Monthly Archive

Every workday morning when my bus drops me off on 6th St I pass by a row of big empty buildings.  They used to be upscale restaurants (one was a five-star for over 40 years) but now they are just empty shells; where they were once teaming with life, they stand abandoned as a tribute to a dying downtown nightlife.

As I survey the edifices from the opposite side of the street I replace the old buildings with different businesses.  I think where the french restaurant used to be would be a great place for a Morrocan restaurant.  And next door to it, maybe a Korean Grill?  Or an upscale Latin-Vietnamese fusion place.  I can see a changing landscape to businesses that would reflect the gradual changing of faces and cultures that are now inhabiting the Queen City.

I’m not sure if that is something that could be recognized as being needed in a city that sees racial diversity as having two or three blacks in a sea of white. 

But then, people have different ideas about what makes something “diverse” anyway.  For some people, heterogeneity would be an array of varying hues.  Or, excluding race, some would think a cross-section of ethnicities and cultures means more to diversity than color.  Others think that economic variance brings more of a variety than race and culture would.  Then there are sexual preferences, although they are harder to gauge just by looking at a person’s appearance.

These are the things that run through my head yesterday as Sybil tells me about her plan to build the perfect lair –I mean hiking club –so she can meet her dream man.  She’s planning on making the cards so she can pass them out to potential cute male hikers.  She asked me to suggest some places she could go and hang up a flier and pass out cards and I suggested this one area.

“But isn’t that a gay area?” she asked.

“Well… yeah… kind of.  But an eclectic bunch of people seem to roll through there.  What’s the problem with having gays join?”

“Because I’m a gay magnet,” she said.  And she is.  When we were in our twenties most of her closest male friends were gay.  Unintentionally they became her ideal and her stand-bys during her spate of being sans boyfriend.  But now, for the makeshift community she’s building, she wants to create a group that is racially diverse but restricted by age and sexual preference.

“I don’t want to go there,” she dismissed the diner I suggested because it was in that neighborhood.  “Isn’t there a place in the city that is creative and conservative?”

“No, not really.  A creative conservative would be an oxymoron here, don’t you think?”

Our city is not only stratified by race but also by class sensibilities.  One day while visiting my best friend Vee on the westside of town I was in dire physical need of coffee and went in search for a Starbucks or a coffeehouse.  There was none to be found.  In a five mile circumference around my home there are at least five eight Starbucks and three or four independent coffee shops.  I find it odd that coffee houses would be pervasive on my side of town and asked friends who lived on the west side what gives?  Why no Starbucks?    There’s one in the grocery store on Harrison, a friend said.  They didn’t see a need for it and my notion for having a surplus of them (I thought they just needed one or two on a main throroughfare) seemed so eastside to them.  The eastside is where those with money (or those who desire it) seem to habitate, they said.  The westside is the working class; they’re for Godliness and no nonsense.

No, we can’t meet.  No, no intermingling.  East is east and west is west and everything is just fine, thank you very much.  So on the westside diversity constitutes of being catholic or methodist or presbyterian and on the eastside one would find the chichi clothing stores, the art galleries and, for some reason, an abundance of coffee houses.  For the eastsiders diversity is what street you live on and which neighborhood.

My city is divided by race with neighborhoods that are nearly all black or all white.  Yet in some of the roughest sections there are oases of affluence on a few blocks.  You can be walking down a street that seems to be a rough, blighted area with a few small trees and houses that need a lot of work with large dirt patches in their front yard and then turn the corner and be among tall trees and large houses with lush lawns. 

In a lot of those black areas there aren’t a lot of black businesses.  And we are just beginning to have a discernable latino community, which at first was spread throughout the area but now seems to be concentrated on the lower westside.  My thoughts were that it seemed cool; we could finally be like other cities and maybe have a Lil Havana or a Chinatown or Koreatown; there could be ethnic enclaves that one could patronize and get authentic food (yeah, I’m thinking of my stomach).  J disagrees.  He likes the fact that the races (aside from African Americans) are interspersed among the community and thinks the idea of different neighborhoods inhabited by race or ethnic groups to be exclusionary, even if they are self segregating themselves. 

“Its not really self segregation,” J argues.  “They move into those areas because no one else wants them in their communities.” J is a student of urban planning and ethnic studies and then proceeds to lecture me about the planned building of neighborhoods, the marginalization of minorities, and the disenfranchisement of the poor.  Although he’s Korean,  he wouldn’t appreciate a Koreatown in our city unless it could be built up and as prosperous as the richer city communities. 

