Cobb

Pray For Me - An Open Letter from an LAPD Officer

Doc speaks in an open letter to Pops. 

Time to speak up. To keep nation from dissolving into civil unrest, I think it is imperative that people of good conscience stand up and loudly counter violent voices stirring for race riots and the death of more cops. 

The graffiti on the 5 Freeway just outside of downtown LA, "Kill more cops" is indicative of the tactics violent revolutionaries seek to employee against the people's guardians. You and I both know that there is no American institution that is done more to preserve black lives the nation's police departments.

The Democratic Party -- with its welfare practices, condom distribution schools,  abortion on demand and union-controlled substandard school systems has decimated the black family. Margaret Sanger (Ms Kill-a-Negra-in-da-womb) is a hero of Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood locations are smack in the middle of impoverished minority neighborhoods.

It's time to speak up. I'm appalled by the lack of courageous, creative and articulate leadership within our nation's police ranks. Big City Chiefs are largely mum on the deadly threats being posed by militant black terrorist organizations that have emerged. David Clarke is it! But what a powerful force he's become.

I was born for such a times as these. It's my turn to speak up. Later this week my partner and I will be assigned to patrol the BLM protest encampment of LA's City Hall East. The protesters have vowed to remain in place until the Mayor fires Chief Beck for deeming "in policy" the shooting of armed (with knife) female black who charged officers. They were in foot pursuit after she robbed a store.

I've been reading voraciously to equip myself with facts to counter false BLM narrative regarding white cops. Here's one; although blacks comprise just 12% of the population, they are 40% of those who confront cops while armed. Despite this WHITE COPS fire LAST! It's three times more likely to be shot by a non-white. As to the statistics re: unarmed suspects, cops are 18 times more likely to be shot than people who aren't armed are to be by police. 

BLM is comprised of interest angry blamers who don't have strategy for reducing black on black homicides. 97% of homicides Black suffers are the hands of blacks. 81% of whites on murdered are killed by blacks. Whites kill each other only 16% of the time. Blacks hate THEMSELVES more than ANYBODY else. [Editor's note: These stats are off. c.f. FBI]

My first few days on assignments I'm just going to smile and wave. Over time I'll lay down my 'ghetto credentials' and gradually educate them on the fallacy of their premise that white cops present an existential threat to them.

Pray for me.

Peace. (Doc) 

Advice for the Aspiring Buppie

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

Ground Rules:
You have to know with absolute confidence that there are whitefolks who would fight and die for you, more than anybody you ever met in your life. You just haven’t met them yet. If you believe otherwise, then you will fall victim to the one thing that kills all success, which is fear. If there is some part of you that honestly feels that all, most, or plenty of whitefolks are just smiling faces with ulterior plans to betray you, then looking over your shoulder will deter you from any goal. Bury that fear, and prove it every day.

So there’s a bit of paranoia in the following: “Anyone who doesn’t care if you fail is, by definition, an enemy.” This is a general rule in corporations and business. Everything is not dog eat dog, but trust in business is hard won and super valuable. You must have people who trust you, and whom you trust, with your career. It may not happen for 10 years. Work on that too. This is a two way street. You need to show people that you are invested in their success, and people need to show you that they are invested in your success.

Here’s my primary advice:
1. Don’t make work the focal point of your experiments in social relations. That’s too risky; it puts all your eggs in one basket. Make work the focal point of being excellent. Period. You can be as cold-blooded as you like at work. It’s not a good strategy but there is nothing wrong with being “all business”. In fact, if somebody tells you that, take it as both a compliment, and as an invitation to be friendly. But the point here is to learn, share, and all that offline. Then bring that game to work, when and if you are comfortable. Just because you lose your job doesn’t mean whitefolks hate you. Just because you have a white girlfriend doesn’t mean you get promoted on the job. Two different monkeys, two different circuses. But it’s more important that *in your life* you have real friends and associates of all stripes.

2. The world is never going to fully understand your black world. That includes me. The most comfortable way to communicate a particular or potential conflict of values is to phrase things like this. “Where I come from, respect was very important. So I hope you don’t mind if I hesitate to call you Bob, Mr. Fisher.” Sure, call him Bob, or Bob Fisher if you must. But don’t make it a sticking point.

