A. The war in Iraq was for Americans to get control of Iraqi Oil.
B. The war in Iraq was for the Iraqi people to get control of Iraqi Oil to sell exclusively to Americans.
C. The war in Iraq was for the Iraqi people to get control of Iraqi Oil to sell to world markets.
D. The war in Iraq was to keep Saddam Hussein for threatening American access to Middle East Oil.
E. The war in Iraq was to keep Saddam Hussein for threatening world access to Middle East Oil.
"Thank God Almighty I'm free at last."
-MLK
As intimidating as it is to take on such a subject as the legacy of the good Rev Dr, we ought to have at it.
The first thing that I think about when I think about MLK is a scene in which I am standing on his shoulders, surveying the promised land, which is a green valley and a great glittering city. We are on a hill which represents the Civil Rights Movement. I look to the valley and to the mountains beyond, only barely visible. I never look behind. He says he has been to the mountaintop, and I am there with him ready to run down into the valley - but I've seen the mountains beyond the valley and they are constantly on my mind.
The second image is that of black and white children playing patty cake somewhere at the foot of Stone Mountain.
--
As long as I've been on the web, I have despaired of the King family allowing MLKs papers be published and available for free. It strikes me as a sorrowful legacy, one that's simply broke, one of tragic miscalculation. The reason is money, and nobody has met the family's price. So for a message putatively for the world, it has gone unheard for the lack of the proper payday. So we've been left with a less than clear way to assess his intentions.
I've never been able to think about any wrong King might have done in principle until I understood the Black Power criticism which was that King mistook non-violence for a principle, when in fact it is nothing more than a tactic. King's solution was thus a Negro solution which couched all possibilities for dissent in the context of a citizen's dissent, and not of a human's dissent. Human dissent includes the threat of violence, the dissent of a citizen can be only that of political protest and petition. And thus King could only be a leader of those Americans who were satisfied that the level of injustice heaped upon the Negro could be reconciled within the political confines of American democracy.
It is wrestling with the implications of this final matter that occupies my thoughts about King today and it is, I think ultimately where I must be satisfied with him. King therefore represents to me the bright line between radicalism and reform. King may have been called a radical, but against the background of human history, he was not. King used all of his skills to highlight a contradiction between the promise and the presence of democratic justice in society. King used power in such a way as so it would disaggregate after his demise - he did not use it in any conventional way to force change. He was a one man minority whip who gained a democratic majority. He was the ultimate citizen-Senator outside of the formal Congress.
Like Thomas Paine or Patrick Henry, he was able to electrify the people and gain an extraordinary consensus of action and purpose. It is why, like them, he is a great patriot and perhaps the greatest of all patriots.
--
The image of King on the mountaintop is of *my* King, a black king making promises to a black people. It is in that regard that I find he can be questioned. As the great American patriot, his electrification of the government and of the people found expression in the passage of laws guaranteeing equal defense of civil rights for all - not quite a Constitutional amendment, but certainly the most significant legislation of the era. In that act he is *everyone's* King and in that regard cannot be questioned. Why he must do double duty has everything to do with black expectations of their own trajectory towards freedom and blackfolks' very definitions of freedom.
The American Middle Class is free, as free as the Founders intended, as free as anyone would defend their rights to be free. Free enough to determine their fate. Free enough to self-destruct tragically. I am free. And so I don't expect anything more of MLK. Others do not believe they are free, and so they have greater use for him than I. It is the very controversy of my claim that I think generates friction.
King has no legacy save the effect he had on American government and on American attitudes. He did not aggregate power and so there is no well of power remaining. He did not collect money, nor build buildings. He didn't amass an army or grab land. He didn't build a church or run for office. He lived to be a catalyst in a reaction that would end without a need for re-ignition. I am confident that this was a conscious omission, one generated out of his Christian sensibilities. He would build no earthly kingdom. He would pass no such power to his heirs. It is in that breach that we find people scratching their heads wondering what King might do or what King might say. People who are dissatisfied with the freedom his reaction delivered. People who wish to recreate the old formula. The time is long past, and if there is any truth in what King said but left undone, then it is to that message and not to King that the future belongs.
Every man is born free and every man must fight to stay free. The amount of freedom depends upon the amount of the fight, because enslavers are everywhere, even in ourselves. King's fight reminded us all of that and he fought for us so that we might remember nothing is conceded without a struggle and that some freedoms are worth dying for. But King would not say which freedoms were worth killing for, and that left him the leader of men who would talk, walk and sit in jails. Of men who would endure cruelty for the sake of a moral argument. But such are not the fullness of man's desire to be free, but man's desire to be avoid combat. Thus King is the author of our comfortable freedom, and so long as we can enjoy it in comfort, we need only thank MLK.
Nulan lobs a large and complex bomb: I attempt to deal with it seriously
I'm wondering this morning, if I am immune to Obama.
George twittered that if I have to ask... meaning that I must not be.
