This is the essay where I express my frustration at your inability to understand me, and my willingness to abstract that what I know to be true for the sake of the public good. In so doing, I will wrap up three itches in my head, although it probably won't buck up my spirits.
First of all, there's the abject cynicism of my compadres over at Vision Circle. I was going to try to be serious about the Black Progress Net:
Many years ago I read 'The Black Power Imperative' by Theodore Cross. This was the book that single-handedly proved to me that there remained a great deal of work to do in continuing the progress and reform brought about by the Civil Rights Movement. That imperative, of real representation and political power, became my imperative.
And make the distinction between those who publish books and those like me who read 'em and critique 'em. Point being I'm never going to try to be a paid policy wonk or policy analyst. Leave it to the professionals.
Then I read Lynn Johnson's resume and realized that she and George will be doing all the black thangs at SXSW. I don't get to represent. So I'm never going to fly around the nation speaking on panels with journalists about all this yada either.
This morning I read Faye Anderson with despair. Niger Innis and Jesse Lee Petersen? Yike. I know this isn't the best that conservative blacks can do.
I know where I am. I am in the bubble ahead of things. My mind and my brain run too fast, and I'm never going to slow down long enough and write enough non-caustic syllables to profit from what I know. It's inevitable, I think, that I am destined to be alone with my keyboard.
In 1993 I spoke out at Harvard and watched the stars of black academia shrug off the entire internet. And I had bothered to wear my email address on a backwards baseball cap, because as anyone who knew could see, that was the coolest of all possible worlds.
For the next week or so I'm going to be digging up stuff from the archives, because at this particular moment, the past is more interesting than the present, and the present just doesn't seem worth the effort of seriousness. That means the cartoons are about to jump off. But I don't care.
I just don't care.
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