Cobb

Death

Boggle Brain

You only use 10% of your brain at any one time. That's a good thing. You don't want the part of your brain that helps you solve math equations working when you should be using the part of your brain that moves your fingers out of the way of a sewing machine needle.

My brother sent me a puzzle the other day. It turns out that there are 93 English words that can be made from the letters in the word 'planets'. I found 64 in about 7 minutes. As I did it, I swear that I could feel my wordsearch brain working.

It was actually the same part of my brain that I could feel working when I played 'Bespelled'. I kind of twist and turn the words in a kind of backwards permutation. I'm sure this is the Scrabble and the Boggle brain as well. What I cannot explain is how I was able to do this and only making one repetition, the word 'at'. Although I haven't tried, I'd bet that I can't come up with any more. I think that's the same part of the brain telling me that I have exhausted that possibility.

Speaking of this, there's another part of my brain that I think is highly specialized. That's my photo repeat brain. If you give me a stack of 500 pictures that has one duplicate in it. I can parse through them serially and tell you when I get to that duplicate. I have no idea how I can do this, but I'm sure that the how has something to do with being a photographer's son and having that task.

Oh wait a minute. I only used plurals a few times, so I probably could beat 64.

Return of the Bogard

This is for the [black male] youth.

What I can't do is undo what I've done. I can't go back before the age of 14 and be back in all black schools in the hood. I can't unlearn what I've learned. I can't suddenly put the fear of whitefolks back in my head, but I can try. Hanging with Lee helped remind me of all the distance I've travelled, of all the hard work that put me in my happy spot, doing what I never thought probable or even possible back in the day. So thinking about what I think is real for young black men today whose future is dicey, I'm going to come up with my best advice. For what it's worth. And I'm thinking in particular about some of my young cousins down south, whom I don't really know, but I'm just guessing.

As usual, I start with Baldwin.

All you are ever told in this country about being black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. Now, in order to survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and re-create yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose, in fact - this may sound very strange - you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

Probably the hardest thing about being a young black man in America is that nobody believes anything you say or do that doesn't confirm some stereotype about black men. It's like you simply don't exist and nothing you say or do will make you seem real to people unless you add something typical at the end, nah mean? You don't have to say a word, and the cop thinks you're a suspect. But you can go to a job interview and talk all day about your real character and they still don't hear you. That's real. And guess what, it never ends. You are going to have to talk your way into every situation and keep reminding people honestly about what you are expecting, even if it sounds stupid - like damn, why do I keep having to explain this to you?

#1 Bogard
You have to Bogard. You have to talk your way in, even when you're not sure you have what it takes. You have to get into a situation where you can try and fail until you get it right. You have to let people believe that they're a little bit more responsible for your success than they actually are. After all, you're doing the work. But that's how people are a lot of times with black men. They don't believe we can do without their assistance because they can't just look at us and percieve our skills and potential. Bogarding means trading on your potential, never forgetting your potential, not being worried about hearing 'no', and never stopping pushing the envelope. As soon as you fail, and you will, you're going to hear the same old crap, and the moment you start to believe it, then you actually will be heading in that direction. There are 6 billion people on this planet. There are at least 1000 who have got your back and can help you. Find them. They're waiting to hear you.

#2. Listen and Learn
You're young, and you don't know anything. What you have going for you is energy, ambition, and nothing to lose. Therefore you need to soak up knowledge in every form that's related to your ambition. Be all about it. Get the magazine, watch the TV show. Read the books. Find the experts. Become a geek about it. Show your love for that thing, because this country is big enough for you to make your fortune in it, whatever it is. It's almost scary how much you can accomplish just by listening. You really have your whole life to learn it. That's why you follow your love.

#3 Get Out
Get out of your comfort zone. Get out of your old habits. Billions and billions of burgers have been sold at McDonalds, and everyone knows what's on the menu. But I bet that you order the same thing every time. Order a vanilla shake from McDonalds next time. I bet you never have. Watch a TV show you never watch. Buy a shirt you would never wear and see what happens. You are more flexible than you think. Listen to me, I sound like Morpheus. But it's true. You have to be able to think on your feet, because you already know the same stuff that's coming to you where you are. But the most important thing to do in this category is to travel. If you have a car, get a map point your finger at a place and drive there. Get out of your car and walk. Be there for a while.

I remember several years ago talking to brothers in Oakland who went to the Million Man March. One of them had never left Oakland in his entire life, he was in his 30s. They rented Ford Explorers, him and about 10 partners and drove clear across the country. He said that the trip was far more interesting than the destination. Why? Because he couldn't have, in a million years, guessed how people across the country would have treated him. He told me about stopping at a truck stop in Iowa and a conversation he got into with some white truck drivers, and he couldn't believe how easy and friendly the people were. But he needed that excuse, 'going to the MMM' to get him out of Oakland.

This is not about making friends with white truck drivers in Iowa, this is about expanding your social ability. Making friends is going to be one of the results. People trust people who feel they can handle them. And the only way to be able to handle all the strangeness about people is getting out with people different than yourself. I go to Baldwin again:

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which robes one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

#4 Be Intimate
Everybody thinks they know who you are and what you're all about. You need to have imagination to get out of that. But you also need to be intimate with people. You have to let people into your sphere. That's difficult.

I hated people all up in my business. I liked handling my own business because almost nobody could give me what I needed. So why bother telling them about yourself? Because everybody knows somebody, and that somebody might be the key. So you should let people know what you're all about, even if you think they disrespect that, or can't help you in any way whatsoever. At the very least, you get associated with your ambition. It's better than the alternative which is they make up their own minds what you are all about without any real input from you. People talk. People can't shut up. Use that to your advantage.

#5 You Are Not The First Black Anything
And the cieling gets higher every day. What do you think blackfolks who've got it going on have been doing all this time? There are miles and miles of headroom. There is no place I've been and nothing I've studied where there haven't been blackfolks with great accomplishments. Anybody who tells you different just hasn't been out much. But you're still going to be outnumbered. That's neither here nor there. You are responsible to the people who are responsible to you. There is not a great big club out here waiting... well, there is the NBS Summit, but just take it for granted that the black race is doing just fine. You just need to get your hookup in order.

#6 Save.
Handle your money well. Get into a relationship with your bank today. Read everything possible about money and remember this. The best feeling in the world is walking through a mall and knowing you can afford anything in it that you want, but not buying one thing. Save your money. The only way to get money is to keep money. Buy savings bonds, and live low.

#7 Don't Doubt America
America is the country where things work. Whatever it is, if it's possible, then it's happening here somewhere. If it doesn't work in your neighborhood, then you're just in the wrong part of America. The fact that you can read this is proof. If you think you can fight with 'America' and win, you've got it all wrong. Lose that attitude because America is a lot bigger than you think. You'll find your place in it.

#8 Do Not Ignore Luck
You have to learn how to handle misfortune, and good fortune. That was hard for me to learn. I wasn't prepared to take advantage of any situation that wasn't completely in my control. Why? Because I assumed that the outcome would always be bad. I wasn't prepared to be surprised either way. In the end I would just end up mad because I couldn't take all the credit. But sometimes you just have to take the leap of faith.

#9 What Goes Around Comes Around
It's true. You will pay for your mistakes with people. You need to apologize and move on. Don't try to make your enemies pay. When you are actually powerful enough to do so, others will gladly do it for you. But until that point, you need to just collect your stuff and walk away. Don't give anybody a reason to do dirt to you, because you will be in delicate situations.

#10 Find Your Chillout Zone
You must find something you can do, on your own, that chills you out. You cannot depend on somebody else for that. You need to be able to get into your chillout zone when life throws you a knuckleball. For me, it changed. When I was in college, I ran. I could run for 10 miles and just leave the whole world behind. After that it was cycling. Then it was writing all my demons out on paper. But whatever it was, I knew I could come to that thing and find peace. Nobody had to come and restrain me, I didn't find myself on my knees like Usher begging for forgiveness for my own peace of mind. It had to come from within.

#11 Recognize
If you can get half of these things right, you have a good shot. But it won't change the perception of black men in America. So you have got to do a little to recognize others who have their heads on straight. And this is more than just a head nod in passing. It's affirmation of good work or a good deed. It's not paranoid, we brothers got to stick together when you know you or this other man is wrong. It's acknowledgement of achievement, not just survival. A black man can survive in jail. That doesn't mean anything. It's not just about living, it's about living right. It's about making a social space for doing good and keeping that space clean.

Men make choices and live with their choices. These are all tools that I think can help young black men keeping in mind the specific things I had to learn as a young black man. I come from a strong family, but these things still weren't obvious. But look at these lessons closely, see how universal they are?

Civil Rights Lefties Left Behind

Brent Staples fires a warning shot across the bow of the 'Civil Rights Establishment', insisting that they are not entirely logical in their sideline position. He gets no argument from me, especially since I've been advocating for more black engagement with the GOP. But in the following three, he nails something that I alluded to when speaking about Kilson's demography:

The most complex and deep-seated objections to No Child Left Behind
are clearly emanating from teachers and school administrators, who
have come under increasing pressure to improve student performance.
They have always wielded an outsized influence in the black community,
especially in the days of segregation, when they made up that
community's largest, most visible and most respected professional
group. Members of the teacher corps have historically played powerful
roles in civic organizations, including churches, while forming the
backbone of civil rights groups like the N.A.A.C.P.

Thanks in part to the civil rights movement, which expanded job
opportunities, the teacher corps in the black community is not what it
used to be. Many black children now attend school in educational dead
zones, where teachers are two or three times more likely to be
uncredentialed or unqualified than in the suburbs. It should come as
no surprise that minority children lag behind.

The educational dead zones have become part of a vicious cycle. As
experienced teachers retire, they are replaced by people who were
themselves educated in dismal public schools and sent on to teachers'
colleges that are often little more than diploma mills. The federal
government tried to fix this problem in the late 1990's when it
encouraged teachers' colleges to beef up curriculum and student
performance in exchange for the federal dollars they get in subsidies
and student loans. This effort failed, but it spawned No Child Left
Behind, which requires the states to place highly qualified teachers
in every classroom.

It has long been my position that the ghetto needs to be bombed and that some hard slogging towards residential integration of the suburbs get under way. In cruising through New Orleans, and given my knowledge of the (rusting) industrial Northeast, that's a lot harder to do than say, and probably unlikely to happen. And yet as David Brooks astutely observed in 'Patio Man', this is why people are moving to South by Southwest. It happens quite a bit out here on the West Coast. In fact, California's Inland Empire is probably the best place to be in the nation for families on the rise towards a relatively affordable suburbia. It's certainly growing.

But what Staples says here is very interesting because it underscores the changing profile of the 'Talented Tenth'. Know that I'm with the engineers and scientists and a cadre of professionals which are the largest in the history of African America. We are new to the ranks of the leadership of black Americans. That's one of the things that puts me on the progressive edge of the Old School rather than the traditional edge.

So when it comes to matters like public education policy one needs to seriously ask whether change is more likely to come from successful political agitation from just one party or engagement with both. I tend to be cynical about a Democratic solution and dubious about a bipartisan one. So foot dragging on whatever educational reform is offered at the Federal level has very little support from me. What works - even at the simplistic black-white level of analysis is to get black kids into white schools. The politics paving that road is already done. So it boils down to a matter of money and mobility. I wonder if we are at a point of equilibrium - if all those stuck in the ghetto and the projects are permanently stuck. If so, NCLB is probably going to be the only widely supported initiative with any juice in the nation that trickles down to institutions accessible to those classes of African Americans. To the extent that education is the only way out of the ghetto and the projects, everybody better jump on board, even if it means ignoring those traditional civil rights folks from the old middle class.