It's not a question of Obama actually. Although I haven't made up my mind whether or not I can stand him, I'm already decidedly contemptuous of people who appear to me to be obsessed with him either pro or con. But I also realize that these are the same people I've been living with in the US since forever. And for matters on which there is a great deal more clarity to me, like the reasons we are in Iraq and what we should expect from that conflict, I already have a great deal of contempt for my opponents. So much so that I can rest reasonably easy that their whining, while annoying, is insignificant in the bigger scheme of things.
This is a grave temptation, and it troubles me.
You see, my entire life as a progressive has been marked by that contempt for the American middle class. I know the feeling of being deeply into the most esoteric and hip bohemian scene. I know what it's like to make Cornel West laugh. I've been the cool guy with the smart question at the Studio Museum in Harlem on the occasion of Gina Dent's book signing. I know how to be part of the cognoscenti, intimately familiar with the impetus to demand 'education' for the [benefit] of the [ignorant] masses. I know what it is to glorify the common dissonance and weave it into a fashionable trope - to make the backwards Malcolm X hat into a symbol of youthful black resistance against the lifeless gray existence of the clueless white proletariat and their corporate masters. In fact, I know how to wordsmith that very sentence into something that sounds exactly like what we all expect Michelle Obama to say the next time she gets a chance. And I know the permanent franchise the cognoscenti have as the voice of the people, even when it's honest and heartfelt and requires days, weeks and months in the ghettos, hoods, barrios of that vast GTA version of America.
I don't want to be like that.
So I'm trying to restrain myself and say that I am not immune to Obama. To be immune from Obama is to play the corporate hedged bet. To release oneself from the responsibility of hogwash going wrong. To leave people to their fate and pretending to be surprised with the shit hits the fan and the disillusionment sets in. To play both sides from a safe distance , not care. To withdraw investments of serious consideration for the public sphere and the will of the average Joe and know you'll be protected no matter what turmoil troubles the hoi polloi. I can retreat to my gated community and shoot at whatever moves. To be immune from Obama is to not really care if he wins because you can get through it OK. It is to be invested in cynicism. Well, you ask, how much can he actually screw up?
But in particular I am concerned about his foreign policy. Would he dismiss Petraeus? I mean, there are no mainstream media guys who are on the ground in Iraq - we could all pretend that Obama's election makes everything all good, and that the American image so many people mouth is tarnished in the world could suddenly turn gold. In Obamaland, people could pretend that Myanmar is cool, and we'd never hear stories that they are denying access by USAID because we are vicious imperialists. The story just gets buried. And I could pretend that I'm immune and that I don't care, because whatever is Myanmar anyway? I could pretend that the following factoid doesn't matter:
Iraqi sources report that al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri has been captured in Mosul. If this report is correct, al-Masri almost made it to his 2-year anniversary as commander. He took over al Qaeda in Iraq after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed June 7, 2006 in a U.S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad.
And I could stop subscribing to the news sources that would tell me that because I could find something nice to think about and not concern myself with the hash he'd make of the hot pursuit of Al Qaeda all over the world.
I could pretend to be immune to Obama and everybody who votes for him. But that would be treacherous to my conscience. So I guess I'm going to have to make up my mind after all, and really fight against him if what I believe to be true about his policies is revealed to be the case. I'd rather be really cool and say it doesn't matter, but I'd be lying to myself.
It ain't all good, and that's the truth
Thangs ain't goin like you think they should - it's all on you.
-- De La Soul
Following up on my post Why Race Talk Doesn't Work, I remind people that national conversations on race turn out to be useless. My case in point.
TOWARDS ONE AMERICA: A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ON RACE
Here's the Google search. Go spelunking for yourself. Many of you may recall, or perhaps even more telling, you do not recall, that President Clinton initiated a presidential level one year conversation on race from the White House. It doesn't get any better than that, unless you believe that Clinton simply couldn't do it because he was white. In which case you might be likely to hold out hope that Barack Obama can do it because he is black. And of course that would only work if Obama dictates the content, in which case ... well, he's got a lot of 'splaining to do.
In either case, it's a travesty and a sham. There was nothing created by that presidential commission that improved anything about anything except for the political careers of those people who took part in it, notably Christopher Edley Jr, and the Thernstroms. And there is nothing either of them has done from a national perspective on race that holds a candle to what Shaquanda Cotton, or the Duke Rape Case or Kanye West or Jeremiah Wright or Don Imus or Michael Richards has undone.
Repeat after me. Your racial ethics are a matter of personal responsibility. There is no other way. You should have learned these values at home. Family values.
Once again. The difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals seek to use the public power of the state to guard against the deprivations of the dysfunctional family. Conservatives seek to use the power of the family to guard against the deprivations of the dysfunctional state.