But as a corollary, Americans will understand black culture, because it’s American culture. I can tell you that in 1992, if you said “What’s up with that?” in any business conversation, you might as well have had a bone in your nose. Today, pierced noses are no big deal. Well, they are with my customers, but I deal with finance and aerospace. Which leads to:

3. Every business culture is different. The only way you get to know American business, really, is to be in a consulting company. So say what you want about ‘white’, what works in New Hampshire does not work in Colorado does not work in Florida, and Texas and California have three different worlds each. Oil Services is not Health Care is not Finance is not Online Advertising. The only thing that works across the boards at all of those companies in the ‘consulting standard’, which is the nephew of the WASP standard. You know how that works, it’s just another mask.

And finally,
4. Be prepared to deal with the end of your blackness. As long as you have a dog in the fight of ‘race relations’, then you have to feed that dog. You may feel you have to be a role model. You may feel you have to take a stand ‘in solidarity’ with some political or social stand that is race related. But guess what, ‘blackness’ is not in your control. All you can control is the amount of emotional investment you put into showing and proving. How much you pick up that burden is entirely on you. The bottom line is that if you are being *yourself* somebody ‘white’ is going to tell you “You don’t seem black.” And somebody ‘black’ is going to tell you “You don’t seem black.” If you make that your problem, well then it is your problem. It sure the hell ain’t mine, because my name isn’t ‘Black Mike Bowen’. So I don’t have to answer to that name. Unless I want to, until I don’t want to any more, unless I do again.

The longer answer is here in my essay called My Black Life Doesn’t Matter [1]. I am in a very very comfortable place. You’ll get here. I’ll pour you a bourbon.

Footnotes

[1] My Black Life Doesn't Matter

Obligatory Seriousness on Melania Trump

You try to bite lines, but rhymes are mine
Youse a sucker MC in a pair of Calvin Klein
Comin from the wackest, part of town
Tryin to rap up but you can't get down
You don't even know your english, your verb or noun
You're just a sucker MC you sad face clown.

-- Run DMC

When my mother and my daughter both tell me the same story about politics, as rarely as they speak on it, I know that the circle of propaganda is complete. Everybody knows the story, and the memes and the jokes and the conclusion, but not my conclusion. My first reaction was "How do you plagiarize a cliche?" This, especlially in an environment of journalism in which every scandal is called something-gate. Aside from the hypocrisy, one wonders exactly how it comes to be that such platitudes as one should expect from books like "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" should become a critical talking point when it's already self-evident that the electorate is producing chumps as their front-runners.

Chumps. 

My second reaction was a bit more thoughtful, but still mostly downcast and critical. 

It occurred to me this afternoon, as my mother switched from the RNC to the Christian channel, that America is packed to the gills with ideologues who for the life of them could never agree in principle to the following:

..forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil...

I just understood that in a whole new way, which is that the third and fourth phrases are continuations of the second and first. Which is to say that on the whole, vindictiveness is an evil temptation. You need to forgive those who break your heart. The forgiveness one might receive is dependent on the forgiveness given, and yet we are sorely tempted not to forgive but to blame and to punish. This is the evil from which we must be delivered. It is our forgiveness that allows us to be forgiven.

This is one of the places I can go that political partisans cannot. American politics is vindictive to the point at which there is fault to be found in the smallest details. Today most everyone in America has been instructed on how to be extremely cynical.

I have found a bit of hope and enlightenment in words I haven't written, but would gladly say to anyone with trust that they would be taken in the spirit they are given. If you'd like to throw them back in my face, that's OK. I forgive you.

I still have the overwhelming feeling that we have failed to sustain a class of dialog and a spirit of debate worthy of the intent of democracy, and thus have delivered ourselves into a world of rapacious mendacity. I want to withdraw, but I am compelled to remain in the public eye with as much public spirit as I can muster. I understand completely how the fortunes of the nation depend upon a common understanding of the lived in ways of elevated sensibilities. In that common understanding we must discriminate between the good and the better, and know that we must all strive to be better, while acknowledging all that is good and revering that which is truly great. Greatness. Not merely achievement, nor simply excellence. Not knowledge but wisdom. This must be our aim, or we will destroy it all, the good, the better, the excellent and the best, for to neglect the great is to denigrate and ultimately lose the process by which greatness is created and sustained. 

I know we are questioning now whether or not we are even capable of greatness, and in many places we seem to doubt the very existence of greatness. Human imagination will triumph, and it will triumph in words and ways that will echo across the ages, if we would but seek them. 