I'm going to move quickly beyond the politics of this because I just read Kilson's second article on Black Elites and I want to move quickly in that direction. Still I will mention briefly that he confirms much of what I've been saying about black mobility, and in fact uses that very term.

Civil Rights Lefties Left Behind

Brent Staples fires a warning shot across the bow of the 'Civil Rights Establishment', insisting that they are not entirely logical in their sideline position. He gets no argument from me, especially since I've been advocating for more black engagement with the GOP. But in the following three, he nails something that I alluded to when speaking about Kilson's demography:

The most complex and deep-seated objections to No Child Left Behind
are clearly emanating from teachers and school administrators, who
have come under increasing pressure to improve student performance.
They have always wielded an outsized influence in the black community,
especially in the days of segregation, when they made up that
community's largest, most visible and most respected professional
group. Members of the teacher corps have historically played powerful
roles in civic organizations, including churches, while forming the
backbone of civil rights groups like the N.A.A.C.P.

Thanks in part to the civil rights movement, which expanded job
opportunities, the teacher corps in the black community is not what it
used to be. Many black children now attend school in educational dead
zones, where teachers are two or three times more likely to be
uncredentialed or unqualified than in the suburbs. It should come as
no surprise that minority children lag behind.

The educational dead zones have become part of a vicious cycle. As
experienced teachers retire, they are replaced by people who were
themselves educated in dismal public schools and sent on to teachers'
colleges that are often little more than diploma mills. The federal
government tried to fix this problem in the late 1990's when it
encouraged teachers' colleges to beef up curriculum and student
performance in exchange for the federal dollars they get in subsidies
and student loans. This effort failed, but it spawned No Child Left
Behind, which requires the states to place highly qualified teachers
in every classroom.

It has long been my position that the ghetto needs to be bombed and that some hard slogging towards residential integration of the suburbs get under way. In cruising through New Orleans, and given my knowledge of the (rusting) industrial Northeast, that's a lot harder to do than say, and probably unlikely to happen. And yet as David Brooks astutely observed in 'Patio Man', this is why people are moving to South by Southwest. It happens quite a bit out here on the West Coast. In fact, California's Inland Empire is probably the best place to be in the nation for families on the rise towards a relatively affordable suburbia. It's certainly growing.

But what Staples says here is very interesting because it underscores the changing profile of the 'Talented Tenth'. Know that I'm with the engineers and scientists and a cadre of professionals which are the largest in the history of African America. We are new to the ranks of the leadership of black Americans. That's one of the things that puts me on the progressive edge of the Old School rather than the traditional edge.

So when it comes to matters like public education policy one needs to seriously ask whether change is more likely to come from successful political agitation from just one party or engagement with both. I tend to be cynical about a Democratic solution and dubious about a bipartisan one. So foot dragging on whatever educational reform is offered at the Federal level has very little support from me. What works - even at the simplistic black-white level of analysis is to get black kids into white schools. The politics paving that road is already done. So it boils down to a matter of money and mobility. I wonder if we are at a point of equilibrium - if all those stuck in the ghetto and the projects are permanently stuck. If so, NCLB is probably going to be the only widely supported initiative with any juice in the nation that trickles down to institutions accessible to those classes of African Americans. To the extent that education is the only way out of the ghetto and the projects, everybody better jump on board, even if it means ignoring those traditional civil rights folks from the old middle class.

I'm going to move quickly beyond the politics of this because I just read Kilson's second article on Black Elites and I want to move quickly in that direction. Still I will mention briefly that he confirms much of what I've been saying about black mobility, and in fact uses that very term.

Deduction

English

Your Linguistic Profile:

50% General American English

25% Yankee

15% Dixie

10% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

The Great Guys hang out in Kinshasa, practicing their American English on a regular basis.

Black Ain't Black

Rust

Warehouses

Steeple

The Narrow House

The Pink House

On the League's Brief

"Freedom of the press, or, to be more precise, the benefit of freedom of the press, belongs to everyone - to the citizen as well as the publisher.. The crux is not the publisher's 'freedom to print;' it is, rather, the citizen's 'right to know'"

I am encouraged and proud of the brief filed by our Bear Flag attorneys on our behalf. Although I don't report the news on the regular, there have been several occasions which I do specifically go places to report news. The knowledge that I could be shielded from legal actions like those filed against the Apple leakers is of great import to me and I strongly believe that our folks have the case exactly right.

The fact of the matter is that every writer, every blogger is up to snuff in the particular way we have looked at journalism traditionally. But we are learning new ways of communicating, there are new values given by new content. In many ways, it can be said that blogs are the shape they are, partially owing to the shape of the rest of news reporting. In that spectrum they have unique value and so they generate different expectations from their readers. But the principle of getting news to the public is exactly the same as with any other journalistic endeavor. Blogs are journals. Thus bloggers are entitled to the same legal protections as any other professional journalist. Although the Apple case is not an example, one could clearly see that investigative actions themselves, shared by journalists and bloggers alike, generate the vulnerability which without shield protection would stifle presentation of crucial information to the public.

I've always felt a little twingy about reporting certain things, and yet I've also felt that the blogosphere would be an excellent source for more serious communications. When Sean-Paul over at the Agonist published his PGP key and began taking interviews from senior officers in Iraq during the ramp-up, I was sure I was seeing something new and exciting. The Agonist has continued to be an excellent source of news and Sean-Paul's excellent reputation is well-deserved.

Clearly the California powers that be can step up in this matter and codify blogs as 'periodicals'. I believe that should be sufficient to show that when we decide to report news, that we bloggers will have all the protections of other journalists. The public deserves it.

On the League's Brief

"Freedom of the press, or, to be more precise, the benefit of freedom of the press, belongs to everyone - to the citizen as well as the publisher.. The crux is not the publisher's 'freedom to print;' it is, rather, the citizen's 'right to know'"

I am encouraged and proud of the brief filed by our Bear Flag attorneys on our behalf. Although I don't report the news on the regular, there have been several occasions which I do specifically go places to report news. The knowledge that I could be shielded from legal actions like those filed against the Apple leakers is of great import to me and I strongly believe that our folks have the case exactly right.

The fact of the matter is that every writer, every blogger is up to snuff in the particular way we have looked at journalism traditionally. But we are learning new ways of communicating, there are new values given by new content. In many ways, it can be said that blogs are the shape they are, partially owing to the shape of the rest of news reporting. In that spectrum they have unique value and so they generate different expectations from their readers. But the principle of getting news to the public is exactly the same as with any other journalistic endeavor. Blogs are journals. Thus bloggers are entitled to the same legal protections as any other professional journalist. Although the Apple case is not an example, one could clearly see that investigative actions themselves, shared by journalists and bloggers alike, generate the vulnerability which without shield protection would stifle presentation of crucial information to the public.

I've always felt a little twingy about reporting certain things, and yet I've also felt that the blogosphere would be an excellent source for more serious communications. When Sean-Paul over at the Agonist published his PGP key and began taking interviews from senior officers in Iraq during the ramp-up, I was sure I was seeing something new and exciting. The Agonist has continued to be an excellent source of news and Sean-Paul's excellent reputation is well-deserved.

Clearly the California powers that be can step up in this matter and codify blogs as 'periodicals'. I believe that should be sufficient to show that when we decide to report news, that we bloggers will have all the protections of other journalists. The public deserves it.

Peasant

Oldies but Who?

I've never played Legend of Zelda and I've always thought that Mario was a dweeb in every way. In fact, the only thing Nintendo ever did for me was in the arcade. You know, arcade? That place you had to go to and put quarters in the machines?

Quite frankly I couldn't really tell you which of any of the arcade games I liked were made my Nintendo. Maybe Donkey Kong, but I played it more than I liked it. Clearly none of the games I did like wound up impressing young musicians like this dude, The Video Game Pianist.

Yes I do believe it's art. I just don't recognize it. Oh except for that little thing by Liszt, the Transcendental Etude #10. That's actually one of my all time favorites.

Pride

Pride

Kilson on Black Elites

I didn't read all of the tables in Kilson's interesting article. That's mostly because the most interesting of them didn't have any data for my father's time, let alone my generation. If there's anything I'd like Fryer to check out it would be the distribution of African American professionals, longitudinally. In other words, I'd like to see evidence documented by statistics, that indicates the extent to which the black middle and upper middle classes have diversified and expanded in the post-war and post-civil rights eras.

Meanwhile Kilson concludes:

One crucial lesson for today’s Black elite at the dawn of the 21st century can be drawn from the foregoing discussion of the formative-phase Black elite outreach-to-Black-masses-leadership pattern (from 19th century to 1940s). Namely, the formative-phase Black elite set a high-standard example of the outreach-to-Black-masses-leadership orientation, especially in light of the racist-restricted miniscule modernization resources that our White-supremacist structured American society permitted the formative-phase Black elite to acquire.

There is also a second crucial lesson to draw from the foregoing discussion. Namely, that today’s early 21st century Black elite has a tremendous obligation to bear in regard to replicating an outreach-to-Black-masses-leadership pattern that is comparable to the pattern fashioned by the formative-phase Black elite from the 19th century to 1940s.

Indeed , as I will discuss in Part II of this essay, given today’s Black elite’s new mainstream status in both the economic and political structures of early 21st century American society – providing it new economic resources and public policy influence – the future outreach-to-Black-masses-leadership pattern should be superior in quality to what the earlier Black elite could achieve. I myself believe that today’s early 21st century Black elite will fulfill its outreach-to-Black-masses-leadership obligation. Today’s Black elite confronts a situation involving 40% of today’s African-American households that suffer numerous social crises.

I have mixed opinins about Kilson's conclusions. I agree that there are Talented Tenth aspirations among us, but that Progressivism and race raising is nowhere near as important as it once was - that the relative amount of time elite blacks need to consider and dedicate themselves to their inferiors is less . Furthermore, I would argue that the social capital with which blacks are endowed allow their elites broad responsibilities in mainstream organizations which far outweigh those that can be accomplished via progressivism and aggregation. This sets up a paradox that Kilson seems to ignore. There are more things that black elites can do, but it's not entirely clear that they need to or want to.

I think that it is very difficult to establish the connectivity the black elite would require to become a self-sustaining force in American life. I am optimistic and hopeful about that becoming an eventuality, but I do have grave concerns that a great deal of energy my be dissapated in search of that Black Establishment. But I also say that it's a great mystery which I am bound to pry open and discover, not the least because I think I deserve a seat in the star chamber. But beyond my selfish reasons for wanting to be a part, I think that there are a goodly contingent of my peers who are puzzled about how this thing might come together.

As much as most of us complain about the NAACP, it's always there (like BET) and you can rely on its ability to draw attention to itself. So whatever they say cannot be ignored, nor can Sharpton or any of the other Fungibles. And yet it seems impossible to determine with any accuracy the extent to which their policy pronouncements and rationale is shared by the African American public. All we hear is criticism, but where is the consensus? This whole problem of working with a default consensus is what keeps black politics stagnant between the Rock of the Republicans and the Hard Place of the Democrats. (I don't know how to spell Schilla or Charibdis). Most of us would rather be elsewhere, but elsewhere has no permanent address.