There is no way to improve the quality of America's race relations by proxy. No committee, no ethnic leader, no policy, no religious crusade, no demonstration, no lobbying group, no campus speech codes, no public service announcement, no MTV Rock-the-whatever, no celebrity endorsement, no multicultural chorus singing We Are The World, no endless loop of MLK speeches, no critical theory reinterpretation of Founding documents, no deconstructive analysis of images in media, no parsing of vocabulary, no editing of dictionaries, no banning of words, hairstyles, websites.
There is nothing but you, your morals and your discipline, and your neighbor and his.
My friends feel it's their appointed duty
They keep trying to tell me all you want to do is use me.
-- Bill Whithers
Fisher presents the following syllogism:
So because you believe in that essentially color-blind meritocracy, you'll end up blaming yourself for any "lack of success". Besides that it's the manly, Clint Eastwoodesque thing to do. Yes?
No.
You are a victim of a system of racism.
You got let go from Solver because you are black.
Your consultant clients have less confidence in you because you are black.
You get paid late by your clients because you are black.
You got a harder time finding clients because you are black.
And black folks ain't making it easier for you either, because the system trains them to be unreliable, plus most of us have been trained to lie about how much money we have anyhow.
Once you acknowledge the existence of this system and, using cold, hard logic, study how it actually works, you can game the system to an extent, 'cause there are always cracks.
Let's take this reasoning to its logical conclusions.
If it were the case that I could neatly put the blame for all of my failure on being black, then the consequence for black responsibility would be total. Which is to say if white people cannot be trusted, then no responsible black person would ever work for whites. Furthermore, any black person who does is engaged in treachery against their self interest, for then only blacks could properly fulfill other blacks' ambitions.
The evidence for this would be that the most successful blacks would be employed by other blacks. They would be in possession of the answers and the resources and it would be an ethical and moral error for them to hold this to themselves. In other words, if the greatest threat to black success is whitefolks, then the only solution os blackfolks, and any black person with that success is obligated to his kin.
I don't believe this, but I think I understand the logic as presented by Fish. Fish paints the world, not just America, in terms of the operation of a Global System of White Supremacy. So there are certain things implied by the existence and operation of that system which obviously apply to me as a black man. I don't want to get into the existentials of ontology ie, how do I know that what I mean by 'black' is the same thing the Global System sees as 'black'. Let's just presume that Fish knows what he's talking about as far as identifying friend or foe. Friend = black. Foe = white, as commonly understood in America.
Now the question for someone like me would be, how and where can I get some of that black-sponsored success? Which is to say if the true meritocracy would be a black-sponsored regime of meritocracy then I'm objectively worth more there than I've been getting from the Global System. Fish takes a step to acknowledge my talents as he should ethically in keeping with his theory. Hey, this sounds good. Essentially let us also presume that his acknowledgment implies an offer or an invitation, either to join this meritocracy or for an actual j.o.b. I would thus present a more or less realistic negotiating start point.
I need a base of about 150k/year and total compensation package of around 200k to take an offer of employment seriously. That's a solid upper middle class figure which accords with my comfort level here in California. And I offer my services as a senior data architect, and hands-on consulting exec in the business intelligence area of the software industry with 18 years of experience all around the country and various spots on the globe. Reasonable trade. I could do this kind of gig without thinking for two years, basically anywhere, four years if there is upward mobility and business development upside w/ kickers. But it all comes down to dollars. In the American scheme of things, it's not rich. That's orthodontist money. That's first year NFL money. It's still below the top tax rate. There are millions of Americans who do this well, and probably a million different ways to make this kind of loot. So it is reasonable for me to believe that there are lots of ways to get paid like this.
The question now becomes, what is the difference between black-sponsored success and white-sponsored success - that is to say how will I know which is genuine? I mean is this black meritocracy going to pay me more money, or are there fringe benefits of the sort I have never gotten before? What are the signs I should consider to let me know that the white meritocracy is just a rat maze? Is this my phone call from Morpheus? Don't just offer me a red pill, show me the desert of the real. Help me understand why I'm just a copper top.
Assuming such bona fides are presented, that this black meritocracy exists, how has it been that I haven't seen it or noticed it before now? Am I just finally becoming worthy of consideration? Was there one magic phrase I hadn't said? Is there a test?
OK Enough.
Now. Here's what I do believe. I believe that 12% of Americans are racist and that when dealing with those people, the best thing to do is to game them whether they are black or white. That is to say while it is morally proper to confront their racism and disabuse them of their errors, such efforts are likely to be futile. So I should take Fish's offer and I should also take any white offer, because no matter what their reasons are for using me (employing me), I have to negotiate my best deal with either system. I have to decide if it's worth it to me. It's still my decision.
The decision I have actually made is that I have come to expect none, zero, zilch, cultural fringe benefits from work, and that I provide all of that myself from my family, friends and cultural consumption (books, music, food, blogging). See here for details. The import of this is that it doesn't matter what the fringe benefits are from the black-sponsored meritocracy, if they can't pay more money it doesn't help me for squat. I watched the movie Boomerang, and I thought that was very cool, but that was 17 years ago.
