Cobb

The Dell Gines Interview

Dell's Site has disappeared from view. So I have recovered this from the Internet Archive, especially for the benefit of new Cobb readers who may be directed here from my appearance on Warren Olney's show of 4/10/08.

An Interview With Michael Bowen AKA Cobb - Founder of the Conservative Brotherhood

Blogged under Blogs & Blogging, Guest Bloggers by Dell on Sunday 25 September 2005 at 

I would like to say thanks to Cobb who was open to doing an interview on why he founded the Blog Collective called ‘The Conservative Brotherhood’. He talks about where he came from, why he is a ‘Black Republican’ (currently dropping ‘black’ from Republican), and why he founded the Conservative Brotherhood, and what he would like to see it become. When you get a chance, visit his blog by clicking HERE or visit his general site by clicking HERE

Note: The currently listed members of the Conservative Brotherhood in addition to Cobb are:  Our friend Booker Rising, Lashawn Barber, Duane Brayboy (Black Informant), Tavares Forby (Black Pundit), Desmond Hunter, Michael King, Ambra Nichol, Juliette Ochieng, Joseph C Phillips, Samantha Pierce (Uncle Sam’s Cabin), Darmon Thorton, Avery Tooley, and Scott Wickam

Cobb Interview

First Tell us a little about yourself?
I grew up in Southern California and have very vivid memories of the
late 60s. We spoke swahili at home and celebrated kwanzaa at the very
beginning of the movement. Pops was a scholarly nationalist. I was the
oldest of five kids and we grew up in a neighborhood overrun with kids.
I attended catholic school and was a ‘brainiac’. I did the
scholar-athlete thing in Highschool but all I really cared about was
computers, soccer and diving. Still, I tended to be philosophical even
then. I wondered why everybody else’s folks weren’t serious about the
Movement. I worked four years out of highschool then worked my way
through a computer science undergrad at the state U. I got involved
heavily in campus and national student politics through NSBE which
really changed my life. I went overboard with Thomas Sowell even though
I had worked with the Rainbow Coalition. I did the Joe College stuff
big time making up for lost time.  I wound up at Xerox Systems Group and
became an evangelist of sorts for their technology. It all made pefect
sense to me. After Xerox fumbled, I decided to work as a field
consultant. It was all about building systems where the customers were.
I haven’t changed much on that score. I was king of the Buppies during
the 80s - pretty much all the way through. BMW, Nordstrom’s wardrobe,
American Express card.. the whole deal.

I moved to NYC in 1991 after the death of my brother and watched the LA
Riots from Brooklyn. I pretty much abandoned the Buppie scene in ‘90
and started indulging my artistic sensibilities. Read a lot of the Critical
Theorists, and Blues Aesthetic. Wrote a lot of performance poetry and
got online to do community work. Also my discovery of what was going on
in Namibia, Oliver North’s crap and the invasion of Grenada put my
patriotism on ice. So I was doing the whole Chomsky bit for a while. I
settled in around Cornel West in an attempt to be what he was trying to
be when he cut his extra wack hiphop album.

Marriage and kids pulled me out of the radical mode and in 1994 for the
first time I got serious about making money. Finally, it wasn’t about
me. I was 33 at the time and realized how simple life could be. I’d say
that fact and reading Gwaltney really changed my perspective about
blackfolks.

I moved back to California in 1997 and soon did the whole Silicon
Valley thing. All these years, since 92, 93 I had been on the internet. At
Xerox, before that, I ran the internal Blacknetwork. It was all a part
of my writing life which started back in 1982. It was the performance
poetry that gave me the courage to say what I really believed in front
of people, so I’ve always been fearless online.

What gave you the idea to start the Conservative Brotherhood?
It was a long time coming really. I mean for a decade I’ve been looking
for a community of blackfolks who did some serious intelligent writing
about the issues of the day. It wasn’t until the invention of blogs
that folks who have been there all along had the ability to control their
online environment enough to get out the cogent thinking that had been
going on.

From my perspective, the Conservative Brotherhood needed to be because
what conservative blacks were and are saying is more important for the
nation to hear than the standard liberal and progressive lines. I
believe that we are the only ones creating new opportunity for
blackfolks - we’re felling trees in a new direction, everybody else is
on safe, plowed under ground.  So I borrowed a relatively tried and
true idea, a blog league (I had already joined the Bear Flag League) and
said let’s do it.

I had already tried and failed to create a grass roots web community. I
bought the domain oldschoolrepublicans.net and built it, but nobody
came. I had been hanging out on Yahoo and various other public forums
but I wasn’t particularly impressed. In fact I went to Project 21 as
well, and I just didn’t see that they had the bandwidth to handle all
the issues in a form appropriate for my interests. In the end it had to
be bloggers.

Who are the members, and how were they selected?
I sent out emails to the right of center bloggers I respected the most.
Every one of them was an independent thinker, a proven blogger, a good
writer and beholden to no one. It was very easy to see who these folks
were. Everybody accepted, and we were off.

Where do you see the Conservative Brotherhood going down the line?
I have committed to help build a portal site which will RSS all of TCB
posts and then attaching a commenting community to that. It should work
pretty much like Daily KOS in structure. As the members do their own
thing, the notariety should grow - I certainly plug it when I’m invited
to speak. We registered with NZ Bear as a blog community. We’ll
probably have another round of inductions this year. We lost Michael King to big
media and he’ll be missed, but time marches on. I think the outlook is
bright.

We’ll probably collaborate to get a little more specific on policy
positions and common shared values and their implications. But we have
done well in being a diverse group of right opinions without any kind
of orthodoxy or litmus tests that cause unnecessary friction. That’s
important because we said from the first that there are plenty of
different kinds of right of center African Americans. We are actually a
pretty broad coalition.

What does being a ‘black’ conservative mean to you?
It means headaches. Being a black conservative is painting a target on
your head - it’s unconventional and something of a radical move. People
simply don’t believe that blackfolks are in their right mind to be
conservative. As soon as you start representing that way you enter a
new realm and it’s very easy to get in trouble - not because of what you’re
saying, but because you are saying it at all. There are very few
conservative ideas that blackfolks haven’t heard or acknowledged, it’s
just that American notions of what a black man or woman can get up and
say in public is very limited, and this is a direct consequence of
racial stereotypes against us. But again, the problem is mainly one of
deportment. Can you stand up saying out loud what you really believe
without making a fool of yourself?

So that’s the first hurdle, and believe me it’s a big one. Then you
have to navigate and situate yourself within the broad American Right.
Because it’s foreign territory for people who don’t live it, you
instantly get associated with people and ideas you don’t even know.
Like suddenly I’m an apologist for Tom DeLay and I’m supposed to account for
him? For someone like me who is a relatively recent convert to the
Republican Party, you have to deal with your own stereotypes of the
Right and with the Left’s stereotypes of the right. Basically, people
who don’t want to work through all that just throw up their hands and
call you a traitor to the race, which is the biggest spitwad they can
hurl.

After you get through all that, you now have to reconcile yourself to
your position and ask exactly what is it that you bring to the table.

