Cobb

The Community Service Resume

I've been thinking lately, about my 'black credibility cookies'. As most folks know, if you are going to stand up and talk about why your opinion ought to be respected, some resume of credentials is expected. When it comes to matters of 'black interest', you need to have black credibility cookies.

The interesting and difficult thing in all of this is that once upon a time, there were surefire cookies. Today it's a lot harder. I thought about this as I drove through the old neighborhood on the way to the office this morining. I went past the building that used to be the WLCAC store. It is a fact that Pops used to volunteer for WLCAC some afternoons, and of course I would come along with. They used to have a supermarket on Washington Blvd. in Los Angeles, just a couple blocks east of the original Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles. In that same neighborhood were the Wilt Chamberlain apartments. Back in the day, you couldn't say enough good things about Wilt Chamberlain because he purchased those buildings from white people and then became a black property owner renting to black people. I cannot imagine that any pro-sports player could, in 2007, get nationwide props for doing the same thing. I think it is natural, given the events of the past 40 years, that blackfolks are harder to impress.

Nevertheless, there were some things I've done that I can remember getting some measure of props for. But even if not, it's a good exercise to try and remember such matters.

I think that the most significant thing I ever did for community service was to insure the funding for NSBE. I really enjoyed that job generally. Specifically, the thing I was able to pull off which had a direct impact was the funding for the Southern California Camping Conference at which we took three busloads of inner city kids up to the mountains for the weekend and introduce them to business, math and science professors and professionals. One year I was head counselor with the hands-on role, but I insured that we got the buses paid for two or three years in my capacity on student finance committee for my college. That was my pet project and it was fun to have the political clout to make sure that it happened, and of course I think that experience set an insiders pattern for me subsequently. Who knows? I don't think about it much.

I did a lot of activist work in the Anti-Apartheid Movement, again, mostly raising money and helping other black clubs and organizations raise money. I helped organize fundraisers for the UNCF. I assisted Maxine Waters' office in various ways. I volunteered for the Brotherhood Crusade. I knew a lot of folks who were involved with the founding of the King-Drew Medical Center. I did my piece for the Rainbow Coalition when they rolled through town. When I was a kid, I got to ride in the Watts Christmas Parade. These are things that come to mind, vaguely.

When I think about the kinds of things I wanted to do during the mid and late 80s after my college career, most of it was around establishing communications across multiple black organizations. Really the biggest and last thing I wanted to accomplish as black community activist was to go into business setting up bulletin boards and websites for grassroots community groups. I think my college career was very pivotal and instructive in that.. the more I write about and recall it the more I think I should talk about that specifically.

In high school I did a smattering of community service. I was a camp counselor for my church. I was a page at the Episcopal Convention in LA. I taught Sunday School and was a responsible member of the church youth group (The Images of the Future). It's all rather a blur. I'd have to find a very old resume. So let me skip back to college.

At Northridge, I was chapter secretary for my frat (Alpha Phi Alpha) and representative to the (black) Interfrat Council. I was the School of Engineering rep on the Student Finance Committee, I was the student advisor (one of two) to the Minority Engineering (MEP) Program Board of Directors, and a rep to Statewide MEP. I was liaison in the Black Business Association (and my girlfriend was the Vice President). I was also National Finance Chair of NSBE, having had a number of chapter and regional positions earlier including Head Counselor for the Camping Conference and Editor of the Regional Newsletter. Basically, I was hooked up. From this position I was able to see a hell of a lot from the perspective of black clubs and organizations.

I tried and failed to do two things there which I thought would be beneficial. The first was to create the ECC, the Executive Central Committee for the black clubs and organizations, which was essentially going to function as a clearinghouse for the organizations to share information. The second was to get a 'jewel' line of seven brothers to cross into Alpha. Only three crossed. Of the other four that dropped, one was BSU president, one was captain of the track team, one was a piano virtuoso and the last was the president of the BBA. The three of us that crossed became best friends and roommates, but those two essentially live elsewhere in the world.

Part of the difficulty in establishing and maintaining this coalition of black interests on a predominantly white college campus had a lot to do with their unwillingness to give up control or even the illusion of control. Some of the black clubs were relatively wealthy, politically connected and powerful, like NSBE. Others, like the recently radicalized Black Student Union were weak and disorganized. The BSU, facing declining enrollment renamed itself the Black Survival Union and claimed to be the parent umbrella organization of all black clubs and organization. (This radicalization accomplished by a seventh year senior with an undeclared major, not the brother who dropped line) However, no matter what their position or orientation, all of the black clubs and organizations strongly resisted giving up their independence.

I actually learned a hell of a lot in having these leadership positions and the NSBE work took me across the country to see how the situation at Northridge compared to those at other college campuses. Naturally, we had Ivy League schools, HBCUs, public and private colleges in the mix, and I was able to speak, on the regular, with the leadership of all these schools. In my capacity as national finance director, I learned how much work it took to bring discipline to a broad variety of different black organizations. It wasn't exactly like herding cats, but some days it was.

 

Extending the Aphorism of Fishing

"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish and he eats forever."
-- Anonymous

Give a man a job on your fishing boat and he can feed his family and buy a house. Finance a man's fishing boat and he can employ other fishermen. Teach him how to build a boat and he can increase the size of the fleet. Indemnify the fleet and you can make the village into a net exporter.

Often times when arguing about what is the best strategy for uplift, people only examine the original aphorism of charity and education. This is short-sighted and ultimately only useful at the bottom of the economy. Come on people.

In The Tradition

The Dumb Money: The DAP Abuse Loophole

The Field Negro just posted this argument on his sidebar. I will reproduce it in full without permission because I think it is a perfect example of politics of purposely defying the market for socialist reasons.

Dear *[field negro]*,I'm coming to you as a big time reader (and troll, I never comment).There's an issue on my radar that has been overwhelmingly disregardedby the mainstream media. The Bush administration, helped by Uncle TomAlphonso Jackson, is eliminating downpayment assistance programs thathave helped hundreds of thousands of people gain first time homeownership. This is about modern civil rights, wealth creation andasset ownership.

'Modern' civil rights? You mean the right to petition congress for a house? How is a government grant about wealth creation? It's the absolute opposite of wealth creation, it's a tax-funded subsidy. If you think you can create wealth by filling out an application to a government program, you don't know the first thing about wealth creation.

To me, breaking the chains of poverty means getting the down payment assistance necessary help working families and adults move into their own homes. . Eliminating down payment assistance is just another way to put Blacks into a modern day sharecropping system on the apartment renting plantation. Unfortunately, fake liberal Demprez candidate Chris Dodd is siding with the Bush admin to close this program... here's a little mini blog post I wrote below. If you could help promote this issue or at least mention it, that'd be great. Keep doing what you're doing.

I'll promote it too. With criticism.

First of all, where are black homeowners? It took me a minute to find out that the majority of African American families do not rent. I was looking for the stats at Booker Rising, but instead found this study by Collins & Margo. Download Collins_and_margoThey basically say:

At the turn of the century approximately 20 percent of black adult males (ages 20 to 64) owned their homes, compared with 46 percent of white men, a gap of 26 percentage points. By 1990, the black home ownership rate had increased to 52 percent and the racial gap had fallen to 19.5 percentage points. All of the long-term rise in the rate of black home ownership, and almost all of the corresponding long-term decline in the racial gap, occurred after 1940, with the majority of both changes concentrated in the 1960 to 1980 period.

Now, here is the deal on Down Payment Assistance Programs (DAPs).

The devil is in the details. These are the details our friends to the left would not bother to tell you. What Dodd is proposing is to close a loophole in the law which created DAPs which are non-profit middlemen / charities. It is perfectly legal for someone to give you a gift from a charitable organization to assist you with a down payment. It's basically illegal for a home seller to give you money for your down payment. This is how DAPs are being abused.

Imagine I have a house that's worth 250k. Generally speaking, you would need 10% down payment to get a conforming loan (FHA approved). 25k. But you don't have 25k, you only have 5k. No problem says I. I will give you 30k cash if you buy the house for 280k. You then will have 35k which is more than enough down payment for a conforming loan on a 280k house. It doesn't cost me anything, I still get all of my selling price of 250k, and you get some extra dough in your pocket. The difference, of course is that instead of a loan for 225k you now assume a loan of 250k, that is if you decide to pocket the other 7k. And why wouldn't you?  Nevertheless, I have just artificially inflated the value of my house by more than 10%. Just for you.

The problem is that you couldn't afford a 250k house in the first place, now you have a mortgage that's even larger. The trick was that we used the DAP to front for me, because it's illegal for me the seller to give the down payment to you, the buyer.

Now your alternative as a buyer, is and has always been that you can take out a separate, cheap loan especially made for down payments. The interest rate on down payment loans is 3%. If you are a first time home buyer and somebody asks you what you would rather do, get 7k in cash and essentially a free down payment or take out a loan for your down payment and for your house, which would you choose? Hmm. Sucker!

The FHA has commissioned three studies which prove that the DAP loophole is the sucker bet and is actually more risky than taking out two loans, the down payment loan and the smaller mortgage. That is why they are closing the loophole.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled liberal noise.

Field...Presidential hopeful Chris Dodd, Chairman of Banking, Housing & UrbanAffairs Committee, is making the remarkable move of closing down aFederal program that has historically helped hundreds of thousands ofdisadvantaged groups and the poor achieve first time homeownership.Dodd is siding with Senate Republicans (like Senator Richard Shelby,R-AL no less) to give a slap in the face to Blacks and minorities across the country. Dodd is supporting Bush's HUD Secretary AlphonsoJackson in his move to eliminate downpayment assistance programs.According to the GAO, the move to get rid of downpayment assistanceprograms will bar approximately 40% of African-American homebuyersfrom utilizing Federal Housing Administration insured loans.

Alsoaffected are potentially 30% of Latinos.What Senator Dodd is doing will screw the poor, minorities, and manysingle parent mothers from ever owning a home. True progressives Rep.Maxine Waters and Rep. Barney Frank have showed their leadership in securing a bill in the House to protect this program. In the Senate,Senator Dodd holds the keys. Sign this petition and call Senator Doddnow. For more information on this issue, see below.[for blogs, often you may post the long portion of your text in a'below' or 'read more' section]Here's the lowdown. Downpayment assistance programs allow nonprofitsto assist home buyers in providing the minimum down payment requiredfor Federal Housing Authority (FHA) loans. Shutting down this programwill effectively destroy the nonprofits seeking to help first timehome buyers achieve their dreams of home ownership. From 2000 through2006, more than 650,000 buyers got their down payments throughnonprofits. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson believes with the recentforeclosures occurring because of subprime loans, an increased numberof borrowers will seek downpayment assistance and place enormousfiscal stress on the FHA. However, Secretary Jackson is overlookingthe fact that if downpayment assistance programs are shut out, evenmore borrowers will be FORCED into predatory loan agreements andsubprime loans. The reality is, downpayment assistance programs are needed more than ever now, and to remove the program is to put families onto the street and to keep an entire segment of thepopulation continually renting from landlords..

blah blah blah. lies lies lies.

UPDATE: Five years later, the Washington Post relates the sad tale of foreclosed blacks.

For blacks, the picture since the recession has been particularly grim. They disproportionately held subprime mortgages during the housing boom and are facing foreclosure in outsize numbers. That is raising fears among consumer advocates, academics and federal regulators that the credit scores of black Americans have been systematically damaged, haunting their financial futures.