The pervasive racialist scenario means that racism is unavoidable because everybody believes that race is essentially real and unavoidable. Race never means nothing; it tweaks the grid of human existence. You are always tethered to it. It is therefore in my interest to get with the black gang. Hey. If I have no choice, then I am only hurting myself.
Where is the alternative?
I have gotten 1000 words of nonsense attempting to update this piece and relate it to the Old School. I can't and probably won't. Right now I'm going to just say that I'm an independent voice calling them as I see them. The Old School is my demographic, but I cannot accurately describe it. I have an affinity for black veterans and cops, businessmen and philosophers, writers and musicians. I'm Cosby's side. That's about all I can say. I say what I say about Iraq in retrospect because I saw what I saw. I like Cheney. I look forward to Michael Yon's new book. People disagree. Temple3 wins this round. At the moment my heart's not in it.
It has been about 6 weeks since I've done a radio show, and I think that's OK. I'm very very proud of my boy Jimi Izrael who is blowing up all over the place, and I want the professionals to get paid. I don't need the money and I'm not sure that I need the exposure - and I don't want to be taking up space that aspiring career writers can make better use of.
My book is coming. Slowly but surely.
What I'm doing is a subtle shift in the entire blog and Old School perspective. Basically, I think I have made all my points as clearly as necessary. I'm stepping back a bit from the provocation which is becoming somewhat pointless. I'm just focusing threads of interest here and I continue to facilitate debate.
Nobody Cares. Nobody's Care. Nobodies Care. Nobody cares about Jamiel Shaw and it shows.
Black & Jews
Ta-Nehisi Coates is riffing a bit with dNA. I weigh in a bit.
It's a very interesting discussion. Where do black nationalists get their vibes from Jews? Real Jews or imaginary Jews? Of course Jews are not a race, and any black can be Jewish. Also, I dig Matisyahu more than KRS-1.
Fox News Accepted
Over the past few weeks, the Democrat
mainstream has defied its left side, particularly the Netroots -
MoveOn.org & DailyKos by having their top dogs appear on the much
loathed Fox News Network. I think that calmer heads have prevailed.
Good.
Obama Won NC
Does it change anything?
I've been rubbing my noggin around the subject of self a little bit over the past few weeks. Since Boy missed the deadline for application to Loyola and I've recently been in touch with some old alums, I've had some painful moments in dealing with the fact that a very significant experience in my life will not be shared. I haven't gotten through all of that, but I have preliminarily concluded that I'm going to have to be for the kids what the Jesuits were for me. Part of the problem is that I have to disambiguate what was them and what was society and what was me. So that's got me looking at me and Catholicism in particular.
Within the past two months I have recognized how much the literal 'old school' themes resonate with me. Yesterday, as I watched Oceans Thirteen I tended to identify with the Brits who went to the same school. Three weeks ago I rented Hitman and admired a killer for his stoicism, single-minded discipline and impregnable ethos. His ability to follow the rules no matter what, to the death. It's the same for Jason Statham's Transporter. A bit closer to reality was Robin Williams in the Dead Poets Society. Cloistered boys figuring out self and life in the context of traditions which are supposed to serve towards greatness for life. If you can survive our discipline, the rest of the world should be no problem, my boy.
A career on the road has had its effect. I am called to help people get through their decision making process, and it is never complete for the customer. I go to a strange town and solve familiar problems. It's my old discipline. I walk through airports and drive rented cars and sleep in hotel beds in silence. And I am comforted in my blogging and writing, solving problems in a slow arc and clarifying what it means to me. It is never complete for the reader, the nemesis, the commenter.
I am at odds with and yet totally comfortable with solitude. I believe, for the same reasons as Dennis Prager, that one must make efforts always to make as many friends as possible. It is a matter of helping good people stay good. Of letting them know that you're looking out for their souls, that they matter. And the mutual effect is positive, it builds value. And yet at the same time I know that my every expansion, every new book I read, every new place I go, every refinement of every idea makes me that more removed. I may spend years communicating to no avail. I have accepted this. Love the one you're with, especially when you're alone.
I survive where I am from. That can never change. My beginnings made me look for the things I have searched for. My beginnings made me ask the questions. And with every answer, with every found thing I have squirreled away, my longings have been satisfied, until I update my beginnings - starting with an older man each time. And in that succession of questions and answers I have been a success. My life has turned over several times, like all of the cells in my body are new, except perhaps some in my teeth. I am a man using his full name.
I am a black survivor, and I do not know what to do with the pain of watching others ask questions of the world I have found answers to. I cannot reverse-engineer the longings of their beginnings, dissonance is eternal. And even if I could, it would be presumptuous and rude to do so. Everyone must find their own way and feel the value of their own searching work. Neither can I go searching for seekers. I'm in the middle of being able to make men and worried about whether or not I should. Instead, as always, I consult. I speak out loud and say, this is how I see it, this is how it works for me. I am a facilitator of thoughts in my avocation and in my vocation. But in both because I find the subjects compelling and important, and so I approach them with humble certitude, like a farmer who bets his life that he is planting corn but can never tell how tall that seed might grow. It depends on a lot, but that damned sure is my best seed.