What does this new world need or want from you? Sometimes it’s just
your black face, and that’s a letdown. The GOP wants votes and money, the
ideologues and thinktankers want insights and rhetorical support. The
local activists want feet on the street and bodies volunteering.
Everybody wants something.

It’s a tricky road to navigate, especially if you’re being thoughtful
about it. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but that’s my way. I want to leave
no implication unconsidered. So I pay attention to my impact as a black
conservative and as a conservative black. It’s not dual consciousness
because I know my own path and where I’m heading, but I do consider
what multiple political communities are thinking in relationship to my
vector. In this regard I’ve been especially careful to recognize my own
roots in Progressive politics even through bitter disagreement. It
means nothing to me if the whole process isn’t organic. If I didn’t think
that African Americans don’t already have well-lived-in reasons to ‘be’
conservative, I wouldn’t bother with the black label.

In the end I’m getting rid of ‘black’ with regard to the label of
‘black Republican’ because of that essential understanding. There is nothing
about being black that procludes one from being a good Republican
except fear to face all the challenges I’ve mentioned above. Once you deal
with the existential hurdles it’s over. You’re no more a black Republican
than you are black Bachelor of Science. Yeah there was a time when
there were none, but get over it. I think it should only be a temporary
label, and I think I had a tough time getting through it because I did much of
my conversion in public in broad daylight as an advocate. I’ve got a
hundred essays to prove it.

How did you come by your political views?
I would say that I have had two or three major epiphanies, but it has
always been a practical evolution for me. I never read a book like
‘Profiles in Courage’ and said — ooh that’s the political thing I
aspire to. My politics are part of my civic duty, something I feel very
strongly. I tend to be philosophical, and I want to know what politics
does, and why is what politics do well not done as well by science or
religion. I view politics as a way to acquire and act on knowledge.
What’s interesting about political ideology is they are generally
shaped by what people are interested in ignoring and discounting, which is
kind of the opposite of economics which is shaped by people’s perception of
their self-interest. Its tangential to faith which is shaped by
people’s perception of the unknowable.

What I refused to know prior to my conservative epiphany was the cost
of dismissing the ambitions of the middle class. That is what Stalin did
and what despots do all over the world. But it’s also what bohemians
and revolutionaries do - and a lot of Progressives come from that
orientation. I know I did. When I decided that the interests of home
and family and middle class mediocrity are essential to the fabric of a
stable and prosperous nation the appeal of conservatism became
immediately clear to me. I was back where I was as a college freshman
reading Sowell for the first time and the middle class became a
beautiful thing.

I think that if I would have gotten rich in Silicon Valley as I planned
to, I’d still be a pretentious progressive, or libertarian.

Finally, do you honestly, all rhetoric aside, feel that the
Republican Party would do black Americans right in terms of economic, social,
and political development or would an aggressive third party be a better
fit?
Black Americans who have every honest desire to get with the mainstream
economy, society and politics are going to be indistinguishable by the
party. Until you start putting race on the 1040 forms and the IRS stops
giving tax cuts by race, were already automatically in the program. I
think that people who would rather have the squishy soulful things than
inclusion in the vast anonymous dont-care-if-youre-black mainstream are
going to be left out. The Republican Party is not going to make any
special considerations for the psychic burden of being black, and they
shouldn’t. That should be on blacks to do their own mental liberation.
Part of being an American is about getting paid. So the the extent that
the Republicans are good for doing some of that, then you owe it to
yourself to get in line with everybody else.

I think that social development is the tough thing, and I recognize
thatblack political traditions put a heavy burden on things that
Republicans don’t pay much attention. So there is a trade off. But I think it’s a
trade-off that upscale and independent minded African Americans can
easily make - that is if they care about politics at all. I’m putting
it at 25%. Black families that are in the Cosby Show / Different World
demographic are right there. I mean Denzel Washington is Republican, so
what’s so hard to understand about where he’s coming from?

An aggressive third party? That will be the Greens if they get a
foothold, but I suppose I’d rather have them than what Germany has,
Christian Democrats. But I don’t think the prospects for a third party
in the US are good at all. It really depends on how far Christian
fundamentalists push the Republicans and how seriously the GOP takes
them. There’s a big difference between Bill Bennett and Pat Robertson,
and if the Robertsons win, the Bennetts will bolt.

African Americans who want somebody to romance them politically have no
chance. That’s because there’s almost nobody in the hiphop generation
who has an intellectual understanding of what their own parents
generation was all about in supporting the Brown decision and King’s
vision of integration. Our own kids are out of step politically, so how
is some non-existant third party going to do right by those of us who
grew up on Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye? That’s what’s goin on.

 

Quote of the Day

"Tavis and West's reaction is no different than the people jumping on Obama for Wright's comments. Its the same logic. So what would they have us believe? That Obama don't care about black folks because he passed on the King events? Is that what we are going to be doing to the brother from here out, jumping in his grill every time he doesn't show up for some purely symbolic stuff and claim he is distancing himself from black folk for political reasons? Because he doesn't come and genuflect at some civil rights icon as the West and Tavis think he should? Its bull."

A Political Season: Bitching About Negro Chicken Dinners is Not Accountability

Three Classy Men Could Do It

Michael Jordan is busy hawking underwear, and yeah well I'm too old to know or care about the next generation of role models until Boy gets college age, but the idea behind Mr. Brooks is a no-brainer and wouldn't take much of a fortune to generate one.

Mr. Brooks said he had contacted about 500 angel investors and angel-investor groups and 40 venture capital firms and boutique investment bankers over the last year to raise the $2.5 million he thinks he needs. But only nine have put up any money, including his former wife. The total he has raised so far is $475,000.

To some extent, Mr. Brooks is snared in the Catch-22 paradox that bedevils many entrepreneurs who have come up with a promising product and marketing plan: investors are reluctant to open their wallets until they see a functioning business. But it is difficult to create a functioning business until the investors open their wallets.

In addition, he may be looking in the wrong places. Some of the investors he has contacted get involved only in deals worth at least $5 million.

The idea is at least that big, I think, but borrowing on that level makes for danger. Still the small size of the business makes it very attractive to a guy like me. Here is exactly where I think Aggregation works. Nice and small, and men I know could handle the dimensions of this one.

Mr. Brooks, a native of St. Vincent in the West Indies, said his African heritage might also be an impediment. The issue is not racism, he said, but the fact that he does not have a network of well-heeled friends and acquaintances that he can tap.

Luke Visconti, co-founder of DiversityInc magazine, which covers diversity in the workplace, said aspiring black entrepreneurs are at a clear disadvantage. “There are almost no black-run venture firms and very few black angel investors,” Mr. Visconti said. “Successful black entrepreneurs are scarce, and they are getting hit on every day.”

These are the days - the time is for social power.

Starting Salaries

Til You Get Enough

Just a reminder of what America was like 40 years ago.

Jamiel's Law

Here's a law and order issue that deserves a good deal of attention. It's very hot on local radio.

Jamiel Shaw was gunned down by an illegal alien gang member who had just gotten out of jail. Jamiel was not in a gang. If Special Order 40 didn’t stand in the way, the illegal would have been deported, and Jamiel would be alive. It’s as simple as that. We say that Mayor Villar, Chief Bratton and the City Council have blood on their hands! Call City Hall and tell them to support Jamiel’s Law.  Jamiel’s family needs your help.

