Is It Is or Is It Ain't?

As far back as I can remember, I have always had a baseline in my critical thinking process and it is this: facts win.

I'm not sure I ever really believed in Santa Claus, for example. I may have, but I must have been very, very young at the time because it didn't take me long to figure out that there were closets we weren't allowed to look in after a certain point in the fall. And there was a reason for that. I didn't get any less excited about Christmas. I just understood that Mom and Dad were footing the bill. I was okay with that. I didn't care who gave me presents. I just wanted presents. Santa was an entirely expendable idea.

Through the years since that time (and there have been more than a few of them), I have pretty much stuck to this baseline.

I might believe something that is patently untrue, but I won't typically believe it long. For one thing, being in denial about one thing or another has kicked my ass enough times that I have learned the hard way that this is an ill-advised perspective.

Besides, it is what it is. I've been told this is a Navaho line and I, for one, use it a lot. It is what it is. You can believe in Santa if you want to, but it doesn't make Santa real -- even if you believe really, really hard. And while believing in Santa may not do much damage, believing some fictions can.

Sociologist W.I. Thomas discussed why. He wrote that when we believe something is true (even when it is NOT), it can become true in its consequences. In other words, if I come into the classroom with an automatic weapon, giving my students to understand that I've lost my mind and I'm taking myself out and them with me, all hell is likely to break loose. First, they may not believe me. "Is this some crazy explanatory stunt?" they might ask themselves. But if they decide I'm serious, conseqences will ensue. Some will rush for the door. Some will rush for me. Some will hit the floor or jump behind their classmates. And according to the movies, somebody might wet their pants.

When I show them that the "weapon" is a squirt gun and tell them that I just wanted to illustrate W.I. Thomas' theory, the ones left in the classroom will take their seats, shaking their heads, maybe even disgruntled. But the one who pee'ed his or her pants will still have wet pants -- even though the threat was not real. Capiche?

I'm forever running into students who want to "argue" with my "opinions."

"I don't agree with you (or the book or the research or whatever)," they will say.

And I ask them what they are basing their disagreement on. I have no vested interest in "being right." I have great concern about knowing what's real, what's true, what's really going on instead of what we think is going on. So any student (or friend or colleague or blogger or anyone else) who can demonstrate how my understanding of x is flawed is appreciated. But I tell my students from day one that they better be prepared to bring it. I base what I say in the classroom on forty years of personal study, on centuries of recorded history, on replicated scientific research based in solid theory, on seven uninterrupted years of graduate school, and I'm not interested in "arguing" with somebody's knee-jerk opinion based on...oh...whatever they learned from Uncle Joe at the family picnics (especially when it becomes readily apparent that Uncle Joe was basing his opinions on a tract he picked up at church or a case he once heard about from a guy at his local bar involving this Mexican guy who makes more money than him).

I'm not trying to be rude here, but you'd be surprised how simple things get when you just require that people be accountable for what comes out their mouths. So one of the central ideas my students learn, no matter what the topic of the course, is that they need to know what they're talking about.

Unfortunately, it's often difficult to get this across to the rest of the world.

So we have legislators in Louisiana right now about to decide (again) that creationism (the literal Biblical presentation of how the Earth and the human race came into being) is just as valid an idea as documentable evidence to the contrary. These are, according to virtually the entire State House of Representatives here, just two differing opinions and therefore equally reasonable to study in schools. The problem with this, of course, is that when you do that, you teach children (without them even knowing that you're doing so) that an opinion based on "faith" (I just know that I know that I know) is as reasonable a perspective as one based on "fact" (reality). And once you have established that, then an 18-year-old who's never read a single book all the way through, who's never seen anything but the town she was born in, whose experience of life has been totally prescribed by conservative politics and religious television programming, can believe that her opinions are just as valid as those of someone who has worked hard to find out and document the way things really work.

The result of this kind of "individualistic" "thinking" is that it allows anybody to believe anything without having to prove anything. And endless arguments between fact and fiction can then take the place of critical analysis wherein differing interpretations of the facts are argued.
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The Ricardo Levins Morales poster featured above is available from the Northland Poster Collective.

How Could That Have Happened?

How could two really astounding women poets of the twentieth century have been born on the same date, I wonder? I mean, what was it about that date? Were the stars in some kind of peculiar alignment? According to The Writers Almanac, which I visit online daily, two remarkable women were born on this date: Gwendolyn Brooks in 1917 and Nikki Giovanni in 1943. Perhaps Giovanni looked at the Earth from wherever babies wait for the go-ahead and decided she wanted to tumble into Gwendolyn Brooks' wake. But whatever, it gives one pause. And presents the unusual situation of having TWO stellar individuals to highlight.

The first date I ever went on with my daughter's father was to see Gwendolyn Brooks read from her work in 1981. At the time, all I knew about her was that she was the Poet Laureate of the state of Illinois (where we were) and that she was the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize. I wasn't so far removed from my poetry-writing days myself (though hardly deserving of having my efforts called "poetry") and during the question and answer period, I had the audacity to raise my hand and put this icon on the spot by asking, "If you could only give us one line to take with us when we leave here, what would it be?"

Brooks didn't flinch. She just paused for a moment, as if reaching inside herself, and said resolutely, "Conduct your blooming in the noise and the whip of the whirlwind." I've been doing that, clinging to that fragile connection between myself and her, ever since.

Here's one of her shorter pieces, but if you have a minute, you can read "The Lovers of the Poor", as well.

~~My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell~~

by Gwendolyn Brooks

I hold my honey and I store my bread

In little jars and cabinets of my will.

I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid,

Be firm till I return from hell.

I am very hungry. I am incomplete.