“I’m against planned minority ghettos,” J said.

Although I can see his point I can’t concede it.  Sometimes people want to be around what makes them comfortable which may include being around others with similar backgrounds and heritage.  I have a friend whose mother lives in the projects and even when they moved her out to do a two year renovation she moved back in when the time came.   She grew up there and then raised her son there; it was all she knew.  The community is beginning to change, though so I’m not sure how much longer she will stay but I suspect that when she moves again she will search for another place that offers her the same feeling.

But going back to my vision of a utopian society it would be a place where all cultures could co-exist peaceably side by side and it wouldn’t matter what color someone’s skin was or what religion they practiced.  No one would care if someone loved someone else who was the same gender.  There wouldn’t be any class barriers.  I’m sure I sound like naive dreamer but I don’t think I’m the only one….

(John Lennon music swelling in the background to a finish)

“I hope someday you’ll join us/And the world will live as one”.

Macy’s department store has angered hispanic Americans with their t-shirt that says “Brown is the New White“. 

I wonder if the person whose bright idea it was to imprint that slogan on a t-shirt is dumbfounded about how it went over in the latino community.  You can take that phrase a few different ways and a couple of them are pretty insulting.

It might surprise some in the majority that many in the minority don’t aspire to whiteness.  I can see how they might get that confused, considering they have all the cool stuff and are running everything.  But many who know their heritage and where they come from don’t want to trade it in to move up; they want to move up and carry all of that along with them.

But with the rapid browning of America maybe in a few years we will white people sporting the t-shirts “White is the New Brown”?

Sometimes when I’m bored on a Monday night I will watch the Brookhaven Obesity Clinic show on TLC.  The show is about grossly obese people who won’t/can’t lose weight so they check themselves in to get help.  Most of the residents sneak food in or have accomplices that sneak it in to them.  One episode I saw made my jaw drop as I watched a guy decide to amputate his gnarled leg because he knew he just couldn’t give up the food.

It’s like that for some folks.  Some people are addicted to food and they just can’t leave it alone like crack or bad tv.  But just because someone has a drug or an alcohol problem it doesn’t mean that those around them will soon succumb to the problem.

The New England Journal of Medicine says its different for weight gain.  According to an article in today’s NYT if you run with a fat crew then, you too, will probably become fat. 

I have friends who weigh close or over 300lbs and I am no where near that.  In the black community some people don’t feel a woman is sexy until she hits 160lbs and has some meat on them bones.  I know when I was at my thinnest (126lbs) I was told by my female elders needed to eat and gain more weight, not lose anymore and once I hit 130 I got their seal of approval.

But for the country at large, I don’t know if I agree of the peer pressure to gain weight or even women trying to keep up with the Joneses.  I think the study is too simplistic in its approach, what about cultural attitudes and access to healthy food?  What about the use of food as a means of socializing? 

And what I really fear is that people will use this as a way to discriminate against overweight people. 

I think we can all agree that as a society we might all need to lose some weight but I don’t think we need to jettison a group  socially because we are afraid they’ll raise our cholesterol.

That’s just my two cent.

A few years ago when Kelis made her debut with the song “I Hate You So Much Right Now” I was in love with her music.  Finally a song of defiance and with a touch of punk rock. 

But that went by the wayside with the quickness.  Black female empowerment doesn’t sell music.  When they aren’t being arm charms in someone else’s music video they are boy toys in their crooning, like Lil Kim’s pseudo-confidence that is closer to concubine.  Artists who think their power comes from talking about what is between their legs instead of what they have between their ears.  When singers like Fefe Dobson and Cree Summer (I know, hard to believe) tried to put out music with a rock feel and lyrics that didn’t talk about sex they became marginalized.  Jean Grae has a record deal and is a spitter whose putting out more than just vacuous lines of rhymes, but black radio isn’t showing her much love.

My friend just sent me this link to Raging Geishas and I’m in love with this group.  This is the kind of stuff my daughter and I have been on the search for.

Peep them on Myspace and the article from the Miami New Times.

Where was this group when I was going to punk concerts?

It premieres tonight.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a hit.

Jumping around from the blogs and upset media critics about the show and how the name change (from Hot Ghetto Mess to We Must Do Better) isn’t necessarily going to make a whole lot of difference for a show that may predicate itself on being an advocate for change but instead is helping in the deterioration of the black image.