Here's the story:

Stanford University called about Jamiel Shaw a week or so ago, intrigued by the slight but speedy running back for Los Angeles High School, the Southern League's most valuable player last year. Rutgers University called a few days later.

The Shaw family already had reason to be proud. Jamiel's mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, was on her second tour of duty in Iraq.

On Sunday night, it was Jamiel's father on the phone and then his son's girlfriend, Chrystale Miles. Jamiel Sr. called to tell him to hurry home from the mall. The 17-year-old boy was three doors away when someone shot him to death while he was still talking on his cellphone to Chrystale, friends say.

Jamiel Sr. heard the shots almost as soon as he hung up. He ran out of the house, raced around the corner and found his son lying on the sidewalk, bleeding.

The Shaw family is pissed, and they are on the verge of becoming the new face of anti-illegal immigration in California if not the nation. Their son Jamiel was an all-star and a very popular kid. This will not be swept under the rug.

Already, Chief Bratton is being accused of being a lapdog to the Mayor Villaraigosa who already has very bitter enemies over matters of illegal immigration. Nobody forgets how the Mexican flag was waved onstage at his inauguration, and how he has consistently pretended that Mexican gangs are not a real problem in Los Angeles. The recent spate of drive-by murders, killings of blacks by latinos have forced the Chief to say publicly that they are not racially motivated - meaning 'cool it baby'. And now he's waffling on that, semi-off-the-record. The black backlash has the potential to be ferocious, and as I said, local Right Radio is all over this. Talk about chickens coming home to roost.

I have a gut feeling that this story is about to go large and that the City Council is going to have a lot of explaining to do. I expect Ted Hayes to raise the roof. Patterico is on top of the story and the Deport Illegal Alien Criminals First, an idea I support wholeheartedly should gain some headway as well. I'm going to stick this one onto the Kwaku Network, but it's already on YouTube.

USC Credit Union
Foundation for Jamiel Shaw II
1025 W. 34th Street
King Hall, 2nd Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90089

Child Support: A Man's Perspective

I'd run off to Brazil, Paris, Timbucktoo.

There is very little I wouldn't do for my children. That's because they are mine. I live with them, I see them every day. My 13 year old daughter has several pictures of me up on her bedroom wall among the dozens. My boy dresses in matching clothes. My 11 year old daughter jumps into my arms every night. They obey me, they love me, they need me, they ask me questions, they critique my belly. We always hug, we like each other as people. They show me their homework, they tell me their jokes, we cook for each other (them more than me), we shop together. Right about now they are closer to me than ever.

If I didn't live with them, they would disappear.

The hardest thing about being a parent is your inability to treat children like adults. You need to tell them shit that they don't want to hear, that adults don't want to hear. The real deal. But you know they can't understand it. And so you repeat somewhat watered down platitudes until they can repeat it in their sleep. And they still don't get it. Kids are just accidents waiting to happen - innocents who can't do the math and have only a vague idea what danger is. So you shelter them and grow their virtue and give them every reason to believe that their virtues will be as respected in the real world as they are at home. And then you heal them when reality smashes their little virtuous worlds and show them that their tears are the pain of understanding when virtues get dissed. You need to be the grownup, the virtuous grownup when the shit goes down, and it tries your patience. But you do it so that in this dirty nasty world there can be at least these few you can trust with your life and you with theirs. My kids are the best people I know, that's because I raised them.

But if I didn't have that control? Phss. I wouldn't invest in that commodity.

I have no faith whatsoever in child support. There is nothing the state can do to come anywhere close to what I've been describing, and there is no way they can compel it. A man's relationship to his children is entirely his to decide. There is nothing anybody or anyone can do to change what that is. And if a man decides to write off his offspring, it's over. Done. Finito. Ask somebody with a distant father if child support made a difference. Oh I didn't have a father but at least I got the bastard's money. A fine substitute. I've never heard that.

When a man takes to a child, the greatest thing he gives him is his time and the benefit of his wisdom. A man allows a child to see how the man works, which is about the greatest privilege a man can give. He shares the secret recipe, he allows the child to see the man behind the curtain, all the while being a full man to the world. 'This is how I do it, and I know you can too' is the gift. 'This is what you've got, that I don't have'. That's the bonus. 'This is how you can do better than me', that's the whole enchilada. 'Here's some money, now leave me alone'. That's a bribe.

Anybody who pretends any different doesn't know jack.

I'm the primary custodial parent of Boy, and I don't get child support. I could demand it but I don't. I have been in all the chambers of child custody Hell except the lowest which is the one at which all hope is abandoned. But I know that's an exit to the other side at which all care is abandoned and a chunk of money is sent instead. I couldn't do it, and I know it's because I have it good, that I can say all this. I am in possession of my children and I am selfish and greedy about it. They belong to me, unquestionably. And so I belong to them equally so.

You can feel my passion in this, and I believe every man has it. And I believe that's why they say fuck the law when they do. Because when a man loses possession of a child, he asks why he even bothered to give life in the first place. I know the feeling of being a man when it seems that the only thing the world cares about your value is how much money you can send them - especially when you could be giving those great gifts. I feel for every man who has been there and must live with that, because I also know deeply that what every man wishes most to provide is security. That feeling when you wrap your arms around a woman or a child who places their head on your chest and thus are finally put at complete and total ease. The man who erases fear is the great man, and it's what we all wish to be. It's definitely a man thing.

You can't buy that.

The Interracial Question

Several years ago when I wore my race man's suit, I got into many debates, especially around the matter of the 2000 census with the interracialists. These were people of mixed racial ancestry who argued that they were the natural arbitrators of racial dialog, especially those who were 'black' and 'white', like Barry Obama claims to be. At the time, Lisa Bonet of the Cosby Show, as well as Lenny Kravitz the rock star, were the idols of the moment in keeping with the biracial spirit. Those biracials argued specifically that 'black' and 'white' were naturally or inevitably antagonistic and that the Census should recognize a new interracial category which was neither. I disagreed.

I am happy to report that the Census did the right thing by allowing individuals to claim as many races as they felt appropriate and that no interracial category was created. The interracialists were defeated and everybody went home. My greatest argument that I recall employing was that the interracialists were racist in that they wanted to create a new race and destroy two old races - they were eugenicists. Aside from that, they could not avoid the reality of the one drop rule which still applied and why most Americans with any discernable black ancestry tend to align with blackfolks - or at least those who are willing to acknowledge any.

But what about those who don't?

I know that the son of Anatole Broyard has a book out now, and I've been tempted to purchase it. Also there is no better critic of racial thinking than Adrian Piper, although she has managed in recent years to avoid becoming famous for it, much to her credit. Sure they are extraordinary folks, but here is my fundamental question.

Is anti-black racism in America so pervasive and oppressive that the best strategy against it is intermarriage?