I have survived and I have succeeded and while I know I am not free, I also know that there is only so far that I desire to run. I am happy with the size of my enclosure, my family, my work, my writing, my face. My spirit is constrained but not subdued. And I ask myself if it is wise to be more ambitious than I am. I have decided on my career destiny. I am ready to say no to the multi-multi millions. Boyd says there are two ways to be successful. One is to be rich and the other is to reduce your needs to zero. I am pursuing both ends in moderation, but the latter with a new inspiration. I am starting to resent being full, and am learning to enjoy being hungry. Being hungry means that I am losing weight, which means I can slow down, which means I can die satisfied.
I enjoy being a man of means, and I am reading gigantic tales of vast scope in order to bring myself to accept the possibility of merest chance. If I can accept that my everything was an accident, that would be good. I was thinking the other day that the wise man is equally prepared for riches or poverty, because in the end all you really own is your self, your discipline, your knowledge, and what people call on you for. You are not, or at least I am not, in control of the rewards associated with those things. So they must bring to you their own motivations. It is providence. There is some order to it, but I'm not so sure that it's important to figure out what that order is. Great things, wars and plagues, make a dogs breakfast of discovered order.
A black survivor is of minor interest at this moment of history. I am not black in any way more than I was young. I did a million things because of my youth and only a few of them mattered. Now my youth is no longer a thing to be shared, but merely to be remembered. And so I am black in memory as I was young. Where I've been and what I've been cannot be changed. But new beginnings are an every day occurrence.
I am coming to terms with chaos, with chance, with great fortune and with great misfortune. I mind my children and become fearless with myself. I kiss the fevered forehead and spite the virus for comfort's sake. I tell what I've known, and show what I've been shown, a man accepting that he is beyond his beginnings. My eyes are opened, one is surprised and curious, one is disciplined and fierce.
The worst thing you could do is read Consider Phlebas back pages first. Once upon a time I used to take the first and last sentences or first and last words as a brief synopsis of every book. It kinda works for the Bible. "In Amen". But to do so for Iain M. Banks celebrated sci-fi would almost obviate the great adventures contained therein.
Consider Phlebas is a space opera, something of a cowboy story with a trick ending, an amoral tale of the actions of civilizations on conflict down to the deadly combat and scheming of individuals from different parts of the galaxy.
In one way I didn't follow my own advice. I was advised to read 'Player of Games' first but didn't find this Culture book of Banks available. So I read his most recent treatment of the galaxy 'The Algebraist' and then to his very first, Consider Phlebas. There is no doubt that Banks is a much more accomplished writer now than 20 years ago and so I can see that he has clearly gotten to where he was trying to go which is to convey the essence of the practically infinite scale of galactic events and put the actions of humans in scale. He does so without making humans any larger or smaller than humans. Which is to say that in the largest scheme of things imaginable, human drama still counts for something, as it inevitably would to us humans. And in that regard Banks is an extraordinarily good sci-fi writer, standing just below Samuel R. Delany as the best ever.
But Banks gives us something one better than Neveryon which is a continuing series of novels about the Culture and it is in the matters of the Culture that Banks shines. What is the Culture? It is utopian, and infinite in the ways we are most constrained here on earth. It is a cultural empire that fights for philosophical reasons, and it is run by machines which were created by humans. They are the Minds each of which is capable of nearly god-like intelligence and they work to integrate every alien species into harmonious existence in which all sentient beings are accorded rights.
Of course not every species is interested in following the Culture's scientific and logical perfectionism, chief among them are the Idirans, a race of 3 meter triped giants who evoke the deep religiosity of a warrior cult. In fact they were a perfectly peaceful people, in total harmony with the ecology of their bountiful planet until provoked by the Culture. At that point they realized everything foreign to them as a threat and transformed into a race of annihilation still steeled by religious discipline. So war was inevitable and it is in the midst of that war that our story begins.
It is the story of a lost and crippled Mind, a planet of the dead, a Changer, an intelligence agent of the Culture and a Firefly-like crew of freebooting pirates. The Changer, allied with the Idirans, and pursued by the agent, seeks to capture the Mind from the neutral planet of the dead. He ingratiates his way into the pirate ship and the adventure takes off from there.
Phlebas is a work of great imagination whose galaxy makes extended human sense and yet is not extensively human. I suspect, that in that regard I am going to have to complete about 1000 more pages of the Culture novels to get at what Banks might be implying. To that end I have just begun Matter, his latest.
Even without that these are excellent tales of enormous scale.
Back in 2002 I was unbecoming a race man and beginning blogging. The stellar and stunning thought which contributed to this political transformation I called 'The Cost of Not'. The subject was Reparations. Back then I wrote:
my point is that a good portion of negoitiating a peace requires a credible threat of war. that's how nations are reformed. african americans are not going to issue a credible threat of war for reparations, and the amount of reparation due from this nation requires that much. i believe olgetree will make the case and prove the theory, but the cost of not repairing is not high enough.
