So, the author of "The End of Blackness" now deigns to tell us the difference between black and "black". And while I have endlessly delayed reading this book (really waiting for the avalanche of parallel books from other cultures to sweep the market; still waiting for that The End of Jewishness to reach the charts), I have to say that her division of the descendants of slaves from modern day immigrants to the US from Africa is perfectly appropriate and really nothing earth-shattering.
One wishes that the writer had taken time to visit MOAD - perhaps it would have enhanced her descriptive metaphors.
But what this commentary does highlight - inadvertently, of course - is the author's own rejection of Pan-African philosophy. This is not surprising from again - the author of The End of Blackness. While one rarely hears white intellectuals posit the wholesale rejection of Western thought such as from the Age of Enlightenment, it seems as though the best way to be published as a black author today is to reject the very concept of collective black action, as though it is okay and perfectly appropriate for white people to establish social organizations and communities, from which they proceed to act in their collective interests, but for black people to embrace Afrocentrism or express any inclination to form social collectives violates some principle of "individualism" that must be the basis of all Black success. It is as though there is this coterie of black authors who somehow figured out that Ayn Rand was really talking to us.
Whatever.
Dickerson cannot unequivocally support Barack Obama because she is uncertain about the necessity for collective black action. This causes her to hesitantly crab walk toward what his candidacy means at the same time as she skitters away from the very idea of why she as a black pundit must have an opinion on a black presidential candidate. Only when the scales fall away will she be able to see that the Obama candidacy is an unalloyed good - for black people and all citizens of this nation. It is precisely because Obama is a member of yet another migration from Africa (back to MOAD) that his story can be one to lead us all away from this endless game of musical chairs that has ensnared former slaves and former slave owners for these many centuries.
2007-01-24
Damn! I was hoping to stay out of this for awhile
Madam Speaker, the State of our Union is . . .
What tripe. What if the President gave a State of the Union address and nobody came? I ceased watching these events back in 2004 and I kick myself for taking so long to awaken to the reality of this presidency - and the signs were all there from the beginning: faith over evidence. At the very start of this reign of Bush the Second, he has chosen to ignore things that do not conform to what he believes: stem cell research is bad as an embryo of 12-weeks has as much a right to live as a person of 30, 40 or 70 years; hybrid cars are not the way - hydrogen is the path we must trod; treaties - even those written in his lifetime - are too ancient and creaky to underpin our nation's defense (what must he think of some rickety documents like the Declaration of Independence?); and the one that surely must be thought of as Belief Zero - if Bill Clinton did it, it must be wrong.
It is from these beliefs - those of a man who has a surety of self that is supremely uninformed by his own record of achievement - that we have arrived where we are today: 3000 of our citizens killed in one day from an attack by an organization that until 12 September 2001 never received more than passing attention (next time you hear anyone complain about the Clinton Administration response to the attack on the Cole; ask them what the Bush II Administration did?); 3000 of our soldiers dead and tens of thousands of them gravely wounded in service of a war against a man (Saddam Hussein) and a nation (Iraq) that had neither the intention nor ability to attack our nation and still today - 24 January 2007 - the man who struck the gravest blow against our nation that has ever been struck walks the earth as free as the day he was born. Almost 2000 days have past since that fateful day. Scores of children have been born into this new world - the world created in the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001. How they must walk around and think that as it is now it has always been an forever shall be: airplane passengers treated like criminals simply for wanting to fly and color-coded messages that tell us how fearful we should be on any given day. A world in which the adults talk of never-ending war and then tell their kids that violence is not the answer. Our actions are leading us further from the goals in which we profess to believe: Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward all Her People.
When will we arise from this nightmare, shake loose the cobwebs from our minds and venture forth with the confident stride of our ancestors, as opposed to these timid steps that keep us within the limited visibility of our "leaders"?
I should make this clear: I was against this war in Iraq before it started; I am against it now; I do not support expanding the war with a "troop surge" and I certainly do not support increasing the field of battle by attacking Iran and/or Syria. I lived and worked in NYC back in 2001 and I was their on that day. I want those responsible for that attack to face justice. Last I heard, the whole world believes UBL to be living on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
2006-10-24
If it weren't for those meddling kids!
This is almost too funny. It seems that a few days ago, a liberal friend of ours waded across the Atlantic - being careful not to trip over the bones of several million dead Afrikans - to complain to his British friends about those nefarious negroes in the CBC.
Yes - if it wasn't for those unfair darky members of the Congressional Black Caucus, white Democrats would be free to . . . do I really need to continue this parody? For those of you who are new to US politics, let me sum up this position as exactly analogous to the one that ended the first Reconstruction period, after the Civil War. Strangely enough, back then it was Democrats who complained the most then too. Andrew Johnson brought that brief 15-year period to a close and the Democrats were returned to power in the South (and the South has always produced more Presidents than the rest of the nation, I think it is the mint juleps but frankly – I don’t really care). Of course, they brought with them their old buddy Jim Crow and their new buddy KKK, but I am sure Democrats with 100-years of aging will not make those same mistakes decisions (because Professor Alterman tells us we can trust his friends; you know the ones who overlooked the 2000 election voting irregularities in Florida - when Black votes were thrown out because their names "resembled" the names of felons or those same nice folks in New Orleans who forgot that not everyone in the country has a car to drive off to their second home to escape an approaching hurricane).
