Archive for March, 2008
Four Words on Kwame Kilpatrick
Black power is dead.
Radio Interview with Minister Faust tomorrow (easter sunday)
Minister Faust is an sf writer, a Pan-Africanist public intellectual, and a thinker deeply immersed in both the wisdom of the Ancients and the geo-political realities of the present day. And if it sounds like homeboy is from Detroit (or maybe brooklyn), you’re showing your Americentric roots. Faust is Afro-Canadian (currently living in Edmonton). Anyway, he’s supposed to be interviewing me tomorrow, either for his podcast or for his radio show. If it is a live joint I’ll let you know. We’re going to be talking about the Obama speech, and Pastor Jeremiah Wright among other things.
Back in the Barbershop (Obama, Kilpatrick, and more)
After a bit of a hiatus I was back on the barbershop doing the thing. Among the topics of discussion were Obama’s speech, Kilpatrick’s chances in Detroit, and the LeBron James Vogue cover with Gisele.
The Obama Speech–Coming Back to Earth
One of my colleagues (Adolph Reed) called Obama’s speech The Philadelphia Compromise, tying it to Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise. One of my friends argued that he gave a “placating speech.”
I’d like to see Reed’s reasoning in full.
But I could make the claim that just like Washington, Obama purposely ignored the contemporary structural problems that have us in the situation we’re in now. And in talking about “race” rather than “racism” and “understanding” as opposed to “politics” he moves us towards “unity” rather than structural change.
When I heard Obama’s speech yesterday I felt it was the best campaign speech I’ve heard delivered. I still think it represents a powerful template upon which other candidates can build upon. But when I read this interview it gave me pause.
What I don’t like about Obama and Harold Ford and other black candidates who seek high office and have to rely on white voters to do so, is the way they every now and then throw black people under the bus. I remember when Harold Ford made it a point to criticize the move towards Ebonics in Oakland without prompting AND without seeking to understand the nuts and bolts of the issue.
When Obama mentions his distaste for the “black community’s” behavior in the OJ verdict, unprompted, it upset me. You’d be hard pressed to find a case that concludes in a guilty verdict where the police are caught redhanded lying on the stand. Obama, unprompted, was either saying he disagreed with the verdict black jurors rendered or with the elation some black people evinced when they heard the verdict.
In either case this places him on the wrong side of the law. The wrong side of history. The wrong side of white supremacy.He’s got a tough road ahead, granted. And I appreciated the way he made the interviewer realize how looking for white analogues to Wright’s speech are simply impossible. But my high is now gone. And while I’m not quite back to square one, I’m closer than I was at 1pm yesterday.
A student in distress needs our help
Every now and then you get a forward that you in turn forward? This is almost like one of those joints…but in this case I KNOW the person sending the original. She is an educator with a pure heart.
She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta, and in the process of trying to assist a former student pursue her dream of becoming a member, she found out that the young woman was not only going to have to put her plans to pledge aside, she was thinking about leaving school in order to take care of a serious financial issue at home.
I can vouch that this didn’t happen last year, that this hasn’t already been taken care of, that this is legit. I just got wind of it after I heard the Obama speech.Please consider donating, or at least blogging about this on your own. If you DO forward this, or blog about this PLEASE attach a date to it so folks won’t try to send money ten years down the line:
Dear Friends and Family, I know I come to you often for your support but after the phone call I received this morning for one of my favorite former students, I am asking that you help me out with the request below. This young lady is strong and very humble. She did not call me for help but after hearing about her family, I could not do anything today but think about her. If you knew her, you would do what you can to help her too. I have 25 days to try and help her. If you have it to give, please consider helping Eboni out. See below and pass this on to other who may consider helping.
Every Sunday evening, I watch Home Makeovers. By the end of the show I am usually crying. It reminds me that in spite of all the negative things we see everyday on the news, there are still good people out there.
I know a young lady who is troubled right now. This young lady is a former student of mine and she is very special. We were so very proud of her when she was admitted into the university she attends. She is currently a junior and doing very well.
You see her family was just evicted from their home. She, as a college student, took out a 10,000.00 loan to help out her mother and it wasn’t enough to save them from eviction. They are currently living in a hotel and hoping to find some kind of housing very soon.
What saddens me is that this young lady did everything right. She worked hard when she was in school so that she could get into a good university. She understands the importance of an education. She understands that the degree she will earn will give her a chance for a successful future. She is very involved in community service and spends many hours a week giving to others in need.
I am going to contact local churches to see what can be done about getting them housing. What I want most for this young lady is to pay off the loan she took out for her family. She has a part-time job that helps her pay for her tuition but is struggling to pay the loan back. Her payments are behind and she is very stressed. She should be able to concentrate on school. Can you help me out? I have 25 days to raise 10,000.00 for her. She is not aware that I am doing this because I do not want to get her hopes up. Please give if you can and pass it on to those who have a heart.
One family’s story of economic hardship
Everything has fallen apart — all his dreams, all his plans. He doesn’t have a job, and he’s three months behind on his bills, and he’s afraid of losing his house, and he can’t find any work, and he doesn’t feel like a man anymore, a real man, the guy who used to walk around with a couple hundred in his wallet, just in case.
He hates asking for help — whether it’s the government or relatives or anyone else — and has sold off most of his possessions. The 55-year-old welder can’t support his family and can’t imagine the future. He doesn’t have a pension and his savings have evaporated. When he thinks about everything, he sees only one way out.
“I think about suicide a lot,” he says.
More here.Obama’s chosen a novel strategy to deal with the media furor over his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. But if he’s not able to somehow get families like the one above to see beyond the soundbites, none of this will matter. For what it is worth I don’t think he has it in him. The model of post-racial politics he is pushing simply does not have enough progressive heft to it for him to make the types of innovative leaps required to bring to life a new conception of American citizenship. It’s too bad, because as Craig Nulan notes, it isn’t as if there aren’t other models:
Barack should’ve spelled out his moral propriety rooted in latter day MLK exegesis and put his membership in Trinity in that context. Should’ve done it up front, should’ve had that entire lexicon of blocks, strikes, kicks, and grapples at his ready disposal…
A small solution to the drug war
From David Simon (creator of The Wire):
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right,” wrote Thomas Paine when he called for civil disobedience against monarchy — the flawed national policy of his day. In a similar spirit, we offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn’t resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do — and what we will do.
If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.
More here.
Interesting Take on Obama (formerly: Not Quite Back on the Block)
….but back enough to urge Obama supporters to check out this article. I’ve noted before that I don’t plan on voting for Clinton because her politics are too conservative. This was before she began to race bait Obama. I’m even less sure about Obama than what I was.Shouts out to the folks who looked out for me when I was in L.A. Good food, good pictures, good times, combined with an excellent critique of my work.
