them. I was always ready to whip some teacher ass!"

This woman's response is a classic and human example of what happens when rampant abuse, even within our own communities, goes unchecked. The failure of the Civil Rights Movement concerning education was that our parents and grandparents (and bless them for their efforts), pushed mightily for integration in education without moving toward improving education in our own communities. We didn't check that abuse or try to improve literacy in our own communities. And even after the enforcement of school desegregation, many Black school districts remained majority-Black school districts with the same teachers in place like Mrs. Pompous. Is it any wonder, then, that parents took matters in their own hands?

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Why a Certain Age Demographic is Leaving the Black Church

Let me make this clear: I love God. I was raised in the church. My mother's side of the family were staunch Baptists, and my father's side were staunch Christian Methodist Episcopalians. I was raised working in the church; I was in the youth department, and on the cleaning and kitchen committees. There's nothing wrong with scrubbing toilets in the name of Jesus. And I often tell people that I wouldn't be the vivacious person that I am if it were not for my youth directors. They were young, beautiful women who loved ALL children. All children were important, and every child participated in special programs equally. They, along with that entire community, rallied around the youth department and took pride in us.

Now, as a 30-something-year-old, I'm asking, what in the Hell happened? As a young adult, I have tried to work with various churches to help the youth. Lord knows they need it. But, having grown up for most of my life hearing that people in my age group are just a lost generation and how we have no respect for anybody, including God Himself, the churches were where I experienced the most disrespect from my elders and witnessed some of the most petty, childish behavior in my life. Talk about disrespect? I've been to many churches and seen people way older than me text messaging, whispering and elbowing one another, openly scowling at other members, and playing games on the cell phone while the minister was up talking. And when things did try to get done, efforts usually devolved into who was going to get credit. So, I've decided never to try to accomplish any kingdom building inside what is supposed to be God's house again. From now on, I'm taking my efforts to various community centers. It's sad to say, but God's house is no longer the place where young people should go in order to give or receive help.

There are many people in my age demographic, the 18-40 group, who are turning their backs on God's house. First of all, though this is flawed, we think church is optional anyway. Most of us can read, and we see church on television. Why wake up on Sunday morning and go to the fashion show? Second, in many cities, churches have become social aid and pleasure clubs. This is why a city like Memphis has more churches than gas stations; everybody's splintering off into social aid and pleasure clubs, and it seems that every pastor wants some kind of glory. It's so amazing that even churchfolk can't see Satan's first and most effective strategy is to divide and conquer. If a neighborhood has twenty churches, why can't five of them get together and work for the good of the community?

And here's my big third. Many people my age still have parents who fought hard for civil rights and respectable treatment. They remember a time when no matter how old a Black man and woman was, they were addressed as "boy" or called by their first names. The church was really the only place where Black men and women could receive the respect their age and wisdom commanded. My parents' generation fought to end that, and I am proud to say that I am a benefactor of that struggle. But, how could our parents have known about the petty office politics, codified racism and sexism, and silly Baby-Boomers who refuse to retire but stay on the job and pick on younger people? I understand the fear of becoming irrelevant, but come on AARP members.. All week long, we watch a bunch of our peers and older people at our respective jobs act as if they are 13. They keep petty mess going from Monday through Friday, calling endless useless meetings about useless things, and loading down our in-boxes, mailboxes, and office cubicles with stupid memos about things as small as popping gum or wearing the wrong kind of shirt to an off-site job. Then there's the sh*t-sniffing, Uncle Tom brown-noser who can't wait to steal our ideas and stab us in the back.

By the time we get to church on Sunday, we've had it. And when we run into that same kind of behavior in the churches, we turn right around and walk out of the door. We put up with reprobates at our respective jobs because we have to. But we'll be doggone if we spend what is supposed to be God's day in God's house with reprobates who say they love the Lord and continue to scream shout and dance like they love the Lord but who act un-Godly while not even attempting to do God's work. If we spend Monday through Friday with reprobates, we damn sure deserve a couple days away from them to regroup, and that means walking off from the reprobates in the church as well just to keep our sanity.