So latent in the energy and motivation, and even egos of the black elite, is a formula for black political amplitude if not unity. And what must happen is that the content of that political desire must be made manifest through self-representation. This is central to the Black Power Imperative. It is what we want for Iraqis, it is what we want for ourselves.

Still, will we aggregate successfully? There is a paradox. America has to be open enough for successful blacks to feel as though the limits on their success is entirely their own doing and not due to latent institutional racism. Yet America has to be closed enough for them to take the burden of lifting their racial brothers seriously. Absent both conditions, there's no real reason for this elite to take its duties beyond friends and family. Cues will continue to come from the big dogs like Cosby, but it's still an iffy proposition. I agree with Kilson that the spirit is willing and the chances are good, but this cuts awfully close to home in many ways. Is it essential or is it optional?

Black is Black

Black is Black

Dancing on the Third Rail: Part Three

You can sing the words to 'Amazing Grace' to the tune of 'Gilligans Island'. Try it. It works perfectly, and it kind of destroys the purity of both songs. It's completely unexpected and it stays in your head. I think that's what a black Republican is. The first time you see it, you don't believe it, because it seems wrong, and whenever you think about it, it makes you angry because it disrespects tradition. And as long as you've learned it the way you've learned it, it will seem that way.

I believe the future of this country is like that, with regard to race. We are going to have to expect the possibility that all of the different colored square pegs belong in the square hole. We have to stop mistaking color for shape. It requires an honesty that seems wrong and disrespects tradition. It requires an honesty about color and an honesty about shape. But there's still a lot of mending to do because we've all been getting bent out of shape over color.

The Existential Shape of Politics
I've talked about the mending in terms of healing and curing. Since I'm a conservative, I think that the primary burden of healing and curing lies with the self. I have come not to expect a fair society, I've always said that you cannot wish for a better public. As my new pals in the Mother Company salesforce say, 'It is what it is.' I prefer the Run DMC version myself, but the point is exactly the same. We live near the end of an awful history that has taught valuable lessons. That's good and bad. The bad speaks for itself, but the good is found in those lessons - after all, somebody succeeded. But since I believe what I do when it comes to race it puts me in a peculiar if not precarious position, with regard to whom I feel my responsibility lies. I say this understanding that it's a fair guess that most of my readers might consider themselves to be whitefolks. I'm shouting out to the public. The bottom line is that I'm trying to direct black politics into a direction that speaks honestly to self-representation that allows the truth about blacks to be said, and I'm trying to influence white politics into a direction that works in honest coalition with black interests as expressed through those black politics. We've had a liberal white coalition with left blacks and that produced the mandate for Civil Rights. Now that Civil Rights is baked that coalition is in shambles and everybody is wondering where to go next. So far they're regressing. That's why I think the progessive side of the Old School is in a unique leadership position now that Republicans control American politics, but that connection has to be done right.

You see, I am a nationalist and a globalist. I believe that I am a citizen of my nation and I inhereit its traditions and laws. I have a duty as an African American to reconcile myself to the history of my country. I make sense of it and I locate myself within a thread of its development. I am an African American raised as a black nationalist in Southern California during the 70s. When I was driving Lee around and showing her my Los Angeles, she found it remarkable that I knew so many black Catholics & Episcopalians. I really never thought much about that fact in isolation, but it's a very real part of my association with the folks in The Dons. Many attended mass at Holy Name, or Advent or with Reverend Stallings. That's part of it as well. And I also look very closely at my family. I am part of them and I am responsible to them, not just the nuclear family but my entire extended family. That's hard. My family tree is deep and wide. There's a lot to say here but the point is that there are significant contexts within which my identity is subsumed and these are the contexts I expect others to represent as we all work as citizens in the public sphere. When we talk about simple matters like Affirmative Action, I don't want to hear just 'white' or 'asian', I want to hear second-generation vietnamese whose family ran a restaurant.. and that whole nine yards.

So when we talk as Americans about race, a lot of it comes back to the personal, and I know sometimes I get upset when people say ('oh by the way I'm white') and just leave it at that. I say that's hiding. If that's all you say, that's all you can be. But I'm trying very hard to get the energy of black nationalists who led back in the 60s & 70s to work on this new politics of the 21c. I can't do that if whitefolks are just going to be 'white', because that's problematic with regard to multicultural ethics and anti-racist principles that are non-starters in the coalition of color.

There are a couple of huge conspiracy theories in operation today with regard to American politics, and one of them is that all Republicans and folks on the right are like 'Goldwater' and that Goldwater was opposed to Civil Rights for racist reasons. So while a significant number of Old School blacks have basically opted out of mainstream politics for this reason, the Republican agenda has a big gaping default. And from my perspective, all the Pat Robertsons in the world do not add up to one TD Jakes - the conservatives of color, not just blackfolks, but conservative immigrants in generation one and two are a huge flavorful coalition that ought to be the more proper multicultural coalition on the right. But you have to play whack-a-mole on a lot of knuckleheads like Phil Gramm & Tom DeLay before that message get through their thick skulls. They think we're going to assimilate and they're dead wrong. We don't have the ethics problem. They think we're going to get stronger by beating up on homos. Wrong again. They think we're going to sell out to high stakes influence politics. Nope. They just don't have their marketing right, although Christie Whitman does. I think GW Bush started off on the right track with regard to 'compassionate conservatism' but global events took over his domestic agenda, and really this Republican congress defaulted big time. I think history will show that the focus on terrorism and the war allowed a high quotient of mediocrity to set the domestic legislative agenda...

But I digress.

The American mainstream is wide open and accomodating to ethnic flavor, but the issue of race is more than just flavor. That's not anybody's choice - but it is deeply embedded in the way we talk about social justice. It's an important shape, and we shouldn't let color distract us from the content of that discussion. There will always be people who have grown up singing Amazing Grace to the tune of Gilligan's Island for whom there is no resonance of the way things were. That's not what we want. We want people who understand the effort with which things were changed who are comfortably fluent enough to put the same words into the tune of 'When the Saints Go Marching In'. So this is not about colorblindness, it's about color competency and cross-cultural fluency. It's about understanding both history and possibility. It's about knowing enough about why people made political coalitions in the past and how they view their progress from there in order to make new ones in the future. It's about living with the public we have and incorporating their aspirations into the society they would have for their children. It's all going to come together and come apart again. That's why integrity is key.

I have thrown in some Cobbian politics above, and I am negotiating some complex dynamics. I am convinced that the leadership of black political coalitions will be of a certain type of elite. You cannot dredge up the 'legacy of slavery' without the understanding that through it all, the African family persists. And you cannot talk about oppression in the world without recognizing the possibilities of Africans on the world stage. So in solving problems for a particular class of African Americans, black political leaders are going to be thrust quickly onto that world stage. The Congressional Black Coalition appears to me to not be forward thinking in that regard; they're thinking small and as such are going to be marginalized. The context of race is political and the political power one can obtain by wrangling that context well is outsized, but the end goal has little to do with race, and it is a mistake to think otherwise. So how we spend the political capital of making the ethnic vote produce is of critical import. I worry that those who believe the 'Goldwater Theory' are all too ready to pay it all back, that is a strategy which will devolve into an Israeli-Palestinian situation.

Failure is Not An Option
An enemy is somebody who doesn't mind if you fail. And since white identity and all American identity depends very highly on how well our ethnic politics go, everyone has a stake is making this work. Nobody wants to go back to the repression of the 50s, well nobody sane anyway. Neither do we want to go back to the chaos of the 60s nor the sappy accomodation of the crossover 70s. And while I don't wish to overstate the import of how black politics gets its act together in the context of the American economy and geopolitical destiny, it is at the very core of the world's experiment with democracy. We are the leading example of how democracy can empower. If it weren't for what happened to Emmitt Till and how we worked America because of it, the Minutemen at the Mexican border would be shooting first. If African Americans had failed in their demand for universal public accomodations, this society would be a great deal more closed and this nation would be unable to lead the world in any way whatsoever. Just count the American cities that burned in 1968 and imagine where we would be if it got worse instead of better.

It took 26 years to free Geronimo Pratt. Certain key things simply must happen in order to sustain our faith in law and order. One of those things is that we must be free to stake our claim in this land. We must be able to sustain our families as we believe they should be in a place we call our homeland. We cannot sacrifice ourselves into la vida sin corazon. Rather we must draw strength from a society that grows respect of its people. When it comes to American identity, that means respecting the aspirations of freedom and accomplishment for which our emergent populations struggle. It means not only, in the way Malcolm described, are we diners at the American table, but our recipies are on the menu. In that and only that way do we secure the blessings of liberty.

"Humankind still lives in prehistory everywhere, indeed everything awaits the creation of the world as a genuine one... if human beings have grasped themselves, and what is theirs, without depersonalization and alienation, founded in real democracy, then something comes into being in the world that shines into everyone's childhood and where no one has yet been -- home."
--Ernest Bloch

Hanging With Lee

I did a lot of talking yesterday, and Lee did a lot of listening. I told her she was destroying my blog for all the things I might have said here went only to her. Lee is a protege of sorts. I'm showing her my Los Angeles. She comes from an extraordinarily sheltered world that I didn't know existed, and she wants to bloom under a different sun. She takes notes. So we drove all over. We met yesterday afternoon at the foot of the hills of the Doheny oilfield and went first at the top of Hahn Park looking across the city. We cruised through the Jungle, to the Fox Hills Mall, up and down Crenshaw, to West Adams, up into The Dons, View Park and Ladera. We went to Farmers Market for my favorite Korean BBQ and watched the odd black woman scowl at us. She noticed how white men were looking at her, and we talked about all that. We went up into Hollywood and then down to the South Bay, to the Hermosa Pier and then up to Marina Del Rey. It was all new. We talked and talked. The interesting thing I learned was about how men want to own women, and the rules that fathers and mothers make to conspire control of their bloodlines. It's makes for a wicked conservatism, and I can see how it had crushed a little life out of Lee. But she's gaining confidence in this world and she wants to be a part of all of it, not just her own well-wrapped universe. She helped me realize how fortunate I have been at a young age to be exposed to a wide variety of whitefolks. Because she looks at them and she sees nothing. We didn't talk about white women more than once in 12 hours, but of white men and how they do nothing for her. Of course she's never been down South and you might imagine the sort she met at her elite New England college. "75% rich and 50% gay". So one can hardly blame her, as sheltered and protected as she has been, both by her parents and by her own mind. And while there's nothing particularly special about whitefolks, it's always useful to recognize them for the way they recognize themselves, which is what traveling among and between the various cliques can do for a young person. But Lee only traveled from the old country in Eastern Europe to America as a child driven from oppression. And so she has remained close to her parents for all of her 2 dozen years, without much freedom at all. She said that if you took the African American out of the Conservative Brotherhood creed, you would harness 70% of her countrymen. And she knows of black men who hang with them finding much in common. I say we are all emergent in America, and sometimes we clutch at ourselves when encountering cielings and walls against our ethnicity. Sometimes we hold our loved ones too close and create in them a fear of the unknown that is easily knowable. On the pier we stared into the cold black water. The sea is massive, powerful and all encompassing. But you can never trust the sea. All you can trust is your ability to swim.