And none can give me any word but Wait

The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;

Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt

Drag out to their last dregs and I resume

On such legs as are left me, in such heart

As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive

To honey and bread old purity could love.

After serving in the revolution of the 1970's with Giovanni (in different battalions, if you will, but the same war), I got reacquainted with her when I created a book for a group of inner city African-Americans teenagers. I included her famous Ego Trippin' and also the following one. And if you watch the YouTube clip after you read, you'll see where her revolution has taken her.

~~Revolutionary Dreams~~

by Nikki Giovanni

i used to dream militant

dreams of taking

over america to show

these white folks how it should be

done
i used to dream radical dreams

of blowing everyone away with my perceptive powers

of correct analysis

i even used to think i'd be the one

to stop the riot and negotiate the peace

then i awoke and dug

that if i dreamed natural

dreams of being a natural

woman doing what a woman

does when she's natural

i would have a revolution.

On Freeing Ourselves

In my last post, I mentioned that I sometimes ask myself, "How am I a slave? What oppressions have I internalized that keep me in bondage today?" Later that day, I read and made a brief appreciative comment on a remarkably insightful post by TheFreeSlave. He, of course, being a deep-thinking kind of guy, asked me in response to my simple thanks a question about how we can advocate individual personhood without sounding as if we support some version of what is popularly called "colorblindness." My response to his response (sorry about that, Faithful Readers, you know how it is) follows, modified slightly to make it read more sensibly. I strongly recommend that you read TheFreeSlave post first in the interest of having any idea whatsoever what I am talking about. I think you'll be glad you did. In fact, I have permanently ensconced a link to the post in question on my blog roll to the right under "On Freeing Yourself." Then, proceed with caution:

To me, TheFreeSlave's post moves the consideration from the arena of "politics" (having to do with the use and distribution of power) to the arena of "spirituality." Don't misread me here. I don't mean warm-and-fuzzy-esoteric-new-age-mumbo-jumbo type stuff. I mean down-deep-in-the-gut-where-the-rubber-meets-the-road-and-the-individual-psyche/biological-being-meets-history type stuff. In the end, what I call my spiritual being gives birth, I think, to my political perspective (which is how I see the personal and political as connected). Being one's whole, unmitigated, unapologetic Self (again, for me) does not, then, wash all the "color" out of the visible image, but rather actually heightens the color (continuing the metaphor). It shines the light of acceptance of all beauty on each individual image.

A rose garden can be lovely, but the kind of garden I like best is an explosion of all different kinds of flowers: different colors, shapes, heights, sizes, scents, etc. Each flower is beautiful because of the characteristics of the specific group it represents. No flower in such a garden is the only one of its type, though every flower is different in it particularistic manifestations of its group characteristics. Such flowers don't jockey for position, don't hold knock-down, drag-out battles to establish hierarchy, don't engage in sneaky, underhanded and manipulative attacks (either publicly or privately) out of ego or greed or ignorance. They just bloom and shine and pass the bees and butterflies one to the other.

Admittedly, though there is such a thing as weeds, humans are grossly more complicated than flowers. But I think that's part of what TheFreeSlave gets at so well in his post. We complicate the shit. We make it ugly. "Fighting the good fight" (if you will) often creates people and groups not wildly different from each other in important and frequently negative ways. And, of course, capitalism has left virtually all of us all but ruined as keepers of the flame of life.

Do African-Americans need to band together to survive and bring about change? I think so. Do women and men need to educate themselves about the patriarchy and take organized action against it (again to survive and bring about change)? I think so. Do immigrants and poor people and prisoners (and others) need to see themselves as similarly situated and act accordingly? I think so. But that does not negate the Truth inherent within TheFreeSlave's post.

"Resigning" as a White person (something I did some time ago, I guess, when I started using the term European-American and then started referring to other European-Americans as "people who look like me") does not mean I stopped honoring the beauty and experience of people in general and people of color as definitive groups, in particular. But it means that I see all Life (and not just all human life) as sacred. In order to do that, I must be fully Conscious. Conscious of others' struggles (because of the socially-constructed political notions of "race" and "gender." And Conscious of any ways in which I have participated on any side of those struggles -- in order to be healthy mySelf. This is obviously a lifetime process of Becoming. But it's the bottom line for me at the end of the day.

I am not antagonistic toward and don't have any argument with those who feel that they must be in a different space at this point in time. In fact, I often support them uncategorically. There's a reason that, in the only photograph we have of Martin and Malcolm together, they're grinning like delighted children. We don't have to be clones to be effective or to be allies.

And I am incredibly Conscious that enemies stalk the Earth, that there are many humans who do not support Life and the other perspectives that rational, loving people naturally support. I do not make them enemies. They make themselves enemies. They may destroy Life on Earth, if they are allowed to do so. I am going to do what I can to stop that process and nurture Life instead. And my full Self represents a number of groups and experiences of which I am an amalgam. But I am also an individual and stand individually responsible for everything that emanates from my center.

It's not easy to make sense of all this, but it is reality, to my mind, and therefore, a crucial aspect of the dialogue that will carry us into a sustainable future, if there is to be one.

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The image featured above appears on posters, prints, t-shirts, bookmarks and stickers produced by the Syracuse Cultural Workers.

General Harriet Tubman

On this day in 1863, Harriet Tubman led a band of African-American soldiers in an onslaught described eight days later on the front page of The Commonwealth, a Boston newspaper, as follows:

"Col. Montgomery and his gallant band of 300 black soldiers, under the guidance of a black woman, dashed into the enemy’s country, struck a bold and effective blow, destroying millions of dollars worth of commissary stores, cotton and lordly dwellings, and striking terror into the heart of rebeldom, brought off near 800 slaves and thousands of dollars worth of property, without losing a man or receiving a scratch. It was a glorious consummation.