Since that time, I have looked at American politics with regard to the extent that black partisans can unify and aggregate black political opinion and negotiate concessions from non-blacks who see black progress as zero sum in America with Reparations being the primary case in point. But immediately I realized that everybody who was doing anything was doing that. It was kind of an alternate version of that quote that the future is already here, it is only unevenly distributed.
Ta-Nehisi Coates last week about the utterly depressing state of race relations in this country.
And I responded: I think you are coming to the realization that nobody can broker relations for an entire race. As soon as that becomes perfectly clear, then you'll recognize why it's not even desirable.
The first step towards this realization is this: America is at racial equilibrium. Everybody who wants to do anything with regard to changing what race relations means is, at this very moment, living that reality.
Essentially, I think race relations in America is moving at the pace of progress of television sitcoms. Which is to say no faster nor slower than pop culture. It is not any reason to celebrate nor is a reason to be overly concerned, unless you feel put-upon by the racial status quo. People who feel put out and uncomfortable will be cynical and try to get away with as much racial bullshit as possible. That basically covers both sides of the coin, as well as the third side which would be 'disinterested observers'.
My essential observation is that nothing, including the trashing of Obama and the killing of Sean Bell and the execution of Tookie or the freeing of Mumia Abu-Jamal is capable of sustaining a fundamental or national movement. It all just slouches forward or backward if you please, one Supreme Court decision at a time, if that. We're done, and nobody really cares. Or perhaps I should say that nobody who cares, and knows is capable of doing much. Then again, the answers are already here. The examples of doing it right are plentiful and spread all over, just maybe not in your patch. And so the politics are at a stalemate.
It has been a while since I've considered the opportunities for institutional reform vis a vis racism. I basically don't see much changing of substance unless and until there is criminal enforcement of racist offenses. Basically you need a movement about the shape and size of the anti-illegal immigration movement so you can identify 12 million bodies and start punishing them and those who harbor them. That's not going to happen, because on the whole Americans don't care that much. On the whole, American racism is like American homosexuality. Sure there are people who are absolutely horrified by it, but nobody is going to stop it. Ever. So shout until you're hoarse, but it all comes down to the strengths of political movements.
I therefore now introduce The Rule of Whatever:
It is what it is. Get in where you fit in.
In general, The Rule of Whatever is in effect until somebody burns down a building, passes legislation in Congress or carries out an assassination.
If you do nothing else today, check out this. It is a must-hear podcast over at Coates' blog on Minnesota Public Radio with some analysis and interpretation of the Cosby message with T. Coates and McWhorter.
www.flickr.com
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That goes straight to the question of blackness, and I have had no success whatsoever in enaging that aspect of what makes blackfolks properly black. The 'who owns blackness' question is moot, unanswerable. I'd like to engage it but I cannot. I would engage it from the perspective of the change from Negro to black and suggest that the original prospects were useful but that they cast off too much of the 'old time religion'. Instead and now I am attempting to rectify mistakes of black nationalism, primarily ridding it of marxist economics and racialist thinking. And in that regard I would suggest that my own orientation as an old dude is proper and that Huey and Karenga went wrong. Which is to say nationalism is good, how does a black nationalist become an American nationalist? Economic development is good, how does a Ujamaa mature into black capitalism, moreover how 'black' does economics have to be?
All of that is limited to what I think is the ambit of the Civil Rights and Black Power agenda, which is to establish and maintain a strong and vibrant black middle class. I think we have that. So now my question becomes, what was the primary thing that created that black middle class and sustains it? Was it the values of Black Consciousness? Or was it the rising tide of the American economy combined with black mobility in it? I don't know for sure. So I'm not sure how to prioritize my critiques of the Defense of Marriage vis a vis black OOW birth and economic causality. But I do agree that Moynihan was right, and my own perspective is that a strong black family is absolutely necessary - that it can't be done without it.
and why no corollary criticism of whitefolks inclusive of some of disingenuous posers who perpetrate right here in your salon? As things presently stand, Bill O'Reilly is beating you on fairness and balance levels and everybody and they mama know that Bill O'Reilly is a lying sack'o'shit working a very definite and highly racialized political agenda.(Juan, Dr. Marc Lamont, Rev. Al and all his little crumbsnatching negro correspondents notwithstanding.)
I have no idea what Bill O'Reilly does. None. I haven't watched 30 minutes of the man in my entire life, and probably less than 4 hours of Fox News, ever. I have watched Glenn Beck a couple of times but not enough to remember much. My corollary criticism of whitefolks is implied in everything liberal and left and most things progressive. But I don't think of 'white' politics as anything different from racist politics. At the same time, I come from a perspective of black strength. Sure I'm going to call a white racist idea out, but I am particularly expecting blacks to overcome.