Dancing on the Third Rail: Part Two

Everybody knows how to fight. Nobody knows how to fight racism.

It could be said that in my life online I have been through three phases. In the first phase, mostly as a cat named 'mellow mike', I was primarily interested in black cultural content creation. I had honestly believed that I could transform the realm of hiphop through some kind of online interactive artform. I was also all about the writing, and so I did a lot of lower case, and spoke with flair and flavor. It was all about the culture and the existentials. It was all about the Representation I spoke of.

Then I found out that people were so stuck on race that I couldn't carve out such a space without it being attacked. The internet was a hostile environment for black creativity. I recall as I write this, the hostility a friend of mine received for proposing a black cultural forum from the editor of Boardwatch Magazine, which was very influential at the time. It is exactly parallel to the stink over TCB, the same whack logic. Like any number of new domains, you'll often find self-appointed white male guardians who require it to be 'colorblind' and are thus hostile against women and minorities who claim a spot. As if white wasn't a color and male wasn't a gender. And so faced with this racial problem in the way of my cultural expression, I became 'boohab' and fought the race man's battle.

There was a break and a breather between boohab and 'Cobb', and I'm not sure how much longer Cobb will last, but in this phase I am clearly more focused on the political. As such I am being much more personable rather than abstracted and talking about Domestic Affairs, from an Old School perspective. I don't so often pick the subjects and preach as I comment on the subjects most bloggers are commenting on. That was easy during the beginning of the war and during the campaign season, but not so easy now. At any rate, The Conservative Brotherhood and Cobb are specifically about the black Right, what it is, what it thinks, what it wants, how it operates. Simple.

Or not.

I spoke to my boy Les briefly on the phone last night. He made me laugh in his own inimitable way, knowing just what to say. He said that there will always be some fool whiteboy who will want to make it all about himself. How come I can't form a white political group? How come I can't talk about white culture? How come I can't do what you do? How come I'm always made out to be the bad guy? How come I...? Yes indeed how come you? How did you come into this discussion in the first place? What's your mission? Why are you here?

Remember what Baldwin said. "To be committed is to be in danger." To come up with a handle and dedicate yourself to black culture or anti-racism or black right politics for years at a time online is dangerous work. Somebody might take you wrong. Somebody might take you as a wierdo or as a narrow minded obsessive. You might be accused of stirring up trouble and upsetting apple carts. Good.

Somebody will always demand an explanation, an executive summary that sits well with them. Something they can give a thumbs up or down to, because most people don't want to get into the details. They don't want to hear, they don't want to learn. They want to note briefly, categorize and move on.

But when it comes to rolling that boulder of race, every American's identity is at stake. So there's a lot of excuse making about why such talk is dangerous. And that poor whiteboy is wondering what we're all going to decide for him next. Because if it isn't the damned blacks, it's the damned gays. And if it's not the damned gays, it's the damned feminists, and then the damned Asians and all these damned people keep trying to redefine America under the white man's feet. The white guy bullseye. Sitting duck. Dinosaur. Nobody has any common decency any longer and things don't make sense. No they don't. And the world keeps changing and everything settled is at risk, and everybody fights with the tools they have. Can't we all just get along?

Yes we can. And when it comes to race I've been saying as boohab that yes Mr. Man you have to come up with a new name for yourself. We have. We're not coloreds any more. We're not Negroes. We're halfway done with black and still trying out our African American. Asians ain't Orientals or Celestials any more. You can't be sure if you're looking at a Hispanic or a Latino. Everybody is changing and getting better, why should you be your father's Oldsmobile?

I know there was a deal done when Moses became Morris and lots of people lost the 'stein, shave off a few grams of nose meat and married the blonde. I know there was a deal done when the lace curtains were traded in and the brogue dropped. Everybody pays their price to be called American. But it's a price that keeps getting paid, so long as we are a free country and people still want to come here all of our destinies and identities are bound together. I wish I could be at the border of Mexico this weekend with the Minutemen because I believe that we need to force our politicians to reckon with the hypocrisy in our Immigration Laws. But I know I can't do that without being considered biased against Mexicans. That's the price of the ticket. We all inherit a racial identity, but what do we do with it?

Right now we're in a muddle. Everybody has got different terms and everybody is weary of dealing with race. But we haven't really finished getting it right. A lot of people think it would be better if we just call the whole thing off.

No. We have to face off and deal. I cannot hide behind a XXXL sports jersey, a doo rag, 500 watts of bass and a sneer. You cannot hide either. You have to talk about that smelly town where you grew up. You have to talk about your roots and what was right about them and what was wrong and we have to see the common struggle and invest in the common system. There's no hiding here. With TCB and me, we show our path, our roots, our values, our aims. We can't just front as 'black'. That's not enough. And yet sometimes it just gets reduced to that. That's what got us into this mess in the first place. Oh it's just racial thinking.

I don't to the 'black Republican' thing any longer. I had to work my way through it to understand this side of the aisle. I discovered it was about *do*, not *be*. So when I did different things, my identity changed. And I don't think anyone can read Cobb and say 'typical black conservative'. That's because I don't front. I'm honest about where I'm coming from with myself and with my readers. Sometimes it gets to be strictly about race, and I have decided to deal with it as it occurs, whether or not I want to. Not because I'm defensive about it, but because I know that I have something to contribute which can draw people into this shared issue we have.

Next: The Future.

Dancing on the Third Rail: Part Two

Everybody knows how to fight. Nobody knows how to fight racism.

It could be said that in my life online I have been through three phases. In the first phase, mostly as a cat named 'mellow mike', I was primarily interested in black cultural content creation. I had honestly believed that I could transform the realm of hiphop through some kind of online interactive artform. I was also all about the writing, and so I did a lot of lower case, and spoke with flair and flavor. It was all about the culture and the existentials. It was all about the Representation I spoke of.

Then I found out that people were so stuck on race that I couldn't carve out such a space without it being attacked. The internet was a hostile environment for black creativity. I recall as I write this, the hostility a friend of mine received for proposing a black cultural forum from the editor of Boardwatch Magazine, which was very influential at the time. It is exactly parallel to the stink over TCB, the same whack logic. Like any number of new domains, you'll often find self-appointed white male guardians who require it to be 'colorblind' and are thus hostile against women and minorities who claim a spot. As if white wasn't a color and male wasn't a gender. And so faced with this racial problem in the way of my cultural expression, I became 'boohab' and fought the race man's battle.

There was a break and a breather between boohab and 'Cobb', and I'm not sure how much longer Cobb will last, but in this phase I am clearly more focused on the political. As such I am being much more personable rather than abstracted and talking about Domestic Affairs, from an Old School perspective. I don't so often pick the subjects and preach as I comment on the subjects most bloggers are commenting on. That was easy during the beginning of the war and during the campaign season, but not so easy now. At any rate, The Conservative Brotherhood and Cobb are specifically about the black Right, what it is, what it thinks, what it wants, how it operates. Simple.

Or not.

I spoke to my boy Les briefly on the phone last night. He made me laugh in his own inimitable way, knowing just what to say. He said that there will always be some fool whiteboy who will want to make it all about himself. How come I can't form a white political group? How come I can't talk about white culture? How come I can't do what you do? How come I'm always made out to be the bad guy? How come I...? Yes indeed how come you? How did you come into this discussion in the first place? What's your mission? Why are you here?

Remember what Baldwin said. "To be committed is to be in danger." To come up with a handle and dedicate yourself to black culture or anti-racism or black right politics for years at a time online is dangerous work. Somebody might take you wrong. Somebody might take you as a wierdo or as a narrow minded obsessive. You might be accused of stirring up trouble and upsetting apple carts. Good.

Somebody will always demand an explanation, an executive summary that sits well with them. Something they can give a thumbs up or down to, because most people don't want to get into the details. They don't want to hear, they don't want to learn. They want to note briefly, categorize and move on.

But when it comes to rolling that boulder of race, every American's identity is at stake. So there's a lot of excuse making about why such talk is dangerous. And that poor whiteboy is wondering what we're all going to decide for him next. Because if it isn't the damned blacks, it's the damned gays. And if it's not the damned gays, it's the damned feminists, and then the damned Asians and all these damned people keep trying to redefine America under the white man's feet. The white guy bullseye. Sitting duck. Dinosaur. Nobody has any common decency any longer and things don't make sense. No they don't. And the world keeps changing and everything settled is at risk, and everybody fights with the tools they have. Can't we all just get along?

Yes we can. And when it comes to race I've been saying as boohab that yes Mr. Man you have to come up with a new name for yourself. We have. We're not coloreds any more. We're not Negroes. We're halfway done with black and still trying out our African American. Asians ain't Orientals or Celestials any more. You can't be sure if you're looking at a Hispanic or a Latino. Everybody is changing and getting better, why should you be your father's Oldsmobile?

I know there was a deal done when Moses became Morris and lots of people lost the 'stein, shave off a few grams of nose meat and married the blonde. I know there was a deal done when the lace curtains were traded in and the brogue dropped. Everybody pays their price to be called American. But it's a price that keeps getting paid, so long as we are a free country and people still want to come here all of our destinies and identities are bound together. I wish I could be at the border of Mexico this weekend with the Minutemen because I believe that we need to force our politicians to reckon with the hypocrisy in our Immigration Laws. But I know I can't do that without being considered biased against Mexicans. That's the price of the ticket. We all inherit a racial identity, but what do we do with it?

Right now we're in a muddle. Everybody has got different terms and everybody is weary of dealing with race. But we haven't really finished getting it right. A lot of people think it would be better if we just call the whole thing off.

No. We have to face off and deal. I cannot hide behind a XXXL sports jersey, a doo rag, 500 watts of bass and a sneer. You cannot hide either. You have to talk about that smelly town where you grew up. You have to talk about your roots and what was right about them and what was wrong and we have to see the common struggle and invest in the common system. There's no hiding here. With TCB and me, we show our path, our roots, our values, our aims. We can't just front as 'black'. That's not enough. And yet sometimes it just gets reduced to that. That's what got us into this mess in the first place. Oh it's just racial thinking.

I don't to the 'black Republican' thing any longer. I had to work my way through it to understand this side of the aisle. I discovered it was about *do*, not *be*. So when I did different things, my identity changed. And I don't think anyone can read Cobb and say 'typical black conservative'. That's because I don't front. I'm honest about where I'm coming from with myself and with my readers. Sometimes it gets to be strictly about race, and I have decided to deal with it as it occurs, whether or not I want to. Not because I'm defensive about it, but because I know that I have something to contribute which can draw people into this shared issue we have.

Next: The Future.

Dancing on the Third Rail: Part One

(Today and tomorrow, I'm going deep into racial territory)

The problem with learning and caring is that you can never shutup, even when you want to. Even when it's better to let people be wrong, and misinterpret, to be committed to what you know to be true forces one, in the end to add another straw to the camel's back, hoping it will balance the odd one someone else put on a moment, or a millenium before.

So it is with race in America. The conversation never stops.

What I understand about race in America is that it involves two sides, and that neither side can win. Black and white are like twin brothers wrestling on the floor. But I think the most true thing about race in America is that it inhabits all of our metaphors. There are so many stories and so many reasons and so many prayers bound up in the drama of race. For anyone who truly cares about the American condition, the state of our union, the meaning of our values, race is always intrinsic, ever puzzling, ever revealing, ever punishing.