But its not the only show.  I’ve complained about Flavor of Love (if PE sanctioned Professor Griff for anti-semitic comments he made in the 80s they definitely need to curb Flav for his beyond the pale minstelsy on the tube), I Love New York and then Charm School.   Popular with white and black audiences, these shows help to promote the buffoonery image of African Americans.  Many people will tune in to watch our shame parade around in prime time and, the sad part is, some will be thinking that it really is a way to elevate the community.

Except for me.  I put a parental lock on BET after I viewed one of their video shows that resembled soft porn.  I agree with the title of their new show, We Must Do Better, but doing better for a lot of black parents will mean locking out that station.

So, Sybil emails me to ask if I knew anyone who could help her create a website.  She wants the website to try to encourage more people to join her hiking club.  Aside from being her main form of exercise, Sybil wants to use the hiking group as a way to meet single men her age.  She had joined another established group but most of the other members were over 50.

“And you can come, too,” she offered.  “Bring your husband.  I want to make it as diverse as possible.”

On the first couple of hikes she invited three other people and only one person showed up.  She’s hoping with the website she can attract people who are over 30 but under 50 with diverse races and, of course, a couple of males thrown in with the females.

I am wishing the best for her but I don’t know if it will happen.  The city we live in sucks for singles and throw in the fact that Sybil is a tad bit on the eccentric side and has hit forty its going to be harder.  It would also help if she knew what she wanted.  She kind of knows what she wants: she wants a male, non-black, over 33, under 50 and that’s about it.  I told her she needs to be more specific; how does the universe know what you want if you don’t know what you want?  She told me she was being specific –did I mention she’s ditzy, too? 

She calls me up at work one day to tell me that this gorgeous Indian man is standing in front of her and she needed to know what to say.

“Well… have you tried hello?”

She giggles like a school girl,”Yes.  But what do I say next?”

“It depends on what he says.”

“But then what do I say after that?”  I could not see myself being a hi-tech Cyrano to her Christian.  How can I comtemplate everything that he, a stranger, can possibly say and help her to look witty, alluring, and seductive all while she has a phone glued to her ear?  Its impossible.

But I see where she’s coming from.  She just turned 40 at the beginning of the year and for the last four (maybe five or six, I lost count) she’s been celibate.  She hasn’t really tried to date since she returned back to the Midwest with broken heart when things didn’t work out between her and his Asian guy.  Now she’s wondering if she made the right choice in coming back.  She had a bigger selection of Asian men (her preference)  on the West Coast and since she’s been back she felt as if no one is giving her the eye, not even black men.  Which is untrue.  There have been black and white men that have expressed an interest in her, she just hasn’t felt an attraction to the men who were feeling her.  And the one she was feeling for a moment was not for her; he’s was Asian but he was gay.

Its not like she’s not an attractive woman; she’s very pretty actually.  In her younger days she has done some modeling and she looks like she could be Brandy’s older sister.  Personality wise she’s like like a black Phoebe from the tv show “Friends”.  For real, no embellishment there.  She plays the guitar just as well and, although she has never written a song like “Smelly Cat” her punk-folk songs she penned when we were in high school were about as quirky.  I don’t know why she’s single.  I’ve met less attractive women who are paired up.  I know women who are nuttier than she is and 10 times as mean and they have a man.  But for some reason whatever Sybil is sending out into the universe, the universe has reward her goodness in the form of a man.

I don’t know what to tell her.  Hang in there? It seems so trite.  I tried to introduce her to the world of online dating and encouraged her to go on to MySpace which, yes is teaming with oversexed teens and twenties, but seems to have some serious minded mature men on there.  She created a profile that was about as exciting as a blank sheet of paper.  I tried to give some tips (none of which she followed).  Aside from Tom she made one friend –a black guy.  I knew that wasn’t going to go anywhere because she’s not attracted to black guys; I’ve never known her to date one.  She’s dated white, red, and yellow but never black guy, at least not seriously.  After a few months she deleted her profile.

“I don’t have the time to go on there,” she told me.

“If don’t have the time to go online how are you going to find time to date?” I asked.

But she wants to date.  And she wants my advice, although in the past anything I have told her she immediately did the complete opposite of –with disasterous results I might add.  Once 40 hit she’s feeling the pinch so she’s looking to find a guy, any guy well almost any guy, if you’ve read this far you know the criteria (preferably Asian but almost any non black, a bit eccentric like she is).  But if whites have a hard time of dating in this city then for African American women is veritably non existant for a lot of us. 