And Now For Something Really Scary

You all remember the old joke about an educated black man being a white racist's worst nightmare? How about two? A little self-deprecating humor here to loosen me up for the big show.

My Favorite Prince Songs

I had to do it this morning. I went through all of my Prince music on iTunes and boiled it down to one CD. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I'll probably have to revisit this another time but I gotta throw it out there. In alphabetical order:

Acknowledge Me
Prince didn't often come with the hard hophop track, but damn when he does it's just slamming. This is a kind of retro kicking beat which is just the kind of new jack swing that I thought he was going to do big time. Whereas most of Diamonds and Pearls was just over the top beat overkill, this one had just the right balance.

Adore
There's only one thing I regret about this song and that I was never really in love with the women I applied it to. I didn't really know the song very well until my boys were crackin' "..maybe not the ride..". This is one of the great love songs of all time, and clearly one of Prince's best.

The Ballad of Dorothy Parker
Every bit as witty as its namesake, this is just a killer little minimalist song. Just proof that the man in purple was a master lyricist.

Billy Jack Bitch
The only song in the universe that samples Fishbone, what's not to love? And really, there aren't many songs that Prince has recorded that just slam a woman. Most of the time he's bending over backwards to be be the perfect lover. He's just hard on this one, pretty unique. Also, you've just got to love the organ solo. 

Come On
The groove on this song is just hypnotic. Whenever I get new stereo equipment, I pump this song through. "I got the butter for your muffin, just need the keys to the room". Damn!

Computer Blue
Of all the classic Prince cuts, this is the one that still resonates as something that cuts extraordinarily close to the man. The essential melody of this song as he revealed in the film Purple Rain, was just too compelling to let go. And yet he still managed to orchestrate it into something both rocking and electronic as well. This is also a personal favorite from back in the days I got flack for loving it. When all kinds of questions would arise for lovers of Prince's 'out there' music, I couldn't resist this cut no matter the cost to my rep.

Da Da Da
When I got Emancipation, I was like.. we waited all these years for this? This was one of the few cuts that I really dug. Hard Prince.

Don't Play Me
The greatest acoustic cut off Crystal Ball. A grown-up song for grown-ups, a smack in the face to the record industry and a bold declaration. "My only competition is.. well, me in the past".

Gett Off
Yeah. How can I put this in a way not to offend or unnerve? That there is my alter ego all over the place. Lucifer Jones. When I laugh and think about some conversation that Nulan or Fish was talking about in which the buppie was embarrassed out of his shoes when the conversation turned to raunchy sex, this is sort of the song I think about. People who know me, know me to be one of those characters known as a closet freak. Yeah well, something about this song just goes straight to my balls.

I Rock, Therefore I Am
Of all the defiant Prince songs and anthem songs, I like this one almost the best. That's because it came on one of his most despised albums, Chaos and Disorder.  Musically, it's actually not so very interesting, it's the only one with a Jamaican accented rapper on it. But when I was grooving to it, I really got deep into it.

Lovesign
Another massive groove. One of the few Prince songs that I don't mind playing with the kids around. Smooth, funkin', positive.

The Sacrifice of Victor
For some reason, I tend to think that this song is somewhat autobiographical. It's one of the blackest of Prince songs. He goes there. I very good anthem.

SEVEN
I confess that I just played this symbol album to death. Three Chains of Gold just wore a hole in my CD player. SEVEN still stands up and I just love the moaning harmonies over the crisp beat and elements of jingling percussion. Just good uplifiting lyrics and wonderfulness.

Slave
This is the song that passed through my iTunes last night and made me stand up and take notice. I was like damn. I hereby declare that it is now the official anthem of the black contrarian. "Everybody keep trying to break my heart / Everybody except for me / I just want a chance to play the part / The part of someone truly free.

Starfish And Coffee
I consider this a classic. Just a perfect little Prince song.

2 Nigs United For West Compton
Squirrel meat! Just an extraordinary run, the first real extended Prince jam. An amazing piece of musicality. In one way, this is kind of the ultimate Prince song, emotionally unleashed, dirty underground, witty and clever, funky and rocking.

Honorable Mention:
The usual suspects (Housequake, Temptation, Pussy Control, The Pope, White Mansion, Another Lonely Christmas, Bob George, Suzanna's Pajamas (by The Family), Irresistible Bitch, 17 Days)

Oh yeah and its true that Come On is the last song I ever really listened to by Prince. I really have no idea what he has been up to since then. I remember that Musicology was about something, but I haven't really listened hard since The Gold Experience.

Control Issues

Fish Vs Cobb: Anticipation

This morning it was my turn to fix breakfast, but my mind kept flashing back to some contentious flack expounded by Michael "Fish'' Fisher, who has distinguished himself as the second person in history to be booted off Cobb. I almost forgot to put the Mrs Dash on my eggs. It's that deep.

But seriously, we are indebted to EC Hopkins, on whose blog we hijacked the thread. He has offered to stage, pub up and moderate a smackdown between the two of us. It's going to be the bomb. Interestingly enough, I'm not sure how productive it will be, but it could be illuminating and it will certainly be entertaining. So, I'm down with it.

In near corner, in the Royal Blue trunks, from Los Angeles at 5 foot eleven weighing in at a broad shouldered and knobby kneed 209 pounds, representing the Old School, West Coast, Conservative Brotherhood. An Alpha man and Quiet Storm DJ, the brilliant, the erudite, renaissance man and Defender of the Faith: Michael David Cobb Bowen. (yaah - the crow goes wild)

In the far corner, in the Gold Lame sagging trunks and pointy shoes, the drooling, semi-conscious and crosseyed loudmouth, hailing from parts unknown, the  Suge Knight wannabe, the jackleg street vendor of conspiracy theories, with the nose ring and Tupac tattoo, Michael 'Fish' Fisher. (boo - the crowd throws fruit salad)

This is going to be really fun. I hope.

Black Social Capital

I'm a star in the ghetto
If I never reach Broadway, that'll be OK
(Keep on shining)
I don't care what the people up there in New York have to say.
-- Ben E. King

This is going to be rather long and somewhat complex. I'm basically attempting to contextualize a response to EC Hopkins query:

What forms of above-average capital (economic, social, symbolic, cultural) are assigned to Black Americans³, what unearned social advantages are given to Black Americans, or what valuable social opportunities are more easily accessible to Black Americans than other Americans due to Black Americans’ phenotypical traits or due to Black cultures?

This sounds to me as an investigation of black social capital. What do we get credit for knowing and what privilege do we get in society? Interestingly enough, the corollary questions have to do with whether or not we understand and appreciate our social capital and if we are satisfied with it.

My traditional approach to the question of black social capital began with a comparison of how blacks see themselves within physical and cultural black communities vs how they see themselves and are perceived outside of those communities. The example I always used was about how the black homecoming king and queen were popular and respected at the black high school, but did not get that same popularity or respect elsewhere. This would be an example to me of diminished social capital.

But before we get into diminished social capital let's talk about positive black social capital.

Positive Social Capital: Black Pride
In the American context, I happen to believe that blackfolks who are not recent immigrants inherit a substantial amount of social capital. We understand American life and American life respects, even if it's not 100% accurate, the black experience. America wants to touch our hair. It can be condescending or straight out stupid. As I am writing this I recall something I wrote from BYO Blackness:

..There would be no way I could have any pride or function properly as a black man if I depended on the computer industry to take care of my personal needs. It doesn't matter to me whether the industry is hostile or indifferent with regards to the reasons for its short supply, I bring it myself. So you will see, at industry functions, a black family when families are invited. I represent.

I am satisfied with my career because it provides the rewards I expect. But it is not a part of my expectations for them to understand and provide anything related to black culture. If I had to get support from the workplace, I would be in sorry shape. But since I do get what I need, when I am in the workplace the flow goes the other way. They get it from me. I am the provider. So everywhere I work has a little more flavor than it had before I came with it. This is your standard 'strong positive black man' stuff. I got it goin' on and everybody is better off for that. Every once in a while people want to touch my hair. Every once in a while somebody says something incredibly stupid and racist. Every once in a while there are intolerably stark reminders of the white male desolation of computer geekdom. So some days, I have to head for the hills and recharge the batteries. Nevertheless it is not difficult for me to enjoy a week in Boise, Idaho learning MDX, as Cobb readers know.

I believe that Americans understand and expect black people to hold their own. I think a black person who is approached from a dorky liberal position, "My word, you certainly are articulate", is insulted. It's a double insult. One, it's possibly a racist insult in that the speaker might think that blacks simply can't be articulate. But it's also an insult because the speaker feels compelled to tell that black individual that they deserve some kind of special approval, as if we don't know that being articulate has value in society. One aspect of black social capital is that all of that hair touching condescension is not necessary. Black people know how to be black in a society where they are a minority. It's edifying. It builds character. We know this. And we know Americans know we know this. America expects black pride and America knows we expect them to respect it.

I'm convinced that America is very well prepared for black pride. Generically ethnic chauvinism is OK, but I think there is a special case of this in America which is reserved for blacks who 'overcome'. We get props.

The Sambo Card

Imagine a street hawker offering a strange game of three card monte. All the cards are face up and underneath one card is a $100 bill. They are all Kings, the King of Hearts, King of Diamonds and the King of Spades. The King of Spades, however has been altered to look like a Sambo. The $100 bill is always under the Sambo card, and in fact you can see a piece of it there. This particular street hawker is wearing a white sheet in the style of the KKK. Does the black man take the money? Is he insulted by the Sambo card? Where is his enlightened self-interest?

I say that the proper man is not insulted by this game. For him it is easy money, because he is not plagued by the demons of race. He has achieved a level of self-actualization and is a player in free markets that obviates him from the guilt trips of white supremacy. Moreover, he sees the street hawker as a tool and the recognizes the limits of that game.

War Plans for Iran

"if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (the Iranians) from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
-- GW Bush

Sounds reasonable to me. It is in everybody's interest to keep Iran from going loony. The trick seems to be how might this be done when they are funding Hezbolla.

But let's just say for the sake of argument, that there isn't jack we can do to stop Iran from building the Islamic Bomb. What's next? Obviously, any president who isn't having his military planners consider that possibility isn't worth a dime. Obama, are you listening?

Anyone who read Colin Powell's bio knows that the general spent many months with many thousands of troops and tactical nukes at the ready watching the Fulda Gap ever on alert for WW3. He was there. That's no joke.  That's the way America operates, and that is not going to change. It should change. We should pre-empt those with hostile intentions. It's pay now or pay later and the PNACians understand this.

We have been fortunate to have a President who puts troops in harms way and develop our own capability in the field of operations. Petraeus is somebody who could not have happened in the Carter, Reagan, Bush or Clinton eras. In those days, the American President was too accustomed to overusing, and often abusing the Directorate of Operations of the CIA and paying proxy soldiers and Contras to do the geopolitical heavy lifting that should have been our burden in the first place. The more I study this sad history of the Cold War, the more I lament the idea that we could place 'advisors' all over the globe and do covert war using local 'freedom fighters'. I'm glad we have a real Army and yes Blackwater doing all of this hard military work above board in broad daylight. That's how American wars should be.

But the plans for such wars should always remains ongoing and in secret. That's what the Pentagon gets paid to do - plan for and respond to threats.