Statistical Morality - The Fallacy of Racial Representation

One of the most frustrating things about being a race man is that most of America is primarily educated and convinced about comparative racial statistics based upon a theory of proportional representation. It is a fallacious line of thinking that is easily debunked in the abstract but is the sine qua non of race relations talk. Nobody seems to get it until you bring absolute numbers into consideration, but even then, it's an uphill battle, even when people suddenly realize they have nothing to talk about. In my various clumsy attempts to be both provocative and informative, I wrote something called 'Angry White Math' some decades ago. I find myself disheartened to be repeating the same syllogism in this glorious future. 

The fallacious line of thinking goes like this. The incidence of X dysfunction is found in 40% of the white population of the dysfunctionals. In the black population, the same dysfunction is 25%. This indicts the black population because whites make up 75% of the general population and blacks only make up 12.5%. So then you leap to the conclusion that blacks are Y times as dysfunctional as whites, and therefore whites have something to teach blacks.

The same argument is presented on the other hand where whites are 'over-represented' and blacks are 'under-represented' and such representations are given as prima facia evidence of racist discrimination. I'm sure you are aware of a dozen examples yourself. Crack vs powder cocaine is a favorite obsession of various racial theories. 

All of these arguments fall apart in their import for the races when informed by actual numbers, or they actually should. For example if you were to take notice that the actual number of black Americans who do smoke crack is somewhere around 10,000 you should recognize that this number of criminal addicts could not possibly represent the habits of 40 million. So why would we call this black criminality? And who indeed is responsible for this criminality? The criminals themselves, that is unless you have a racial theory to prove, in which case you will determine that black crack addicts are White People's Fault or that they are Black People's Fault. Why? Because we can never 'blame the victim'. And thus the maddening illogic continues to misinform reasonable politics. Somehow in America we have not bothered to debunk this magical thinking because, as I said, without it we can't talk about race any longer. Since most Americans love to talk about race, as its painful indictments seem to give its specious conclusions the feeling of harsh truth, the bodewash continues. 

So it really doesn't come as a surprise that the current outrage over the deaths of some 420 black Americans last year at the hands of police across the USA has given all of this bent logic a fresh new arena in which to wreak havoc and even to go beyond the significance of the paltry numbers. It thusly doesn't matter how few, so long as black deaths are disproportionate, it's an affront to racial equality and therefore people claim their rights to be hostile. This is the logic of snipers, whether or not they are card carrying members of BLM or under direct orders from its leadership. It's not the weapon, it's not the telephone conversation. It's the twisted logic. It always has been and it always will be. Those who accept this line of thinking are all witless collaborators who merely lack the bias for revolutionary action. 

Fortunately, we have those within our midst who have the foresight and the ability to do the proper counting. Heather Mac Donald give us all the opportunity to test our stomach for racial theories. She is guest blogging the topics of her book 'Are Cops Racist?' this week at Volokh. She comes right out with it:

In America’s 75 largest counties, comprising most of the nation’s population, blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants in 2009, 57 percent of all murder defendants, and 45 percent of all assault defendants — but roughly 15 percent of the population in those counties. In New York, where blacks make up 23 percent of the city’s population, blacks commit three-quarters of all shootings and 70 percent of all robberies, according to victims and witnesses. (Whites, by contrast, commit less than 2 percent of all shootings in New York City and 4 percent of all robberies, though they are nearly 34 percent of the population.)

New York City’s crime disparities are repeated in virtually all American metropolises. They will determine where officers are most often called to a drive-by shooting or an armed robbery, and where officers are most likely to face violent and resisting criminals — encounters which can lead to officers’ own use of deadly force. Police critics have never answered the question of what they think non-biased policing data should look like, in light of the vast differences in rates of criminal offending. Blacks commit homicide at nearly eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit gun homicide at nearly 10 times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined. Should police stops, arrests and those rare police shootings nevertheless mirror population ratios, rather than crime ratios? The answer is not forthcoming from Black Lives Matter activists.

Two decades ago when Pat Buchannan produced this kind of statistical evidence to prove that:

1. Blacks commit 8 times more assaults than do Whites.
2. Blacks commit 9 times more rapes than Whites.
3. Blacks commit 14 times more murders.
4. Blacks commit 19 times more armed robberies.