So what can I say that she will even give any heed?

“Just because you are 40 don’t act desperate,” I said.  “You are still a hot commodity so no sex on the first date.”

“What if I want to?” she asked.

“But you don’t.”

“But what if I–”

I interrupted her.  “No, you really don’t.  You give it up early you set the tone for the relationship and that’s all it ever will be is sex.”

“Its been such a long time,” she whined.

“Girl, you’ve gone this long without it you can go a bit longer.”  She was quiet on her end of the phone.  “Sybil!” I was exasperated.  “For real, you can.”

“Yeah… okay.”  Her voice was small and unconvincing.  Its gonna be a long journey.

Dunbar is one of my favorite poets.  He’s a native Ohioan so I have to give him love.

This guy here deserves a lotta love, too. And he also hails from Dayton.

Check out his interview on NPR and also his performing schedule.  I’m kinda hurt he’s not coming my way, but I’m going to have to see about that.  I’ve gotta make it happens that he performs because I don’t have the time to hunt him down.

Rev Al Sharpton is backing NY Senator Antoine Thompson’s idea to pull public investments from record companies that won’t curb their hyper-masculine artists who insists on denigrating black women by calling them “bitches” and “hos” and disparaging the rest of the black community by referring to one another as nigger.

Sounds like a good idea.  So why aren’t I happy?

I would be more inclined to think a substantial change was forthcoming if it was the artists sanctioning their brethren or the audience making their voices heard by witholding their money by not buying the pablum the record companies are putting out.  I’m curious to see what effect it will have with government officials stepping in on the act?  Will it be positive or will the Tipper Gore effect come into play?

I was a teen in the eighties; that’s when you listened to your raunchy music like Darlin’ Nikki after midnight.  Listening to artists on the radio today make the raunchiest of music back then seem tame.  Back then it was mostly alluded to; double entendres were tools of skilled lyricists.  Today’s rappers and singers have no time (or wit) for that.  Everything is on the table, when they are singing about fellatio or cunnilingus they use street parlance of getting head, going downtown, eat my….

But back to the point,  those of us who wanted to hear the full version of Little Red Corvettte, Darlin Nikki or whatever knew to just stay up after midnight to hear it.  At sixteen, seventeen I was going to the record store and buying Too Live Crew’s “Throw That D” which had the real version on the other side.  I bought the records home and left them out for my mom to see because I knew she wasn’t going to go through my albums.   But then one of my older brothers went through them (that dang bible thumper) and told on me.  As a child of God I gave my questionable albums away to my good friend who didn’t have a mother or brothers who would check and where at her house we could listen to our filth flarn filth in peace.

So when Tipper Gore came out with her idea about record labeling (similar to movie ratings) my family thought it was cool.  I personally didn’t care because I knew it wasn’t going to stop me from listening to what I was going to listen to.  I found out about music from my friends who found out about from their friends or local makeshift djs.  We passed around mixtapes.  No one was going to stop the music.

So yeah, I’m wondering what effect the crusade will have on musical tastes of our young.  As a mother I don’t pay attention to the ratings on the music.  My daughter doesn’t buy cds.  I buy her cds.  But much like it was when I was a kid, she gets some of her music selections from her friends (for her its mix cds).  Long ago I had a talk with her about music selection.  I let her know what was appropriate to listen to and what things she didn’t want seeping into her subconscious by repetitive chanting (like women are bitches and hos). 

The other day as we were driving down the street we talked about how everything on the music sounds the same and I mentioned that it goes like that in spurts.  I told her about how for a while everyone wanted to sound like Prince, then it was Teddy Riley (she didn’t know who he was), and now its whomever it is.  We were listening to K-Os at the time and my daughter noted how his sound was different.

“Everything on the radio wouldn’t be so incestuous if they played artists like him,” she said.

Which is true.  But what big radio station is advocating on his behalf?  Or Blackalicious?  Or Michael Franti?  I list about ten positive young rappers and singers who have a unique sound but don’t get any airplay.  Sheeple need to ask themselves why is it?  Is it because their music isn’t as good as the folks on the radio?  Or is it because the big companies have the radio stations so hemmed up that they play whatever it is they send over.  When selling product its not conducive for companies to have an intelligent consumer. 

Being young and being dumb almost go hand in hand.  People don’t really expect much with their music except good beats and a catchy hook.  And if parents aren’t worried about what music their children are listening to then why would anyone else be?