In the current American political environment, it is difficult for me to see how we might ever attain the kind of rapport with the Iranian people that we deserve. We Americans are quite lousy at diplomacy. I don't mean our diplomats and bureaucrats at State, I mean our citizens. We don't establish real ties to foreign countries in very significant ways. Even now through the Iraqi conflict, we have not by and large come to any advanced accommodation with the Iraqi people. We have done admirably well as of late being the proper soldiers in pacification, but we Americans can hardly brag about being goodwill ambassadors to the Middle East. It is not because of our foreign policy, it is because of our worldview. We can be so very condescending. Even through that, I have been constantly buoyed by the actual words of Secretary Rice and Ambassador Crocker whenever I hear them. It's not enough, but it's something.

I don't know how to get America on track, to focus on national consensus so that we may give our better natures more air. The same spirit that brings us to compassion over the conflict in Darfur is the primary American spirit. When it comes down to it, we do help and we do everything in a big way. We will come back to being a nation of consensus.

When we do become a nation of consensus once again, it will be useful to point out, and believe me I will, those marginal loudmouths who will turn the bile they reserve for the Bush Administration towards America in general. For when the White House and the Congress will bi-partisanly agree to defend American interests abroad, you can be sure that the George Carlins of the world will cynically describe us as 'a warlike people' while fighting to preserve their grip on the right to spew the obscenity of the day. It will be the tenor of language they will have to use in order to shock us out of the 'complacency' of rational national interest.

Those of us who to strive to be rational everyday are quite well aware that Iranians fall in love and have babies too. It only means they are people. We hear critics suggest that war plans dehumanize the enemy - and it is only a sort of xenophobic racism, or religious intolerance that allows us to consider drawing up plans to fight wars. What they cannot seem to imagine is the kind of rationale I've had as a moral geopolitical neocon since day one:

Yet if I could stop for a minute and start dealing with the hideous facts of the matter on the ground in Iraq (and probably a half dozen other horrible places), I wonder if I would mind so much if my president is Shrek instead of a Handsome Prince. I'm a policy snob in the face of Saddam's clear and present danger. Not to me, to Iraqis. It's not about me.

Since it is not about me, and a busybody neighbor is better than an abusive parent, I have to concede the fact that an ugly rescue is better than benign neglect. I feel that our geopolitical snobbery and posing are pretty worthless right about now, and the fact that we have to wheedle our way around the diplomatic chicanery of the UN and everyplace else is only necessitated by a failure of brotherhood and an ignoble squeamishness which is not rescued by our well-meant outrage at Bush's mendacity. I do believe in class warfare.That means noblesse on our part and revolt by the Shi'a.

The focus of the world is on Saddam Hussein. WMD or no, Iraqis are hopeless without our intervention. Now is the time for action, political snobs be damned. No matter how physically wreckless we may be, and I have a strong feeling that we won't be, this war is better happening than not. No matter how diplomatically wreckless we have been, and I know for damned sure that we have been, those are only words and hard feelings, but they're not lives. Lives are more important than words.

Americans who rationally observe the actions of Ahmadinejad's Quds forces, his engagements in Iraq and Lebanon through them and Hezbollah must see how he seeks to undermine the rule of law and of national sovereignty. Americans who hear his willingness to question the statehood of Israel should rationally question his willingness to respect borders.

So we plan.

New ATM Bank Tech

Today at the Bank of America ATM, I made a deposit. It was cool.

The new ATM accepts checks (face up) in a slot. No envelope, no deposit slip, just pop the check in the slot. The check is then scanned and it interprets the dollar amount on the check. The ATM then displays a scanned copy of the check on the screen and asks for verification of the amount. Cool.

The receipt is then printed out with a small image of the check with the MICR band blanked out. Extra cool.

If I Die Before You Wake

Fresh off the Kwaku Network. Man there's something about country music.

Back home now I know you're probably sleepin'
Over here it's the middle of the day
I finally found the time to write a letter
Sittin' here a half a world away

I heard about all them folks protestin'
As if I really want this war
But that don't stop me from believin'
There's just some things worth fightin' for

CHORUS
And if I die before you wake,
I pray the world will take
A good look at what God's given us
That we could only understand,
everything is in his hands
All we need is a little faith and trust
I want you to know it ain't too high a price to pay
If I die before you wake

Tell everybody that I miss them
And I can't wait to get back home
But until then I'll serve my country
And be proud to wear this uniform

CHORUS
No it ain't too high a price to pay
If I die before you wake

San Diego County Fires

FYI. Google has a map resource up.

Madam President

It's official. My youngest daughter now has a new provisional nickname, 'Madam President'. Today she won election to student body president at her elementary school. All hail the president.

Burning Burbs

Not very long ago, the Spousal Unit and I were figuring out how to make sense of California real-estate for us. We have openly speculated about moving to North Carolina and to San Diego. Before I landed this gig headquartered in LA, we were potential short-timers to LA County. Although it hasn't gotten much easier to plot our way through the shoulder crushing expenses we are aiming to bear, we are counting our blessings today for not having moved to San Diego.

All of our friends down that way are doing fine at this moment, one was directly in the path of the conflagration and then the winds shifted. The areas we planned to consider most seriously, Poway and Rancho Bernardo are today under constant threat as are thousands of families.

Like earthquakes, Southern California suffers greatly from wildfires. We call it Red Flag Season, and it also seems to bring out the arsonists as well. We managed to escape fairly well last year, but I've been up close to the scene of tragedy and it's damned scary. Just a few weeks ago, we dealt with a fire on the way to Big Bear. Growing up in Southern Cal is growing up with wildfires in memory.

Last night on the way home from a late evening at work, I stopped at Dockweiller State Beach just north of LAX. I could see the orange flames across the Santa Monica Bay northeast in Malibu stand out in the night sky. Just 200 yards below, folks sat around bonfires at the beach. I have a mustard cardigan that was ruined from bonfire smoke at Dockweiller but the smell is a familiar one. The crisp of manzanita and pine flakes in the air. We don't have limbago in our joints that tell us that storms are coming, in Los Angeles we sniff the air and check the coatings on our cars. Today is our hell time.

There's talk about raising taxes on the Malibu types who suck up fire resources on the regular. Mike Davis is likely waxing elegaic about the cosmic justice we are suffering today. I don't really go for the politics of tragedy, although I must admit that I get a good dose of schadenfruede when Californians lose million dollar homes to the fickle finger of nature's fate. Way back when, I used to wonder, as prompted by Davis, why the homes in Orange County should have such high values. Most of the OC is on sandy ground which is subject to liquifaction during earthquakes whereas much of South Central LA ground is bedrock. Location location location my black ass. But that was then. Now I'm gearing myself to be a proper grandfather and wise man, when every man's death diminishes me. So I don't wish ill for anyone nor retribution against the few. I merely hope we all try not to forget where we live and what we face.

The Sprite Struggles With War

Last night my youngest daughter, who is the brainiest Bowen yet born, came to me agonizing over the meaning of war. This conversation, which very often brought her 10 year old eyes to redness and tears as she explained her dilemma multiple different ways, has confirmed something that I had always sensed but never quite understood about my daughter. She's deep. In everything about her life, she has won, not often with style but with ease. But she's so accustomed to making it look easy that I could never guess anything she might be passionate about. It turns out that they are the central questions of humanity.

She has come to me before with questions about the size of God and the size of the Universe, puzzling out which might have come first. So I knew that she was philosophical - not in the cute way that kids often are  you've seen the emails, but in a freshman dorm bull session kind of way. Totally serious and thoughtfully curious with understanding about the implications.

Last night was a real blowup.

In context (maybe), she's running for student body president, and I suspect that she is finding something out about bad leadership by the way she is forming her questions. What she doesn't quite grasp is the conflict of belief systems and how people go from disbelief to disrespect. Her tears were for the intransigent minority who sacrifice their lives against the majority. She doesn't understand why protest metastasizes into violence, which she sees as pointless. She also wouldn't readily acquiesce to the necessity of force even for the sake of good.

I very consciously tried to stay away from the term 'evil', and at one time I tried to use the movie Pocahantas as a backdrop. But she kept coming up with examples of her own as she attempted to exemplify the main thrust of her problem. I keep hearing her weep as she said, I just don't understand why people think they can just take things that don't belong to them. And she also tearfully lamented why people don't compromise. Why they would come into somebody else's house and disobey the house rules when they don't even own the house?

I asked her if somebody came into our house and killed me, would she want to get revenge? She said not enough to kill them back. I expected to take the argument over towards the sentiments of orphans - saying orphans wouldn't cry for her and would not support her desire for revenge. But she didn't go that way and so that tact was lost.

We stayed up an hour past her bedtime, and with a lot of crying and hugging she went reluctantly to bed. I told her that because she thinks about these questions in such a heartfelt way that she was expressing the love of God and the need for justice, that this is what makes great leaders and that these are the sorts of questions that have vexed mankind since the beginning of time.  They make all of us cry, because the answers are often very difficult, but that her head and her heart are in the right direction.

This is the day my baby grew up. She'll still be 'Sprite', but a new nickname is in order.

Soeurs Sur Seine

Name Three

The only one I know is Hamdan. He's the guy whose case went to the Supreme Court who decided that some of his rights to a speedy trial had been abridged. The others I don't know. I have heard some stories about some people on planes who have been harrassed, I think there was a manic depressive guy who was off his meds that the air marshalls dragged to the ground. Then there was an obnoxious git from Silicon Valley who made a stink over some hassle with the TSA. But other than these guys, I say there have been no serious curtailment of American civil liberties since 9/11.

You can find plenty of people to say that they're scared, or that they don't trust the government. Some will even go as far as to say that Osama has won, and America is less free than ever. But we know more about who is losing football games than we know about whom exactly is losing protection under the law.

So I open up the floor. I will bet a nickel that I can find more people bit by pit bull terriers by name than anybody can find people deprived of their civil liberties, by name.

Jindal Wins

Bobby Jindal has won the governor's seat in Louisiana. Hooray.

I've been a fan of Jindal since I was first introduced to him during the days of Katrina madness. Jindal, I discovered, was one of the reasons that Ray Nagin was a Republican. He supported Jindal over that awful Blanco woman who actually won last time around.

Jindal is basically my kind of Republican, and I say that without dissecting his political views. He is simply an emergent in the same way I see myself. New to American power, idealistic and realistic at once. I don't think Jindal can do any worse than the pols like Jefferson who stank up the joint previously. I wish him good luck.

A Few Words About Marcus Roberts

I've been listening to too much rock. Having finally let my iTunes shuffle a bit I fell into a hole of Marcus Roberts and I've been loving it ever since. I think the ballet has braced me.

I have four of Marcus' albums:

• Deep In the Shed
• Gershwin For Lovers
• Alone With Three Giants
• The Truth is Spoken Here

My favorite cuts are his renditions of Pannonica and Jungle Blues. I've always, since I first started listening seriously to jazz, been a sucker for standards. They were my rudder in a disorienting universe of improvisation. And while I completely dig riffing and solos and whatnot, I maintain that nothing really speaks about an artist like their covers of standards. Roberts is not daring but employs a subtly stylish virtuosity that speaks for itself. In many ways, I think of him as the Vladimir Horowitz of jazz, just masterful, mastery.

Two Worlds

Two Worlds is the suckiest game I've ever played. Change that. It's the suckiest game I never played. It took me all of 15 minutes to realize that this was a loser. I rather feel sorry for the guys who had to write this game because they're going to have to crib their resumes if they expect to work again. Something went radically wrong here.