"After they were all fairly well disposed of in the Beaufort charge, they were addressed in strains of thrilling eloquence by their gallant deliverer, to which they responded in a song. 'There is a white robe for thee,' a song so appropriate and so heartfelt and cordial as to bring unbidden tears.

"The Colonel was followed by a speech from the black woman, who led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted. For sound sense and real native eloquence, her address would do honor to any man, and it created a great sensation...

"Since the rebellion, she has devoted herself to her great work of delivering the bondman, with an energy and sagacity that cannot be exceeded. Many and many times she has penetrated the enemy’s lines and discovered their situation and condition, and escaped without injury, but not without extreme hazard..."

For more about this remarkable story, visit this site.

My favorite Tubman quote: "I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed more if they knew they were slaves." And rather than putting that on others, I read it and ask myself, "How am I a slave? What oppressions have I internalized that keep me in bondage today?"

"See" You Next Week?

For those of you in the New Orleans area, I will be on television Tuesday morning, June 3rd, at 9:30 a.m. on NOA-TV, Channel 76. The show is called "Knowing Your Family History" and is hosted by Antoinette Harrell, an expert on geneology and the practice of peonage (present day slavery). Harrell's personal ancestral exploration uncovered her descendance from the Tuareg tribe in West Africa who she visited for a month after discovering her connection. I'll be posting more on Harrell's work next week, but in the meantime, I wanted you to look for us on Tuesday, if you can. I'll be talking about how I learned several years ago that I have ancestors who became millionaires in the early 1800's in Kentucky and Virginia by the brutal use and abuse of hundreds slaves of African descent. (You can just imagine how I received THAT news.) My understanding is that the show will appear at least a couple of times per week for the rest of June, but I don't know the exact times. And if I can work it out, I'll put a film clip on YouTube, as well.

Countee Cullen

On this day in 1903, Countee Cullen was born. A romantic poet in the fashion of Keats, Wheatley, and Dunbar, Cullen was one of the talented young African-American intellectuals who formed the backbone of the Harlem Renaissance. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa from NYU, Cullen went on to earn a Master's degree in English and French from Harvard and won more major literary prizes than any other Black writer of the time. And he married the only daughter of W.E.B. DuBois in one of the most lavish weddings in the history of the African-American community in New York. In memory of the beautiful who lived and died before us, here is one of his poems:

~~From the Dark Tower~~

We shall not always plant while others reap

The golden increment of bursting fruit,

Not always countenance, abject and mute,

That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;

Not everlastingly while others sleep

Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,

Not always bend to some more subtle brute;

We were not made to eternally weep.

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark

White stars is no less lovely being dark,

And there are buds that cannot bloom at all

In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,

And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

Free the Angola 3!

Thirty-six years ago, in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, one of the most notoriously bloody and unjust prisons in the United States, two African-American men, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, helped to form a chapter of the Black Panther Party. Ill advised, under the circumstances of their incarceration? Probably. But they were committed to address the system of sexual slavery that lay at the base of abuse and rage so intense among the population that there was on average a murder a week inside the walls. The organizing capability of the Black Panther Party inside prison, however, was even more threatening to the Powers-That-Be than similar activities in the street at that time.

Then, the killing of a White guard in a dormitory housing two hundred men gave the administration just what they were looking for. Despite the fact that authorities had bloody fingerprints and even the knife used in the attack, all evidence was set aside uninvestigated in the interest of neutralizing Wallace and Woodfox who were charged, convicted, and put into solitary confinement for the crime. They have remained in "the hole" ever since (see their site, the Black Panther Party site, this article, or this one). The case was so rife with contradictions that a third man, Robert King Wilkerson (who was not even in the prison at the time of the stabbing), also got scooped up and placed into solitary confinement for the crime without ever even being charged with it. He was released in 2001 on a separate matter, but has not forgotten those he left behind.

With the work of Wilkerson, the Innocence Project, some lawyers out of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and Color of Change, pressure has been building to have Governor Bobby Jindal investigate this on-going travesty. These men have suffered for thirty-six years for a crime their persecutors KNOW they didn't commit (why else would they refuse to release the fingerprint cards for the two hundred men with access to the dorm where the murder took place, one of whom would more than likely turn out to be the actual murderer?) 25,000 supporter's signatures have already been collected to announce our interest in pushing this matter. The Louisiana House Judiciary Committee is set to review the case in June. If there's anything you can do to reach out to or on behalf of these men or to support the effort to release them, now's the time.

Call the governor.

Herman Wallace
#76759 Camp D, Eagle 1
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Angola LA 70712

Albert Woodfox
#72148 Camp D, Eagle 1
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Angola LA 70712

Why Am I Not Surprised?

The U.S. Supreme Court made a decision yesterday that protects workers who report racial discrimination from retaliation by their bosses (see this). Does that seem like a no-brainer to you? It seemed that way to the lower courts, as well, that ruled in favor of Hedrick G. Humphries, a man who was fired by Cracker Barrel for bringing a legal complaint about the racially-motivated firing of another worker. Cracker Barrel, of course, appealed. The Supreme Court doesn't typically weigh in unless lower courts disagree, so there was real concern that the high court was going to roll back protections, remaining consistent with their now infamous ultra-conservative stance.

When it came to the vote, however, 7 of the 9 Justices agreed that the lower courts had been correct. I am, needless to say, delighted.