I think that the answer is an unqualified no despite the fact that political efforts against anti-black racism are in a pitiable state of affairs. I find that the country has bumbled on quite well, based primarily on the unapologetic success of blackfolks themselves. There is racism and rumors of racism everywhere blackfolks are not in evidence, and Progressives cling to a theory that over a specific tipping point of black concentration, all of the 'bad' whites take flight. But I think that only racism that reacts to a black presence is the racist assumption that everyone else was an enemy. Nobody is allowed, it seems, not to take notice.

Nevertheless, it is an interesting question we may employ to split the difference between those who remain advocates of Black Power vs its more mainstream cousin of the cult of MLK. (For lack of a better worded dichotomy, true or false). As I mentioned this morning, no conversation which brings up the spectre of white supremacy can long evade the stubborn fact that there is no essential prohibition on interracial marriage in America. Since the Loving decision, which is not nearly as celebrated as the Brown decision, we've been free to break the most sacred taboos of the KKK.

It is clear to me that intermarriage is not a political solution to anything. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em is about as unprincipled an argument as possible. Any arbitrary boundary established for the free exercise of rights is oppressive. I'd no sooner marry white to vote than sell my soul to the devil. But..

But.

It seems to me that the proper perspective on interracial marriage should not be a point of racial pride or of rights. Nobody should recommend it. But exactly how does it matter socially? I'm really at a loss to explain how to think about it, because I've never considered it seriously for that reason - that of the liberty of one's progeny or, frankly any reason other than love. In other words I've never politicized interracial marriage - it simply always seemed to me a marginally interesting social choice. I am not suggesting that there is not controversy attending it historically -- I'm certainly aware of those social pressures on the African & French branch of my family union circa 60s Paris. And I've certainly noticed how much jungle fever gets noticed in various parts of the US. But I'm not sure there's much I can make of it today. I'm not even sure my fundamental question makes sense.

Why? Because

• I don't buy into 'tragic mullato' stories. It doesn't mean anything.
• I think that if one fundamentally believes that ethnicity should be subservient to modernity, you cannot respect the advantages or disadvantages that accrue for those who don't.
• Who you marry is not the kind of personal choice that is politically significant.

There must be something else that I'm forgetting here. Let's go back to EC's/MLK's premises.

When the proportion of Blacks out of poverty will be the same as or within 5% of the proportion of Whites out of poverty, then our nation would have at least one good reason be very proud of herself with respect to her efforts to achieve the ethnically and socioeconomically egalitarian and meritocratic society King dreamed of. Until then, folks like me, folks who believe that an ethnically and socioeconomically impartial meritocracy is achievable presently and would make for a more competitive and profitable use of our collective societal resources, will continue to argue we've not come far enough and we're not moving fast enough toward King's dream. Folks like me will continue argue that too many middle-class and upper-class Whites still inherit too many unearned privileges that they do not take full advantage of and too many middle-class and lower-class Blacks still inherit too many social hurdles that unfairly disadvantage them from birth.

There seems to be implicit in this argument the premise that blacks simply cannot marry whites and overcome the social barriers against them. In fact that the very unearned privileges inherited and passed on to little Jason and Megan would be stifled if they were half-black. So let us take the position that poor blacks cannot marry middle-class and upper-class whites. Is that because of race, or is that because of class?

Aside from this interracial question, I say that marriage and family are the ways that values are passed on, including and most importantly those values that teach one how to get on in society. When I suggested this vociferously for the elevation of blacks, a la Cosby, I have been scolded vociferously by Dr Spence that marriage is no leading indicator of economic progress, that he can prove them to be disjoint. So now I think we've stumbled onto the controversy.

I know this goes all over the place, but I hope to generate enough comments here to clean it up.

On Condi as McCain's VP

The news is abuzz with the prospect that Condi Rice may be seeking the office of Vice President. What is particularly interesting to me in this regard is the extent to which it suggests that her differences with the Bush Administration in foreign policy might be at issue and the implications that accrue to the differences between McCain's geopolitical worldview and Bush's.

Of course this is not the primary reason for the buzz. Rather, or so it appears, the reason is for the identity monkey wrench it throws to the Democrats. However it is not so shortsighted as the particularly shallow counter-candidacy of Alan Keyes against Illinois Senator Obama when that little fiasco was attempted. Rice is a genuine superstar and darling of the GOP and very popular.

I think Rice makes for an attractive candidate and have no doubts she's up to it. Lots of people like her for lots of reasons, and her geopolitical gravitas is hardly dismissible. At any rate, her positions would certainly get the focus they deserve. Whether or not such is a good thing for McCain remains to be seen. I think it augers well for the independent vote as well as the dissident Democrat vote.

As much as I got excited about a Petraeus vice-presidency, I cannot see that working with McCain. Besides, I'd rather see Petraeus as SecDef.

More on Condi:

• The Rice Card
• The Biography of a Parrot
• Condi's Black Ops
• Condi's Black Ops II: Tyrone Willingham
• Condi Rice & Black Liberals

John Adams

David McCollough's book and HBO miniseries are likely to remain the strongest portraits in my mind of the context of the times and the personalities of the Founders at the beginning of our republic. I happen to be immersed in them thanks to a combination of technologies I have heretofore not exploited, video on demand and podcasted books.

Having come to the podcast at its maturity beginning in January of this year, I am gradually replacing Right Radio on my lunch hours and during my commutes. And so now I tend to select from the podcasted recordings rather than test my patience after more than 15 mintues of listening. Only Bill Handel and Dennis Miller work better live than podcasted. As for the video on demand, this great thing has saved me from waiting several months for a DVD boxed set of something I would only watch once, and then as a 60 dollar boat anchor I would prod my kids to watch. In fact Boy and I have sat through a couple disjointed hours of the first and third episodes - he has only barfback recall of lectures in school but the docu-drama serves well to fill in his mind's blanks and mine as well.

Adams is a compelling figure and I am very apt to judge myself against him, for I see more of my own character in him than in any other historical figure in America I have studied yet. It is a very odd sensation that I have reconciled but never fully put to rest - this continuing mini-existential drama. Who might I become, as old as I am, given a model that never was settled for us black men as Baldwin relates? VDH asserts, rather unequivocally, that in the US, liberal arts education is a failure.

7. Colleges. We need more transparency in our universities. Why do tax-exempt private institutions use their funds largely to enrich an elite rather than to subsidize student tuitions? Universities avoid taxes, but as non-profits don’t use that saving to help those for whom they exist, but rather spend their fortunes more often subsidizing faculty and administrators. They are no different than those scandalous charities who exist for their apparat. How universities have been able to up their tuitions consistently above the rate of inflation, while exploiting part-time, poorly paid contractual faculty, and masquerading all the while as liberal institutions are among the great mysteries of the modern age. Yet any inquiry into the labyrinth of identity politics, racial quotas, the absence of intellectual diversity or the problems with tenure are met by charges of “McCarthyism” or worse. American universities are rated the world’s best only because of our sciences and engineering—and thus despite, not because of, our failed liberal arts curriculum.