Now, we're grateful that our parents fought and broke that glass ceiling for us to enter into corporate America. We're grateful that our parents wanted to have good homes in good neighborhoods so that our children will have a fighting chance. I'm grateful. But I'm also saddened that the competitiveness and dog-eat-doggedness of corporate America, and the one-up-manship of the suburbs have entered and ruined God's house.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

White Flight and Black Followers

For the first time in its history, Hattiesburg,Mississippi is experiencing the phenomenon of white flight. In its past, Hattiesburg was a small college city which could boast of producing an NFL quarterback. It is home to the University of Southern Mississippi and Brett Favre. Since Hurricane Katrina, it is also one of the fastest growing cities in America. African Americans as well as whites have been moving into Hattiesburg in rapid numbers, swelling the small city at its seams.

As with any influx of new people, some of the old guard of Hattiesburg have decided to move to the outskirts of the city. They are running to a smaller suburb called Oak Grove, Mississippi. These mostly white people move, taking their children and their tax dollars out of the city and its school system.

Normally, in these situations, Black middle class members tend to follow their white counterparts. If the white people move to the suburbs, we also move there, automatically thinking that the what's contained in the suburbs is somehow magically better than what we already have in our own neighborhoods. Their schools somehow educated better. Their neighborhoods are somehow cleaner. Their houses somehow house better. Their stores magically have better clothes. Their grocery stores somehow have better food. So, we take our much-needed dollars and revenue outside of our neighborhoods, too for better, better, better. Everywhere is better than our own neighborhoods.

This is why we follow white people into the suburbs. This leads to ghettoization and impoverishment of Black neighborhoods. We cease to care about our own schools and making them better with the assumption that if we can just get to the suburbs, everything will be all right. We allow people to throw garbage on our grounds while keeping the suburbs pristine. We allow all types of criminal elements into our neighborhoods without so much as picking up the phone to call the police. And the worst part is, the children become miseducated because no one has any educational standards that they care about; thus, a cycle of poverty begins that is almost impossible to break.

But, and this is a big but, I am so proud of the people of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Instead of abandoning their own neighborhoods to follow the white folk out to Oak Grove and Petal, they have decided to stay in the city proper. Instead of abandoning their own school system, they are steadily investing in it. They are steadily recruiting the best teachers they can find from the surrounding universities. And even though it is now a majority-Black district, it remains one of the best educational districts in the United States.

I think Hattiesburg, Mississippi can be a model in resisting the ghettoization that follows white flight. Instead of following white populations, thinking that what they have is somehow inherently better than what we have in our own neighborhoods, we should focus on improving our neighborhoods and our own schools.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Sometimes Race is Just a Smokescreen

As a politician, how would you go before thousands of poor/working class white voters and say, "Even though most of you all don't have insurance or access to quality healthcare, I'm going to repeal and/or block any legislation which will help you to buy/purchase/receive quality medical care?"

How would you tell poor/working class white people, "Even though you are already struggling financially, I'm going to increase your taxes so that you pay even more while giving my campaign contributors, who may be your bosses, a tax break and they will pay taxes at a rate lower than yours?"

How would you tell poor/working class white people, "We need to start and fight endless wars, put boots on the ground all over this globe and use only your kids to do that?"

How would you tell poor and/or working class white people, "I know the economy is terrible, but I'm going to make it even more terrible by allowing our businesses to take more manufacturing jobs to China and everything in your house, from your toilet seat to your calendars to your forks and spoons to you television to your clothes to the mini-American flag which you are now waving will read, 'Made in China'?"


As a politician, how would you campaign on these things? Even though this is the reality of Republican politics and economic platforms, how do they win elections by saying these things to their majority-white voters? The answer is you don't. They use a smokescreen instead. And the favorite smokescreen of choice is Black people.