Who were the two Justices that voted AGAINST Humphries and FOR Cracker Barrel? Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Which is the reason for the title on this post. Clarence Thomas is an embarassment on so many levels, he reminds me of a poem by Richard Shelton:

~~THE CREEP~~

his compass has no needle
he is everywhere at once
arriving at the wrong moment
dragging an embarrassed shadow

if he does not come by he will call
if he does not call he will come by
if he comes by he will not leave
and if he leaves he will return
too soon it takes several weeks
to spend an hour with him

he is the one subject of all
his conversations but his life
is garbled like a bad translation
his mind is a series of interruptions
his voice an insult to silence

he is needy he wants
to tell you about himself
wants to hang himself on your wall
like a coat somebody forgot
just hanging there you can't
wear it can't throw it away
and each time he returns for it
he will forget it again

at parties he violates your space
when you step back he steps forward
when you look down you feel guilty
his shoes are ashamed of his feet

ambition's blue vein twitches
in his eyelid he wants
to be famous for something
for anything to sign autographs
to be recognized wherever he goes
and eventually he is

On Emancipating Minds -- Our Own and Other's

I don't want to give anybody the wrong idea. I've assured my students here in Louisiana that institutionalized oppression in the form of racism is, unfortunately, alive and well throughout the U.S. culture. The default position in this country, I tell them, is White Supremacy. From coast to coast. Even for those -- Black or White -- who have money. (Can you imagine a major White actor being sentenced to three years in prison for being convicted of the misdemeanor crime of not filing his taxes -- like Wesley Snipes just was?) Even for those -- Black or White -- who have advanced degrees from college. (African-American men are four times more likely to be unemployed than European-American men at every educational level.) It's not just in "The South," I promise you.

However, many people in Louisiana don't try to hide it as readily or as well as they do elsewhere. They aren't more racist, you understand. They're just less apologetic about it. They see it as natural. Even reasonable. And African-Americans here have been down so long, they think they prefer segregation to having White folks all up in they business. I don't blame 'em. Sometimes I don't want White folks up in my business either and I'm White (as far as I know).

That's what has bothered me most about Louisiana so far. There's much I love about it. People are often gracious. Almost anybody will feed you. Virtually everybody will invite you to church. Laughter is common. Music is lively. The food is famous. And people kiss you on both cheeks. No place is perfect, after all. But the n-word, as I mentioned the other day, is so common that I've been left off guest lists to avoid a possible scene. (Note: I'm the one left off the guest list.) Once, when I engaged a Black man in a conversation about a business matter, his White employer marched up, joined the conversation, and then summarily dismissed the African-American with a curt "Don't you have something to do?" despite the fact that we were standing in the space where he did his work. On another occasion, I was blessed with a whole collection of racist materials (including an Imperial Klans of America patch and a copy of The Turner Diaries) that a casual acquaintance had skanked from a former cop. At least half of the people of color I've talked to here have warned me in no uncertain terms to be VERY careful who I offend (as if I have any control over what goes on in other people's heads, past just shutting up entirely -- the tack most folks like me apparently are expected to take). And my least favorite moment so far occurred when I was at one point (and I swear it) called "Boss Lady."

I even had an African-American student write me an infuriated note after the grades went in because the F he received (that's going to destroy his chances to keep his athletic scholarship) was MY fault. That poor child was so ill prepared for the idea that he would actually have to do the work in the course that he was incredulous at my behavior in holding him responsible. I tried to work with him all semester, giving him all kinds of encouragement, setting him up with a study group, outlining exactly what would be necessary for him to do to make sure he passed the course, and I could tell he wasn't making the needed effort, but I couldn't figure out why. In the end, he simply didn't believe I was serious. Now where do you suppose he learned that? Black students here are by and large relegated to schools that make little if any attempt to teach even the most basic skills, are trained to believe that their only hope is in sports, and ultimately become convinced that they are incapable of even adequate academic performance, in any case. And that just eats my lunch. Yes, I know it goes on everywhere (which makes it okay how?), but I've never seen the level of self-doubt that I see in people of color here. I'm told it's worse in Mississippi, but I can't speak to that, not having lived there.

This sad reality recently caused me to realize that I now see my primary mission in education NOT as trying to raise European-American consciousness related to "race" (which I used to think), but rather to reach young African-Americans and unmask the lies they have been told as truth about themselves. I mean, I always saw this as important, too, but I used to reverse these two commitments. No longer.

Bob Marley wrote: "Emancipate your mind from mental slavery. Only we ourselves can free our minds." And he was charging all of us with this responsibility. It's no mean trick to shake off the dead hand of history (as Walter Mosley called it here) when the whole society with all its authority, culture, and media machine is ever wrapping chains around anything that moves. But some of us have not only the responsibility to emancipate our own minds, but to feed others that they, too, might free themselves. Of those with much, it is said, much will be required. What is much? It's all relative, now isn't it?


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The poster above can be found at Northland Poster Collective.

Summer Reading

Good morning.

I guess I'm back. I'm starting to blog in my head now while I'm driving. Seeing things through not just my eyes, but through my readers' eyes. Wanting to tell you things, to share my thoughts. And that's how it started two and a half years ago.

Let's pretend we're sitting down to coffee. I don't drink a lot of it these days, being focused on my body 24-7 and all. But this morning I had to go to have blood tests before I even woke up good, so I stopped at the local Waffle House for scrambled eggs with cheese, grits, and toast with apple butter (though, apparently, they didn't know I was coming because they had somehow inexplicably allowed themselves to run out of raisin bread). And of course, I had coffee. A cup and a half. With cream and the tiniest bit of sugar. Thinking to myself, "I'll take this nice high and go home to Blog Central."

So here I am, imagining myself at my little glass-topped table (which I rarely use except to hold red flowers) sitting across from you, rambling from topic to topic in my head, with no particular order to it all.

Did I mention I've been doing a lot of reading?

