Three years ago I won the Aaron Hawkins Award. It was one of those magical moments in life, the unexpected blessing, the honor of being recognized by your peers. I was doing a lot in '07 that got me the 08 award, including a little TV and Radio. But things have changed since then, and having had my fill of populist politics, I began changing direction again.
On Sunday morning, I found myself over at the Sheraton Gateway bogarding into the closing hours of the Blogging While Brown Conference which presented the award for 2011 the previous evening. Having stepped away from the subject of black politics, it was interesting to see the BWB crowd. I've also been paying attention to headlines from The Root as of late. Some of them I want to grab by the lapels and shake, others are actually intriguing. Last night I got a minute to hang out with the orchestra my niece is playing in over in Ladera, one of few remaining America's Talented Tenth strongholds. And last but not least, there's some email going around that the black middle class is shrinking in on itself.
So I've got a little bit of ground to cover, and even though I've been on vacation for a week, I did so much more meeting and reading than writing that it feels a bit odd to take on what I used to do so often back in 07. So I figure I'll make my own update which I will recontextualize into the 8th, 9th or 10th series of essays on The End of My Blackness. I can't keep up.
On the whole existential front, the answer is that I don't have an answer, which is primarily because there are no niggling questions that get under my skin about race. On the whole, the race thing seems superfluous exactly in the way it should. Which is nothing more or less than me saying, I've succeeded with regard to race in the way I wanted to so I've got no issues.
Nevertheless, I cannot say that I'm up to date on what keeps the audience on their feet. So to that end I'm going to be doing some trackbacks over to Ed Brown and to the Black Snob, as well as a few comments at The Root, just to see what's up. And as usual, I will stick my foot into various tarbaby topics just to spice things up a bit.
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