I shake my head because I have not yet reached that time in parenthood during which my children rebel. So my instinct remains at the patient-explanation-for-your-own-good level rather than the, fine-do-it-your-way-you'll-see level. And so I am taking an hour or so to respond at length to some straws I see poking out.

Two cats respond here at Cobb on the regular. One is Dave, the other is Chap. I don't really know them. I don't really know anyone in cyberspace, and it's difficult to explain how much of an in-your-face person I am, how I am such an acute observer of people. The web and all computer mediated communications represent to me an abstract medium for the expression of (more or less) pure thought, and it is perfect for certain things, but doesn't begin to approach what I can remember when watching a man or woman walk or listen to them speak or read their faces. So I am something of a bull in a china shop of ideas out here on the web, I am an arrow on a path. I redefine and correct, and I don't listen as much as I would face to face. And it is that gap bewteen the person and the virus of an idea inhabiting their minds which may or may not express itself clearly in the digital realm, that I both recognize and obliterate. So if it sounds like I am beating up them, or whitefolks, or blackfolks, I am, but only in digital bits, only in the realm of ideas. I am a great respecter of people, but when I see a bad paragraph, I am compelled to attack. I don't know that I will find one, but don't hold your breath. This is not about you guys in particular, it's sorta about your being a part of this thing that I and the Brotherhood, and America is going through. I understand your stake as Americans in the reconciliation between all of us.

The best defense, they say, is a good offense. And I really have no need nor cause to be defensive. I'm already here, on the other side of the mountain of personal achievement that unleashes a man's spirit. I have been unleashed for a dozen years and then some. It is how I have managed to take the diary I had been writing in college, to the public - to stand in front of hungry patrons and recite poetry from the heart - to write the unspeakable memo, to correct the man who thinks he knows it all. I care deeply for people, but I only answer to God. Engagement with me is an exercise in honesty, it's about how real I think I can get with you, it's about how much truth you show that you can handle. Sooner or later we get to that place called intimacy. It's a quick jump to there when I write. And I am true to myself and therefore not false with my readers.

So what is this racial thing and why do I bother? I thought about that at the baggage claim this morning after a good 4 hours of sleep. Why is it that this black experience thing is so difficult for my white cousins to understand? Why do I appear obsessed? Why even use such a word? The first answer that passed back through my mind was that it only seems obsessive if you don't see the value in it. But like breeding sows or birthing cows, somebody has to stick their whole arm into uncomfortable places, and once you have learned to do so everything is different. I think whitefolks depend on blackfolks to stick our arms up into race, and they take our civility to be a sign of forgiveness. That's partially true. But there is also a science of husbandry in this, we bring it along generation by generation. But that is always done by engagement, and never by distance.

Represent
Speaking for myself, and I think for many in my generation, much of black culture has been about representation. We have been engaged in a struggle to be a different we. We were like stowaway children under the tarp of the horsecart of the Underground Railroad. Our parents rode shotgun with their hats down low, not speaking too loudly less they draw too much attention. And yet we were their joy and it was our brightness, sheltered within our humble homes, that gave them the courage to take that road to freedom. But my generation crawled out from under the tarp and started talking loud. Yeah! We're free, and guess what you don't really know about us? We've been representing black culture, we've been blackety blackety black black y'all. We've been painting the white house black, and we've dared you to say anything about it. And it was necessary, God knows what the world has been missing in the wake of our parents' silence. And you've been discovering it from Eddie Murphy to Joe Jett to Serena Williams to Condi Rice. The Negro is dead. Blackness is about busting out of jail, about bringing music to the Nowhere Man, about never letting anyone forget about our flavor and unlimited potential.

The success of blackness is demonstrable but its task is not complete. It will take another two generations I think. When my grandchildren purchase banks in Chile or Ghana perhaps. When there's a country club in Georgia where two black ex-presidents hang out. When the Kwaku Foundation awards it's million dollar grant for the 40th time and the networks celebrate. These are my expectations of a fulfilled African American destiny. But lots of African Americans have their own. These hopes and aspirations were forged in different fires and every family's history shapes them, but there is a direction to it, and a common kind of struggle when it comes from African American history. In our generation, it has been to represent - to come out and be loud and proud. As Rick James said, we're bustin' out of this L 7 square, done braided our hair and don't mind if you stare.

The Balance
James Baldwin said:

Take no one's word for anything, including mine-but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear. Please try to be clear, dear James, through the storm which rages about your youthful head today, about the reality which lies behind the words acceptance and integration, There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.

And so I know that American destiny is not complete until African American destiny is complete. And we keep working, we blacks and whites, we keep working each others nerves until we reach a settlement. Today the settlement is an accomodation, a compromise, a tenable peace which is both uneasy and comfortable. We still live in a society where OJ makes a difference. We still live in a society in which Colin Powell's wife fears for her husband's life. We still live in a society in which Camilla Cosby was considered crazy when she said race mattered in the murder of her son. And whitefolks know very well, as they look at their own families and friends and associates, that something about them is unfinished and unreconciled to the rest of America. It's nothing a simple as 'discrimination'. Hell, nobody I know is a racist. Everybody I know hates racism. But only few can talk about it in mixed company for more than a minute.

Online is a different story. I've proven that, because I wanted to and I paid close attention. But the fact remains, there is still dissonance, sometimes it is as clearly defined and significant as the street between a white gentrified enclave and the beat down streets of chinatown. Sometimes it's as subtle and insignificant as choosing the right beer when ordering Thai food in New Orleans while listening to reggae music. I don't mean to be cavalier, but I'm not sure that we know what to do with our Multicultural ethos or exactly what it buys us in the post 9/11 world. I'm not sure we know what to do with our new sensitivities. Today, 3000 gay couples had their marriages annulled by legal fiat in the state of Oregon. Online we can talk about all this stuff, but what do we do?

More later.

Dancing on the Third Rail: Part One

(Today and tomorrow, I'm going deep into racial territory)

The problem with learning and caring is that you can never shutup, even when you want to. Even when it's better to let people be wrong, and misinterpret, to be committed to what you know to be true forces one, in the end to add another straw to the camel's back, hoping it will balance the odd one someone else put on a moment, or a millenium before.

So it is with race in America. The conversation never stops.

What I understand about race in America is that it involves two sides, and that neither side can win. Black and white are like twin brothers wrestling on the floor. But I think the most true thing about race in America is that it inhabits all of our metaphors. There are so many stories and so many reasons and so many prayers bound up in the drama of race. For anyone who truly cares about the American condition, the state of our union, the meaning of our values, race is always intrinsic, ever puzzling, ever revealing, ever punishing.

I shake my head because I have not yet reached that time in parenthood during which my children rebel. So my instinct remains at the patient-explanation-for-your-own-good level rather than the, fine-do-it-your-way-you'll-see level. And so I am taking an hour or so to respond at length to some straws I see poking out.

Two cats respond here at Cobb on the regular. One is Dave, the other is Chap. I don't really know them. I don't really know anyone in cyberspace, and it's difficult to explain how much of an in-your-face person I am, how I am such an acute observer of people. The web and all computer mediated communications represent to me an abstract medium for the expression of (more or less) pure thought, and it is perfect for certain things, but doesn't begin to approach what I can remember when watching a man or woman walk or listen to them speak or read their faces. So I am something of a bull in a china shop of ideas out here on the web, I am an arrow on a path. I redefine and correct, and I don't listen as much as I would face to face. And it is that gap bewteen the person and the virus of an idea inhabiting their minds which may or may not express itself clearly in the digital realm, that I both recognize and obliterate. So if it sounds like I am beating up them, or whitefolks, or blackfolks, I am, but only in digital bits, only in the realm of ideas. I am a great respecter of people, but when I see a bad paragraph, I am compelled to attack. I don't know that I will find one, but don't hold your breath. This is not about you guys in particular, it's sorta about your being a part of this thing that I and the Brotherhood, and America is going through. I understand your stake as Americans in the reconciliation between all of us.

The best defense, they say, is a good offense. And I really have no need nor cause to be defensive. I'm already here, on the other side of the mountain of personal achievement that unleashes a man's spirit. I have been unleashed for a dozen years and then some. It is how I have managed to take the diary I had been writing in college, to the public - to stand in front of hungry patrons and recite poetry from the heart - to write the unspeakable memo, to correct the man who thinks he knows it all. I care deeply for people, but I only answer to God. Engagement with me is an exercise in honesty, it's about how real I think I can get with you, it's about how much truth you show that you can handle. Sooner or later we get to that place called intimacy. It's a quick jump to there when I write. And I am true to myself and therefore not false with my readers.

So what is this racial thing and why do I bother? I thought about that at the baggage claim this morning after a good 4 hours of sleep. Why is it that this black experience thing is so difficult for my white cousins to understand? Why do I appear obsessed? Why even use such a word? The first answer that passed back through my mind was that it only seems obsessive if you don't see the value in it. But like breeding sows or birthing cows, somebody has to stick their whole arm into uncomfortable places, and once you have learned to do so everything is different. I think whitefolks depend on blackfolks to stick our arms up into race, and they take our civility to be a sign of forgiveness. That's partially true. But there is also a science of husbandry in this, we bring it along generation by generation. But that is always done by engagement, and never by distance.

Represent
Speaking for myself, and I think for many in my generation, much of black culture has been about representation. We have been engaged in a struggle to be a different we. We were like stowaway children under the tarp of the horsecart of the Underground Railroad. Our parents rode shotgun with their hats down low, not speaking too loudly less they draw too much attention. And yet we were their joy and it was our brightness, sheltered within our humble homes, that gave them the courage to take that road to freedom. But my generation crawled out from under the tarp and started talking loud. Yeah! We're free, and guess what you don't really know about us? We've been representing black culture, we've been blackety blackety black black y'all. We've been painting the white house black, and we've dared you to say anything about it. And it was necessary, God knows what the world has been missing in the wake of our parents' silence. And you've been discovering it from Eddie Murphy to Joe Jett to Serena Williams to Condi Rice. The Negro is dead. Blackness is about busting out of jail, about bringing music to the Nowhere Man, about never letting anyone forget about our flavor and unlimited potential.

The success of blackness is demonstrable but its task is not complete. It will take another two generations I think. When my grandchildren purchase banks in Chile or Ghana perhaps. When there's a country club in Georgia where two black ex-presidents hang out. When the Kwaku Foundation awards it's million dollar grant for the 40th time and the networks celebrate. These are my expectations of a fulfilled African American destiny. But lots of African Americans have their own. These hopes and aspirations were forged in different fires and every family's history shapes them, but there is a direction to it, and a common kind of struggle when it comes from African American history. In our generation, it has been to represent - to come out and be loud and proud. As Rick James said, we're bustin' out of this L 7 square, done braided our hair and don't mind if you stare.

The Balance
James Baldwin said:

Take no one's word for anything, including mine-but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear. Please try to be clear, dear James, through the storm which rages about your youthful head today, about the reality which lies behind the words acceptance and integration, There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.

And so I know that American destiny is not complete until African American destiny is complete. And we keep working, we blacks and whites, we keep working each others nerves until we reach a settlement. Today the settlement is an accomodation, a compromise, a tenable peace which is both uneasy and comfortable. We still live in a society where OJ makes a difference. We still live in a society in which Colin Powell's wife fears for her husband's life. We still live in a society in which Camilla Cosby was considered crazy when she said race mattered in the murder of her son. And whitefolks know very well, as they look at their own families and friends and associates, that something about them is unfinished and unreconciled to the rest of America. It's nothing a simple as 'discrimination'. Hell, nobody I know is a racist. Everybody I know hates racism. But only few can talk about it in mixed company for more than a minute.