The first thing that went radically wrong is that this game arrived in 2007, several years after Fable and Oblivion. It's a damned high standard. The second thing that went radically wrong is that this was released on the 360. The XBox is still out there, and there are still games like Blynx and Oddworld at the lower end oft he graphics wars which are still playable. I dunno maybe the whole thing was a bad idea. I mean orcs are so yesterday.

But from the very first cut scene, this was a snore. Sorry guys. It made for about 10 minutes of hilarious mockery MST3K style, but then even that got tired. Two Worlds is officially the second worst video game ever to hit my console, number one being uh... I think it was Minority Report. Nah, check that. Minority Report was actually fun for about 10 minutes. This one was never fun, and within two minutes of the action, the camera got lost behind a wall. Bag it.

Eleven, Double, Twenty Seven

I took the family downtown for an afternoon at the Music Center. There we enjoyed three dance pieces by the Mark Morris Dance Group. There were three interpretations of Mozart piano concertoes and we most thoroughly enjoyed the second piece, Double.

The odd thing about dance is that, well for me, there's not much vocabulary I have to describe it. For me it's all about enjoying the poise and the positions. I will pick out a dancer among the troupe and observe their hair, build and movement then try to understand what the choreographer sees in him or her. Then I reinterpret what I see from that assumed perpsective.

MMDG is largely uniform, but there are four breakout dancers. The first, most obviously was the soloist in the first piece, Eleven. She is petite with a short curly blonde cut and falls into her moves transparently. There is absolutely no effect or cant with her, she simply moves. The second is the darkest man, who is bald and medium thick build. He played the 'prince' in Double. His motions are consistently bold and regal. The third is a man who is visibly more graceful than any of the dancers. His arms are simply perfect and something changes when he is on stage, even and especially in the minimalist settings. The final man is the tall one with the pony tail. Something about him I liked - I can't put my finger on it.

All of these acts, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion took place on a black stage with a Franz Klein-esque swishes on a large white backdrop which was alternately lit in deep green or organge depending on the mood. Mostly the brushstrokes were left on the white. The dancers were dressed in simple togs, rather like what I imagine Greek peasants would wear, close and simple off whites but not too clingy and mostly sleeveless. All were barefoot and oftimes their movements would be accentuated by the squeak of their feet on the matte floor.

There were very signature moves in this set, most notably plain walking, brisk running and the most graceful kind of falling down one might imagine. I tended to recall Morris as the gropey troupe, but they showed none of that orgiastic slithering in the Mozart performance. Rather it was a well balanced set of motions one would expect for allegro-speed concertos. Classic but not too leapy at all, and not too much with the strange feet. Rather a set of unique arm motions done smoothly reminiscent of angular trees, budding flowers and falling leaves.

In our favorite, Double, the dark man wearing a black outfit which reminded me of a minimalist samurai robe began solo. Then the thinner men wearing off white vests would shadow him on angles up and down stage. It was a sort of teaching game at the end of which he marched off stage left. It was the first bit of humor in the performance. Then six men in vests began a complex set of moves across the stage in a prayer circle, finally working a sort of sets of assistance to each other and a seventh man. The seventh man then returns to the prince and these two men engage in a friendly pas de deux. Finally women appear on the edges and the entire village echoes the moves the prince originally performed alone. It was a marvelous entertainment that I found fulfilling on many levels.

The occasion was that we got free tickets from the school and that allowed one of Boy's teachers to gush about his artistic talents. We took photos out front. I rather enjoyed the crowd which I found rather unusual for Los Angeles. LA dowagers deeply freckled and makeupless, or wearing large brass hammered ornaments and oversized tortoise shells. Men in light jackets without socks in deck shoes.  A smattering of students, women in African dress, men in sweaters. Small girls with ballet frocks. It was a perfect afternoon, summery, different. And now there are three new Mozart pieces I can dig which were surprisingly unboring.

Tween

Appropriation

Sometimes a noose is just a noose. Today it's news. If you haven't been paying attention to entertainment news, the gentleman on the left is standup comic and ex-pimp Katt Williams. He actually has some comic skills, which implies that he has more than a couple brain cells to rub together. They were obviously kicking on all cylinders when he decided to blackify the age-old symbol.

I love it.

I'm a fairly strong believer in black social capital, so it never surprised me when Louis Vuitton and Timberland were appropriated by one of our demographics. I've been waiting for the Confederate Flag to be next. I've certainly done it on several occasions - worn a confederate battle flag bandanna and dared anybody to say anything about it. Obviously Williams has the nerve. Good on him.

There are too many real problems in the world for people to be spooked by echoes of a bygone era. I say get it all out there - take it back. Now is just the right time to laugh in the face of lynching, and Katt Williams is just the right kind of person to make exactly this statement. He doesn't have to be squeaky clean. I don't expect Barack Obama to be sporting one. But a high five to KW. The line he should have dropped on the red carpet should have been, "As you can see, I escaped."

This Is Your Blog On the Cutting Room Floor: Any Questions?

Well I actually didn't think it would happen quite so grotesquely, but it did. The editors at the LATimes completely obliterated my presence from Richard Fausset's page one piece on the black blogosphere. Instead, they focused on Wayne Field Negro Bennett and Gina McCauley. I'm the one who lives in LA. Damn!

Was it because I was black? Was it because I wasn't black enough? Maybe it was because I've been online for 15 years and these guys are new to the blogosphere. Could it be? Ahh why bother guessing? They consider Afrospear to be the voice of black diversity. From a left perspective, that could be considered true.

Anyway, I am only moderately pissed- rather like when you order two burgers at the window and only get one in the bag. But I do hope Patterico notices.

I was very satisfied with the interview the Fausset gave, and I'm certain that he got enough material from me to deal with a completely different angle of the evolution of black writing online. I got no beef with the reporter. With any luck, the editors at the LAT will extend that one piece into a second part. But now I know how poor George Kelly must feel. After all, he is all of our blogfather and he gets no props these days.

Aside from all that, I've got radio coverage from NPR. I love them and they love me, so no love from the LA Times does not leave me loveless. Still, I am kinda prominent. You'd think they'd give me a passing mention. After all, I'm not only a single blogger, but I started a blog league. Doesn't that count for anything?

While I'm ranting, I gotta say what happened to P6 and Booker Rising and others of note in the black blogosphere? I think that the LAT was mostly interested in Afrospear which is new and frothy and Jena-6 enabled. That's not even half the story.

Real Torture

The subject of torture came up again this week. I just so happens that I've had several hours of dental work over the past two weeks and in that chair, I've had plenty of time to think about torture. It doesn't take much.

I have been blessed with very strong teeth and a high tolerance for pain. I've also been cursed with fairly weak gums. So in my infrequent trips to the ordinary dentist I've been accustomed to hearing. "No cavities, but you should do something about those gums, but I'm not a gum specialist."  So I finally got to a gum specialist and he's whipping my ass into shape. As part of that whipping, I have become intimately familiar with a device called a cavitator. It's essentially a jackhammer that vibrates at about the speed of jet turbine. The dental hygienist with forearms like Popeye grinds that bad boy on all the surfaces of my teeth and even though the nerves of my jaw have been properly zapped, it still feels like high pitched whine of crossed light sabers inside my head. Naturally, on one of my teeth, all the nerves weren't adequately deadend and I got a taste of what real torture might feel like, for one eighth of a second. In your dental career, something similar might have happened to you.

So a thinking person might suggest, that when the US says "We don't torture", that the lines between advanced interrogation and torture might be pretty slim. Waterboarding, for example. A thoughtful person might say.. yeah that could be considered torture. But from the perspective of someone strapped to a chair with his mouth open, I think that it's fair to say that it's damned easy to torture if we really wanted to torture. And I know, that in that position, I would give up my grandmother in a heartbeat. I know damned well breaking off a tooth with pliers is torture. I don't have to think twice, I don't have to consider the nuances and shades of gray.

There are so many different ways to torture that any idiot could do it. We serve up examples in horror movies for fun. But interrogation is a different kind of thing, and I believe that there is a significant qualitative difference between those things that bring the noise for information's sake and those acts which bring the pain for the sake of pain. Torture is easy. Interrogation is hard. Think about it.

Cobb Back on the Air

I did another Barbershop session. I'm a little rusty in getting my soundbite game on, but I did make a point or two. Interestingly enough, we were all in broad agreement.

Philly Cheese
My ongoing harangue against the Philadelphia Cheif of Police continues. This 10,000 man posse continues to be a big dumb and potentially dangerous idea. I am reminded of an old comedy bit by Robin Harris about the security guard at the shopping mall with a flashlight and a pair of house shoes. What's he going to do when a real gangbanger shows up. Shine a light? Like the gangbanger is Sir Nose and he's got the Bop Gun? These volunteers, if they show up, get a 90 minute sermon, an armband and a hat.

I tell you what's going to happen. Somebody with an armband and a hat is going to get shot or worse yet, shoot somebody. Then he's in front of the judge saying, but your honor, I got this armband. It takes a lot of training in law to be a law enforcement officer. These volunteers at best will get lessons on verbal judo, but they won't get anything as simple as a police radio so they can call. My nickel says the Philly 911 system couldn't handle an extra 10,000 phone calls.

But the worst idea is still bad. Today it's a cop shortage. Oh we'll get 10 thouand black men to handle it for free? What if the City of Philadelphia suddenly has a cotton shortage?

The only good thing that can possibly come out of this is that all of the men that show up will have the experience of walking the beat with a cop in their own neighborhoods. Three hours spent with a cop talking about crime in your own community is three hours of pure righteousness and I can only hope that makes a world of difference. But the problem still remains. Don't get 10 thousand volunteers, train, and equip 500 more police officers. Policework isn't easy and you can't get it cheap. The world will see very soon, as soon as a questionable shooting goes down. That's when the programs founders will get sued for every dime and that will be the end of these wasteful public experiments.

Experiments on the black community. Damn. I thought we learned our lesson in Tuskeegee.

America's Dad
America doesn't want Cosby as their dad, because he says mean things and that hurts America's self-esteem. But you and I both know that America needs a kick in the ass. Don't we get enough fake love from MTV?

Today's big point I took from a poster named Angie over at Booker Rising. She said something that I welcome hearing, which is that the black middle class needs to take center stage in American life again, and kick all that ghetto dysfunction to the curb. People might disagree with whether or not Cosby is saying the right thing to the black underclass, but what he is saying to the black middle class is loud and clear. We did the right thing, and maybe, just maybe we ought to puff our chests a little bit. Cosby emboldens the black middle class, and maybe that silent majority is about to get loud.

Sure Alvin Poussaint sounds just like the kind of fuddy duddy you'd expect to be named Alvin. They played the clip that was only 20 seconds long and I swear I was nodding off that quick. But he did say the words 'self-destruction' and it reminded me of that old rap video and song. Remember 'Yo Yo'? Yes you do. But we don't need another fake gangsta rapper to talk to our kids, we need boring college professors, and PWA, Parents With Attitude. As you can guess, we have plenty of attitude here in the Old School, and we're not afraid to say so. Neither is Cosby, so be careful who you hate on.