My message on anti-racist politics is purposefully not directed at either race, but I do hold blackfolks to a higher standard. And what I see is a pro-black politics that tends to be more self-interested than it is willing to build a proper multi-racial coalition. I see that this is a problem for me, because in fact I tend to be dismissive of such efforts anyway. That is because I get to a point at which I think blackfolks and whitefolks ought to get along without political urging. So you're likely to hear me push back at blackfolks who have identified extraordinary sensitivity and zero-tolerance anti-racism. Like TCoates implies that Hitchens is doing against 'black women' by ranking on Michelle Obama. So my kneejerk is how many whitefolks in political coalition can you get on that zero-tolerance platform - and then the answer is 'all of Obama's white supporters' and I dismiss that. Why? Because Michael Moore says whitefolks have no right to judge blackfolks. So it all sounds like political correctness to me, none of which has a significant effect on the economic position of the average black American. I'm interested in seeing institutional racism broke down and beat up, and I hear terms about the respect accorded Rutgers basketball players.
I'm not defending Smrgol nor taking any time to appease or correct him either. He's only been here two or three months. I do think he's said some tangential stuff that didn't pass the sniff test, but I'm not trying to make an example out of him. Yet. To be frank, I think Sparkle gives me a little bit too much love. I'm always attempting to be Socratic and instructional, welcoming of conflicting ideas and drawing people out to anthropological value. I've only had to bust on Chance and Fisher but both are welcome back.The levels to which you strain in order to appease and furnish aid and succor to disengenuous Black haters is neither "old school", original, or constructive. Right here on this thread, you allowed 1400+ words of pure-dee-pure irrelevant horseshit without uttering a peep. Now you know the stink is hella deep when thegrayconservative and A. Charles alike have to call folks out on their nonsense!!!
I appreciate the work they do. I hope neither of them get tired of Cobb. I don't see haters, I see dissonance and a profound difference of priorities. I'm not trying to mediate that I'm trying to facilitate in the midst of being provocative. There have been lots of occasions where folks have gotten into a fight where I have no dog. Fzample you essentially chased off DailyBowelPrep when you two got into it about brain chemistry. I thought it was a breathtaking discussion, but I pretty much stayed out of it. I can't exactly say what the bone of contention between you and Smrgol is, honestly. But I don't see it as zero-sum. You're both welcome. I'm not objectively evaluating a lot of the comments that aren't directed at the thesis of the blogpost. I just don't have time.
On the whole however, the comments at Cobb are dynamite, and I mean that in a very good way. We don't have any trolls, people don't cuss each other out and people with completely different experiences and priorities still engage. That's all good, and I really don't care who has the last word when I don't want to have it. I'm perfectly content with a bit more horseshit than you.
MLK posited a human essentialist Christian ethos and constructive political and economic engagement toward that end, and got shot for his efforts. ~ one month ago, you had the audacity to reject that in favor of precisely what "superior values"? Please tell me what these superior values are, because for the life of me, I'm at a complete and total loss to identify ANY of them. If they exist, that's a major hole in my bucket.This is the most important criticism you lay at my feet and I want to look at it seriously. I will take it as a separate issue. I feel that there is a very big difference between Black Power and King's Dream. I'm not positive that they can be reconciled. Essentially, I think King's Dream was limited by its populist appeal. I think Black Power was premature, impatient and rude. I would like to believe that King's Christianity would work in ways that American politics does not and cannot, but I am left with B16 for now. I have not engaged as much or as well as I should, the implications of a transformational Christianity and its role in American affairs. I'm not sure why I have been distracted from that task. I'm glad you bring it up. The time is right to consider Liberation Theology, the separation of church and state and the proper ethics for America. I think notions of 'social justice' are very sloppy in contemporary thought. I think King's emphasis on racial integration was absolutely right and the Christian implications of that are clear.
No, I say your "rhetoric" is conspicuously anti-Black and I have encouraged you for the longest time now (as have many others - not a few of which have simply thrown in the towel) to check yourself.
I need to be checked. Believe me. I'm a legend in my own mind.
What's the American Express motto, "everywhere you want to be"? I for one am genuinely curious about precisely where you want to be Cobb? Despite all your hypothetical pinings for elite Black aggregation, do you genuinely lift a finger toward that concrete interpersonal end outside of episodic and externally constructed media interludes? Instead of being the change you claim to want to see, it seems like you're in constant audition mode for Larry Elder's or Juan William's media gig. That steez is closer to "being everywhere somebody else wants you to be", right?
I'd like to be rich enough to have people over to my house and have significant dinner parties. I would essentially expand Cobb to be a real place, and whenever heads are in California, you'd know to drop by. I want to be rich enough to become a community macher, and I think in retirement I'll write books or do radio. I need to continue the conversation so that I don't show up one day aged 60 sounding foolish.