Everybody immediately understood that he was using the bad examples of the few to stain the reputations of the many. It was clearly racist. 

There are virtually no black Americans who would take this disproportionate count of perpetrators to suggest that the black race ought to be held to a different standard of scrutiny by law enforcement or judges. And yet there are many who take the 'War on Drugs' as defacto evidence that there actually is some form of genocide against the race going on at the hands of the government. It's obvious to me that this is wanting it both ways. What it is not saying is that criminals are getting busted and that's the end of it, because saying so would destroy the lie that white cops and other government forces are trolling for black bodies to destroy. It would take away the racist conspiracy theory that informs so much of American politics. Heaven forbid. In short, the fallacious reasoning of racial disproportion indicating racism, is what underpins what much of today's discussion about race. What happens to some fraction of people who are identified by race doesn't say anything about the race unless it's clearly the majority of the race. It is only when people take that twisted logical leap and stand 'in solidarity' with the odd fraction as if they had no choice that the real racism begins. In that arena nobody 'happens to be', everyone gets locked into zero sum conflict. 

Looking at Mac Donald's indictment one simply has to say that criminals are criminals and most people are not criminals. It's obvious that the overwhelming majority of people are not criminal. The question then becomes, to what extent are people willing to suggest and agree that criminal culture is real and that for the sake of racial politics, it is overlooked or forgiven? 

Related posts about Statistical Morality:

• Stats & Morals
• The Last Black Economist
• Derbyshire's Miscalculation

 

 

The Black Spasm

People have been telling me today about a guy named Tim Scott who has presented some confession in the context of all the deadly lynch mobs roaming America looking for black flesh to char under the color of authority. I hear that this Tim Scott guy is a senator of some sort. I'm not particularly interested in finding out. No wait. I wrote a line about him a couple years ago, and then I completely forgot about him until two minutes ago. Here's the thing about Tim Scott (which I have not read). Somebody feels they have the right to ask any black man, "Hey! What's the most racist & humiliating thing that ever happened to you?" and believe he is obligated to answer. So do I have the right to ask any woman, what is the rapiest thing that ever happened to you, just so I could make some statement about feminism today?

 

I know that well-meaning people expect that there is some multicultural formula that they can adjust to weigh out exactly what level of insult to the dignity and person of aggrieved minorities can be tolerated. I know for example that the kind of ethnic jokes that were popular when Richard Pryor recorded 'Bicentennial Nigger' would not be tolerated today. I doubt that there are few millenials that could stand the humor of the film Blazing Saddles. And I know that most people judge this to be some measure of social progress. I also know that people who enjoyed watching Archie Bunker in All In the Family would be horrified if George Jefferson were to tell jokes like Kevin Hart. I myself am horrified that Kevin Hart make more money than Sherman Hemsley ever did. Or Roscoe Lee Browne for that matter. 

When I grew up, I did hear the term 'black spasm' before in just such a pejorative context. It was an insult to call somebody a black spasm, but exactly what kind of insult I do not recall. So I am re-inventing the term to mean the response to that question. Tell me about your humiliation at the hands of white people. I know you must have experienced it. It's part of the black experience. I cannot tell, nor do I care to estimate the extent to which any black individual finds fault with the question, or might be negatively affected by the presumption. But I cannot see how it's not essentially prying. Why wouldn't anyone shiver at the cheek of the question? 

People have been commenting that we have returned to 1968 in America. I dig the metaphor. My particular take on it is that we are treating today's cops like yesterday's Vietnam vets. People have decided the lenses through which they want to perceive the lives of others and we have come to a moment in which black Americans are celebrated for sharing their humiliations. That's a political and social agenda that I despise, and have my entire life.

Ellis Cose wrote about this problem very persuasively in his 1994 book 'The Rage of a Privileged Class'. So this is the power of the politicization of black life which is the ability for the moral one-upmanship of 'social justice' to make anyone they please a martyr for their cause, whether or not the individual actually suffered. In short, I don't decide how much racism affects my life, you do. I deal with this problem on a periodic basis, as I have the occasion to comment on race in America with the authority vested in me as an award winning black blogger. I accept the fact that I have a racial identity whose shape and meaning lies beyond my control. Yet I do determine what I will and will not respond to. 

We saw this at the beginning of the Obama Administration. More beer summits anyone?