Everybody Freeze
Warren Ballentine suggests that all blackfolks freeze spending on November 2nd. Don't spend money and the world will notice. And so then what happens on November 3rd? Everybody will spend all of the money they didn't spend on the previous day and that won't make a difference either. This is one of those self-serving symbolic things like Global Orgasm Day. that only temporarily affects the habits of people in earshot and gives the originators a pat on the back. If Ballentine was smart he'd get Whoopi Goldberg and Chris Rock to host a variety show and call it Black Aid. But you know I'd be dissing that too, unless I had a percentage of the gate.

Vote for me and I'll set you free. Maybe I will get famous enough to make such bold and dynamic suggestions, but I'd be happy if you just subscribed to my RSS feed. It only takes a moment of your time and it would mean a great deal to me.

The last boycott that worked was when black voters completely dissed Michael Steele in last fall's election. I felt that one all the way over here on the West Coast and we're still talking about it. There's a clue.

In Other News
All of this gives me a bit of satisfaction. We need people to recognize that Black America is America and all that special boycott and social experiment stuff doesn't work on us. Why? Because those of us who are obsessed with race know exactly how things work for whitefolks. There doesn't need to be two sets of lessons.

I also shook hands with one of the black doctors on the cover of that new book. I can't remember the names of any of the brothers or the name of the book - I was in a rush to get into the studio. But I suspect you'll hear about them sooner or later - they're all taller than me and clean up pretty nicely. No doubt they will be in demand on TV. They were glad to hear that Hudson Booksellers features them prominently, maybe I'll even pick up a copy.

Additionally, I finally met Farai Chedeya face to face. I've known her online for damned near 20 years. Wow. She's in LA. We will definitely hang out.

Limited Liability Personnae

(M) to the (A) to the (S) to the (K)
Put the mask upon the face just to make the next day,
Feds be hawkin me
Jokers be stalking me,
I walk the streets and camouflage my identity.
-- The Fugees

Something about cell warfare scares me. It threatens the nationalist in me, it threatens my understanding of the rule of law. It reeks to high heaven of perfidy. But there's also something rather inevitable about it. There is something very appealing about network relationships replacing hierarchical relationships. I've always been fascinated by Stephenson's concept of phyles.  At times like this I wish I knew a little bit more history. I want to know which way this can go.

The newest idea I have seen that appeals to a tight cellular network within the loose hierarchical framework is the LLP. The pioneers of this concept are The Burton Group, which maintains a blog on Identity.

The basic idea is that an LLP would be a legally sanctioned and recognized virtual person in which you could "invest" some of your financial or identity resources, while holding the rest of your resources back so that they're not exposed to online risk. Once you created an LLP, you'd have the legal right to use it as an online "alter ego", even in commercial transactions. You can't really do this today; if you use an identity other than your own in a transaction, it's usually called "fraud" (but not always; people in the witness protection program, for example, are given government-sanctioned alter egos which they can use to avoid various privacy and safety risks).

Now in practice, I do this kind of stuff all the time. For a simple example, whenever I go to Starbucks and they ask me my name, I say 'Max' because there are too many Michaels. (Michael was the most popular male name when I was born in the early 60s). In the days when I used to attend strip clubs in the Derrty South, I used another name, for obvious reasons. I have sophisticated reasons as well. Obviously Cobb and Boohab are me but not me, and I have invented other personnae for various online discussions. I think that a fluid kind of identity is second nature to many different people for different reasons. I went into one set of reasons way back when:

for example, in my grand theoretical thinking of things, the existence of virtual   communicative spaces offers one the opportunity to make one's identity completely opaque   or even false. i could very well be a very clever new zealander pregnant with twins   despite all the things i say here. the opportunity exists to navigate in virtual worlds   and take on multiple personalities, identities etc. the question which strikes me is, why?   i believe people will experiment and communicate here in ways they wouldn't (in reality).   but to what extent does the virtual experience change you (in reality)? so if you do it   here, and become confident enough than you may ultimately do it there. you are exposed to   the ideas and people's generally honest opinions (or genuine fantasies) and so that   experience becomes real.

still with me?

but despite all the opportunity for identity swapping (and believe me there are people   in cyberspace right now pretending that they are x-rated green eyed squirrels) most people   stay with their own identities. so the folks who want to be adventurers are adventuring   already. (i often take on the identity of a overly generous cheeto eating sumo wrestler   but that's another story). since this is a communicative medium i believe people assume   the identity which provides them with the kinds of interactions and experiences they think   that identity will get them. this is very fluid and very interesting when it comes to   black folk (who always seem to fascinate me).

as an aside what i have not seen so much in this forum as i have in private black   forums is what i call the 'black persistent object'. that is someone who self-identifies   as the 'nigger' who mucks up the works no matter what they are. i am not saying this is   good or bad but if you would reflect on that idea for a moment. because this is something   i desperately want to see. (in samuel r. delany's third of the neveryon series he writes   of a black 13 year old hanging out in ny's port authority bus terminal saying 'hey white   man, are you afraid of me? i'm not going to hurt you. hey where are you going? do you   think i'm going to rob you? i'm not going to rob you..' - this is a variation on what i am   saying. the existence of the 'black persistent object' calls into question and disturbs   'progress' or 'disinterest'. for cyberspace the question is how do you 'be black' in a way   that is different? should one even *try* to change. there are only one or two people in   scaa who have ever seen me. i have never said if i am a light skinned brother or dark.   what does skin color mean when i write about it in text? what does black identity mean in   computer mediated communications? howard rheingold has no clue, but still read his books -   he's the man. now that i look back, why did i call the 'black persistent object' a nigger?   it could very well be any other african-american archetype, but i think you catch my   drift. i guess that's the catchy one.

     

I've always talked about 'identity gloves' as something you put on to grab something that you want, but don't want to really touch you. Identity gloves are like sex with a condom - it's not really touching, it's a safety mechanism accepted by both parties so that you can limit your liability. What if you could do that legally with a whole new self? This is how the LLP opens up a world of possibilities. It's a shell corporation for the person.

Fascinating. Dangerous.

Sellout Year Zero

I've been watching The Field Negro with some interest lately. It is mostly because his website has become wildly popular in the past several months, and because I hear he's the hot topic of the new LAT article on the black blogosphere. He recently asked a question, when did you (dirty) sell-outs sell out?

Selling out is also buying in, but other than that it's a kind of vague reference to the old trope of cooning, who is 'house' and who is 'field'. Rather than evade the entire analysis as shallow and practically useless, I'll play along as devil's advocate. In my terminology, I have come across points in my life where I think 'what I ought to do as a black man' has changed. I generally call this 'The End of My Blackness'. I have done this about seven times in my life and each time I find another strange and interesting reason to be black, but in a way different than anybody might have expected. I suspect in the most important way I will always be black - in that way I chose to be when I was forming my ideas about my particular manhood, so there is that essential thing I will never escape. But according to some popularly interpreted ways I am not black at all, I have turned my back to what might popularly be considered a critical mass of blackfolks, and thus Sold Out.

Cobb readers might be familiar with my old NSBE story, but it is the one point in my life when I felt most conflicted and torn about the move I decided to make. It must have been somewhere around 1985 in my second year as the National Finance Chair for the National Society of Black Engineers. NSBE is a college group dedicated to the recruitment, retention and successful graduation of black students in the sciences and engineering disciplines. As the money guy, it was my job to solicit bucks from corporate sponsors and fund the programs of the society. The impossible decision I faced was that we were of two minds - should we fund scholarships for the best and brightest so that they might piece heretofore unreachable glass ceilings? Or should we fund scholarships for the first time collegians who might never graduate, but like Dr King, will have seen the promised land and be rewarded beyond what they ever expected of themselves in attending engineering classes? It was ghetto vs bourgie. It was School Daze, light skin vs dark, straight hair vs nappy, HBCU vs 'predominantly white'. It was every social and class issue of Black America placed at the feet of the NSBE leadership, and it shook my faith in black unity to its very foundation.

I left the Society somewhat traumatized with that realization - that there is no single black agenda. Whatever faith I had in black nationalism was destroyed by the reality that given a real organization with real money and real capacity for change, getting cooperation and agreement was politically impossible. You could not satisfy all the black people all the time, you could only play the game. The game was bound to make some black people mad as hell. Like Michael Jackson sung in 'The Wiz', you can't win, you can't break even and you can't get out of the game. It became clear to me that there was no solution to be had, and that somehow black America was going to have to deal with that. I had really gone the length to discover this disillusioning truth, convinced as anyone raised to be Talented Tenth could be. The difference between me and the other Talented Tenth types was that they tended to come from families with a little bit more money and thus could afford to condescend to blackfolks in a way I refused to do. I wanted to take all black aspirations seriously, especially uplift. But realizing the economic constraints of supply amidst an untamably diverse demand made me sell out.

I sold out to the minority of the minority of the minority, basically black like me, and adopted the most ruthless and snobbish airs I could appropriate from the Talented Tenth school. I decided that if the problem couldn't be solved, then I would side with the people who had the fewest problems. And pretty much since then, to the extent that I identify with blackfolks, I tend to identify with the blueblood blacks. Except I have a problem. Both of my parents are sociologists by profession, and I know better. I haven't and could not internalize the self-conscious self-hatred many sellout Negroes possess, plus I don't have that blueblood money. And so I am in a sort of limbo of black identity meritocracy having inherited nothing truly settled class-wise. Perhaps that explains why I feel that I must continue to make progress by producing this black oriented work within my writing - which changes every time my blackness changes. Maybe it is why some part of me keeps evolving.

It doesn't particularly bother me, this imbalance and self criticism. It's like my internal radioactive element whose steady decay changes my weight and sparks mutation of my soul. It is a kernel of something that forces me to create, and I enjoy that deformity in me. I think it makes me a better man. It augments my humility. As I approach the age of 50, I am sure that it will continue to individuate me as a writer and will help define my place. I am accustomed to not being a stable shade of black, and that is excellent because I get to be black my entire life and yet never be anyone's stereotype of black. I can substitute the word 'human' if I were a humanist, as most intellectuals pretend to be, but on this note I tend to like Russians and I tend to like Jews. I think the world is much too complicated for us to pretend we understand humanity, but I know a Russian when I speak to one, and you know me as a black man when you speak to me.

Being a sellout means selling out a vision. I cannot accept a simple vision for the black race and so I don't mind attaching to various ones over my lifetime. Today, as Cobb, I am in the thankless position of political advocate for Conservatism and Republican governance. Thankless among most blacks that is. But I know that shade of black isn't permanent, nor is the realm of the Cobbian. I hope, in fact, that the Cobbian endgame is at hand. I suspect it will take about three years, because I still aspire to connive my way into riches. From there, from that aspect of a wealthy property owner, I think I can properly address the task of Lucifer Jones, because then and only then will I be truly free to sin in ways we in the middle class cannot afford on pain of dissolution. When I can afford to truly sin, then I will best understand and values the ways of virtue, whereas now I am held in check by fear and matters of self-preservation.

So we are all sellouts to the race, because there is always some agenda we are evading or undermining. There is always some blackfolks who are going to be mad as hell at you, and if you don't know who they are, well maybe you're not saying anything. I am blessed to have critics, admirers and commenters on the blog - although I don't have nearly as many commenters as The Field Negro. So definitely one of us is a sellout. But to whom?

Mechanism Design

The NYT covers the Nobel for Economics, pretty much the only one I really care about and respect. I like the abstracts about mechanism design:

Mechanism design, Professor Maskin explained, can be thought of as the “reverse engineering part of economics.” The starting point, he said, is an outcome that is being sought, like a cleaner environment, a more equitable distribution of income or more technical innovation. Then, he added, one works to design a system that aligns private incentives with public goals.

