"Yo man. Let me get this straight. You work five hours a week and they pay you 50 G’s?"
It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Calvin, who as far I know answers only to "Hot Rod," was expecting an answer, and I wasn’t sure what to say – especially since I was pretty sure that Hot Rod didn’t even know that I don’t teach in the summers.
"Dawg, I’m in the classroom five hours, but I spend a lot more time preparing for class. It’s just like out here, baby (I shove the basketball into the pit of his stomach); I only teach your ass for about an hour, but I spent years perfecting those pretty moves."
Hot Rod chuckles at the lie. I play hard, have a passable jump shot, and am a willing passer, but at 35 my quickness and jumping ability ain’t what they used to be, and they never used to be all that good. As Mister Señor Love Daddy likes to say, "that’s the truth, Ruth," but I’m not complaining – far from it. I get to hoop three or four times per week, which isn’t too bad considering that, my conversation with Hot Rod notwithstanding, teaching is just one of several professional activities that I and other university faculty juggle. But I’m getting ahead of my story.
Funny thing about this election is that the media seems to think that Barack Obama’s challenge of appealing to both Black and White voters is somehow new. Consider, as evidence, the following opening sentence of the John McCormick and Rick Pearson’s July 15th cover story in the Chicago Tribune.
"When it comes to African-American audiences, some have called Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid a ‘dual-track’ candidacy, one that seeks to prove he is in tune with the needs of the black community while also not alienating whites."
Really?!! Then I suppose that makes McCain a dual-track candidate too, since he presumably has to prove that he is in tune with the needs of the white community while not alienating African Americans and other people of color. After all, Latinos and African Americans alone comprise over 30% of the U.S. population. Doesn’t McCain face the exact same challenge of appealing to voters across racial lines? Hasn’t every single Presidential hopeful in modern times?
I am an authentic American Negro. I'm descended from freemen and slaves, slave bosses and slave owners, and the Native people who gave them sanctuary, family and hope. I say all this to offer my credentials, my Certificate of Authenticity, so you know I'm qualified to speak for at least one Black person: me. Now, so you don't get confused, that doesn't mean I'm suggesting that I am authorized to speak for all the Negroes of the Great Diaspora (settle!), but as a wise, old white guy (Carnegie, Zigler, Bozo? I'm not sure and don't care to look) said: "I've lived this life and I have the right to talk about it." The current debate over the use of the "n-Word" (that's "nigger," in case you're confused) has become so nettlesome that it has set the flower of fecund, white womanhood tearfully a-twitter.
Pay close attention, people. This is terribly important and very few of my ilk will say this, even in sotto voce.
The "n-word?" Use it. You have my express permission. Let me break this down.
This is heresy I know, since most of the white majority likes to pretend that it’s colorblind, but race needs to be part of the calculus in the November election for all voters. Of course, it was never not going to be part of the equation. And race is certainly part of the explicit discourse for Black voters, as it always is. My point is that it's high time white folks join in the discussion and acknowledge that it matters. Because it does.
Here’s what’s at stake in November: For the first time in history, there is a real possibility that "The Man" won’t be White. The implications will take years to sort out, but here are some very early thoughts about why the candidate’s race is important enough to influence our vote. Because the implications of a Black President are somewhat different for different identity groups, I break it down accordingly. But, and make no mistake about this, all other things being equal, having a Black President would benefit all Americans -- well almost.
This 90-second video highlights the value of the right to vote during the life of my grandma, who had no such right at birth. And this year, she will be voting for Barack Obama.
At the recent NAACP convention in Cincinnati, Governor Patterson gave his first major speech since becoming New Yorks first black Governor and the first legally blind Governor in history.
addressed the convention as the intersection between race and politics in the United States appears especially fraught. Recent polls have shown that whites and blacks hold very different views of Mr. Obama, and that despite the senator’s candidacy, blacks do not believe that race relations have significantly improved.
Addressing those fissures in his speech, the governor said that he was not sure whether Americans would be able to put their differences aside in this election and support Mr. Obama.
"Can America reject the crucible of race that has dictated and pervaded all of our history to embrace an African-American man who has the right policies?" he said. "We will find out."
I just got through watching CNN Presents: Black in America, Reclaiming the Dream. It featured a panel discussion that included many scholars, religious leaders and activists in the black community. There were several segments including ones on the breakdown of the black family, the achievement gap and the HIV/AIDS crisis.
I found it especially interesting that not once did I hear any serious discussion of racism or any serious dialog about black/white interaction in America at all.
What does one say at the funeral of a bigot? Politicians and pundits have been grappling with that question since the passing of Sen. Jesse Helms on July 4, and the collective reaction to Helms' death speaks volumes about the state of race relations and social progress in our country.