Online is a different story. I've proven that, because I wanted to and I paid close attention. But the fact remains, there is still dissonance, sometimes it is as clearly defined and significant as the street between a white gentrified enclave and the beat down streets of chinatown. Sometimes it's as subtle and insignificant as choosing the right beer when ordering Thai food in New Orleans while listening to reggae music. I don't mean to be cavalier, but I'm not sure that we know what to do with our Multicultural ethos or exactly what it buys us in the post 9/11 world. I'm not sure we know what to do with our new sensitivities. Today, 3000 gay couples had their marriages annulled by legal fiat in the state of Oregon. Online we can talk about all this stuff, but what do we do?

More later.

New Orleans Diary: Day Five

This is the last entry. I feel like one of those idiot film students walking around taking video of everything around him. It's not going to capture the flavor, especially as close to real time as this is.

I found my mother's house's in the projects at the corner of Claiborne and Orleans. My cousin took me around all this afternoon and we visited the places where they grew up over in that neighborhood. It's funny when I look at the place now as symbolic of the lowest class on the totem pole: projects. Funny because she kept telling me about the movie theatre that used to cost a nickel for all day, that's now a converted church, and the other theatre that's now a converted church and the old bowling alley which is now a converted church. Then she showed me the old church that's now a middle school, and the high school where a kid got shot not long ago. Nothing is the way it was. The streets haven't been paved and the shutters haven't been repaired. There are too many holes in the infrastructure to hold the same quantities of hope and aspiration, or so I presume.

Poverty of this sort would not work in Los Angeles. Very few parts of my hometown get as rundown as these have, and yet there's something magical about that inversion - the charm of the Drop Squad value the whole place holds. I don't get the feeling this place is dangerous, then again, my sense of dangerous is fairly different from most folks.

We visited another cousin briefly. Somewhere in my family tree file are the digital connections. It's so embarassing when you don't know and can't place the face. But now that the physical connection is made, everything makes sense. It has depth you can't get from a family reunion because it's about place as well as face.

Cousin showed me the park where they played 60 years ago at the southern end of the Laffite projects. Just as quickly, she pointed out the twin park, 'where the whites would play' on the other side of Claiborne. The Two Sisters Restaurant was closed so we headed back up to Galvez. Then over and across to Esplanade, the burb quickly transformed to exactly what you could expect - gentrification. Not so fast, Cousin said of the house at the corner of Esplanade that a white somebody has lived there all of these years. An odd thing to know, but coming with the territory of a woman born in 1940 in this part of town.

As we drove further up Esplanade we got into a stretch of nicer houses that rent for 'as much as $700'. For a three bedroom? 'No a three bedroom would be $1000'. I'm freaking out, silently. These are very nice houses. Finally we arrive at my aunt's building. She's somewhere in Europe this week, nobody quite knows where, and so I missed her tour of the city. Instead, I'm checking out her building, the Esplanade at City Park where she lives on one of the top floors with a view of the lovely park. In the distance to the left across a lagoon is a stand of magnificent homes, one of which must be the Pitot House. As we cross the lagoon towards City Park, nearly clipping a duck, Cousin explains how 'we couldn't even think about crossing those gates'.

Just around the corner is another cousin, and the sun is going down and the breezes are warm. Lovely. He chills my enthusiasm for the idyllic spot by bringing back the reality of New Orleans' own recent school shooting. Every place has it's plusses and minuses. In the end, we had a nice fish fry down at a joint called The Trolley. And I met yet another couple of young cousins.

It has been a great trip. Now I gotta sleep. I have a 5am wakeup call.

Aint Misbehavin'

Aint Misbehavin'

Little Brother

Little Brother
The cases brought against protesters in NYC during the Republican National Convention have had a stunning failure rate of 91% according to this story in the NYTimes.

I take this one at face value as further evidence of what the decentralization of technology will enable citizens to accomplish independent of large slow traditional organizations. This is clearly smartmobbery, which can be a good thing. On the other hand, it can start an escalation in the sophistication with which red-handed authorities handle their tech. I predict the upper hand will remain with the crowds for the forseeable future.

New Orleans Diary: Day Four

.0930
What's that in my eyes? Ouch, it hurts. Damned sunlight! My mouth tastes like the floor of a cheap Dominican cigar factory. I was awake at 7 but I went back to bed. Now I overslept and am going to be late to my first breakout session. Drat.

Well, it's nothing I don't know anyway. The good one is at 11. I guess I'll just use my new password and download several hundred MB of software.

.1600
Everything is boring except meeting new people. A couple of the seminars I signed up for were bogus. Well, not bogus but a little underneath my feet. So I took off and checked out the city for a bit in between the time of the last good session and now.

Poverty is the same where ever you go in America. It's instantly recognizeable. You get off the grid and suddenly people are hanging off stoops where the houses have no A/C. The day after rain, the curbs are still flooded where the pavement turns to dirt.

I took Canal up to Rampart Street and took it out to where it splits off with St. Bernard. By there I was in the heart of somebody's hood. So I took Elysian Fields north to Claiborne and flipped some circles around there and hit ghetto. It was around Derbigny that I dropped off the precipice into that 5th Ward Houston look and feel, three classes below the middle where the streets ain't paved. Sure enough the horse cart clops by.

I couldn't find the right part of town Moms pointed out to me a week or so ago. Half the problem is that I'm using three different map programs and the streets I recall go halfway across town.

So I decided to go random and headed down Dauphine because I remember it from the Quarter. But I was going in the wrong direction and ended up at some Navy yard. So I flipped around to Chartres and headed back the other way. Not long afterwards I was on the waterfront boulevard, Decatur, and there was a Hooters to let me know I had left one kind of poverty and entered another.

I'm happy to get back to my hotel room and play with my downloads, but that's partially because I let the spousal unit have the good digital camera. I'm stuck with a miserable unfocusable blurred and distorted view of New Orleans reality, and I know that's the best I can do for the moment. But I know a lot more than I did yesterday.

.0125
Schmooze. 6 Hours straight. I'm losing my mind. I didn't realize that I had such good friends in high places. It's nice to know, otherwise this whole evening would have been a total, complete, utter, bore. I'm getting old and experienced and I see this whole thing in a new light. I get a good understanding of how the schmeer is applied. So tonight it was the devil suit. Black on black on black. Sorta like the Hollywood suit but with no blue whatsoever. Streaks of red instead. My whole attitude was "I'm sick of all this and I'm going to be unique, but I'll pay attention to you". I'm full of shit. Not really, just for the moment.

I drove my car fast down the narrow streets of the Quarter. I eyeballed the hookers and spring break girls gone wild with knowing looks. I stared down every hombre in the streets. I gave a pound to all my homies in the mother corporations. I was this close to buying drinks but everyone was still talking business, even after their fifth drink. I have the insight about this but I'm not going to tell. It's too simple and embarassing for those who have pierced the veil.

You see, worlds have collided. I've been recognized by one of the young guys at the mother corporation as a blogger. It was like a splinter in his mind as I sat at his booth and watched his neighbor's demo. He caught me on the way out. Hi reader. I wanted to come back to him and ask what he'd like me to write, but I kept thinking why 'When Worlds Collide' would be such a cool, yet inappropriate title about the encounter. But I'm cool with all that. Let everyone know everything I always say.

The funny thing, which another long lost associate reminded me, was that I had a well-deserved rep as well as an undeserved rep, for speaking out. I had an infamous HR red-flag moment for a percieved use of an inappropriate metaphor in a business communication. The very idea is so fricken bourgeois it makes me choke. Nevertheless, calmer heads prevailed at the time. But I also mouthed off on a public forum under a pseud. I haven't written there in years, or so it seems, but some people remember me for that. So I have a number of reputations, most of them stellar with the old gang.

Tonight's fare was pedestrian but the best yet. Fish tacos & BBQ ribs with peanut sauce. In fact, it's probably the most imaginative buffet this company has ever produced.

Over in the Quarter, I schmoozed even more. I returned to the 544 and the waitress remembered me. I had 3 drinks and once again I missed the traditional jazz band. The flashing girls were out, but there were only two of them and I have the feeling they were paid by the local Chamber of Commerce. Cops on horses pooped up the streets. Crowds gathered around to laugh and point at suckers who stepped in it.

I am solitary.

Stuck

Stuck

New Orleans Diary: Day Three

.2009
OK if there's only one thing I'm going to talk about, it may as well be food. Dayum! But first let's dispatch with the business.

This conference is rocking and rolling. I got my proposal put together last night at about 11:30p while all my colleagues were at some club called 'Bombay'. Apparently, that's why I was fairly bushy tailed this morning and one or two others were MIA. Nevertheless I got in touch with a whole passel of folks I haven't seen in over four years. Mad, Rishi, Dan, Trevor, Rich, JP, Johnny, Jose, Kathy, Rudy, Rob, Brett.. hell I can't ever remember them all, Al, Mark... I'm wondering where big Charles is. It shouldn't be hard to find him, but yet I haven't seen him or Leah yet. But there was Eric, Jean-Paul, Allen, John, Bill.. a huge party. What's best is the chance to keep these professional relationships rolling. Straight awesome.

All the products that I stuck into the proposal actually work the way I thought, and better. The company has done a bang up job on their technology roadmap and the picture is clearly in focus. They are evolving the platform to do the impossible. I'll tell you what I think, and that's that only Teradata understands data better than we do, and that's why they're partners. We've hit some awesome scalability points.. blah blah blah.

Now embedded in this business blather is the following restaurant review:

The joint is called K-Paul's. I got a tip that it was the bomb, and since my crew had abandoned me by 6p when I was starved, I didn't wait for the dinner invite and cabbed over there just before the rain came down. I beat the rush and got a table unannounced so I decided to go spicy. Starting off with a Ketel One martini, I scarfed down their hot and fluffy jalapeno muffins. They are sweet and hot at the same time, and just irresistable.

I got a nice firm andouille sausage in dijon mustard to warm me up and switched over to the molasses muffins. Now I was really ready to go. I picked a mediocre gevertz to hang with the spices and ordered their duck & shrimp remoulade. The rice was a perfect into, kinda dirty but not too, sucking up the gravy just nice. Now this is the thing. You've got this really spicy duck, in which you can taste edges of pate, and the sauce is like a light brown gravy but watered down to boulliabase consistency. All you taste is the warmth and savory of the gravy which is like a perfectly familiar base onto which the spicy meats are dancing. The green beens had teeth squeeking texture and the carrots kept their backbone. The shrimp was light and just another texture in the mix, nice and firmly chewy but tender and succulent.

I think I ate more than I should but I didn't even care. Halfway through, my buds called and said they were heading to Antoine's around the way. By this time it was just getting dark and the rain was coming down. I spoke briefly with the proprieter (I think), a kindly woman with bright inviting eyes and I told her that I'm writing her up. I thought at the time that I would do a little hopping and compare, but I didn't really need to go there. My buds weren't even out of their hotels by the time I footed it to the front door. That joint looked like a jacket only affair, but everybody was wet-dogging it at the front door so I could have stepped in with the leather. But since the guys aren't going to be done until 10p, I decided to get back here to my lil ole room.