One recent subject of Professor Maskin’s wide-ranging research has been on the value of software patents. He determined that software was a market where innovations tended to be sequential, in that they were built closely on the work of predecessors, and innovators could take many different paths to the same goal. In such markets, he said, patents might serve as a wall that inhibited innovation rather than stimulating progress.

In Chicago, Professor Myerson said he was drawn to the field of mechanism design because it promised a deeper “understanding of the logic of conflict and cooperation at the most fundamental level” that could possibly help “build better social structures.”

These are essentially very cool things to me. When I get bogged down in the mechanics of BI, I often daydream of the opportunities I might have someday to work with a real economist and build some KPIs from scratch. I've only had the opportunity to do that once in my career and the software was just barely able to manage that kind of complexity. Now that the software has matured, I never see customers who are particularly interested. One of these days when I'm not so hungry to make it big, I'll take the time to find such folks.

The example I heard tell of with regard to mechanism design on the radio that also piqued my interest was the question of whether establishing a market makes sense. If you had 7 empty seats on the city council and 15 applicants, what is the best voting scheme to apply? I worked a similar problem out by using my gut when I put together my top 100 funk songs list.

In the meantime, it's very interesting to hear about the sorts of problems they address, and it fits with my theories that most folks are not really working within the contexts of free markets and more stochastic environments with regard to their application of BI and other software. Quite frankly, only WalMart has introduced an element of near-real time supply and demand pricing in their retail business and it has revolutionized that business. It has been many years since AS/400 systems dominated the mechanics of retail pricing, and yet I wonder how far store managers or buyers have actually crunched numbers to reprice moving inventory as part of their normal business planning.

I'll be looking, in my spare time, for some of the modeling tools of mechanism design to see if they might apply to the technology I'm peddling these days. Could be nice.

Cosby, Father's Debts & Ugly Subjects

Cosby and Poussaint appeared on Russert this weekend and have put together an admirable perspective on a depressing series of facts about many African Americans. I think that he has a considerable amount of weight in his pronouncements, but man it's news I just don't want to hear.

I've been thinking a bit this weekend about fatherhood, not only because Cosby is the author of that fabulously successful book (Fatherhood) but also because of another book I saw on a similar topic. I saw it in the airport the other day and on the cover were three handsome successful doctors. These African American men told the story about forgiving their fathers. Hmm. But also I spent some time shopping with my entire family which is something I haven't done since the beginning of school.

So today's question for me became, what did your father not give you? This must be the thing that you want most from yourself and society. It is the manly quest that defines most of us. As much as I love and respect my father, the answer jumped immediately to my head in this context. This thing that I have become that he is not is that part of me that thinks I'm a more successful man than he is, as good as he was. I could answer that question and give myself a grade, and I think every man today can.

Cosby laments the failure of parenting, and he is attempting to summon the spirit of the Old School for today's generation of parents. He is trying to get them to say something to their children that he sees that they are not saying - to do something that they evidently are not doing. In particular he is demanding that parents take control of the things they can control, and do it out of love.

As much as I disdain talking about the psychological, I cannot deny the personal. And perhaps the reason I find psychological questions and analyses as so fluffy is because of my experience and faith in the Old School. But Old School values are certainly not enough to overcome that racism that exists - and yet they are the thing we control. We control our values, we control our affinities, we choose our own lives. Daily. I cannot sustain the thesis that African Americans are incapable, even if this is the ugly truth born out in the evidence Cosby and Poussaint show. We are not a monolith and yes there is that ugly reality - we all know it when we see it. But we're not all victims of it. As self-serving as it may sound, I'm brought back to that old quote when foolishness goes down:

Mom: There goes your people.
Dad: I didn't raise 'em.

Poussaint suggests that there is a new dysfuntion within black culture, or rather a virulent infestation in much more of black culture than ever before, that looks at the bad and says it's normal. But we know better, and that's why Cosby says 'Come on people...', because when I hear that tone of voice in my own parents I knew the next phrase was 'you can do better than this' or 'I expect more from you'.

Cosby cannot be America's Dad. I know he wants to be, but we all have our own real fathers to reckon with. What did your father not give you? Were you able to get it for yourself? What are the consequences in your life of that success or failure, or is the jury still out? Last week EC Hopkins asked about how we define success. I happen to think success is deeply class-defined, but it really starts with what did your father expect of you and how did he handle the cards life dealt him.

The ugly subjects of incarceration, single parenthood, drug abuse, murder and crime dog our civilization. All of these are not givens, and even when they are, our attitude towards harsh reality is instrumental in our fate. There is a politics and a culture and, I imagine, a psychology out there that assigns much of that to fate. We can do better.

Racism Review: Group Blog Boohabia

I was recently interviewed by the LATimes about the rise of the black blogosphere. It was a long and thoroughgoing affair which left me very satisfied. It may turn out to be a bit too comprehensive for the editors at that august publication, but I don't really sweat that. True archaeologists will appreciate Cobb for what it is. Lengthy. Comprehensive. Verbose. Dense. Egomaniacal and all that.

One of my points was that the blogosphere allows for ownership. Blackfolks can say things in spaces they own and control and sustain discussions that simply could not be maintained in public spaces they could not control.

As a veteran of online writing - going on what, 15 years now, I've invented various personnae to handle the different projects of my writing interest. I think it doesn't stretch credibility to suggest that I have been ahead of the curve wrt black authors. At every step in my evolution, online as well as personally, I have been on the cutting edge of what is widely understood to be black culture. I happen to believe a significant minority of African American will be following in my footsteps, and I get emails to that effect periodically. I've always enjoyed being one of many blackfolks during my forays into integrated environments because it gave me the opportunity to be me, instead of the only black, representing as it were. Now it's second nature in person, I don't need other blackfolks to support me. But online I still feel the need to represent. And accordingly when certain subjects have reached critical mass, I feel comfortable enough to step away from a political and generational imperative knowing a certain important perspective is getting air.

One of the things I have neglected to say enough times is that the emergence of Aaron Magruder's Boondocks helped in my decision to abandon the Boohabian project. I felt quite liberated by his voice - I knew that a certain flavor was going to be out there and I didn't have to do so much heavy lifting any longer. Thanks Aaron.

Today there is Racism Review. This appears to be the thing that I have been trying to see get organized for many years. I think in time it should complement and surpass my related static sites.

• The Boohabian Slamdance
• Boohab's Factotum
• The Race Man's Home Companion
• Cyberspace My Black Ass
• Black Hell (aka Dead Nigger Storage)

I wish them all the success and notoriety that they are due and I sincerely hope that they will do a good job. I might even pitch in from time to time. What are the chances that I will go back to doing that old stuff? Slim. Remember I'm not Boohab.

But I do have one big fat hairy question, which is whether or not P6, Michael Fisher and the Afrospear coalition will ever make common cause with John Rosenberg at Discriminations. I still don't see him on the blogroll.

What Warms the Globe?

A. Man
B. The Sun

" Doomsayers like Al Gore and Jared Diamond aren't doing the environment much good. To save the earth, we need to stop blaming and start celebrating ourselves."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/09/break_through/print.html

Right Wing Chatter for the Week

On Haditha
Apparently, there's nothing left to speak about. I never thought there was much and was rather incensed, although not to the point of Michael Savage, that our soldiers were chained up at Pendleton. It was the Massacre That Wasn't. Michele Malkin ought to have the last word. Eat your heart out, haters.

On Al Gore
There's only one place left for Gore to go, second place again. Here's the the best slogan I can hand to my fellow, if misguided, Americans. Clinton-Gore, better than before, following up on 2004. As for the Nobel Peace Prize itself, right now I think it's value is slightly higher than an NAACP Image Award. Whenever awards from committees are awarded to committees, all sense of human heroism is lost.

On Christopher Hitchens' Letter
Let me be the first on the Right to slap Hitchens and the Right around for getting all sobby and sentimental over the inspired and inspiring soldier. If I hear another verbal creche of support for the troops, I think I'm going to retch. It's actually starting to sound like Barbara Ehrenreich when she talks about the fate of the great American waitress. Friken' violin creshendos of sentiment are really getting on my nerves.

On Ann Coulter's "Anti-Semitism"
For everybody who even gave her remark about 'perfected Jews' even half a gasp of a raised eyebrow, I offer you the back of my hand.

On Clarence Thomas' Anger
Well now we have an angry black man who feels he's been disrespected by whitefolks in the System. Do you get him now? You shouldn't. He's complicated. Whoda thunk? The only way to make sense of Clarence Thomas is to stop abstracting him and pay attention to what he says and does. Maybe 15 years from now, people will actually do so.

The Population is Fixed

It's fairly rare to hear really new ideas about Iraq. I think I have just fallen across one, and it's a stunner. The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. In counterinsurgency don't chase the enemy, isolate him from the population. David Kilcullen spells it out to Charlie Rose.

The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. OK? That's the key point. The enemy can run away. The population can't. They have houses, relatives, businesses. They live there. They can't move. And so you can't defeat an insurgency by fighting the insurgents, because they'll just run away and you chase the guy around. And it's like looking for a needle in a haystack, but you're actually destroying the haystack to find the needle. So you do this damage to the population, which alienates the population, creates a recruitment base for the insurgents, and it just creates a cycle of destruction.

The way to do it -- and you know, we've been doing this for a long time and there's a very solid body of understanding on how to do it -- is, if you like, to comb the flees out of the dog. OK? So you get in there and you work with the population. You drive the enemy off, and then you focus on the population and you try to restructure the environment so that the insurgent can't come back when you leave.

And that involves things like counterintelligence work, where you look for those little sleeper cells that stayed behind when you left. It involves most importantly partnering in a real partnership with the local community, where they feel their needs are being met. They make choices that they then are required to stick to, in terms of driving out extremism, or -- in the case of Iraq particularly -- and in terms of defending themselves. You make the population self-defending, so that the terrorists can't or the insurgents can't intimidate them.

That's the fundamental activity of counterinsurgency. Because the insurgents require the enemy. The insurgents require the population to act in a certain way -- support, sympathy, intimidation, sometimes just reaction to provocation, you know? And if you can take that reaction of the population away from them, it's extremely difficult for them to achieve anything.

That's why the surge is not only a matter of putting extra troops into the country, it's what they do when they get there. And what they're doing is going into areas and not leaving. And they sit with the population, partner with them, help them defend themselves. Keep the enemy away. Prevent them from coming back. And if you like, restructure the environment to hard-wire the insurgent out of it.

Just wow.

Addendum: Charlie Rose Transcript with Kilcullen

Light Skin

Deinstitutionalization & The Permanence of Homelessness

We talked about this before at Cobb. Now the ACLU has gone and done it. What have they done? Something stupid that the entire Left once agreed was stupid. Patterico reports:

It’s now officially legal for the homeless to sleep on the streets in Los Angeles.  You can thank a lawsuit brought by the ACLU.

It’s incredibly frustrating to watch groups like the ACLU fight for the “right” of mostly mentally ill people to sleep on the streets — since it is groups like the ACLU that are largely responsible for their plight to begin with. A tremendous percentage of the homeless population consists of mentally ill people who have no business being on their own. They need to be institutionalized and receive proper treatment for their mental diseases. But thanks in large part to the ACLU and related groups, the homeless were deinstitutionalized and tossed into the streets years ago.