• Six Pounds of Racism
• What's Your Excuse?
• Life and Death of the Boohab - An Anti-Racist Activist's Retrospective

Obligatory Seriousness on Dallas Snipers

I sense that many Americans are really looking for a revolution, that they cannot find society worth investing in and protecting. We can only hope their homes spontaneously combust before their neighbors come with torches, it seems they can only be taught by accidental tragedy. They are not prepared for purposeful militancy. It all comes apart quicker than they think.

I wrote this yesterday in response to some messages I overheard about civil war in response to the failure to arrest Hilary Clinton. Yes Virginia, Twitter has made billionaires from gossip. And so we are a nation of gossip some of which is structured and bankrolled sufficiently enough to be called politics. The future is here, but the neanderthals are quite evenly distributed. Can you hear the howling? Of course you can. 

I don't know the names of the last 20 men to be shot dead in America's streets. I can wait to find out the decision of the juries. I have that much patience. It's not just because I'm on vacation in Solvang, California. It's because I understand that the rule of law requires patient deliberation, much more patience than various aggravated tribes are currently willing to expend. The mobs are out. Those invested in chaos are making their point, and the revolutionaries will pick up the ball tomorrow. If I may indulge my ribald sense of humor, the noise sounds a little like Yosemite Sam.

But this is no cartoon. This is political violence. This is putting real revolutionary skin in the game. Shooting cops is the ultimate civil disobedience. It is unmistakeable. This is the turning point for BlackLivesMatter, if they're willing to claim any responsibility. I find it difficult to believe that the shooters had no connection, although there is an interesting possibility that this might be a very clever false flag operation or two entirely random nutjobs found their way into this obscene opportunity. Either way, BLM is the reason and the bearer of the concept that pitchforks and torches are carried to the street. After all, who is it that cannot tweet non-violently? BLM, like ISIS have staked out dubious territory and have captivated millions with their blunted ideas. And while many millions will claim moderation and decry the violent extremism, they nonetheless work from principles that call for radical reform as if the police in America have a serious deadly obsession.

I was speculating today while thinking about the topic of police lethality about how advocates of police disarmament might consider the fallback to billy clubs and chokeholds. There's not much lethal about a broken jaw and unconscious choked out suspects offer very little resistance. Would today's advocates trade a few more broken bones for a few less deaths? Or is this the kind of bloody calculus to be avoided in protest policy? I don't think it much matters to a crowd whose mind is made up. After all, Rodney King didn't die at the hands of police, but 50 people did in the ensuing riots.  

I expect many Americans will accept a rewritten history according to the narrative that serves a President who is not saying 'cool it baby'. They will accept that all the racists in America decided to rise up during his administration and cause this kind of inevitable uprising in this long hot summer. After all, who could not be against racism, and who cannot see how these poor black victims are psychologically unable to contain their justifiable rage? This is predictable in the society we put up with today, and so will be the mindless backlash of yet another 'silent majority' who says a little rough street justice is in order. 

This is simply another coordinated terrorist attack on American soil. It's another set of people impatient to show their dedication to America's destruction, another cohort who cannot abide our status quo. One more set of fanatics with no patience whatsoever with our free society. I think I recognize the reception they're going to get, depending on their Mumia factor. So let's all watch out for that. Michael Eric Dyson is quick to explain that black people see things differently when watching videos. No they don't. It's elementary to suss out what people think police are doing and thus what should be done to police. Then again, why should anyone be surprised at Dyson's angle?

But let's remind ourselves of a bit of recent history, shall we? In January of 2015, a small device blew up on the outside wall of an NAACP office in Colorado. It made national headlines and invoked a litany of pontifications from John Lewis and Julian Bond, like this:

“Obviously, this is a terrorist attack,” says Julian Bond, a University of Virginia history professor and a long-time chairman of the NAACP.

As head of the NAACP from 1998 to 2010, Bond says there were zero violent incidents like what occurred Tuesday in Colorado Springs. And in recent decades, acts of violence aimed at the NAACP have tapered off. But the organization has dealt with direct threats virtually since it began in 1909, with one of the worst occurring in 1951 when Harry Moore, who founded an NAACP branch in Brevard County, Florida, was killed on Christmas Day after a bomb was placed underneath his bed. No one was arrested, but several Ku Klux Klan members were suspected in the incident.