And into this gap, I have been pouring effort which entails my continuing study of Western Civilization with an appreciation for its catholic philosophy and politics. I started this a year or so ago having contextualized the 'clash of civilizations' and upon reviewing Shakespeare and other classic works at the prompting of Larry Arnn via Hugh Hewitt. The failure of our liberal arts curriculum in higher education was apparent to me during my college education, but I took that to be a consequence of the fact that I matriculated from a state university rather than one of the finest schools. I had a clue given my superior high school education and it was something I would have expected to continue at Claremont or USC given those as my other two, although prohibitively expenses choices. But now in retrospect, with Hanson's indictment and what I have found to be true through my reading of Hirsch and the current times, I understand how my existential dramas arise from a weakness in our society's social priorities driven by a rudderless, relativist liberal arts. My aim is not to blame society however, only to recognize the extent to which it cannot be depended and realize the consequences for myself and my fellows who have undertaken serious study of those Western underpinnings, unmoored as we are from them.

To see John Adams made flesh by Giamatti's sterling rendition is a great boon to my endeavor. Imagine my surprise when I heard this quote from Adams:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

This was something I have always loosely attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, but had long lived  myself. In all of my life, and specifically as I entered college for the second time this progression had been that thing which I had always considered my generation's imperative to obey. So my study of computer science and philosophy was in that regard pre-ordained. In Cobb, I realized perhaps finally that I had unfinished work from my father's generation to reconcile which is the Leftist legacy of black nationalism with the reality of my generations opportunity to study the disciplines of the second order. I have mentioned elsewhere in these pages my anticipation of my young cousin's desire to move directly to the third order as he told me during the mid 80s as he was accepted to an Ivy League school. And so he has been a fine if not distinguished playwrite and graphic artist. And yet both of us have become more conservative in various respects pulling back a bit to cover areas left undone. So he now is a school principal and I work at these politics here, both of us with a passion to see those legacies done right. We straddle.

This is something that hews more closely to families than generations, and it is something that may ebb and flow with the fortunes of families. It is this final realization that seals my destiny with this conservative view of life and politics and guides my belief in the role of the state. Another quote by Adams is probably very appropriate to this sentiment:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

It is an unfortunate and yet hopefully inevitable fact that our nation will not be able to correct the flaws in men. We would do best not to make that attempt with the implements of the state. The decision to follow or abandon the laws of God and morality remains in the hearts of men and that is something we must leave to them. The character of John Adams demonstrates to us what is possible when one's life, fortunes and sacred honor are bound to such defenses of liberty. A Constitution binds us together as we are committed to the duties of citizenship, but without such loyalties, it is only words. So too, without the understanding of and appreciation for the motives and actions of our Founders, we are a nation in name only.

As much as we on the Right wag on about how Hollywood often does its damnedest to besmirch America, there are those who have demonstrated not only their willingness but their extraordinary ability to awaken within us the best sorts of patriotic spirits. Tom Hanks deserves our appreciation and respect in that regard as he has given us this particular treasure as well as Saving Private Ryan and Apollo 13.

Strengthening The Ties That Bind

Henry Ng is a name I haven't spoken in a long time. I met Henry in 1986 or thereabouts. He was the first person from another nation that I did business with. He was an exchange MBA from Hong Kong who was up to something at Xerox in the US and we made fast friends. I chauffeured him around LA, showing him various sights and sites.

Like many of the young men in Hong Kong at the time, Henry was new to the city and wore a business suit for the first time in his life. He had many business cards and distributed them as often as possible. In that way we were both alike, the first businessmen in our family history. I asked him what was the great difference between the way business was done in China and what he told me, I will never forget. In his clipped English he explained that in the US, we have a class of people who do business and an extraordinary system of openness and trust - that you don't have to know your banker to know he won't steal your deposits. In China conversely, you don't do business with strangers.

Ng's Rule: If you have friends, you do business. If you have no friends, you have no business.

I'm not sure that Henry realized the way 'you have no business' resonates as an idiom in English, as in you have no business being here. But that was the key to me to remember, and so I have.

It was after the exausting and exasperating experience that was the Bowen-Fisher debate of last year, one of my resolutions was to re-establish and extend my personal networks. It all goes under the headline of 'The Brother's Cup' and the endgame is a supper club and a network of owned buildings in major cities. What it is now is that whenever I travel, I make sure that I touch base with my readers and friends in that city and make sure that I break bread with them at least once. I have hooked up again with old friends from high school and endeavored to make sure my time away from the keyboard begins to augment my networkedness.

This year there are two events that I'm hooking into as well. The first is for the week after next at the Long Beach Grand Prix. I'll be hooking up for the first time to people I've been gaming with online for four years. I know their voices and their playing styles and skills, but few of their real names or faces. This summer I'll be buying a block of tickets for the Return to Forever Tour, for my birthday. The invitation is open.

In addition, I have made a commitment to add Facebook, Dopplr and Twitter to my online retinue. This will help me keep track of people and for people to keep track of me. I have interlocking rings of social networking tools, but Facebook will be for those people I want to meet eventually. I have LinkedIn which is active for career purposes and an old Orkut profile just in case I ever get to Brazil, an obligatory MySpace page and several others like Multiply, Plaxo, Flickr and my growing YouTube presence too. It's very difficult to express oneself online, and so I am going to be using my online to drive people to me face to face.

Hookup with me, I'll hookup with you. We'll have shrimp.

A King Benchmark

It has only been reading and listening that hipped me to the fact that it's 40 years today. In my own radio show, which gets me up to 40 minute rants in my car after I snap off Dennis Prager or Michael Medved, this morning I considered the extent to which the Talented Tenth is in a position to fulfill their interpretation of King's Dream (tm).

I covered about four interlocking topics in this morning's thoughts, one of which is the extent to which middle class success is indeed King's dream. And so I've come up with a new benchmark. How many African Americans live as well as Dr. King did? But before I evaluate that lightly, let me go on an oppositional tangent which also sparked my curiosity as I considered the matter of middle-class philanthropy.

It starts with the concept of 'economic justice'. I say there is no such thing. The only economic justice available is torts. There were torts in pre-civil rights era, there are now. But how many of us take cheaters to court for breach of contract?  Not many. But what about social justice? Doesn't that require a black effort? I echo Spence. Black Power is dead, and so I trample a few flowers on the grave.

Your appliances. Your car. Your clothes. Your cell phone. How many of these are made in Asia? What did Black Power ever do to negotiate for the presence of these products in your life? Nothing. H. Rap Brown never talked to Sony. Stokely Carmichael probably never uttered the word Hitachi in his life. Malcolm never went to Tokyo. So how is it that all these blackfolks have their life made that much more convenient by people that they never spoke to? It's the American economy - it took care of you without any special consideration from you whatsoever. It's why the average black person's cell phone has more computing power than the systems that put whitey on the moon. The revolution will not be televised, but your daughter will YouTube herself with no assistance from the Black Power Movement.

The Black Power movement was an impatient one. It wanted to get to point C whereas the Civil Rights movement was to get us from Jim Crow to point B. All those young revolutionaries had no reason to trust  The Man, and to this day we retain the radical pose that substitutes 'The Man' for the economy. But they didn't come through, even for themselves. The economy did. How do we know?

Perhaps we could use the King Economic Benchmark. We all know, and Progressives are quick to remind us that MLK was on about the War on Poverty, not so much the content of our character.

The US Census doesn't give us black poverty figures for 1968. We have to start in 1974. But there are some interesting numbers I've been able to compile from their Poverty Statistics.