The headline in Wednesday's New York Times barked:
Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race
Americans are sharply divided by race heading into the first election in which an African-American will be a major-party presidential nominee, with blacks and whites holding vastly different views of Senator Barack Obama, the state of race relations and how black Americans are treated by society.
What the poll actually showed are the current inclinations of black and white voters in regard to Obama’s candidacy.
Everyone who pays any attention to politics knows that the GOP is on its heels. On every issue from the war to healthcare to the environment to the middle-class economy, the American people have sided firmly with Democrats and progressives. The issues have always favored Democrats, of course. But the prominence of those issues as the basis for voting as well as the strength with which those issues clearly favor Democrats first made itself abundantly clear in 2006.
And the same thing is likely to happen in 2008, with the outside chance of a filibuster-proof Senate to boot.
Jesse Jackson is not without his problems, but he's been a Lion of the Civil Rights movement, a pain in the Right's Rear End, and a far more tasteful dresser than Al Sharpton, so I've always liked him. When O'Reilly broke the tape, that didn't change. Instead, what caught my attention was the way Fox News was presenting the material. It was out of context and obviously edited to remove a section tape. Why?
O'Reilly's explanation was that the edited section was immaterial to the discussion of intergenerational conflict within the African-American community. A topic on which he has reported with so much passion in the past. He said:
"We're not out to get Jesse Jackson. We're not out to embarrass him...if we were, we would have used what we have"
[emphasis mine]
It was at that moment that I knew he was out to get Jesse Jackson.
I'd like to share a letter I received from my friend Mary Kim Titla. Mary Kim is running strong for Congress in Arizona’s 1st congressional district. She would be the first Native American woman ever to serve in the U.S. Congress. She has a great message and will make a wonderful Congresswoman. Please help her if you can.
I'm sometimes mistaken for an Obama hater. In fact, I'm something less interesting: a critic from the left. There are much more authoritative and prominent versions of me, like Paul Street and Adolph Reed Jr. I generally share their views on Obama's politics, but I part company with them when they say or suggest that it's not important that Obama win.
I want Obama to win not just because he's up against a fanatical freetrader who has Norman Podhoretz's foreign policy and James Dobson's position on abortion; I want Obama to win because he embodies important progressive principles that must be defended. It's a central irony of his campaign: while his policies and political philosophy are frustratingly moderate, a victory by Obama would be a victory for vital progressive principles: racial tolerance, mutli-culturalism, general acceptance of difference. On the other hand--and this is the focus of this piece--a defeat would be a devastating defeat for those principles.
On June 18, 49-year-old Esmin Green was admitted to the Kings County Hospital Center psychiatric ward. After waiting to be seen for 24 hours, she fell to the floor, began to convulse and then passed out. Two security guards and one doctor walked into the waiting room, looked at her and then walked away. After one hour, a nurse finally came over, kicked Ms. Green, and then proceeded to get a stretcher. Shortly afterwards, Ms. Green was pronounced dead. The entire incident was documented on a security camera, and is now on YouTube, thanks to the Associated Press.
You mean Barack Obama just running for President hasn't been enough to heal the wounds of slavery, of segregation, of Jim Crow? Barack Obama is running for office not already running the country. And speak of running the country...
Indeed, the poll showed markedly little change in the racial components of people’s daily lives since 2000, when The Times examined race relations in an extensive series of articles called "How Race Is Lived in America."
As it was eight years ago, few Americans have regular contact with people of other races, and few say their own workplaces or their own neighborhoods are integrated. In this latest poll, over 40 percent of blacks said they believed they had been stopped by the police because of their race, the same figure as eight years ago; 7 percent of whites said the same thing.
Eight years ago. Hmm. Remind me again what happened in 2000?
In light of the recent crapstorm over the New Yorker cover, I've been thinking about the implications of various reactions, including my own.
I've had a couple of days to simmer down and think about things, and gain a bit of perspective.
As many will attest, reactions ranged from mild, to wild, with little in-between. I have to admit, I was all over the map myself, my range being, "WTF???", to resignation, "Well, what are you gonna do? this is America, Black people have been comic foil for centuries, and that's just how it is."
I went to bed last night, quite depressed.
This morning, I remembered a comment one poster made to another, about not being offended because he was seeing the issue from a 'White perspective'.
Is that what I've been doing? seeing this from a Black perspective?
What is a racially derived perspective, and what difference should it make regarding artistic expression?
Last Thursday, the American Medical Association issued an official apology for its past racism toward African American patients and physicians. Along with the apology were the findings of a study conducted by the Commission to End Health Care Disparities, a group that the AMA and the National Medical Association (an organization representing black physicians) co-chair. The study has found that between 1846 and the 1960s, the AMA's past transgressions included:
What does one say at the funeral of a bigot? Politicians and pundits have been grappling with that question since the passing of Sen. Jesse Helms on July 4, and the collective reaction to Helms' death speaks volumes about the state of race relations and social progress in our country.