Reading is the cave into which I descend when I'm depressed or trying to muddle something through. I devour books when I'm going through a crisis and escape into them when I'm trying to re-group. And not just books, but magazines. Jet and The Sun are staples -- always. And I "have to" read the occasional "scientific" piece in this or that publication (usually as a result of assigning it to students to read, really more like assigning it to myself, since most of them won't read it and I must anyway.)

But today, I'm feeling intimate, wanting to "share." So here's a few things I read recently that you might want to check out (in no particular order):

1) The Beautiful Struggle: a father, two sons, and an unlikely road to manhood by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Initially, this book hit my radar when M.Dot. wrote about it back in March. So when my daughter gave me a nice phat gift certificate to Amazon.com for Mother's Day (wotta girl!), tucked into the box with the dvd's and cd's and hummingbird feeder was this book. I scarfed it down too fast. And read almost the whole thing aloud (the sign that I'm entranced, that the words are crafted so beautifully that their sound becomes part of the experience for me). Coates is the son of the former Black Panther who founded Black Classics Press and raised his children in a sort of boot camp to implement Consciousness (a word Coates, the younger, has now taught me to capitalize). This remarkable piece of writing (M.Dot. said it was and she was MORE than right) is not just a "coming of age" story. It's a Coming of An Age story, a description of growing up poor, Black, and male in Baltimore that will (write this down now) eventually be called the sequel to Black Boy by Richard (the original man) Wright, who landed so hard on Western literature in the 20th Century, he came with a name warning us first what he was here to do.

"The words were all braggadocios, but when done with the recital, even though I was alone, I felt bigger. I'd walk outside, and my head was just a little higher, because if you do this right, if you claim to be that nigger enough, though you battle only your bedroom mirror, there is a part of you that believes. That was how I came to understand, how I came to know why all these brothers wrote and talked so big. Even the Knowledged feared the streets. But the rhyme pad was a spell book -- it summoned asphalt elementals, elder gods, and weeping ancestors, all of whom had your back. That summer, I knew...that when under the aegis of hip-hop, you never lived alone, you never walked alone."

2) The Tin Roof Blowdown and/or Jesus Out to Sea by James Lee Burke. Even if you don't like detective thrillers, if you read fiction, you may find, as I have that Burke is a state of the art master of description. And his topic in The Tin Roof Blowdown and in the title story of his collection Jesus Out to Sea is New Orleans during and just after Katrina hit. Burke has the credentials to do this justice since his folks have lived in New Iberia (maybe 90-minutes from The Big Easy) since 1830-something and he has the horrifying clarity of vision and cajones to write it the way it really happened. If you've got the willingness to read on after he has systematically gutted all your gentle sensibilities, then take one of these to the beach. It'll give you something to think about the next time somebody mentions Mardi Gras or beignets or jazz or the night the levees broke.

"A hurricane is supposed to have a beginning and an end. It tears the earth up, fills the air with flying trees and bricks and animals and sometimes even people, makes you roll up into a ball under a table and pray till drops of blood pop on your brow, then it goes away and lets you clean up after it, like somebody pulled a big prank on the whole town. But this one didn't work that way. It's killing in stages.

I see a diapered black baby in a atree that's only a green smudge under the water's surface. I can smell my neighbors in their attic. The odor is like a rat that has drowned in a bucket of water inside a superheated garage. A white guy floating by on an inner tube has a battery-powered radio propped on his stomach and tells us snipers have shot a policeman in the head and killed two Fish and Wildlife officers...

'You guys got anything to eat up there?' the guy in the inner tube asks.

'Yeah, a whole fucking buffet. I had it catered from Galatoire's right before the storm,' Miles says to him."

3) The Angels of Morgan Hill by Donna VanLiere. I bought this book for $3 at a Books-a-Million and it kept me up all night. Admittedly, I thought it was a memoir and it turned out to be a novel, but the fact that I didn't realize it was a novel until AFTER I read it shows you how meticulous the detail is and how real the characters seem to be in this story about the coming of integration to a small town in eastern Tennessee in the late 1940's. The drama is gut-wrenching and the tension of almost ever-present violence forms a skeleton on which the poverty of the entire town hangs like tatters of clothing left over from a former life. If this is just supposed to be an inspiring read, I'm okay with it. Sometimes, I need to be inspired.

"'That little nigger boy livin' with you now?'

The words rang out in the stillness and a shiver ran down my spine. We all looked up the embankment and saw Beef and Clyde smiling at us from Beef's porch. Mama took hold of Milo's hand and threw up her other hand in a wave. 'Mornin'.' She appeared to hope that if she left Beef and Clyde alone they'd leave us alone.

'I don't think Lonnie'd be too happy knowing what's going on at his house,' Clyde said. Mama held tighter to Milo's hand and I grabbed John's, pulling him along. 'He wouldn't like that nigger smelling up the place.'

I felt my heart in my throat and ran to keep up with Mama.

'He's a pretty little nigger,' Beef yelled after us."

4) Respect in a World of Inequality by Richard Sennett. I have to begin by admitting that I've only read the first fifty pages of this one. And it's a totally different kind of read, being rather unapologetically sociological, but at least early on, Sennett manages to weave his early years in Cabrini Green in Chicago into a more over-arching consideration of the difficulties with trying to get past the cultural perspective of individualism that often leads us to determine that only certain people in the U.S. are worthy of respect. I don't know exactly whereall Sennett intends to take his readers yet, but I already want to know and think it will be worth the trip.

"Lack of respect, though less aggressive than an outright insult, can take an equally wounding form. No insult is offered another person, but neither is recognition extended; he or she is not seen -- as a full human being whose presence matters. When a society treats the mass of people in this way, singling out only a few for recognition, it creates a scarcity of respect, as though there were not enough of this precious substance to go around. Like many famines, this scarcity is man-made; unlike food, respect costs nothing. Why, then, should it be in short supply?"