The red bars peaked in 1983 at just over 5 million. Those represent all individual blackfolks 18-64 in poverty. And while there are constantly more and more of us, as the blue bars continue to aggregate up, relatively fewer and fewer African Americans remain in poverty. By this measure, it's clear that the proportion of blackfolks whose problems are the problems of poverty seem less when you look at the bars, but there's no optical illusion. The numbers speak for themselves. The average is 23.17. Green is better and red is worse. The poor are always with us, but they are fewer and fewer of us. Mathematically speaking, MLK's war on poverty becomes less and less significant over time, even though, symbolically speaking, the politics of spinning the significance of that war stays constant.

How many of us are living as well as MLK was when he represented the majority of African American wishes for our future? A whole lot more than ever. In 1974, less than 10 million African Americans were not in poverty. In 1984, 12 million were. In 1994, 15 million African Americans were out of poverty.

Let's stop right there for a minute. If you wished, in 1974 for every single African American to be out of poverty - to have a nation of millions without a single black person in poverty, your goal would have been reached 20 years later, provided you were willing to ignore the 4.3 million more. It begs some very important questions about black nationalism. How many blacks out of poverty makes a nation to be proud of?

Today there are over 18 million blacks out of poverty. Almost double the number of 1974, the year I entered high school, back when Richard Pryor's jokes comparing blackfolks and whitefolks were funny for the first time, back when having a Black Student Union on campus was a scary and dangerous thing.

There are probably a million ways to interpret the meaning of Dr. King's numerous dreams. But taking the War on Poverty at face value, the numbers look pretty good, and this is after the essential destruction of Welfare as we knew it.

Thomas Sowell 101. It's not politics. It's economics.

It's Not My Concern

I found a case of CDs that I haven't ripped into iTunes. Among them are a number of old favorites I haven't seen in a number of years. One gem: Fun Boy Three. And my favorite song from them: The More I See.

The more that I see, the less I believe
The barbed wire fences have replaced all the trees
The houses of God are full of sinners every week
Praying for forgiveness for those they leave to bleed

And they keep telling me, it's not my concern
But when petrol bombs fly, when cars overturn
When your see children cry because the cities are burning
Who's gonna show concern

Belfast's only half an hour away (Belfast)
Close your eyes but it won't go away (Belfast)
Belfast's only half an hour away (Belfast)
Belfast's only half an hour away (Belfast)

But the more that I see, the less I believe
Like countries split in two through religion, tradition, and greed
The devil's passed his hand those who have soultions
And those like me too ignorant to find my own conclusions

Is that what they're telling me, it's not my concern
But when I see children crying 'cause that's all they can do
They are crying for help and they're looking at you
What are you supposed to do?

Belfast's only half an hour away (Belfast)
Close your eyes but it won't go away (Belfast)
Belfast's only half an hour away (Belfast)
Belfast's only half an hour away (Belfast)

The governing powers are confused, the armies becoming bemused
Another bomb becomes defused and the terrorists aren't amused
Paisley is getting his shirt off, Sein Fien are going insane
They strike to divide the countryside but the borderline remains

Another attack leaves a widow in black, grieving for brereaved
Another kid with a brick gets shot in the back and gets left on the pavement to bleed
And they keep telling me, it's not my concern
It's not my concern, it's not my concern

Belfast's only half an hour away (Belfast)
Close your eyes but it won't go away (Belfast)
Belfast's only half an hour away (Belfast)
Belfast's only half an hour away (Belfast's only half an hour away)

Does anybody know any jokes?
Does anybody know any jokes?
Does anybody know any jokes?       

In the swim of the blogosphere, it seems impossible not to concern yourself with terrorist events. But there's certainly no question of us being told it's not our concern. How far is America from its metaphorical Belfast?

I'm finishing up the last chapters of the Cheney biography and my love for the guy remains steady. He is in the unenviable position of being an invisible goalie. And so there hasn't been a follow-on tragedy, but nobody we know can take credit for defensive acts we can't know.

What do we concern ourselves with? What business is it of ours?

The Farm Metaphor

Having been raised in the depths of the most urban of urbanities, in a single family, front-yard, backyard neighborhood on the edge of light industry, I know nothing of living chickens or roosters for that matter. KFC, Jim Dandy, Pioneer, Church's I know. Hens and pullets are a mystery. So will somebody explain to me what is exactly up with chickens coming home to roost?

Are chickens not supposed to come home, or when they do come home are they not supposed to roost? Do chickens who come home, not come home until the cows come home? That is to say, when you send them away are they expected not to return or are they returning too early?  Is it OK for a rooster to roost? And why is a rooster not a chicken? What is roosting anyway?

Somebody throw me a bone here.

The School of Schooling Obama

It has been perhaps a year since I was regularly checking up on Thomas PM Barnett, who is at the moment, my leading geopolitical theorist. And I do recall his enthusiasm for Obama from way back then. This week, I've decided to turn him back on. And this is the first thing I see:

McCain grew up in a very ideological age, where politics and political systems ruled all. Now we live in a era defined by global economics and rising powers who look like us economically but not politically--unless you want to go back to our own "non-party" or "one-party" days as an infant republic (a mere five decades or so ...).

As such, we live in an age defined by questions of economic liberty, with politics taking a back seat in many cultures. Globalization is challenging and changing identities today, not political struggles.

To deal with all that, I think we limit ourselves deeply when we say our friends are only fellow democracies. Right now, I think the U.S. should emphasize fellow market economies and focus on pushing that evolution over politics. We are in a period of consolidation of our liberal global trade order--a time of frontier integration.

And I think both McCain and Clinton see the world too much in political terms to understand that underlying reality.

Moreover, when I think of the profound changes ahead (we add a billion people in 12 years and almost 2X that amount join the global middle class), I think we need to speak more to that emerging global middle and their needs than to our own unreasonable demands that everyone approximate our mature, multiparty democracy pronto.

And that's why I like Obama most.

Now there was a time when I sidled up to Obama geopolitically and on the strength of Barnett's enthusiasm as someone who would straighten up and fly right if and when he got into the Oval Office. There has been little in his behavior to suggest otherwise since then. The fact is that the Right is invested in disbelieving him, and with Wright, they have their little race card. But I have always been interested to see how Obama and McCain debate foreign policy. Despite the fact that Samantha Power is out on her can for dubious reasons, Barnett remains convinced that Obama still has the team best equipped for dealing with the world as it is.

This is very significant from where I stand, but it implies that a completely brand new start may be what's best, and I don't see how that is the case. Exactly what needs doing and undoing in Barnett's view is what I need to research before I get all in McCain's Koolaid.

• Obama Infection
• Republicans for Obama

As I have written, I have some interest in seeing the Obama phenomenon stick a pin in the hot air of black middle class discontent, especially of the Wright variety. But I have never lost confidence that on some things Obama is too smart to let satisfying radicals direct more than his rhetoric. The biggest issue in the world, is the world, so let's see how he stacks up with Barnett in mind. I recognize that Barnett is also selling his mojo, and there's no doubt that he speaks to my generation very well. He could have a profound influence on Obama, and that would be worth a great deal. But evidently, it doesn't look like he's made the inroads yet.