I’ll be keeping an eye on media watchblogs like What About Our Daughters.  Something tells me its more the voice of that enterprising young sister than a sudden attack of conscious that has Sharpton looking critically at the record companies anyway. 

On Sunday my daughter and I went to see the movie Hairspray.  We’ve been waiting for it to come out and would have went to see it on Friday but our day was filled.

So now that I’ve seen it… eh.

The music was great although not memorable except for the final song, “You Can’t Stop the Beat” and “Good Morning Baltimore”.  The acting was good; I really liked Elijah Kelly who played Seaweed, he’s a great singer and dancer.  I’ve never seen the broadway rendition, but I have seen the original several times and the original 1960’s music is stuck in my brain (The Roach and I’m Blue are iconic) but I would never compare Adam Shankman’s musical to John Water’s original.

As I think back I realize it might have been the setting.  To get good seats my daughter and I went to the movie theater close to our house instead of the one in the city or across the river.  We couldn’t help but notice we were the only faces in the room; the place was filled with white movie goers of all ages and there were parents there with their tweens.  As I watched the dance sequence where Tracy, Seaweed and the black cast members dance and sing on a bus I think to myself, “I wonder if my mother would like this movie?”

And I hit the problem right on the head.

I love Waters.  His movies are fun and irreverent.  They thumb their noses at the man.  But I wouldn’t necessarily call some of them family movies.  His movies and usually his audiences are filled with subversives.  We come to laugh at ourselves but also to feel empowered by the fact the those in the mainstream didn’t get the joke. 

Who else but Waters could get away with putting all the black kids in slow learner’s class?  Or decide to have beatniks (wonderfully played by Pia Zadora and Ric Ocasek) chide Ricky Lake’s Tracy for being so uncool because she was a “hair hopper”.   Or have a fat girl become the most popular girl on a dance show anyway.  Waters doesn’t see things the way the rest of the world sees them; he views life through glasses that makes up down and down up. Similarly to how Tim Burton puts a moribund twist on the world, Waters has a way of creating parallel worlds that we sort of recognize as being a negative film strip of the place we are living in.

Perhaps its because times have changed that Waters can be seen as customary.   Nothing will probably ever be able to top the lunacy of Pink Flamingos but daytime talk shows like the Jerry Springer Show and Maury Povich come close.  The side show performances of those programs make the unmentionable mundane.  I once turned on the Springer show to see a man argue that he should be allowed to marry his rodent because they had a spiritual meeting of the minds.  

Shankman’s Hairspray kind of felt like an afterschool special with a moral: I’m different and that’s okay!  It might have even been a line in the movie.  Looking back forty-five years ago it seems more like nostalgia than it did when it was 1987. 

So, if you are in the mood for an upbeat, feel good movie (and these days who isn’t?) then I would still suggest going to see Hairspray. 

My heart has just dropped. 

I cruised on to NPR’s Tell Me More and saw that my favorite poet/performance artist Sekou Sundiata has passed away.  I became introduced to Sundiata’s work when I found out he had been signed to Ani DiFranco’s label.  I bought both of his cd’s (Long Story Short and The Blue Oneness of Dreams) and I have been known to use his poems on my mixtapes and cds that I make for friends.   I love his poems Isle de Goree and Black Boys to Men.  I love the sound of his voice as he read his words; his cadence and inflections are better than anything being played over beats on the radio.

I pray for his loved ones and hope they know his words reached many.

There rest of the world really isn’t feeling us right now.

Usually that point doesn’t hit home to me, being that I live in the Midwest and rarely venture off my own little block.  But I am helping my daughter prepare for a trip to the UK in a couple of weeks and yesterday was the money exchange.  Her father gave me a couple hundred to put on a gift card for her and while I was there I decided to exchange some dollars into pounds.  My bank didn’t have the money on hand and said it would be better for me to go to another one up the street but I couldn’t since it was five and they were all about to close.  I asked the woman what the exchange rate was, from dollars to pounds and she said she didn’t know.

So I went and googled it and what I saw made my mouth drop.

Now, I know that we aren’t as endeared around the world as we used to be and the image of the ugly American tourist has shamed us all, but has it come to the point that across the globe in 1st world countries we have to pay twice as much to be there?

I went to the currency calculator and it showed me that it takes two dollars to equal one pound. 

What is up with England?  How are they going to play us when they were right there with us in that war?

Since I’m not a world traveler things like this usually go over my head.  I didn’t even pay attention to the news reports on July 2 when they said that the dollar was at a low.   But since my daughter is making this trip it has opened up for me.  I explained to her the rate of exchange this way: a hamburger, fries and drink that might cost 3-5 bucks here at Wendy’s will cost 6-10 over there.