On the way I walked a goodly length of Bourbon, but not before checking out Buck & Pops who did a little BB King for my two bucks and the love. They were on St. Louis just before Antoine's.

The French Quarter reminds me a lot of Greenwich Village, except with better music and sweeter drinks. I'm heading back out there tonight, as soon as I belch the stress out of my gut and find my black bandana. I need to sit down. Whoo!

.0100
I did go back out and I'm not to druk t blg abot it. but t wud be bttr if i follwd up on this smtim tomroow. i cn see why popel love this place.

Seriously, it's just too bad that there aren't any people that I know here tonight to hang with, especially when I put on my bad boy gear. (See Photo). Every American man should own a black leather jacket. Most of the colleagues settled in at the overloud Famous Door or Pat OBrien's. I walked the whole quarter. The rain put a damper (ha) on most of the evening's walking but my legs do hurt.

I found all the decent jazz joints too late to enjoy a set, but The All Purpose Blues Band was rocking Club 544. I smoked my way through three stogies and had a Budweiser Select which was icy. There were lots of wet t-shirts but no flashing of any substance. I forgot that it is Spring Break. Tomorrow evening should be more enjoyable. Now I know where to go.

It's OK If You Don't Get It

I'm starting to read Whizbang more and more. I have to say that it's starting to replace Dean's World on my list of big blogs. So imagine my surprise when I find that The Brotherhood is the subject of discussion.

A commenter posts:

Why not "Conservative bloggers" or blogroll, whatever. Why the racist theme, membership requirement? And, is that REALLY a characteristic anyone can be assured of as to who joins? Not like you can discern racial type by User I.D., typing, etc. Perhaps you are also suggesting that "black" conservatives display distinct communication skills? And that "white" ones do, too?

I mean, the entire premise is embarrassingly racist. Be conservatives but drop the elitist racist tags. It's embarrassing for the rest of us...conservatives of any/all racial types.

While it's clear that he flunked Race in America 101, I think he expresses a sentiment that is not uncommon. In fact, during my time as a race man I came across that fallacious logic so many times that I gave it a name: The Ugly Baby Theory.

The analogy is pretty good. One childless white couple sees a black couple with a baby and they call the baby ugly. They ask why on earth would anyone have a black baby? They ask, what if all the white people decided to have a baby, implying that the black couple would be as disgusted with white babies.

The Conservative Brotherhood is our baby. We think it's pretty smart, good looking and fun to be around. We put ourselves into it and this is what we get. We are proud and we're going to show off our baby every chance we get.

I understand that people don't get it. The impetus behind our ganging up into the Brotherhood is primarily for exposure, no different than the Bear Flag League for me. But the impetus behind the writing we do is deep and complex - it is nothing more nor less than the content of our character and it is inevitably what we would produce, whether or not we were affiliated. Such complexity is not easily explained nor contained. I have trouble explaining it myself. So hey, people who write 500 words on black conservatives have their 500 words. We've got years.

But that's really not what upsets me today, it's that David Anderson is holding a grudge, or at least smacking me en passant. It's an unintended consquence of a simple oversight on my part, one that I think I've probably not even fixed to show you how dumb I am. For no reason at all, I have failed to blogroll him, and he's taken it personally. At least I think this is the substance of his gripe.

I understand how important blog patronage is. Clearly, when I had the opportunity to help, I did not. It was a foolish mistake on my part not to take advantage of that opportunity. I respect David as an Angeleno, as a businessman and as a humanitarian, although he could have chosen a better frat. Be that as it may, I accept my smack and blogroll ISOU like I should have done many moons ago.

It's OK If You Don't Get It

I'm starting to read Whizbang more and more. I have to say that it's starting to replace Dean's World on my list of big blogs. So imagine my surprise when I find that The Brotherhood is the subject of discussion.

A commenter posts:

Why not "Conservative bloggers" or blogroll, whatever. Why the racist theme, membership requirement? And, is that REALLY a characteristic anyone can be assured of as to who joins? Not like you can discern racial type by User I.D., typing, etc. Perhaps you are also suggesting that "black" conservatives display distinct communication skills? And that "white" ones do, too?

I mean, the entire premise is embarrassingly racist. Be conservatives but drop the elitist racist tags. It's embarrassing for the rest of us...conservatives of any/all racial types.

While it's clear that he flunked Race in America 101, I think he expresses a sentiment that is not uncommon. In fact, during my time as a race man I came across that fallacious logic so many times that I gave it a name: The Ugly Baby Theory.

The analogy is pretty good. One childless white couple sees a black couple with a baby and they call the baby ugly. They ask why on earth would anyone have a black baby? They ask, what if all the white people decided to have a baby, implying that the black couple would be as disgusted with white babies.

The Conservative Brotherhood is our baby. We think it's pretty smart, good looking and fun to be around. We put ourselves into it and this is what we get. We are proud and we're going to show off our baby every chance we get.

I understand that people don't get it. The impetus behind our ganging up into the Brotherhood is primarily for exposure, no different than the Bear Flag League for me. But the impetus behind the writing we do is deep and complex - it is nothing more nor less than the content of our character and it is inevitably what we would produce, whether or not we were affiliated. Such complexity is not easily explained nor contained. I have trouble explaining it myself. So hey, people who write 500 words on black conservatives have their 500 words. We've got years.

But that's really not what upsets me today, it's that David Anderson is holding a grudge, or at least smacking me en passant. It's an unintended consquence of a simple oversight on my part, one that I think I've probably not even fixed to show you how dumb I am. For no reason at all, I have failed to blogroll him, and he's taken it personally. At least I think this is the substance of his gripe.

I understand how important blog patronage is. Clearly, when I had the opportunity to help, I did not. It was a foolish mistake on my part not to take advantage of that opportunity. I respect David as an Angeleno, as a businessman and as a humanitarian, although he could have chosen a better frat. Be that as it may, I accept my smack and blogroll ISOU like I should have done many moons ago.

The Gay Marriage Catagory

Jane Galt has revealed a GK Chesterton chestnut which is perfectly apt for a large number of situations. I had previously on that score referred to Ayn Rand in my mind, but I believe it shall now forever be thus:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

So now I must gather my thoughts about Gay Marriage, which I am against, into a category which will not go away. Hers is probably the most magnetic essay ever in the blogosphere, to which I add very little at this point.

Tiger's Chip

I just saw the most incredible golf shot ever. Tiger's chip off the backside of the par three 16 for birdie was certainly the most awesome and dramatic moment of the Masters. How could anything get any more spine tingling?

Two Scary Stories

Protien Wisdom is trolling for a scary plot. Here it is. Al Quaeda infects Columbian cocaine with smallpox.

It's actually a very simple scenario which doesn't take a whole lot of doing. The actual intel necessary doesn't seem to be insurmountable. What makes the story interesting is that it strikes countries that are currently off the map with regard to MSM coverage of the WOT. We already know that narco-nations are highly sophisticated in moving the world's supply of cocaine and heroin products. We already know that they have access into every city in the US and all over the world. We already know that they are capable of mind-boggling logistics. We know that SARS freaked everybody out when less than 500 people died.

So there it is.

The second scary story is a series of pulse bombs strategically placed by a psychotic insider at Citibank IT. Imagine all of Citibank's computer records erased. Trillions disappear overnight. The FDIC goes broke. China liquidates its American bond holdings. The full faith and credit of the US is damaged to the extent that the loonies who hate us for no good reason at all are emboldened. We are forced into a standoff daring the EU from constraining our trade as German, British and French banks buy up ours like the Japanese did with American real estate in the 80s. Red & Blue Americans start gunfights in the streets.

New Orleans Diary: Day Two

.0420
It's 4:20 in the morning and I can't sleep. I thought I put down enough OH to keep me knocked out, but for some strange reason, perhaps the shouting in the street below and the boomin' system, I am wide awake and parched. I dreamed about a sentence fragment, but then I had a better dream.

It was New Orleans, artificially small. I kept seeing the same people and they kept wearing the same clothes. So I couldn't be clever or snide. They would know it was me; they would see me again. I was narrating a PBS documentary about a girl named Cinnamon who worked the McDonald's drive-thru window. Except that she did it while singing rhymes on the center divider. She had a face like Halle Berry. I dreamt up my insomnia. I suddenly had the voice of Billy Ocean, or Peabo Bryson or Jeffry Osborne and so I sang a song about lost love to the apartment block. I sang that everyone was lonely and tossing uncomfortably in bed. And I could see everyone watching me out of their bedroom windows, wide awake at 2am. It started at closing time which was 1am and so I sang that song, they finished their whiskeys and beers, and marched off like zombies to the apartment block, all just as lonely as they started.

There's Aquafina on the table near my baseball cap. Maybe a swig will help me sleep. I fell asleep to Whoopi Goldberg's latest HBO Special. The first third of it was retarded. The second third of it was brilliant. The final third was excellent, but I had seen it before, and it was too sentimental. I don't like ordinary celebrations. Birthday cake in and of itself doesn't make me happy. So a story about a physically deformed woman who gets to have a disco pool party wedding doesn't do it for me. It's still an excellent bit, but I remember it from her first act which was almost 20 years ago.

The dent in my thumbnail has almost completely grown to the edge. I hammered it several months ago putting together the desk in the living room. I'm noticing the way that I age. I still have the skin of a young man, but I don't know why I can't sleep. Maybe it's this refrigerator. It's empty and loud. I am completely sober and thinking about my children who are off cruising on ships, as I tap alone in the wee hours in the city where my mother was born.

New Orleans Diary: Day Two

.0420
It's 4:20 in the morning and I can't sleep. I thought I put down enough OH to keep me knocked out, but for some strange reason, perhaps the shouting in the street below and the boomin' system, I am wide awake and parched. I dreamed about a sentence fragment, but then I had a better dream.

It was New Orleans, artificially small. I kept seeing the same people and they kept wearing the same clothes. So I couldn't be clever or snide. They would know it was me; they would see me again. I was narrating a PBS documentary about a girl named Cinnamon who worked the McDonald's drive-thru window. Except that she did it while singing rhymes on the center divider. She had a face like Halle Berry. I dreamt up my insomnia. I suddenly had the voice of Billy Ocean, or Peabo Bryson or Jeffry Osborne and so I sang a song about lost love to the apartment block. I sang that everyone was lonely and tossing uncomfortably in bed. And I could see everyone watching me out of their bedroom windows, wide awake at 2am. It started at closing time which was 1am and so I sang that song, they finished their whiskeys and beers, and marched off like zombies to the apartment block, all just as lonely as they started.

There's Aquafina on the table near my baseball cap. Maybe a swig will help me sleep. I fell asleep to Whoopi Goldberg's latest HBO Special. The first third of it was retarded. The second third of it was brilliant. The final third was excellent, but I had seen it before, and it was too sentimental. I don't like ordinary celebrations. Birthday cake in and of itself doesn't make me happy. So a story about a physically deformed woman who gets to have a disco pool party wedding doesn't do it for me. It's still an excellent bit, but I remember it from her first act which was almost 20 years ago.

The dent in my thumbnail has almost completely grown to the edge. I hammered it several months ago putting together the desk in the living room. I'm noticing the way that I age. I still have the skin of a young man, but I don't know why I can't sleep. Maybe it's this refrigerator. It's empty and loud. I am completely sober and thinking about my children who are off cruising on ships, as I tap alone in the wee hours in the city where my mother was born.