Nouriel Roubini & Mortgage Banking Nationalization

According to the man who podcasts Demand Side Economics, Alan Harvey, there is just about one solution left to put a proper end to the current economic crisis in the making. That is to nationalize Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginny Mac, put together about a 20 Billion government agency and start purchasing millions of mortgages before there's a fire sale. Only in this way will a real floor for the bad loans be established.

According to Harvey, there is one genius who has predicted everything that we are seeing (we meaning people with a great deal more economic sense that I or the common man have) and knows why the Fed has been ineffective. That is NYU professor Nouriel Roubini. Apparently, Roubini knows the way out too. But I tell you that the fact that the three Critters who seem to be on top of this have last names like Dodd, Frank and Schumer make me fairly skeptical. And of course to hear all the piss and vinegar of Harvey's podcasts, it only takes a moment to realize the color commentary is serving more than the purposes of making economics sound interesting.

But in fact Dodd's Banking Committee meeting was indeed enlightening and I would be one to have a more thoroughgoing hearing on the merits of the SAFE plan which sounds almost reasonable. Maybe it's this thing - Hope for Homeowners, I can't find the specific one mentioned in the podcast but it pretty much talks about the same thing.

What I want to know, lord help me, is whether or not the bad monetary policy (given that) requires this specific kind of intervention, and what the actual consequences are coming from somebody a little less partisan than Harvey. I'll get a handle on this sooner or later...

6.046J

When I was a sophomore in the CS major at Cal State, it took at least two weeks of lectures, back in 1983 to cover the material covered in the first hour of the MIT course, Introduction to Algorithms that I am auditing through iTunes U. It's a fascinatingly scary thing for me, at this point in my career and life to update the very heavy fundamentals of my own education.

It occurs to me that a great deal of learning ought to be presented at the slower pace so that we might in the fullness of time come to understand with the most complete set of facts, the status of our profession. It is something we in the computering business have almost no time for. But I am struck by the absolute truth of what the professor says in the introduction. To be a very good programmer, you could write code every day for two years. To be a world class programmer, you could write code every day for ten years. Or you could take up this course and program every day for two years.

It has been so long since I've challenged myself deeply in my own profession, but I am excited to and look forward to consuming a great deal of the Open Courseware as well as other stuff from iTunes U. What I want to understand in much greater depth are the programming skills at the system level that I once knew and let lapse to follow applications.

In my field, to know Knuth is a milestone. I have always considered that I might do just that - to take on all of the exercises in his magnum opus. It's an appropriate thing for my puttering should I grow weary of public political debate, which I think I inevitably shall. But the MIT courses are daunting enough so that I am thinking twice about it. It has been 20 years since I've solved an integral or figured out a power series. As intriguing as Asymptotic evaluation of algorithmic performance is I'm going to have a difficult time managing the mathematics, if I even bother.

I'm like my father in this, endlessly curious and eager to open up my head and pour more into it. But I think this is one area that I could actually profit from. At the very least, I now know where to go for challenges should I once again find myself underemployed.

On PBS On Joe Louis

Over the short weekend, the Spousal Unit and I found a flophouse no-tell motel in the San Gabriel Valley to pass a sleepy afternoon. There, with mirrors on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice, we watched the bittersweet tale of Joe Louis on the local PBS affiliate TV broadcast.

As the SU sighed at gentle Joe's misfortune I parsed the narrative with exruciating exactitude, enjoying, analyzing, second-guessing and running a counter-narrative all at once. I cannot seem to let go with documentaries the way I do with action flicks. It's the same way I shout back at my children's teachers when I criticize the subjects they allow. But then again, if you're going to teach Global Warming, it might as well be to middle school kids.

About Joe, there was this disbelief that he could be humbled and obliged to America that ran through the entire program. It was as if the entire class of memories were being shape-shifted into the privileged impatience of Black Power for the sake of the generation that didn't know Joe. And at the same time you think, my God how easy it could be for any one of America's wealthy blacks to erase the Brown Bomber's enormous debt to the IRS.

At once I marvelled that the symbolism of the man could be so great and yet the actual man so manifestly abused. Was American patriotism ever purchased so cheaply? At the same time, I never sensed for a moment that Louis himself ever questioned that he should be patriotic. In the end, you have to love your country and your countrymen, or leave them.

Rush Limbaugh Over the Edge

Rush Limbaugh is a problem. He is the Moqtada al Sadr of Right Radio, an organizer of dissidents into a political militia, and quite frankly a loose cannon. If there is anybody with a larger ego in America it has to be Steve Jobs. We have a great deal to be thankful for so long as Jobs stays out of politics. Rush, however is knee deep and his Operation Chaos is testament to both the danger of his unhinged populism and the leaderless weakness of the Republican Party. Yesterday he called himself the supreme commander and had his minion dittoheads calling in as if they were foot soldiers. Freaky.

The premise of Operation Chaos is bizarre enough. Have Republicans re-register as Democrats and vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries with the aim being to give the supporters of Clinton a false sense of security and ultimately demoralize the party. This is quite obviously subversive which is bad enough, but when Limbaugh much to the consternation of party bosses on both sides claims to be influencing elections and manipulating democracy with his plotting it demonstrates what I consider unconscionable hubris. He's gone too far and he needs to be stopped.

McCain most certainly has the cojones to stand up to Limbaugh, and several others in Right Radio have stood against his monkey wrenching, but it's going to take some concerted effort to bring his blimpness down to earth. I've heard stories about how Walter Winchell was a one man wrecking crew and I'm just waiting for somebody to cross Limbaugh enough to turn him into an vengeful demon.

It has been 18 years since I found Limbaugh entertaining. He has been nothing but topical and clever, and of course he is a peerless professional, and certainly an innovator of the first order. But I do believe that he's looking to do more than radio at which point it would be just the hour to cut him down to size.

Sixoseven is Cool Ass Music

I've been looking at the colossal amount of webshit I've created over the past fifteen years and I fell upon some interesting stuff lurking in my personal domain.

The first would be Higher Ground. And I look at it in a rather heartbreaking way. I recall the enthusiasm I had at the outset - the idea of creating a sacred space for black online intellectual debate, the origins of which are very deep in my past and personnas. I must confess that I need some reflection on my desires to speed. To 'get it' and move to the next space. I am impatient with what I know and I tire very easily in covering intellectual ground that is not particularly sentimental to me. And so when I look at what Cobb must appear like to my collaborators at Vision Circle it saddens me to think that they might consider this project a betrayal. Yet I continue to believe that Vision Circle was a great success and the closest thing to a black group blog.. well certainly the first one. There's a lot to say about that.

The second is Sixoseven, my musical compositions. I lost the software key to my music composition software which is now under the ownership of Sony who has jacked up the price. So I haven't been able to compose the fifth album of stuff in my head, nor can I even remember the name of the music site at which I offered some of my stuff for sale. There is no cool ass music forthcoming.