Yes - let us place our trust in that same white man who brought us here in chains, because his kindly professor tells us we have no need to worry anymore.
Hallelujah!
I just wish Dr. King had lived to see this day.
2006-10-19
Can you tell a Sunni from a Shia
So, this is not my primary area of interest, but war should have the ability to focus ones thinking, no?
Very good question posed by this Jeff Stein; one has to wonder why no one has ever asked President Bush this question. But the boundaries of this "global war on terror" have expanded so wildly, that this question is no longer enough.
One of the poster here has pointed out that Iran is a Persian country and there is a lengthy history of animosity between Persians and Arabs (who are the majority of Iraqi's of any religion) that goes back much longer than the recent war between these two nations.
But now the word "nation" has introduced another hole into which the GWOT (or here) has stumbled, as Persia (Iran) has a long and storied history (which makes the idea of "regime change" there seem somewhat like an even loftier pipe dream; on the other hand, Iraq is just a creation of the west - for us, by us, in classic "FuBu" style - and its purpose was to serve our interests. So Iraq (and Kuwait too) are not nations in the classic sense like an Italy or a France or an England; peopled by folks with a history a common identity and an interest to want to live in a political union. Iraq was created by the west (Britain) to provide us with steady access to the oil that lay underneath the sand; we cared not about democracy or anything else that might hinder the oil flow. We can debate whether we truly believe in a democratic Iraq today, but the model is imprecisely applied as Iraq was never a nation to begin with.
The southwestern boundary was a compromise with King al Saud; the southeastern boundary was truncated to create Kuwait - as a means to siphon of the oil (a classic divide and conquer move to prevent oil from being in the control of just one country - as well as to prevent easy access to the Persian Gulf for Iraq, placing a premium on the pipeline builders); the western boundary was rather haphazardly drawn adjacent to Jordan and Syrian; the norther boundary was drawn to divide up any potential future Kurdistan dreams, by dividing up the Kurdish population between Turkey, Iraq and Iran - the nation that boarders Iraq on the East and probably has the most realistic (natural?) boarder of any nation with Iraq.
So into Iraq - this cauldron of peoples and religions - comes the most uncurious George we have ever had as a president; Shia versus Sunni is the start of any questions that need to be asked - not the end.
Be a good question to ask before you start a war - regardless of the urgency or the imminence of the threat, as that is a good way to know if you are going after a single bee or stumbling into a hornet's nest.
2006-10-07
Last of His Era
Never much of a baseball fan myself; when I was a kid, the concept of standing at a plate while some other kid threw a ball at me was not appealing. There, I said it. Football was more my game - more direct, more action and more tuned into what seems to come so naturally to kids: run around and hit people. Baseball was so sedate in comparison. I could go on; I could tell you how my older brother never really played baseball much and that I tend to trust his judgment.
But baseball was my grandfather's game. Summer vacations tended to line up with visits to my grandparents and those visits always found a baseball game on the set - and it did not matter who was playing. So as I grew older and began to attempt to learn more about this man who was the sine qua non of my existence, I starting watching those games with him whenever I visited and catching a game or two on TV at home myself. It occurred to me then that baseball is - perhaps more than any other sport - the search for perfection; repeated over and over and done in front of an audience and a hostile opponent. Pitchers chasing a perfect game; catchers chasing the perfect pitch to call for every count against every hitter; hitters chasing batting averages and home run titles; infielders chasing error free play and outfielders chasing the perfect hit-stealing, high-jumping or grass sliding catch. There is beauty in that.
Still for many years, that beauty was overshadowed by hatred, the insane hatred by white Americans against a people that has never wronged them. No war has ever been fought by these children of Europe against the sons and daughters of Afrika and yet they hate us so. For many years, that hatred expressed itself in the form of white people proclaiming that they would not allow us to sully "their" game by allowing us to play on the same field with them. And while this same story has been repeated in every other game or endeavor that the white man has ever insisted was his and his alone - from boxing to track to football to golf - no where did it strike more fear in the hearts of white men than to allow Afrikans to compete on the same baseball diamond with them. This fear kept Satchel Page from being on the same field as Joltin' Joe; made Jackie Robinson a household word even to this day for standing up against that fear in the strong, resolute manner that has ever been adopted by Afrikans facing abuse in America; and it is that same fear that kept Buck O'Neil out the Baseball Hall of Fame all of these years. To Afrikans, the question is almost ridiculous to even ask: did Buck O'Neil contribute enough to the game of baseball to be so honored with admittance into the HOF? Of course. Not only has his love of the game been in evidence throughout his 94 years on this earth, in his time he has only brought honor to the game. And all of this for a game that for much of his life, the fathers and grandfathers of those who were yet the latest to disrespect him denied him the opportunity to play on their hallowed fields and against their sainted elite.
The final vote of white supremacy in the game of baseball was cast this past March, when those children chose to validate the decisions of the fathers; when those children endorsed the viewpoints of their fathers; when those children cast their lots with their fathers - and told Buck O'Neil that he was not equal to his white compatriots of the era.
In the end - though those children had not the strength to stand up to the wrongs of their fathers and had not the strength to look Buck O'Neil eye to eye. What does that say about the lessons they will pass to their sons?
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