Dr. Lester K. Spence

Check out the essay here. Tell Ridley what you think here. For what it is worth I think the essay is poorly written and poorly structured. And lest someone think that black people have cornered the market on this type of ignorance, we haven’t.

But what it signifies is the degree to which black people have “drunken the koolaid” so to speak, making worn out arguments about cultural failings and using them as a bludgeon against both working class black people and those who would urge us to make government do its job. Yes people like Sharpton should be jettisoned. But as I’ve noted elsewhere they weren’t MY leaders (or anyone else i know).

Check out Mat Johnson’s take. What surprised me the most coming from Mat (and I like his blog, and the book of his that I read) was that he appeared to have liked the essay from a craft perspective. Again, from my viewpoint the essay doesn’t just have a horrible political line, it wouldn’t be published in Esquire if it were about any other social group.

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In his recent post Why Do Families Call on Sharpton Steve Gillard attempts to answer what is probably a pressing question amongs white New Yorkers at the very least. Why is it whenever there is some sort of “racial flare up” Sharpton gets the call? I disagree with Steve on two key points.

I do not believe that Sharpton single-handedly staved off riots in New York City. NYC has a contentious racial history to say the least, but unlike a city like L.A., Miami, or even Philly, very rarely has it burst into flames as a result of racial tension. This is kind of like saying that Bush has been very effective at fighting terrorism because there hasn’t been another attack on US soil since 9/11. I’d like to hear more about the specific incident involving Haitian Americans and the NYC police at the funeral…but I’m not convinced about this argument in general.

I am not convinced that Sharpton has a great deal of support among black New Yorkers. How would we measure this? Again, I don’t think we can or SHOULD measure support by the LACK of some behavior (riots). How many votes did Sharpton get in his various electoral campaigns? How many people are involved in his National Action Network? Note that both of the arguments Steve is making here are in effect non-falsifiable…that is to say, you can’t prove them wrong.

I do think there is a logical reason why black people call on Sharpton–to the degree they do. (Because of the way that the National Action Network operates it is difficult to say when he is called, and when he does the calling.) But it has less to do with his supposed efficiency at generating results (again, what results are we talking about here?) than it is with the way that black people are relegated to some anti-place outside of the bounds of normal politics. And when black people are basically removed from the equation, SOMEONE has to be dealt with to try to negotiate a deal. Sharpton, like Jackson before him, and to a lesser extent King before that, wears the racial broker mantle well.

And we all suffer for it.

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In the wake of Cosby-like arguments damning black people for their condition, I thought it would be helpful to actually talk about the case of a single person who’d done all the right things, but still couldn’t get ahead. Listen to her story here.

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There’s an interesting discussion with two parts
over at P6 about cooperative economics. The belief that black businesses will somehow lift black people from our place on the bottom rungs is driven by a mythical belief in the power of capitalism. If trickle-down economics does not work for whites, why exactly would it work for us? Yes black people are under-serviced, and there is a market that someone like Magic Johnson is perfectly situated to take advantage of. But while I’d rather have someone like Magic making loot than some faceless white-owned development corporation, Magic doesn’t line my pockets.

I watch most of my movies at home at any rate.

But there are two classes of black folk that could use one another, and perhaps leverage their power to generate new urban visions–black intellectuals, and new black money. For two interesting models check out Fast Company, the Global Ideas Bank.

It’s accepted as a cliche that crisis and opportunity are generated in the same moment. In cities like Detroit, what the hell will black book stores, and starbucks really accomplish?

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Bo Schembechler, the greatest sports figure in University of Michigan history passed away two days ago, before Michigan (#2) plays Ohio State (#1) in the 104th version of the greatest rivalry in college sports.

It’s funny.

Black students in general have the same sentiment towards the University of Michigan when the are there, as black people have about the United States. I know that I didn’t start to proudly claim Michigan until sometime in grad school, when I realized that the things that were most important to me in life (my wife, my children, my fraternity, my graduate pursuits) couldn’t have been attained had I gone anywhere else. And also when I realized how much blood sweat and tears me and my boys put into making the school a better place.

Bo was part of the problem here. He kept black players segregated from the rest of the black student community. Those few black players who did decide to pledge a black fraternity had to do so without his knowledge.