25 KEY EVIDENCE PHOTOS FROM THE FERGUSON GRAND JURY

 

A little over a decade later, Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader and field secretary for the NAACP, was shot and killed in his own driveway after meeting with the group’s lawyers. Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist, was later convicted in the killing.

 Notice how they throw in some Ferguson stuff. Read the whole article. A month later the truth was revealed that the would-be hate crime racist was trying to scare his tax attorney. 

We are prepared, too many of us, to jump off the deep end with crazy speculation and trumped up victimization. So it's going to be a very tedious but interesting time to see who tries to make hay with this actual terrorist disaster and try to parlay it into the kind of racial complaint BLM has been begging for all these months. 

I do not accept much that will pass for conventional wisdom over the next month, so I will attempt to ignore that which I expect to only add to my contempt for tribal impatience in today's identity soaked electorate. 

A Libertarian Stoic Principle Explained

Once again, I have ingested a nugget of wisdom that somehow has failed to get published on my blog. Let me do so now. Robin Hanson drops this excellent pearl.

A simple moral principle: when a future change is framed as a problem which we might hope our political system to solve, then the only acceptable reason to talk about the consequences of failing to solve that problem is to scare folks into trying harder to solve it. If you instead assume that politics will fail to solve the problem, and analyze the consequences of that in more detail, not to scare people but to work out how to live in that scenario, you are seen as expressing disloyalty to the system and hostility toward those who will suffer from that failure.

I assume that American politics will fail to solve a whole host of social problems. I have been assuming this since somewhere around the time I recognized people were taking Candidate Obama seriously. But there was ample precedent in my prior understanding of the position of an economist named Zingales and his position on mortgages.  What I ended up doing is formulating my Peasant Theory, which is another large story. The bottom line is that I have disappeared into history and have taken it upon myself to pursue the barbell theory of using my cleverness, privilege and social capital to the maximum and expecting only hostility and other minimums from the bulk of society. At the same time, I retain what I think is the necessary principle of respect of common law for the common man. And so I exist in the realm of extreme practicality with expectations of leverage. It's a different take on organicism, but has a bit in common. It games organicism and eschews the moral halo of civic virtue. 

The reason I expect American politics to fail in solving social problems is because there is an interventionist bias in Progressive politics and a rabid desire for power in Conservative politics. Liberals don't know where to go and are choking on their own multiculturalist hypocrisies. The whole thing stinks, so I'm shorting democracy and am long on decentralized yet globally capable guilds and their networked supply chains. The smart money. I'm hiding behind money and ultra-competency right now, and I'm hoping for protection from the right clubs. It means I have to go outside of the normal boxes of the upper middle class; class prerogatives are insufficient insurance, and I suspect that there is no 'hookup' to be found in civic signaling. In other words, I think the millionaires are afraid of the billionaires. That's a lot of paranoid shit rolling downhill. 

So if I can call myself a Libertarian Stoic, it is because I believe in a minimum set of civilizing rules based on Constitutional principles and the need to be left alone. The problem is that we live in a society in which the Tytler Tautology has come true, we are aiming to vote ourselves riches. Regulatory capture and too big to fail and all that crony cruft. Yes I'm encouraged by Brexit, but I expect some bitchy negotiations. Billionaires have unusual longevity. I actually believe everything can possibly go to shit, so I keep my powder dry and a handful of silver handy. Did I tell you that The Book of Eli is one of my favorite films?

What I expect for the future of America is something like the present of India in its big cities. America will adjust its middle class down and will sustain an internal third world. It will take 3 or 4 generations if the current trends prevail, but between now and then the frog boils and the Slice will lose its redundancy. 

Caught Up In The Struggle

Not long ago I reconnected with a childhood friend whose formative years were rugged, but TC transformed and survived. Better than that he thrived.When he left my neighborhood, he got  'caught up' with Crips in Compton. The turning point came, as he tells the story, when an older kid about to do an armed robbery put a gun to TC's head and told him to go home. The person who did it was a killer gangbanger who didn't see himself replicated in young TC. Or perhaps he did, and decided to break the cycle in a moment of clarity. 

This past Independence Day weekend, I found myself in Gardena at a party that reminded me of my old neighborhood, which sheltered myself and TC from the worse parts of the ghetto, but still retained elements of influence. We knew Crips by sight and by name; they recruited us. We resisted. Yet these were people who listened to Marvin Gaye and Cameo like the rest of us. They chased the same girls, played (cheating) ball on the same courts and ate the same BBQ ribs. They whistled at the same cars, and with the exception of an identifying bandana or hat, wore the same clothes. But we were miles apart in character. 