Now they get to sleep there.  What a tremendous step forward for them as people.

When Ronald Reagan reduced Federal funds for institutionalization of the mentally deranged, the hoots from bleeding hearts was audible every other day. Now that the ACLU has established the precedent for keeping them in the streets, specifically in skid rows, because this is essentially what this is all about, I expect to hear hurrahs. Why? Because cops don't like people sleeping in public.

Now might be a good time to talk about the urban destitute because I don't think I've been entirely coherent. Here are my references:

• Social Welfare vs Honest Work
• On Skid Row
• Rural Subsistence 101
• Homelessness in America
• Trade & Class

RLC Slate

Senator John Danforth, Lt. Governor Michael Steele, and Governor Christine Todd Whitman today proudly announced the slate of Republican candidates that the RLC is endorsing in the 2007 elections. You can learn more about the candidates by checking out our brand new website design: www.republican-leadership.com.

"We must have strong state and local candidates positioned for the years ahead. Redistricting in 2010 will be a crucial point in the political landscape, and we are determined to ensure that the Democrats do not control that process," said Lt. Gov. Steele. "That's why these candidates and others are so vital to the party's future."

"These candidates and incumbents are the kinds of leaders our nation needs – leaders who will fight for the true Republican values of fiscal restraint and local control," said
Senator Danforth.

"We have selected candidates running for local and state offices because we believe in reclaiming the Republican Party from the ground up," noted Governor Whitman. "Returning the Party to its focus on fiscal conservatism and less government interference in people's lives is a crucial goal, and one that these candidates will help us achieve."

Not By Blood, But By Politics

Here's my provocative quote of the day. My original language of course.

American slavery is the only pervasive system of slavery which did not come to an end through violent slave revolt. Instead, by political proxy, Africans were freed in America via a war they didn't start, and whose spoils they didn't collect. Therefore the greatest legacy of slavery in the descendants of African slaves in America is that their freedom can be purchased, not by blood, but by politics.

Black Nerds: Beyond Revenge

Nerds are back. A nerd is what you are when your life exists around a strange preoccupation and you're not rich. Rich nerds are called Englishmen. Rich perverse nerds are called eccentrics. Nerds are not sociopathic. What we essentially need to know for the moment is that the difference between a nerd and a geek is significant. A nerd is someone whose strange attraction to what is generally an intellectual pursuit, or a general state of intellectuality itself, renders him socially unattractive. The nerd wants to be socially attractive, knows he isn't and despairs. The geek, on the other hand, is either casually or purposefully indifferent to his apparent social unattractiveness which makes him perversely attractive. The geek tends to be more sociopathic than the nerd. The nerd throws himself at the mercy of society, the geek flaunts it. The geek may do things to enhance their geekiness and makes sport of their oddity, the nerd does it entirely by accident often in the attempt to overcome their social problem. Clear?

The other day, I purchased from the local 7-11, along with a big bite hotdog which I have recently come to find almost irresistibly delicious, a dog-tag for Halo 3. That's very geeky of me, I know. I'm blogging about it.

A thoughtful reader has hipped me to the fact that black Halo players are nerds too. I would suggest first of all that perhaps the reader is not familiar with the sort of game that Halo is. It is a strikingly violent and competitive game which is full of trash talk. Sure there are plenty of nerds and geeks who play videogames but online shooters tend to draw a different species of male, not particularly geeky or nerdy. In fact, there is almost no redeeming value in completing the single player game in the context of Halo fandom. It's all about online rank. It is inherently social. In other words it's all about the fragging and teabagging.

Nevertheless there is something to the shape and color of the new nerd in the mediasphere this fall. (And yes I am watching the new TV sitcom 'Chuck' and I'm digging the inside jokes). Surely it started with Charlie from the dramatic series 'Numbers', and there has had to be an update of your classic computer nerd since the 90s. Remember that data jockeys are some of the most respected professionals in America according to the New York Times survey. (Yeah I know, don't hate me because I'm beautiful).

So it's not surprising that nerds are back in the social sense, and it should not be additionally surprising that GenX blacks have an adequate quota of nerdiness. I know that there is a kind of deep 'positive black images' argument implied in the thought piece, but I don't want to go there. Hollywood will always abstract and it always has. Even Roseanne Barr's funky house was nowhere near as funky as it should be had it any bearing on reality - as phony as reality shows are, they're more real than any Hollywood fiction. So to promulgation of accurate black images in Hollywood is all just marketing, just as any complaint against Hollywood's portrayal. Besides, who can you trust to be inspired to nerddom because of an accurate media portrayal of nerds? "I wanna be a black Screech" just doesn't parse.

There is no revenge to take for nerds. Nerds, by definition can only do one thing to save themselves, which is to get the girl. Meanwhile, the adventures of 40 year old virgin basement gamers will provide yucks for all of us with TVs. But don't be surprised when there are professional gaming leagues and girls go for the guys with the quickest thumbs. These guys aren't nerds, if anything, they're geeks. In 10 years they will be sports heroes, just like X Gamers. Meanwhile, here is the guy you really are looking for. His name is Karma.

Karma.

The Cos is Back

A thoughtful reader hipped me to the fact that Bill Cosby has initiated an online presence and is really picking up the pace on his involvement on matters of domestic concerns. I realize that there are those who critize him for his moral lapses, some charges against him are truly disturbing, but he certainly cannot be dismissed. We all know that Cosby is the bullhorn for the sagacity of Dr. Alvin Poussaint for whom no amount of praised seemed adequate during 'The Cosby Show' years. It is with respect for the Cosby legacy and the core of Poussaint's messages - long before there was a Dr. Phil, and when Oprah was merely a millionaire, that it's time we take another serious look.

Cosby's new book, 'Come On People' strikes me immediately as a broadside of the sort that Juan Williams published last year. So the first thing in my head is that the two media stars of the first order with regard to whose voices were most prominent and respected in the late 80s with Williams' Eyes on the Prize and Cosby's television show, are standing up once again to prod and push African Americans, and they're audibly disappointed.

Cosby's is the next book I read.

Canes Before Guns

Hewitt is allowing goobers to muck up his show this afternoon, especially Ron Paul goobers who think that the Second Amendment obviates the necessity for common sense. Then again, he's also acting as if he didn't know USC lost to Stanford. Laugh it up fuzzball.

The story of some stalkee school teacher in Oregon not having the 'right' to carry a handgun to public school has some gun nuts up in arms. Think people. The idea of teachers being armed is so wrong on so many levels. I'm not going to spell out all of them though.

Hustle and Flow

Like 'Black Snake Moan', Hustle & Flow was one of those films that I basically figured I knew from the trailer which was provocative enough for me to make up a good story in my head. So I didn't bother to see either one, expecting them to be disappointing. It just so happened that Hustle & Flow was on my tube last night. It was an extraordinary film, damned near great.

In one way, Hustle & Flow is the kind of film that people think could never get made, and they're probably right. It feels every bit like the high quality studio tape which is part of the central story. I may have missed the opening scene, which I'm going to have to catch another time, but everything about H&F takes me to a familiarly unsentimental America. In one of its pivotal scenes, the protagonist DJay writes the archaeologist's words for him. In the civilization that follows, one day they'll come digging for what the Memphis ghetto was, and they'll find this music and this film as the bittersweet testimony of the triumph of the human spirit that keeps getting gutshot, disrespected and cursed at.

Hustle & Flow has very much of the right thing HBO has been pimping for the past few years. It's the story of a bad guy who tries to make good in a world of harsh reality. DJay is the macher with no need for a shrink - who knows he exists on the margins of society but still aims to keep his heart as pure as possible, who tries to handle his business the best way he knows how, who tries to keep his head up against all odds, and within that, dreams a little dream. What separates H&F from the exploitative dreck elsewhere is the dream, and the lack of people who go along with the dumb plot line. There is no color for color's sake in H&F. There is no stock character - not even the screaming baby.

Aside from its brilliant location shooting, worlds that team with life among the crumbling city, dialog in dialect is the masterwork of this film. There is such nuance of power and intent, you can feel the articulation of every emotion even when the words get away from you. You get into the souls of people who don't show up as people on any mainstream writer's radar. What does it look like inside of a pimp's house? It's a scene that is never shown unless cops are involved, and so the squalor is always taken as an external view to internal chaos. But nowhere in any film has a simple plate of sandwiches or a lava lamp illuminated so much character. Nowhere have I seen the eyes of fear and love from a pregnant hooker so full. Nowhere in any film have I seen the earth spin over a scrambled cassette tape and heartbreak in a toilet stall. Only Trainspotting comes close.

Hustle and Flow is one of those films that, rather like Saving Private Ryan, ups the ante for the genre. All of the disappointment one can gin up for a sorry half-assed film like Four Brothers becomes immediately evident in comparison. This is the kind of film I had come to expect of Carl Franklin or Charles Burnett. Instead it came out of nowhere. Thank you Craig Brewer. I guess I'm going to go see Black Snake Moan after all.

Critical Mass in Dr. King's World

"And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."
-- MLK

Dr. King's dream was nice and specific, sorta. I, for one, lived in the red hills of Georgia. In Cobb County in fact. I don't make much of the fact very often, but I was compelled when I lived there to visit the most notoriously racist county there, Forsyth County. When I got there, they tried to sell me a house. Really. I don't know where the 'table of brotherhood' might be, but I was certainly welcome into the neighborhood, and it was way out in the sticks.

What if Dr. King's dream actually did come true? How would it happen? Who would acknowledge it? What if it had actually already happened? That is my question for today. What if there were places in America where King's dream is reality? What further, if there was a political effort to conceal this fact? What would America look like? I think it would look exactly like it does today, because in fact we do, in many various places, sit at the table of brotherhood. The most overused quote going around is, "The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed." I think that's a fair characterization of King's dream. It ain't real in Jena, but Jena ain't America.

But dig that phrase - deeply rooted in the American dream. That's deep. Who is being sold the value of the American dream today? Politically, does that American dream make sense for everyone? Hmmm.

The Unmarried Black Womb: Ground Zero

Alan Keyes throws a curveball of Middle Passage proportions:

“Did you know that something like thirteen million black babies have been killed since Roe v. Wade, as a result of this holocaust of abortion? Did you know that the black population today is something like twenty-five percent less than it would otherwise be, because of abortion? Did you know that black women are disproportionately likely to have abortions, that more black babies are being aborted today than are being born, and that, as you project these kinds of tendencies into the future, the black population becomes a negligible factor in American politics and other things, over the course of the twenty-first century? I look back on black Americans with a heritage of oppression and slavery that, unfortunately, is involved in this question as well, because seventy-eight percent of the abortion clinics that are provided by the most numerous provider of abortions in America, Planned Parenthood, are located in or near the black community. Blacks are thirteen percent of the population. They account for over a third of the abortions. So I think that, on these important issues, we have to look for the patterns that still target people on the basis of race-and they’re targeting people in the womb.”

Do you hear crickets?

Lure and Loathing

I think I've had a small breakthrough in characterizing the activities of progressives in their ideological onslaught. Consider the following paragraphs from the heading Under Seige:

The criminal justice system - Judges, legislators, mayors, governors, district attorneys and police officers routinely conspire to deprive innocent Black Americans of their rights, their freedom, and even their lives. Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, Genarlow Wilson, and Shaquanda Cotton are just a few of the more prominent names among the thousands of Black men, women and children who are humiliated, brutalized, imprisoned and even killed by authorities on a daily basis for absolutely no other reason than the color of their skin. And it’s done in the name of preserving safety and order.