But at the same time Bo was reason many of us wanted to be down in the first place–what did I know about an “academic reputation” in the seventh grade? Black students felt good when Michigan won (and were pissed when Michigan State would beat them) just like everyone else. Many of us had neither the money nor the inclination to buy tickets to see the games in person. But we’d be huddled around the tv watching Desmond Howard, Leroy Hoard, Demetrius Williams, Derrick Alexander, Shonte Peoples, and dozens of other players great and not so great, go to work.
I had the opportunity to meet Bo once. One of my older fraternity brothers and I were staying in the hospital for an experiment we participated in. Bo happened to be in a connecting room with his first wife Millie (who was ill). My fraternity brother and I gave him his space, because we were cognizant of why he was there (his wife Millie passed away sometime within the next few years because of her illness). But we talked to him a little, and the others in our experimental cell JOCKED him. What I recognized about him was that he was good people. He could’ve shut the room off from the (well-meaning) knuckleheads that crowded him and his wife. He could have because he had the clout. He could have because he had the right. But he never did.

To say he will be missed–even given his (likely) politics–is an understatement. I likely would have made a very different choice had he not made such a mark on Michigan.

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Jennifer Gratz one of the leaders in the fight against Affirmative Action in Michigan uttered the quote above in a Washington Post piece on end of Affirmative Action in Michigan.  Of the one thing she got right–Affirmative Action was an extremely conservative attempt to solve pressing issues of racial discrimination–the idea that diversity happens naturally without government intervention has got to be the “wrongest.”  School quality is correlated with neighborhood quality on the one hand, and on the socio-economic status of the parents (the mother specifically) on the other.  Neighborhoods in states like Michigan are racially segregated and segregated by class.

This process does not occur without a combination of private interest–white property values increase the whiter a neighborhood is because they value racial exclusivity–and government policy.  Many of the regions with the best schools in Michigan and elsewhere exist as a consequence of past racial discrimination perpetuated by government policy.  And while it is now illegal to use racial covenants and the like to ensure “racial purity” there are ways around it (racial “steering”, coded language in real estate paperwork) that ensure similar results.  Finally, the use of municipal zoning laws have been very effective at keeping low to moderate income families out of wealthier neighborhoods.  This is government.

Charles Mills argues that whites have created a consensual hallucination that is difficult for them to get out of.  Gratz is literally clueless about the ways that state policies create and maintain white supremacy because she (purposely) took the wrong pill.

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My most recent commentary on NPR deals with the fallout from the defeat of Proposal 2 in Michigan, which would ban most forms of Affirmative Action in college admissions, hiring, and in awarding contracts.  I think the effect on black enrollment at Michigan will be pretty traumatic, while the long term effect on white male enrollment will probably be pretty bad as well.

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Usually on a miserable day like today I rely on self-medication. Like I did yesterday. But that alone isn’t cutting it, particularly after I just got back from talking about the devastating effect that the prison industrial complex is having on urban centers like Baltimore.

So while checking out the Detroit Free Press I ran across this article about Will Smith and his next film effort. The film sounds interesting enough that I’ll probably catch it as a rental unless I’ve some time over the Christmas Holiday. But what continues to impress me about Will and his wife is their commitment to a democratic life. Check out that last quote Jada drops about Proposal 2.

Politics isn’t about electing candidates. It’s about resources…and also possibilities. They understand the possibilities inherent in American life more than most.

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I’ve been reading Mat Johnson’s blog Niggerati.com since Tayari hipped me to it. In a recent post he tests whether Black Lit is for White People by looking at the type of black literature given prominent awards by mainstream literature critics. I’d like to know whether the tendency he identifies is one that occurs in non-black lit. It could be that there is a preference for historical literature in general.

But more importantly I think the librarian is wrong in her assumption. The reason why black people in general prefer black fiction to black literature is the same reason why Americans in general prefer fiction to literature. They are more interested in consuming disposable culture (paperbacks were designed to be literally thrown away after being read; it doesn’t take much of an intellect to figure out what “Who Ya Wit” is about) than they are in consuming “high art.” Do you know how many book clubs have fractured over the choice between reading Zane and reading something like The Untelling?

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even in the worse ways.  part of me–the democratic theorist and actor–understands that part of my mission is to expand the ability of folks to speak their “special” truth, even when that “special” is “special” as in “special” needs.  we’ve got to make it so that people like my grandfather who didn’t have a high school degree the first can make sense of the world and argue for the common good against some knucklehead with a phd.

but the other part of me needs expertise.  i wish john ridley would stick to writing about mutants.

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