The third is the Kwaku Foundation which I never amassed enough spondoolicks to fund. I have all these wild ideas jumping out of my head and I need a billion - OK several dozen million to make them happen. I'm frustrated, eternally, eternally frustrated. I needed a Trilateral Commision handbook to world domination handed to me 30 years ago. In 10 years I will acknowledge that it's all too late and begin to become a bitter old black man, although the temptation to move from today's crusty to tomorrow's bitter ahead of schedule is always with me.

Black Righteousness & 'The Context'

This morning and yesterday I have been considering the extent to which 'the context' of Wright and others on the matter of race is owned by blackfolks. It is and it isn't. It is owned by the underdog, in his native gripe. It is also owned by the leader in American unity.

After some thought about VDH's criticism about context I realized two things that I have known but not said. The first is that whitefolks have every right to offer opinions about what they believe is the proper context for a discussion of race - they too have been handed a racial identity that is beyond their control and must wrestle with the American birth defect like anyone else. But in this case, and almost by definition, blackfolks' interest is more pressing. 

The central issue of contention here is what exactly comprises a racist threat.

I have maintained from day one that Wright has done little more and little less than a class three racist offense. What he said was outrageous. In my view of things, what he has done about equivalent to the Don Imus 'nappy headed ho' statement. So for the sake of argument we could all agree that Wright is a racist. But if all we could do in America is point and yelp, we would be no closer to justice. Therefore to deal with the situation we must respond with more sophistication appropriate to the offense, which means that a threat assessment must be made. Exactly what kind of racist threat does Wright make.

Aside from the partisan noise against Obama accompanying this controversy, the question of Wright, his church and his laity has gone mostly unexamined here at Cobb. But what I honestly believe is that since we are dealing with blackfolks in a segregated community that their sense of racist threat assessment is calibrated at a different level, and is much more practiced than that of a white classics professor such as Victor Davis Hanson.

The precise example that came to my mind was the knowledge that I might use as a grandson of a sharecropper, growing up in rural Alabama. There would be a set of warnings I would have been taught for my own protection from white racism. As that grandfather black man, I cannot depend on the goodwill of whitefolks to guide my instructions to my son, it is my responsibility to defend my family the way I see fit. I am not bound to discuss and debate the finer points of xenophobic incitement with classics professors. And thusly I categorize a great deal of common knowledge blackfolks use in their own defense. This is the core of black righteousness on race and it is independent, it is part of black culture, and it is 'our' issue. When the grandson decides to go to college out of state, it is on him to determine the weight of his grandfather's admonitions on race. This is something African Americans do in every generation, but we are always positively responsive to the intentions of our grandparents. We understand their righteous motivations and in that context they are unassailable. We could no more disown them than we could disown America itself.

What America rightfully recognizes is the courage displayed by poor blackfolks who have resented and resisted the kind of racist bias which has dogged and undermined their chances. It is something we will continue to recognize as a very important type of our general support of the underdog. We have lionized the righteous anger and rage of that little guy and that story is burned in our memories embodied most endearingly in the myths and facts around Rosa Parks, and the youth of SNCC.  We also realize, rightly that when more powerful people complain, they have an obligation to be courageous leaders and fighters for justice against all odds. Such are our memories of the facts and national myths about Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and John Brown.

In Wright's sermons we are faced with a conundrum. On the one hand, the South Side of Chicago does indeed represent some underdogs, but a church as a locus of political activism by a privileged class of blackfolks on behalf of the underprivileged has no business being the center of a national dialog.  Obama's association makes it so in a political context, but the proper context for a discussion on race is an assessment of a racist threat, engagement and remediation. What Wright has done in my view is exactly what Obama and other insightful people have said - he has taken a static view of America and that view has poisoned the kind of view he as a responsible courageous leader and fighter for justice should do. He has taken the sharecropping grandfather's view, which is reasonable and acceptable within black culture from grandfather to grandson, but not for national dialog which will inevitably include classics professors, political pundits and actual civil rights attorneys. And, not for the church of a highly privileged congregation like a presidential candidate. Wright has not held up his end of the deal as a leader in American unity, and half of the country hasn't taken Obama's apologetics seriously.

Be that as it may, where national white commentators have gone wrong is in their assessment of the latent threat in Wright's racist message, which is exactly where national black commentators went wrong in their assessment of Don Imus, but also with Bill Bennett. The white commentators are wrong in their assessment of the threat because the black church and the role of preachers is somewhat opaque to them. Those black commentators were too, admittedly not regular listeners to Bennett or Imus. These are all cases of where the particular conflicts with the national agenda that it is presumed everybody is supposed to be on. Bennett was talking to the anti-abortion crowd, his mention of blacks was incidental. Black commentators thought it was central. Wright was talking to an Afrocentric crowd, his mention of America was incidental. It would be presumtuous and insulting to suggest that Afrocentrics require the scrutiny we give to hammerskins lest they foment violence and preach subversion. If TUCC has composed strictly of hard Afrocentrics, then I can see that. People are right to probe the depth of the link between Wright and the racial separatism of the NOI and hard Afrocentrics in that mix ought to get their share of heightened scrutiny. There's not much of a jump between that kind of crazy and that of the Seas of David. But I believe that the average TUCC parishioner sees Obama's politics as their highest aspiration. That is not subversive.

I think that it's necessary to spell out the distinctions here because black culture and very likely black culture within TUCC spreads the gamut from respect for the grandfather's diatribes to the grandson's love to the Christianity of Sojourner Truth to the existential dilemmas of Afrocentrics, and the chronic underdog status of the black underclass, to the stoic dignity of Rosa Parks, to the prideful black bourgieois traditions or race-raising to the opportunistic yuppitude of Obama himself. You cannot instantly divine with what seriousness racist remarks are taken from black leaders to blackfolks. I remain confident that Wright has only damaged himself greatly and Obama somewhat, but nobody should take his influence over the racial attitudes of his parishioners as incitement. Blackfolks have generations of righteous race talk in the same way that Eskimos have a hundred words for snow and ice. If you really  believe that blacks must be judged by the content of their individual character then it becomes clear how useless generic categorizations of Wright's contextual defenders are.

Inevitably, the American naltional leadership shared context is where we all have to be, and I am interested to see that kind of social amity take place. But it must be done with a healthy respect for the  fact that such a consensus still does not exist, not even after a civil war and that we all do have private self-interests and traditions in how we communicate the lessons of race from generation to generation. Colorblindness is a failure.  Multiculturalism is a failure. Black Power is a failure. What's next?

Raceman Selector Survey Results

Several years ago, I created a race-neutral test using free code generated by a marketing website called SelectSmart. It was called the Raceman Selector. Over the years there have been over 10,000 runs of this survey. The results are not particularly surprising to me now, but underlay what I've been thinking for some time which is this. Americans don't want to be racist, but a lot of us are. Those who are have the upper hand primarily because they are hard to shut down. That is a consequence of the ineffectiveness of anti-racist politics. Simply because we are anti-racist doesn't mean we are effective rather in the same way that everyone who goes to church on Sunday isn't the best Christian.

The results are as follows:

• 35.1%  Anti-Racist
• 21.4% Racial Bigot
• 15.9% Colorblind
• 14.5% Racist
• 9.8% Racialist
• 3.3% Racial Realist

I just needed to get this into the blog, and hopefully I should be able to reference this easily from now on.