5) Finally, I want to recommend a magazine, The Crisis, published by the N.A.A.C.P. The tricky part (or great part, depending on how you look at it) is that when you join the organization, you automatically get a subscription to the magazine for free (how cool is that?) At the risk of sounding as if I'm hawking memberships (not that I'd be ashamed to do that, you understand), I am SO impressed with the Spring 2008 issue of this 64-page magazine that I have to suggest that the magazine alone is worth the price of membership ($30 a year). It's super glossy, slickly produced with LOTS of strong photographs, well-crafted, intriguing articles, and the printed equivalent of dozens of sound bytes of interesting worthwhile information. So far, I've read a piece about a female jockey who went from being homeless to winning races, a fine interview with Tom Joyner (accompanied by a photo that is probably the best I've ever seen at expressing the soul of this man), an insightful consideration of Richard Wright's work, a grading of the members of the U.S. Congress based on their voting records on race-related issues, and an article on a new publishing house established by a former New York Times senior editor to bring out works by prisoners and ex-prisoners (see Think Outside the Cell). If you've never looked at The Crisis before or not recently, you might want to. I've been taking mine on the road around town, to read when I'm stuck in a waiting room or grabbing a bite of lunch.

"...[T]hough the elites of academia have claimed [Richard Wright] and indeed deconstructed and post-deconstructed him, he belongs in the end to the community. Bigger was electrocuted by the state, x-rayed by academia, given care and attention where academics can be most generous -- and yet, elusive still, he is alive and kicking out there, seeking answers to questions that are being asked manifold." (Julia Wright on her father's legacy; in "Native Son" by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, The Crisis, Spring 2008).

Now don't say I didn't tell you. ;^)

Remember Me?

Well, this has turned out to be harder than I thought. Apparently my new condition, discussed here, is more demanding physically and emotionally than I had expected. Some days I feel just like I always have. Some days -- for weeks at a time -- I feel like I'm car sick. Some days I feel vaguely depressed for no reason. Though of course, when you feel vaguely depressed, everything is a reason. Some days I get through the day, but by the time I do my now necessary work out at the gym, I'm just too played out to do anything but play a few games of Solitaire and collapse.

To make things worse, if that's not enough already, I often feel as if I'm drowning in a sea of "race" here. I mean, I'm always hyper-sensitive to "race" everywhere I go and always find plenty to be hyper-sensitve about. But here, aside from stuff I'm just not prepared to go into today, de facto segregation alone means that I can be with Black folks or White folks, but rarely with them both and frankly, I hate that. At work, I have to leave my building to have a real conversation with a person of color who's not a student. And, since not everybody knows me personally, I never know when a White person will haul out the n-word (behind African-Americans' backs, of course), leaving me with the hot potato and no idea whether or not it's even worth saying something to rank strangers who might, in fact, be dangerous to me or someone else, if they get their panties in a bunch.

I can go to a family gathering with an African-American friend, but after a few times of this, I'm almost ready to give it up. She can introduce me as her "sister" all she wants, but they're not buying it. And I don't blame them. Why should they trust some trouble-making White woman? And what is she up in here for anyway?

I do have several African-Americans I consider close friends now, but our relationships are conspiratorial in nature. We compare notes, shore each other up, and plan insurrections, laughing in that dark way that soldiers laugh in the trenches.

And as I'm now in the process of being moved into a permanent position, after all, it finally occurs to me what the implications of all this are for someone like me. Good golly, Miss Molly! I'm a highly Conscious White woman living in what might as well be rural Louisiana. I'm not complaining. I'm ready to do my part. But some days, I really don't want to leave my apartment. And it's lonely there.

So I feel sad. And weak. And heartsick (about all the oh-so-obvious effects of the on-going nature of racial oppression all around me -- everywhere, yes, but amped up some here, in spite of my quick disavowals of that in earlier months). And tired (all of this plus 300 students will do that to a person). And daunted by the idea of these circumstances and feelings lasting for the rest of my life.

Then, since I'm not blogging, I don't read blogs either. I mean, I can't bare to lurk when I don't feel up to playing, and apparently, on some level, I don't think I deserve to be part of it all because I'm not holding up my end (whatever I perceive that to be). And since blogging and bloggers are the joy of my life, I ain't having a lot of joy these last few months.

May I please come home?

Is there anybody there?

I got a shit-load of stuff to write about.
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The image above is from Kaotic Enzymes, which is a tattoo blog(!)

One World! One Dream!

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?" -- Dorothy Day

Quote of the Week

"What after all has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of [hu]mankind, if not faith in new possibilities and courage to advocate them?" -- Jane Addams (1860-1935)

Wright is Right!

I know this is probably a day late and a dollar short, as they say, but I just gotta throw in my two cents on Dr. Jeremiah Wright's sermon or anyway several other people's two cents's with me shouting "Amen!" every third word. If you want to know what I thought about what the good Reverend said and how Obama distanced himself from it, just read this and this and this. And that oughta do it. Thank you, Tim Wise, Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, and The Free Slave for takin' care of business. I thought maybe I was the only one until I found what you guys wrote.

By Way Of Apology...and Renewed Commitment

Dear Faithful Readers,

I know some of you have been sniffing around in spite of the fact that I took a little unannounced break after discovering that I have diabetes. That news alone would have been enough to give me pause, but it came on the heels of another set of procedures called for by the possibility that I had another even more dire condition, which turned out not to be so. Regardless, the last two months have been difficult at best and frankly, scary, as I got used to a whole set of new ideas and practices that will be with me now for the rest of my life.

