I got a chance to hang out with the Field Negro the other day in Philly. As is somewhat customary when I hookup with talented folks, I talk about the state of the national black hookup, otherwise informally known as the Kwaku Network. I expressed a mix of optimism and patience while acknowledging that it's probably going to be another generation before (and if) it actually starts delivering goods. Right now we've got Russell Simmons and Al Sharpton. Harumph.
FN is a judge, basically. I haven't read all the details on his business cards, but he's at least a lawyer three different ways and deals with family court in Philly. So the conversation, which always cool and friendly, drifted directly to Shaquanda Cotton. He expressed an opinion that immediately let me know he was serious. They say that the price for being a professional is understanding intimately the dirty side of your profession, and he and I both wish we could know if Sharpville was a hanging judge or a balanced judge or an old boy who goes along to get along with the powers that be.
This was the thing that gets und FN's skin because that's what's up in Philly. It's an old city with old money and old ways. Nobody changes it except new blood from out of town. Here in LA we don't have a class of powerful putty faced Irish and Italians who look like Tony Soprano or Edward Kennedy. In fact, we don't have old Irish or Italian or Polish neighborhoods at all. We don't have the blackfolks who all live in one corner of town. It's a feature of the old cities of the Northeast, and it seems not to have changed in 100 years. We don't have black pols who slickly leverage their way into the big time and make rhetorical promises they never deliver. LA is not a town that beats you down with oppressive claustrophobia, so people aren't voting here to have somebody get this or that union to stop striking. All of that city politics seems rather ancient and quaint to my eyes, but FN confirmed my idea that about 10,000 people have the city on lockdown and those same 10,000 aren't going anywhere.
I've always had that idea that Philly would be a very nice place to be rich, that is if you didn't mind eating with the same people all the time.
Me I enjoyed eating with FN, and as I suspected we know some of the same people. Which brought us back to matters of the Kwaku Network and how it may or may not materialize in the form of Aggregation. You see, the problem that all of us in the group formerly known as the Talented Tenth face is that we are diasporic in America. We grow up in the 'hood, our parents were from the South and moved north. We went to college in another town (maybe on Affirmative Action) and we get our first job someplace else. We marry somebody we met on vacation in Jamaica and we find a compromise place to raise our kids. There's no black unity because none of us can go upscale in our own community. And the communications thin out, and you don't know anybody you grew up with, and everybody's too spread out to buy houses in the same neighborhoods. Think about your dentist or your optometrist. How long have you had the same one? Or maybe it's just me.
I'm in the grip of figuring out where my next set of connections are going to come from. See if I was Italian and lived in Philly, it would be easy. I'd know who controls the Sanitation union and how some graft might be able to work its way into my pocket. And if and when I got to be candidate for mayor, I could say "Our city is too dirty", and I would promise to hire more trash collectors. That provides more jobs and cleans up the city, but it's all the same graft. You might think that blackfolks got that going on in Hollywood in the music business. Almost but not quite. It's going to take another generation. You saw Dreamgirls, you get it. And whoops, Jamie Foxx doesn't have a kid to pass it down to because Jennifer Hudson saw to it that he didn't get to be daddy. No legacy, no dynasty. So the next generation gets to start over from scratch.
Blackfolks have no old money of substance to lay down a foundation and network that right. There's going to have to be some non-trivial wealth accumulated, and that takes skill, time and luck. Until then, we are moving on up, slowly, class by class. See, Will Smith? He can get dinner with the man his movie was about. He could chill with Colin Powell. Field and I were like.. damn, how could we get that kind of hookup. What I wouldn't do to hang out with Gene Washington and Condi Rice, and Gene has been a hero of mine since the days when my afro was too big to fit in a football helmet too.
But the Old School recognizes Gene Washington, just like FN and I recognize and respect each other. People pretend like it's harder than it is because everybody wants to get their say. That's reasonable and sometimes the differences are irreconcilable. They always are when it's somebody else's money. So I related my old NSBE story. We're all crabs when it's somebody else's barrel. But when the day comes when there's five or six black American billionaires, things will begin to change from fly in the buttermilk to cafe au lait. But it never goes directly to chocolate city. And I keep trying to tell folks that there's no future in fronting. Black America's fate is tied to America's fate - there's no time for reinventing the wheel, but time should be spent inheriting the bounty.
We know Obama belongs to the people his money comes from. If you live in Seattle, you belong to where Seattle money comes from. If you live in the Bottom in Philly, there's no money, so you don't belong. Maybe it will be Atlanta where the hookup will work nicely. I got people there. Maybe it will be Detroit. I got people there. In fact, I've got people in Baltimore, and... Somehow I feel that it's part of my destiny to make all these connections work, that's because I remember everybody and I always wish I could be the Kung Fu Santa Claus, delivering gifts or ass-whooping everywhere around the world. And someday if my famousity works out, well I'll let you all know.
You know, I can play One Nation Under a Groove on my bass guitar now.
BTW. Next week I'm going to be in Orlando. I've got to figure out who I know there. The week after that, it's Philly again, and then I'm off to Houston for a month. I really need to hookup with some more people in Houston.
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