The mass media - Entertainment and news corporations skillfully and systematically construct meta-narratives that portray African-Americans as amoral, maladaptive, dysfunctional and unworthy of ordinary respect, with occasional exceptions. Conversely, they portray white Americans as uniquely heroic, ingenious, virtuous and worthy, with occasional exceptions. These narratives are immensely popular, and hence profitable, because they reinforce and justify white Americans’ irrational and unjustified fear and contempt of Black people, as well as their idealized self-concept.

Financial institutions - By circumscribing Black Americans’ choices of where to live, work, and learn, discriminatory lending and housing practices play a critical role in maintaining the physical, social and psychological distance required to enable American institutions to collectively assault Black Americans with moral, legal and psychological impunity.

We've gone over what whiteness is, and in typical fashion we have discovered that blackfolks know what is white better than whitefolks. This is not new or surprising to me because there is a constant trope in black partisanship that calls upon the audience's unfamiliarity with America to call it white or evil. But that jackleg industry aside, I think something deeper is going on. Something basic. And once again I think my friend from Finland was right. There is a political effort afoot to make blackfolks tribal, to disinvest them of American patriotism. That is to say, black partisans attack America for behaving like a nation when they want it to be a tribe. At the same time they see blackfolks themselves as a tribe and yet encourage them towards nationalistic goals. People like Condi Rice are excoriated for believing in American nationalism over black nationalism.

But where is the black nation? Perhaps it exists only in our minds and rhetoric.

Richard 'Wretchard' Fernandez cites the greatly esteemed John Hope Franklin as a certain hedged patriot - the patriot of the future perfect America.

In a roundup of essays on The Future of the American Idea in the Atlantic, the Winds of Change blog found an essay by John Hope Franklin, which archetypically illustrated the first type of “patriotism”: a parole held out for good behavior and time served, based on what Winds of Change called an “uncritically critical view of America”.

If the American idea was to subdue Native Americans and place them at the disposal of European settlers, to import several million Africans to the New World and subject them to a lifetime of slavery, to impose on Asian immigrants a lifetime of discrimination, then perhaps the American idea was not so admirable.

If the American idea, once the Civil War had concluded, was to sentence the freedmen to a lifetime of racial segregation, discrimination, and humiliation, then perhaps the American idea was not so praiseworthy.

Such a horrible country could not even be dignified with the name of home. Its culture was as empty and cheerless as a packaged birthday party at a fastfood restaurant. Franklin’s essay continued: “The American idea is the nation’s holiday garb, its festive dress, its Sunday best. It covers up an everyday practice of betraying the claims of equality, justice, and democracy.”

And we shouldn't be surprised at how closely this mirrors the patriotism of candidate Obama. His vision of America is the America he loves, and he will labor mightily to make this place into the place of his dreams. They are patriots of a future America, an America where x will become y and the 6 will be 9. This is in direct contradistinction to the kind of patriotism that Stevie Wonder professes as love in his great song As:

Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky---ALWAYS
Until the ocean covers every mountain high---ALWAYS
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea---ALWAYS
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream
 
Did you know that true love asks for nothing
Her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day

Stevie's is a love of the here and the now and a pledge to be that love from now until the end. This is precisely the kind of attention a nation which deserves our respect should get were we not faithless, pleasant sociopaths. I am reminded of Living Colour's plea to find the way to 'your' America. Your America is this America and it is a shared America. But it also is what it is and a faithlessness towards it is a choice to disinvest - this is costly.

I chose for the title of this post a title I bit from Gerald Early. Lure and Loathing is his book which is a collection of essays by black authors revealing their simultaneous love and contempt for America the idea and America the place. I think most intelligent, considerate people, as Fernandez says, hold a mix of the two kinds of patriotic love for America. In black partisan America, battles boil to replace one with the other and call it black.

We are not a tribe. And today being Columbus Day, we should remember that people from all over the planet, from hundreds of different tribes, have spent the efforts of their lives to find and fight for this land and to make it into the nation of their dreams. It is unquestionably worth defending patriotically. But can we defend it for what it is? Can we keep in mind Chesterton's advice against change for the sake of change without regard for the reasons of the status quo? Are we willing to say that Generlow Wilson represents black America and those who beat him represent America? Are we willing to say that the discriminator and the racist are the soul of the nation? Some are, and do on a regular basis. At best, they look for a future perfect America upon which to hang their patriotic hat.

In the Old School, I have no time for that. My American family is here. We could be somewhere else, but we're sticking around. We're dealing with the here and now, patriotic to the America that is. We're mindful about what love we forsake on account of some dream of perfection, but also decidedly aware of the flaws as they are in actuality - naming the Diallos and counting the beats on their bodies - and not pretending that every American walks in the shoes of the beater or the beaten. We are painfully aware of what our contribution means by doing it now, rather in some promised land, and we decidely give our support knowing that by doing so we make things better.

A Pleasant Sociopath

Part of being Bowen is being philosophical. Deet is no exception, and so last night in Pasadena he expounded on the spiritual ramifications of the journey of self-discovery in Krakauer's story of Chris McCandless. I haven't read the story but my take on this dude was that he was a pleasant sociopath.

We have a number of physical journeys in our contemporary life that substitute for moral journeys. So whenever I hear stories about people who are bound and determined to discover the world and go adventuring in any sort of extreme or 'authentic' way, I am always drawn to the conclusion that it is some part of rejection. It is a trope in the modern West we have seen. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of which of the classics in our literature stands as the best accounting of this impulse although I suspect Rudyard Kipling is close to that mark. Whether it was Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet or Forrest Gump jogging  across America or W. Somerset Maugham's character, someone is always searching to live on the razor's edge and thus prove that they are more alive than their slugwort contemporaries. I imagine myself in younger days attracted to that selfsame social rejection, seeking a higher moral order than seems accessible or even possible despite our privileged upbringing. However self-serving, it is a journey better taken than ignored.

The pleasant sociopath is a personal revolutionary. He has the good sense to understand that his reconciliation with society must begin with himself. Sometimes a physical journey can initiate the purification, but it is the idea that isolation in extremity from society is the sine qua non of spiritual purification that gives me a headache. That is why I suggest such an adventurer is sociopathic. There is an implicit cynicism that suggests that this can only be done without assistance. It implies that nobody else has similar desires. Ultimately is is a rejection of one's one social circle which is an admission that one has lived too close to home. Inevitably, those sojourners, having found Truth or Enlightenment or whatever golden epiphany they were chasing returns home to find in the very people he rejected some true measure of humanity. Suddenly, he is more sure of those things he only had a vague sense of propriety about and he becomes in deed the man he thought should have been there in his own youth. In the end, such journeys are about a crisis of faith, not an absence of truth. It would be more noble to resolve one's crisis of faith in community with one's fellows rather than in splendid isolation from them.

For much of my younger days, I lamented the absence of the 'noble arena'. I too, wanted men to be men and women to be women instead of dudes and babes. I have always sensed an imbalance in myself as I strove to exemplify what I desired to see in others. I have always feared becoming completely isolated within society as the last moral man left on earth, doomed to obscurity for following my conscience to spite the ignoble throngs around me. But I have somehow regained my faith in mankind and have found in simple ways and manners the means by which I can believe the best about my neighbors while being prepared for the worst. Perhaps this is a lesson sunk into my head subconsciously from 'A Man for All Seasons', because this is the essence of the Law. Let me find the quote:

Roper:

"So now you'd give the devil the benefit of law?"

More:

"Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?"

Roper:

"I'd cut down every law in England to do that."

More:

"Oh, and when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you, where would you hide, Roper, all the laws being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man's laws not God's, and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

"Yes, I'd give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."

In this regard, should we disregard every man and be faithless in our fellows in order to make some journey to perfection, how will we be to them upon our return? We have cut them all down in turning our backs to them.

Thinking About Me Thinking

I had an unusual evening the other night. Oddly enough it was somewhat familiar but then altogether alien. See I took the wife out dancing at a club in Inglewood. I almost never do that. I'm sure we've been out, but we haven't been in quite this environment in a very long time. In fact, the last time it happened, I wrote about it too. Dancing with Sluts. The good thing was that this was a much classier crowd than the last time, the bad thing was because I happen to be on meds, I couldn't drink any alcohol. So despite the fact that I got my slow dance on and had a very enjoyable time, I fell into alien observation mode.

Tonight was a surprise party for Sis, and I wasn't satisfied until I had chatted up everyone in the room. I work rooms. One way or another, I can be ravenous. The discussion finally came to movies, and for the second time in a week I was informed that it's not bloody likely that everybody is going to get all my obscure movie references. I'm nowhere near Dennis Miller, but I didn't miss much from MST 3000. Miller the other day said that uncomfortable silences make him very nervous. For me, they are just cues to think in another tangent. And so I've been thinking about what puts me into that alien observation mode and reconciling my personality to my intellect.

I have number of outstanding traits. I can focus to the edge of Aspberger's symptoms. I have a fairly large ego, and I'm preternaturally curious to explain the universe. Put those three things together and you can understand me - well, I just did tonight which is why I'm writing this piece. So I'm likely to watch all the movies, read all the books, ingest all the news, but then focus and digest on a particular subject, then regurgitate it in my style and make you acknowledge that I have given you a better take on whatever that subject is than you yourself could have. So it stands to reason that I am in the business software business. I build systems to help you know what you need to know and I make you pay me.

Uhm. That's it.

I think this is the thing that makes me annoying. The thing that keeps me from getting invited to certain soirees .. I don't know. But what I do know is that I used to believe that the intelligent people inherited the earth. And I'm fortunate to have an ego. Simply being intelligent makes you likely to stop and try to pick the right word. You ignore the 80/20 rule. You get slowed down by your need to deliberate to perfection - perfection being the enemy of good decisions.

Fear

The cats at Jack & Jill Politics have begun to catalog a rash of noose sightings. To wit:

Hanging a noose, like burning a cross or blowing up school children (whether on a city bus or in a church) is an act of terrorism. It forces people to change their habits, quit their jobs and live in fear. It is a threat on one's life. Black folks in America have been living with some form of terrorism since we arrived here, but somehow, I don't expect the government will be sending the troops to Hempstead and Louisville and Pittsburgh anytime soon.

If I had to deal with crap like that, I know exactly where I'd go; to Doc. Doc is my brother in the LAPD. I know a lot of blackfolks got inspired by movies like Rosewood and Posse but the chances for a modern-day posse to be successful are very slim - something the police chief in Philly ought to know. In America, if you are going to take this nonsense seriously, and yeah I understand some of us must, the the only reasonable alternative is to find out who in the infrastructure has got your back. It's going to be blacks in the Establishment. Try not to forget it.

In a recent trip to Pop's house, I was rummaging through some slides. I found photos of the inauguration of Tom Bradley, LA's first black mayor. As you might expect, when this happened in the 70s we had neo-nazis show up. I was there, a kid, and I had no fear whatsoever. In fact, Pops had to restrain me from making some snarky remark. I'm sure at the very least i rolled my eyes or stuck out my tongue at the swastika wearing knuckleheads. I'm going to scan that slide and bring to mind that context again and again as we find retro black partisans making their little points about the racist backwaters in Sherwood Forest America. There are those of us alive who dealt with bigger enemies and bigger stakes and we are not afraid.

We are not afraid.