Since the beginning of the Republican primary process, politicians like Gingrich and Santorum have used that old reliable smokescreen of telling their poor/working class white audiences, in so many words, "Black people. Black people are the reason why this country is suffering...Black people with their food stamps and socialized medicine and single-parent homes are draining the wealth and resources of this country...Black people! Black people! Black people and not middle-age rich white guys like me who are actively shaping the real class warfare by redirecting wealth up to the richest 1% of the country. It's those damn Black people. They are the ones who are sucking up the resource while every white person in America, white people like us, is productive and working hard and taking advantage of the free enterprise system. We're not the ones accepting handouts. We're not the ones getting wealthy off tax breaks, it's only the Blacks."

As an African American who currently owes a gazillion dollars in student loans as I struggle to obtain a Ph.D., I should be outraged. I should be shouting to the top of my lungs, but I am not. I understand this: race is a Republican smokescreen. To play dog whistle politics, to employ the type of rhetoric which blames one group for the entire country's misfortune, is to deploy tactics which ensure that the public willing consents to their own exploitation. Playing dog whistle politics and securing plenty of votes by them is to assure the wealthiest 1% that their fortunes are safe, and they don't have to contribute their fair share. Playing dog whistle politics assures the warhawks that they can start not one, but two wars, and their children will be safe and secure, and won't be risking their lives. Let the working class children pull the country's load, as long as we keep saying, "The Blacks! The Blacks! The Blacks," They won't mind.

I'm just sitting back, observing it all, and wondering why more poor/working class whites aren't mad as Hell that their politicians are playing them like chumps or using scare tactics. It seems that, as poor/working class whites who sometimes have even less than their African/Latino American counterparts, they'd one day wake up and smell the smoke-filled coffee. But, maybe not soon. The scare tactic....the tendency of Republican candidates to yell, "The Blacks are coming! The Blacks are coming!" has been working since the days of Barry Goldwater. And it looks like it may work one more time.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

What If and the World War II Generation

Lately, I've been down and out by what I see from the Baby Boomer Generation and from my own generation, Generation X. Collectively, we are the most selfish, self-serving, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing people the world has ever known.

As the grandchild of a World War II veteran, I have nothing but love and respect for my grandfather's generation, the World War II generation (The Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation combined). They endured the Great Depression before travelling thousands of miles overseas to fight evil in segregated units before returning home to Jim Crowism down South and redlining and Gerrymandering up North. Having seen the horrors of war, they faced lynching and death at home in order to agitate for better housing and education for their children, sparking the modern day Civil Rights Movement as we know it.

They elected the last Republican to balance the budget, Dwight Eisenhower, invested in infrastructure, and sent their children into the lion's mouth in order to desegregate schools. The World War II generation gave us Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and Ralph Abernathy. They endured much, sometimes sacrificing their lives, and they did it all without asking for thanks and praise. They also produced the Baby Boomer Generation, one of the most selfish group of people the world has ever seen. The Baby Boomers in turn gave us Generations X and Y: the high tech, spoiled, disrespectful, microwave generations who seem to care nothing for the world around them.

As a member of Generation X, I definitely have a legitimate beef with the Baby Boomer generation. Not with everyone, but as a collective. Here's my beef: Baby Boomers offer us legitimate criticism, but no teaching. My grandfather was a harsh old man. He called us variations of the word fool that I still haven't figured out yet (what does "starnated" mean anyway). But after his anger subsided, he always showed us a better way. Though he only had an eighth grade education, he was an excellent teacher. He used parables, every day situations, stories, and riddles (sometimes his belt, too) to get his point across.