The interpersonal thing is difficult for me. Firstly because I simply don't fuss with people face to face. My nature is to be a host. Secondly because the people whose company I enjoy are sparse. But thirdly and perhaps most importantly I am extraordinarily frustrated with what I call 'social work'. My parents were both social workers, by profession. I simply don't have the patience for it. I am so much better having this conversation we are having, then doing any presumptive community service. I am very critical of community service organizations and the politics that support them precisely because I have been intimately involved with the headache of funding and managing such entities, and I strongly resent the hypocrisy of the Talented Tenth position. This is my burden and my failure, which I would be happy to present at length. But I look at a man like Albert Murray as who I want to be. And I cannot imagine him showing his value through community service. I think I am perhaps a bit resentful of the dismissal by a people who take Tupac seriously. My interest is in writing essays, polemics and treatises. It's a chatting class game. Moreover I am strongly attracted to the writing of Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis, a couple of drunk Brits who are extraordinarily insightful and acerbic. Charles Wright was like that.
Bill Cosby is welcome among Blackfolks he's strongly and publicly criticized, (having witnessed it in person here in KC - and knowing the organic networking and coalition building he's done over the past few years here on the ground largely through the historic Kansas City Call newspaper) Cobb's critique - on the other hand - were it known, would be most unwelcome, and that's not simply an unfair catch-22 criticism positing your celebrity against Cosby's. It's a comparison of your and his respective identification with Black folks, organic and day-to-day networking and interpersonal communion with Black folks, old school and otherwise - and see - it's THERE that I believe you have allowed a major hole to form in your bucket resulting in a degree of ideological and rhetorical alienation that is frankly kind of jarring and entirely at odds with your cultural and personal background.
Because I write about politics, there is an expectation that I'm supposed to move the crowd because that's what 'black leaders' are expected to do. I cannot be that. It's interestingly why I like the example of Stephen Biko. He spoke to the crowd in a South African stadium while moving through them with a microphone. He never got to the podium. The man on the podium always gets shot. I want to write. I hate crowds. That is a hole in the bucket I will never fill. I want to be a writer. I want to have a salon. I am a consultant, a host, a raconteur, hell a barfly. I can handle a swanky reception or sit on a dais, but no more than two hours. I need my privacy.
You give every appearance of having put more effort into aggregating with folks whose politics are far less post-racial than they are anti-Black - and - you're not making evident comparable efforts to evolve or convince those folks of the errors of their ways. Personally, I'm very, very tired of calling you out for this, and I'm still more tired of abiding the emanations of folk who have categorically demonstrated themselves incapable of communicating in good faith across racial lines. That is, folks who believe they own the first mover prerogative on defining and controlling racial discourse. Folks who equate pro-Black rhetoric with the anti-Black structural and institutional context giving rise to Black partisan ideation and struggle.
I see a fundamental necessity for an overt black patriotism which owes to the history of black politics. I see it just as necessary as others see the need for Republicans to disown the Southern Strategy. In my mind, I am transfixed by the image of the white man on the courthouse steps trying to stab the black man with the American flag, and in the next second the black man snatches the flag away and shames the white man by holding it higher without fear and with righteous pride. So I have very little patience for the black oppositional, and I am perhaps overly concerned with it.
I don't believe in the post-racial. I believe in the competition of compelling values. So I seek for Americans to be so invested in a proper American nationalism that their racial interests are subordinated. I expect Americans to wrestle with the temptations of racial thinking and discipline themselves to 'play nice' as A.Charles says. I want people to look at the table in front of them and to realize that they *are* diners, and not strangers to the American table as Malcolm felt he was.
But I think that black cultural production has failed to give African Americans a decent context to express their patriotism and their ability to get along with their neighbors. I think that black oppositional politics has poisoned public discourse enough to make life more dissonant and confusing than it should ever have become. I find these to be enemies of American unity. I think white racism is unchanged, but diminished. But I don't see it in country music or anything in particular.
I began many years ago seeking to establish a zero-disrespect standard in politics. So I used to look for the racist insults. I found them surely enough when Meg Whitman used photo-ops with Sharpton to prove black bonafides in defiance of the local Urban League. I found them in the calculations of political strategists. I've never had a kind word for Karl Rove. But I have also determined that polities are led not by spin doctors but by their own percieved self-interest, and those who desire to call the Democrats 'black' and the Republicans 'white' lack the courage to cross the aisle and work things out. I wrote that practically day one on this blog.
Black partisanship is not the same as Black nationalism. Black partisanship is incontrovertibly human essentialist and enjoys first mover prerogatives as compared and contrasted with any other factor in the American popular culture. That's what's old school. It puzzles me how anybody could ever get that twisted? The Black partisan policy and praxis is embodied in the last 4-5 years of MLK's ministry. How large and eggregious a misrepresentation is it to equate that with the Black nationalism you constantly hold up as the object of your political scorn?
Your view of black communion my be incompatible with my temperament as an analytical and polemical essayist. I may have to give up the claim on the Old School, because it simply may not support me. But I am certainly ready willing and able to make some very specific claims on MLK. That's next.