I've gone through a lot of feelings. Shock. Dismay. Crushing disappointment. Panic. Fear. Depression. Determination. Overwhelmedness. Despair. And finally, acceptance. And even gratitude. That I can do this. That it is manageable (with rigorous attention and commitment). That in a world where people are starving to death and watching their children starve, in a world where people are being bombed in their own homes even as I write, in a world where human beings are languishing heartsick in cells and cages year after year like animals, some of them for no reason except that they are used to rationalize a government gone mad without restriction, a diagnosis such as mine is really not enough to be an excuse for the end of all joy.

Perspective is the name of the game now. And renewed commitment to the work I have been given to do. Enough with feeling freaked out and all that being freaked out brings with it.

I had the pleasure of having an unexpected lunch with a young woman of whom I am very fond on Monday. She was passing through town on her way across the country with her young cousin who admitted in embarrassment that she voted for George Bush because she believed he would "allow himself to be lead by God to do the right thing as a Christian leader." Needless to say, she's become somewhat disillusioned.

First of all, I assured her that she didn't vote the man in because he wasn't elected. He just stole two terms and the U.S. public let him do it.

"Well, why?" she asked petulantly. "When the French don't like something, they bring that country to a halt until they get what they want. The people in Spain go to the streets. What's wrong in the U.S. that everybody just watches what's happening and does nothing?"

I explained that we've been socialized to believe that money is more important than life, that wage labor is the only viable system, that the U.S. is the greatest nation on Earth and therefore deserves whatever it wants, that violence is the result of the victim's poor choices, that having stuff is the litmus test of personal worth, and that alienation is natural so escape (of all types) as a way of life is reasonable. I told her that this nation is careening in the direction of facism at a speed light would envy and that I'm not the only one who's noticed (see The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Klein or the video above as two of many examples available by now if you really can't see it staring you in the face on the nightly news).

In any case, I guess what has occured to me of late is that we act like we have forever. But my recent experiences have reminded me that we don't. Enough with the whining and complaining. We get serious or we die. Know what I mean?

The Statement of the Problem

The first thing you write on a grant proposal is what they call "The Statement of the Problem." It's a description of why you think something needs to be done. I was working on a proposal for a program at my school last week-end and after I read it over a few times, I decided that "The Statement of the Problem" deserved a little more attention than it may ever get in its current application. So here it is. Keep in mind as you read that it is not referring to every single male of color on every U.S. college campus, but I see far too many on mine that fit the description.

A strong desire to imagine and purport that racism no longer exists in the lives of most African-Americans masks its presence and effects in the United States today. Despite the disappearance of immediately visible and enforced racial segregation, what some sociologists now call “neo-racism” results in such broad manifestations that statistics in every area of daily life document the up-hill climb success remains for many African-Americans even after decades of supposed progress.

Not only are African-American males four times more likely to be unemployed than European-American males at every educational level, but young Black males are infinitely more likely to be arrested, convicted, and incarcerated than their European-American counterparts. This is, unfortunately, all too common knowledge. Further, White family’s average net worth is still 11 times that of Black families, even when we control for income, education, and family size. And largely African-American urban centers are disproportionately likely to be poverty-stricken and crime-filled without the presence of adequate compensating opportunities for any kind of personal development. In such an egregiously difficult social context, many African-American males arrive at young adulthood filled with grave self-doubt and little sense that they can, in fact, (and deserve to) access a successful future for themselves.

These particular young men often struggle with poor educational backgrounds, traceable to poor schools, poor nutrition during formative years (because of chronic poverty), and the lowered expectations of those authority figures and even teachers with whom these young men have been forced by circumstances to interact over their entire lives. But, as if this is not enough, these same young men have a far greater struggle inside themselves, as they deal with the pain of believing that they are incapable – of learning, of performing, and of achieving beyond the lowest possible goals. Those that are fortunate manage to get into college, but often with just enough of an edge to get in, and no idea whatsoever what to expect or how to negotiate the shoals of college life, still in many ways presented at the average university as a middle class White experience accessible only to specific students of color.

Nowhere in the United States are racial inequalities more apparent than they are on the public university campus, where many young men and women of color are allowed to enter, but expected to fail, where they can watch others successfully acquire the knowledge and skill sets necessary to seamlessly move into the job market as fully prepared workers, but where they nevertheless all too often carry the constant frustration and pain of not being able to find enough belief in themselves to complete that same journey.

A study by Claude Steele at Stanford University in 1999 and since replicated many times, for example, showed that when college students about to take standardized tests were told that the exams were simply for practice, Black students tended to score roughly as well as White students. When, on the other hand, the students were instructed that the tests would be used to rank them for placement purposes, the Black students scored lower. Worse, the best Black students showed the greatest effect in a demonstration of what was apparently their even more heightened fear of not measuring up to White students.

Universities are using such research now to justify creating programs for the purpose of reaching out to and retaining students of color. How successful can these programs really be, however, if they do not take into consideration the fact that the overall society in the United States still relegates these young people to the back of the social bus? Even as they study, even as some become computer-literate and learn how to pass classes, many of them suffer with broken hearts and a sense of their own unworthiness, a condition supported by the default position of White Supremacy in a nation where this reality is not only ignored, but denied. How can they come to believe in themselves when the society in which they live their daily lives continually communicates to them their reduced status?

As long as this situation exists, no amount of superficial programming will do much more than teach students of color and most particularly Black males how to “act White” better. No matter how committed they are or how hard they work, if they do not, as Bob Marley sang, “emancipate their minds from mental slavery,” in the end, the best they may be able to hope for is to someday find themselves able to afford a flashy car, while never actually reaching their full potential or being comfortable in their own skins – assuming they graduate at all. The entire African-American community struggles under the hardship of this truth.