As for our parents, the Baby Boomer generation, most of them were too busy breaking the glass ceiling for teaching. Yes, like my grandfather's generation before them, there was criticism abound, but no follow-up. So, we got called "starnated fools" by our parents as well, but many of us were not taught. Whereas my grandfather listened to our little crappy kid complaints and offered advice, the Baby Boomer generation ignored us. They were always too busy, and our problems were never big enough for them to be concerned about.

Now, these same Baby Boomers are still ignoring the now 30+ Generation X'ers. Many of us have careers, graduate degrees, families, and problems of our own. But who cares, asks the Baby Boomers? We ain't been through Jim Crow or had to help out with the share cropping or never had to use an outhouse, so what are we whining about? Even as they call us a "Lost Generation," they selfishly chase away the few of us in church and in higher education who are trying damn hard not to be lost. What? Let some young fool come in and steal their position of authority or their moments of shine. What? Retire and go home and be old and become irrelevant? Hell No! Not the Baby Boomers. Forever youthful, they're still working (some have to because they simply cannot afford to retire. Others simply don't want to be old). They are now in charge. They run our dilapidated schools, our broken government, and our inadequate social programs.

They failed to teach, but trained us to be consumers. They wanted us to have careers, but taught us to devalue life. What's a baby but another mouth to feed? They traveled half-way across the country, and literally built Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, and St. Louis with their labor and buying power. They taught their children that their's no place worst than the South, especially Mississippi, and therefore to be ashamed of humble beginnings. In short, our current, spoiled-rotten, ignorant generation is the product of the selfish Baby Boomers and their failure to teach.

One day, in my anger, I got to thinking. What if the World War II generation had done the Baby Boomers the same way they did/do us?

1. What if the World War II generation had come home, and said, "I want my child to have everything I didn't have growing up," and instead of agitating for better schools and adequate housing, they simply bought their children more clothes, more toys, and more "stuff," and thought that would suffice or "fix" everything? What if? That's what happened to us. Our parents truly spoiled us. With entrance to corporate America and access to better-paying jobs, our Baby Boomer parents decided, "I want my children to have all of the things I didn't have. I don't want them to come up the way I did." Well, when did "things" ever solve any problems?

2. What if the World War II generation looked at the Baby Boomers, with their large Afros, stack shoes, loud colors, Motown sound, and mini-skirts and said, "This is just a lost generation"? What if they'd written off their rebellious children and asked, "Why are we trying to fight for these ungrateful bastards" and then ceased the fight for Civil Rights?

3. What if the World War II generation looked at children as if they are simply roadblocks to economic success, and recommended abortion for "unwanted" children?

4. What if the World War II generation turned church into a money-making industry?

5. What if the World War II generation never taught their children the value of a dollar, but continued to give their children material things as if that would make life problem-free?

6. Last, what if the World War II generation told the Baby Boomer generation, "You can't tell me nothing. You don't know nothing. You ain't been through nothing. You ain't got no testimony. You ain't been through the Cold War where we had to practice ducking from an atomic bomb. You ain't been through the Great Depression where 1932 was so hard that we was eating dandelion greens. You ain't been through World War II in a segregated army and had to come home and get beat and lynched just because you had on a uniform. You ain't got not testimony."

7. What if the World War II generation hardly ever went to church or took their children to church? What if the World War II "showed how the Lord done blessed them" by going to church only to show off their new clothes?

8. What if the World War II generation never purchased any land to pass on to their children, but bought clothes and jewelry instead? Some Baby Boomers are still living on their parents' land and fighting over their deceased parents estates. Where are the Boomers' land and houses? What will they leave to their children of value?

9. What if the World War II generation, as a collective whole, had created an entire culture in which material goods, but only material goods created by somebody else, are everything, and their children actually became ashamed that their parents owned a sewing machine?

10. What if the World War II generation was satisfied to raise their children in the projects on government handouts, and didn't encourage them to at least get out in this world and try?

Where would the world be if the World War II generation had behaved like the Baby Boomers? Where will the world be if Generations X and Y continue to live as if tomorrow won't come?