Last fall, I learned a lot about how the Los Angeles office of the FBI deals with gang members in cooperation with Homeboy Industries and Father Greg Boyle. It came as something of a surprise to understand how the FBI's was a social initiative rather than a crime fighting mission. But there was no mistaking the psychological dynamics of gang attachment, the necessary alienation from civility that is central to the identity of the youth who attaches to badness. 

People like to pretend that character doesn't count and that in interactions with the larger society, nobody can tell the difference between those of us on the outside of gangs and those of us on the inside because of the Venn of 'hood life and gang life. It's not the shoes and it's not the slang. I do understand that there is a definition of 'black man' that has very little to do with what it meant 30 years ago, but is an extension of a radicalized political hostility embodied in the lyrics of the rap group "Public Enemy". We really don't have to go far to understand the basic meaning of 'Public Enemy' and "Niggas With Attitude". Is it so subtle? Can we tell the difference between Richard Pryor and the highschool kid who quotes Richard Pryor? In kids, it's generally a matter of our faith in their character. Sometimes it takes a gun to the head for the consequences to me made clear and for a permanent choice to be made. Sometimes the gun isn't friendly.

Doc takes advantage of his badge and lets his perpetrators know. He makes it clear to them that you have about seven strikes before you are consigned to the wastebin of prison culture. "You fucked up today son, I hope I don't see you again, but you chose to be here. Choose better. Live better." The attitude alone will not get you there, but cops will be around if you keep showing up on the wrong side of civility. Is it enough that attitude puts one on the wrong side of civility? To be sure, the matters of character will degrade in ways no political class is truly interested in discerning, but processing through the System takes time, energy and persistence, just as does the discipline attached to the conventions of success. Recovering Christian backsliders, alcoholics, gangbangers, gamblers and whores all have long roads. Every day there are choices to be made. Every day there is positive purpose to be fulfilled or abandoned. A lot of that gets buried in the loose bonds of colloquial black identity. A lot of people get caught up.

The political consensus is lazy and prefers not to split up that black identity. It suits certain political agendas that a convenient racial aggregation can be assumed. I saw this over a decade ago and determined to poke a hole in that circus' big top. Black Republican! The very existence forced people to consider values, to consider the character of citizenship, to consider economics and religion and lots of other distinctions that disrupt the diet of racial and cultural conformity.  

It doesn't surprise me that today's Americans suffer from the calculations of hegemonic identity politics. The game is populism and the game is not being gamed. It exploits logical lacunas that might even make Orwell retch. Everybody is supposed to be in favor of 'diversity' which requires a stultifying conformity of opinion. To agitate against a particular nation is 'racist'. I needn't belabor the point to those who read and think. Those who read and think, well their company is not sufficient, and like police, their skill and authority cannot resist an onslaught of incivility in a nation of millions. The attitude of the masses keeps landing them on the wrong side of civility, and the hegemonic players keep thinking they can sustain their powers through it all. We are not only cruising for a bruising we are dashing towards a smashing bashing. 

I want my cosmopolitain life but I'm not sanguine. I tend to feel very much like Bruce Wayne in Gotham City, or the Omega Man in zombified Los Angeles. Not that I am any such hero, but at least I know what heroism requires. We play chess in our own living rooms, but outside is the antagonist who only sees purification by fire. Chess is a fair fight and life is not chess. I stay on the lookout for men who would pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, amongst crowds who believe such things cannot be respected. We are failing to respect the common law for the common man, and we stand on the margins of parades of power as they design uncommon laws for those who sweep the streets before them. I say it all started in the Counterculture, and now we stand on the brink of delivering the Presidency to one such Boomer, again. I am hoping that I can distinguish myself. Not that anyone in particular asks me. A capable man must watch his back. 

I don't want to get caught up in the struggle for survival. I know what a decent life, even a good life requires, and I aim to pursue happiness with vigor. Sometimes a wise coward is better than a brave fool. I explain more than people want to listen. I make distinctions more than people care to discriminate. Yet I know I am splitting the proper differences, but we are all contorted away from speaking the simple truth, avoiding the streetsweepers as we must. I've never read Anne Frank yet.