New Orleans Diary: Day One

So I am in the Crescent City. I'm hungry as all get out. Just got into the Residence Inn on St. Joseph and the valet wasn't around. So I just dropped my rented Monte Carlo right on the curb and got up to my room. It's nice, meaning the broadband works and it doesn't smell funny. So I'll fill you in on all the details of getting here later on. Right now I'm in search of some fried oysters and a drugstore.

Weird. I have no idea what's going on in the news. Don't tell me. I'm actually digging the beads in the trees and people walking slow.

.2007
On the way to getting here, here being a software conference at the Morial, I had to close down a number of issues on the West Coast. You see, as everybody goes their separate ways, I have to notarize some documents to say that the parties involved have permission to be shepherding my offspring hither and yon. When it gets international, you never know. So I am taking this leap of faith and swearing oaths etcetera. Sorry Nolo Press, but I ripped off your verbiage. It would be nice to have an attorney in the family to deal with such matters, but it's just another lesson of emergence. Nobody pays attention to black things at this level, but enough of the self-pity.

Since I'm on the hook for delivering a consulting proposal for a huge company that's going to tie up a bunch of resources, I had to send out my spreadsheet on Thursday. I wanted more time, but everybody is on vaction or indisposed or otherwise out of pocket. I make my best guess, understanding that it's supposed to be a high level draft, and I make a huge mistake. Fortunately, the bossman catches my error. Somehow I calculated that we would be working 40 hours days. Aha. That's why adding bodies cost so much. Dumb spreadsheet error.

But it also turns out that I am not following protocol. Well that's to be expected, I haven't been on the job a month yet and I haven't even met more than 3 company employees face to face. I'm starting to learn the downside of the virtual and distributed corporation. No sweat really, but these are things that could be communicated instantly if it weren't for emails. What do I know about protocols? RTFM? More like download it.

So just 30 minutes before I get on the plane Saturday morning, all the stuff I did wrong Thursday afternoon comes back to haunt me. Fortunately, were' still ahead of the deadline. Unfortunately it means I have to put in work tomorrow.

Tonight, on the other hand, I was ready to party. I met two lovely ladies on the flight over here who are also going to the conference, one of whom is... OK I won't say it on the off chance that she discovers my blog-identity. I will say that she's a neck-snapper. It turns out that she happens to know some other ladies that know me. Damn. This world is too small among the young gifted and black. Anyway, I was expecting this to be the cool and casual, pre-conference chillout day. Everybody is out of touch. So it's just me in alien inspection mode, categorizing the life-forms of southern Louisiana.

My frequent flier miles have all expired and now I am at beige level. So no seat upgrades for me. No express car rental service either. I had to wait in line yet again, but I did get the silver Monte Carlo. I actually fantasized that I was driving a NASCAR auto on the 10 East to New Orleans. I suppose that a brother like me should be ambivalent about recognizing that my driving needs are fulfilled by Chevrolets. Sobeit. I'm cool. I realized, playing my time travel game, that only four years ago, one couldn't be sure that the car you rented would have a CD player. I brought some Biz Markie, so who cares about the outside of the car when the inside is bompin'?

The X calls. I haven't mentioned the X much. She's M11's biomom. She has him for Spring Break and they're cruising the Carib. She's a nervous wreck and didn't know I'd be out of town. So she's calling me on the cell for the fifth time telling me about his proper packing list. I mumble assertions. At least I hit the big thing. He's got to have new white sneakers. You have to understand that she is an ex-diva. Think Zsa-Zsa Gabor in high yellow with crinkle waves and attitude with a capital A. In truth, she used to be hotter than Lil Kim, but even Lil Kim had business sense - well until the conviction. Now she is all high maintenance attitude without the payoff. And more than a little bit batty. Not many men know what it is like to be stalked by a neck snapping psychotic. Buy me three martinis and I'll tell you the whole tragic story. Now suffice it to say that listening to her on the cell phone was quite sufficient to make me miss my exit, so where the hell am I?

I swear to God that if she cuts M11's hair just to satisfy her vanity she's going to have hell to pay, but I wouldn't put it past her.

I ended up in the Garden District 4 miles west of where I'm supposed to be. I finally grab a map. You see, my laptop has no batteries. Despite all the last minute BS I put the spousal unit through to get my boss's complaints onto the proper email address that could be retrieved on the plane, there was no way I could make use of the 3.6 hour flight for business purposes. So I ingested some Dan Brown. Decent stuff but I'm sure it would have been more powerful in 1998 when I knew less about Digital Fortresses than I do now. I'll still finish it. Just not tonight.

Tonight I'm going to watch Heat because I'm too damned drunk to make project plans on my laptop. The fault lies with the Rio Mar Restaurant on St. Peter Street which is more faboulously delicious than I expected to find wandering around the Warehouse District looking for an ATM. Well, it's also the fault of my colleagues who didn't bother to hookup with me on what I expected to be a casual night. Did I say that already?

So I'm right at the moment when the wine has entered my limbic system and the flavors are meshing just right and the cell phone finally rings. Boss Man says, have your shit ready. We have to nail this for Monday. Fine. I SMSed three colleagues for dinner plans and the worse call comes back in the middle of dinner. But nothing could spoil this meal. It's that good.

I've got this oyster etouffe that's the bomb. You know how macaroni and cheese casserole is kinda extra good when it's just a little bit crunchy on the edges? The chef at Rio Mar has taken the essence of that special flavor and turned it into a majestic assault on the senses. You've got oysters, you've got chorizo(!) and you've got spinach and cheese burnt just perfectly in this mix. Awesome. Then I've got the perfect consistency of sticky saffron rice on the side of my surgical stainless bowl of bay shrimp in boulliabase. Incredible. The apple-y chardonnay works right in, and I end it all with a martini and stagger back to my hotel. Yes ladies and gentlemen this is what it is like to be a middle-aged man, when you start thinking that sex is inferior to food.

And suddenly I'm thinking of fat people in a whole new light. You know the ones. Not the midwestern housewives who are just 30 pounds overweight, the morbidly obese ones who have made a deal with the devil. I've known the kind of dog-men that don't care if they get HIV, they just have to do chicks just to see the looks on their faces. They throw their hands in the air and boink 'em like they just don't care. Why? Because they're aesthetes of acrobatic sex. I used to be. Buy me an ounce of coke and I'll tell you the whole bloody yarn. Now I understand how people might do that for food. Like those two English birds. What's life if you can't swill the butterfat? I was like that tonight with shrimp heads and tasting the seawater in the 'base and in the salty sweat on the spinach. And I've got pornographic pictures of my food on my cell phone, so the waiter at the next station mistook me for a food critic. He actually wiped my Palm stylus for me.

I wobbled back to my hotel, a blessed five short blocks away, in one of those moods where it doesn't matter that I might get mugged. I just had a magical meal, dude you just don't understand. If I had my knife you'd be missing your bozack right about now, but today is your lucky day. Here's 93 bucks, go buy a hooker you piece of shit. I just ate my way halfway to heaven and everybody deserves a piece of happiness like that. Besides, I get to expense it.

So now I am back safe on the fourth floor listening to my suite's refrigerator make ice and coming out of the Smirnoff & Chardonnay buzz. And I'm not going to crack the frickin spreadsheet. And I'm going to go to bed early and get up tomorrow and find out how to register for this goddamned conference. We'll deal with business tomorrow. Good night dear readers. Too bad you couldn't have been with me in person.

Memo

Memo

Another One Bites the Dust

And not a moment too soon, Eric Rudolph gets four life sentences. He joins fellow white supremacist Matt Hale. In jail.

Now would be a good time to turn back the internet clock and find defenders of these two scumbags. They can't be too far away. Hmm. There's dad of course. Then here are some folks who say he's a poltical prisoner, although that group has been a bit infliltrated by some wiseacres. Clearly the World Church of the Creator is in mourning, and a bit defensive with good reason.

That's All.

Another One Bites the Dust

And not a moment too soon, Eric Rudolph gets four life sentences. He joins fellow white supremacist Matt Hale. In jail.

Now would be a good time to turn back the internet clock and find defenders of these two scumbags. They can't be too far away. Hmm. There's dad of course. Then here are some folks who say he's a poltical prisoner, although that group has been a bit infliltrated by some wiseacres. Clearly the World Church of the Creator is in mourning, and a bit defensive with good reason.

That's All.

Fresh Treasure

Unusually, I'm going to spend some time reading other blogs that are more than two degrees of separation to the center of my universe. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Watch this post for updates all day.

But first I need to tell you about Duane Brayboy who is the latest addition to the Conservative Brotherhood. His site, The Black Informant has a sweet cocoa design and is chock full of informative links to black organizations nationwide. His recent blogging about the role of black churches in domestic politics is just the tip of the iceburg of a blog of unusual depth covering matters of black and general concern. You get the idea that Brayboy's an advanced, yet thoughtful news junkie. I want to see what he sees.

Next on the menu is a real treat. Latigo Flint, the fastest gunslinger alive, takes you on adventures through Los Angeles and the imagination of the Old West. What with flying spiders, fake cell phone conversations, a biting sway-back steer, swinging backhands by Kid Relish and inapporiate touching of Helena Bonham Carter, what's not to like? Check him out. I guarantee a knee-slapping good time.

Brooklyn Moon Deciphered
Or you can get not just knee-deep, but totally deep:

You have to make sure your bullshit sounds better and is more concretely impregnable than anybody elses. You don't want to be in the cipher, or on stage at the open mic and say some non-sense people can call you on. NO! You want to finish with your poem (cuz deep people write, but we'll get there) and you want somebody, who obviously didn't understand anything you said but not smart enough to realize you didn't either, to say, "that was deep!" This is your goal.

McSizzle for Shizzle
Who is the best rapper for McDonalds? Hmm. Check out the live-blogging battle over at Pandagon.

Fresh Treasure

Unusually, I'm going to spend some time reading other blogs that are more than two degrees of separation to the center of my universe. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Watch this post for updates all day.

But first I need to tell you about Duane Brayboy who is the latest addition to the Conservative Brotherhood. His site, The Black Informant has a sweet cocoa design and is chock full of informative links to black organizations nationwide. His recent blogging about the role of black churches in domestic politics is just the tip of the iceburg of a blog of unusual depth covering matters of black and general concern. You get the idea that Brayboy's an advanced, yet thoughtful news junkie. I want to see what he sees.

Next on the menu is a real treat. Latigo Flint, the fastest gunslinger alive, takes you on adventures through Los Angeles and the imagination of the Old West. What with flying spiders, fake cell phone conversations, a biting sway-back steer, swinging backhands by Kid Relish and inapporiate touching of Helena Bonham Carter, what's not to like? Check him out. I guarantee a knee-slapping good time.

Brooklyn Moon Deciphered
Or you can get not just knee-deep, but totally deep:

You have to make sure your bullshit sounds better and is more concretely impregnable than anybody elses. You don't want to be in the cipher, or on stage at the open mic and say some non-sense people can call you on. NO! You want to finish with your poem (cuz deep people write, but we'll get there) and you want somebody, who obviously didn't understand anything you said but not smart enough to realize you didn't either, to say, "that was deep!" This is your goal.

McSizzle for Shizzle
Who is the best rapper for McDonalds? Hmm. Check out the live-blogging battle over at Pandagon.