Why We Have "Black History Month"

The other day, I received an email from a student who was questioning why we have Black History Month every February. Somewhat modified, this was my response:

The reason we have Black History Month is because we don't typically have history taught as it actually occurred. In essence, we have White History Month all year round. What we should be doing is having True History taught all the time, but we're nowhere near this happening at this point since White Supremacy is still the default position in this country. So-called Black History Month is a knee-jerk concession to the fact that we don't intend to change the way we teach history in general because it makes White people look as if they're the only ones important enough to study seriously--when they're not.

Race, as I so often say and write, was socially-constructed about five hundred years ago and there are those who call for brushing it aside as a concept now. Unfortunately, however, despite the category of "race" being a fabrication, rampant racism and, in fact, institutionalized oppression against all people of color and women are still fully functional throughout the society we live in. Because of this, we have no choice but to continue the practice of trying to give Truth a word in edgewise.

Some folks suggest that observing Black History Month keeps us stuck in the past. They apparently imagine that two hundred fifty years of slavery was the only oppression ever perpetrated against African-Americans when that's far from the case. Historical oppression is still taking a toll because it made White society rich at the expense of people of color and that huge foundation creating and bank-rolling the White power structure has yet to be addressed. But even so, statistical data clearly documents that full-tilt discrimination against people of color and most particularly African-Americans is as United Statian as apple pie right now.

Another argument I sometimes hear for doing away with the practice of honoring our African-American heritage as a crucial part of our national history and focusing appropriately on White participation in the oppression of people of color is that Black History Month somehow keeps the problem of race relations in this country all "stirred up" instead of "letting" us all learn to "love" each other (as Christian doctrine teaches).

In reality, Christianity as an organized religion has participated in the process of oppression against people of color since it helped to invent the concept of "race." There are and have always been some Christians who are committed to fighting injustice and oppression, but most church-goers who look like me just talk about love and being "one in Christ." While the family in the pew next to them might be African-Americans, they're basically being given positions as honorary White people for church-going purposes only. Let them wake up on Monday morning with a taste for parity in the job market and watch what happens--and who doesn't want to get involved with "that sort of thing."

White people who only "love" Black people in church need to remember Jesus' admonition that inasmuch as we have done it (or not done it) to the least of these His brothers (and sisters), we have done it to Him. In my opinion, not attacking oppression against the powerless is just exactly the kind of thing Jesus was probably talking about.

Whether White people like it or lump it, get it or don't, people of color are owed a whole lot more by this society than one month of reflection a year. The hard work and creativity of people of color are evidenced everywhere you look in this country and they have at no point been invited to fully participate in the benefits they made possible for White citizens who have, in fact, paid far less dearly for what they have always expected to receive, accumulate, and enjoy. African-Americans are not even allowed full citizenship in their own country. That's apartheid, just like South Africa had.

I'm always fascinated by the way some folks say this nation demonstrates its godlessness by not having prayer in school. I think it demonstrates its godlessness by brutalizing people of color (all over the world) for money right up to the present and pretending it's not happening. Until that's understood, we better keep right on having Black History Month. If knowledge is power, then there's a whole lot of White folks in this country in dire straits because they don't know their asses from a hole in the ground.
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The graphic above is the work of Syracuse Cultural Workers.

Quote of the Week

"It is good to know that there still remains a creative minority who would rather lose in a cause that will ultimately win than to win in a cause that will ultimately lose."
~written by Martin Luther King, Jr., to Charles Sherrod, Diane Nash and the others who went to jail on this day in 1961 for requesting service at a lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The ten college students refused to post bail and demanded jail time rather than paying fines, refusing to acknowledge any legitimacy of the laws under which they were arrested.
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Thanks to This Week in Peace History for this information.

Two Thumbs Up!

Last year, while I was still in Tampa, I had lunch with a former student of mine and some of her friends. One of them was an African-American woman in her twenties who had gone to school for fashion design, worked hard, and then won an internship to travel with the Ebony Fashion Fair for a while. She was excited (needless to say) that EFF had decided to purchase a couple of her dresses (talk about starting at the top!)

While reading one of my latest Jet Magazines last night, I scanned the names of the designers mentioned in the current show and there it was, among the greats -- Balmain, Biagiotti, Montezin, Missoni, and Elizabeth Carson of Tampa. Two thumbs up for designer Elizabeth Carson, a young woman of color who knew she could. And two thumbs up, as well, for an organization that'll give a young woman of color a shot when she's got it coming.

Tote That Barge, Lift That Bale

It was this week in 1865 that the U.S. legislature passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Three-quarters of the states ratified it before the end of the year, making the Amendment official, though, just for the record, Kentucky didn't ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until 1976 and Mississippi never has.

If you notice the Amendment's wording, however, you realize that the way to get around it was written right into the Amendment itself:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.

Any state that wanted to take advantage of this codicil, as it were -- whether Northern or Southern -- could by simply arresting and incarcerating African-American males who were now, of course, "free" men. This was hardly difficult to do if you just shut them out of the job market and then implement Jim Crow laws that could lock them up for such infractions as not stepping off the sidewalk when a White person walks by.

Now that corporations have stepped into the picture, it's not likely that this game plan is going to be abandoned anytime soon. CorpWatch paints a graphic picture of how insidious and well developed the prison industrial complex is today.

And lest we imagine that African-Americans are the only people of color to suffer under the lash (literally and currently), despite the Thirteenth Amendment, check out this story from Nezua Limon Xolagrafik-jonez, The Unapologetic Mexican.

Or how about this story concerning the Louisiana sheriff who forced prisoners to work in a
stolen vehicle "chop shop" and serve as a pit crew for his hot rod?

What to do about all this? You can look into Free the Slaves or Not For Sale or Ten Students or Critical Resistance -- all of which are organizations working in one way or another to eliminate what the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution supposedly addressed more than 140 years ago.