“What?!”  She wasn’t happy.

I’m not usually an overly patriotic person.  While everyone is yelling “YEAH!  U-S-A!” I’m the one with just a simple “yeah”.  But even I’m pondering about how the strength of our dollar has is becoming flaccid.   Is it time to send Bush on a world tour to remind them how great we are?  If we do hopefully it won’t turn into a similar incident like Bush Sr.’s embarassing moment when he vomited on Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. 

Well, with the weakness of the dollar that should bring tourists here for a shopping spree.  So to all those in the UK and Europe, it’s the end of the season sale in malls across the country.  Bring lots of money, because we need it.

Dewayne Wickam’s column today was about Obama’s speech to African Americans in Washington a couple of days ago.  In the speech Obama took African American’s to task about the state of the black community.

From Wickam’s column:

“It makes a difference when a father realizes that responsibility does not end at conception, when he understands that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one,” Obama said. “It makes a difference when a parent turns off the TV once in a while, puts away the video games, and starts reading to their child, and getting involved in their education…

“There is only so much government can do,” Obama said. “We have an entire generation of young men in our society who have become products of violence. And we have to break the cycle. … If we don’t change how we raise our children, it doesn’t matter how many programs come in here, how much money comes in here. It doesn’t matter how many politicians come in here, how many times we pray. It doesn’t matter.”

Back in May the Washington Post reported that Obama was dishing out tough love in his speeches to the black community. 

His approach doesn’t seem to be working.  Hillary Clinton is outpacing him with black voters.  

For some reason Obama truly believes that if African American voters got to know who he is, learn his record and his commitment to the black community that we will know that he has our  best interests at heart and in turn give him our vote.

Perhaps Obama gives us too much credit.

I’m not one to tell Obama how to run his campaign, but I suspect that if he wants to gain ground with a larger group of African Americans then platitudes will get him a bit further than telling it like it t-i is .  The good and the bad is all good for many of us and at the last meeting for “African American Empowerment for the 21st Century” we decided to keep the party line that y-t is oppressive, slavery was a mother, and African Americans are continual victims of our situation.  When someone brings up an argument about personal responsibilty and freeing the chains that bind us we immediately go back to those three defenses.   He would know that if he came to last couple of meetings instead of stomping in politically white areas.   He would also know that airing our personal business where white folks can hear is also a no-no.

It’s probably perplexing to a lot of non-blacks to see that a lot of African Americans are non-plussed about a possible Black male poised to take over the Oval Office.  Some would think that we would be happy since he is a black man. Well, some lessons have been hard learned in the black community.  We were happy when Bush appointed Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and look where that got us.  And, quiet as kept, we would have been a lot happier if that first black President would have been Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton; a black man who is more likely to tell white folks about themselves instead of offering social critiques of his own.  We aren’t just looking for a figure head to come in and reedem us in the eyes of the world and bring up our image, but also someone who can come in and smite the majority who put us in that category.  We are looking for a black man’s Black man.  An Elijah Muhammed even though a lot of us aren’t even muslim.  Jackson and Sharpton fit the bill, but with Obama we are still wondering about his allegiance.

Which is unfair to him.  White candidates aren’t held to the same conditions that we are using against Obama and others have betrayed us but we still keep plying them with our votes in hopes that things will go our way.  Maybe it’s because we dont’ want to be betrayed by one of our own.  Maybe it’s because we don’t think that because of his skin he can’t help but sell us out.  Whatever the reason is, we aren’t willing to do for Obama what we can willingly do for white candidates, be they male or female. 

Maybe Obama should adopt the Sharp James approach to politics and become charismatic and combative when dealing with whites.  Or maybe he should ask Marion Barry to bottle whatever it was that made black DC voters want to take him back again and again, crack pipe and all.  But then if he became that type of politician would he really gain anything?  And then could he win?

But then that might be the type of politician we deserve.

(tear)

Hok was voted off tonight. 

I knew he was going to go.  He knew he was going to go; he said so and took it in stride with a small smile.

  What surprised me was the cheering that Hok received.  I came in late on both nights (just in time to see the end) and I heard the audience shout when they said Hok’s name right before they cut him.  Then they booed while Nigel was explaining why Hok should be cut.

It was good while it lasted, though.  Hok was a cutie.  The boy has got the moves and the looks.  And, surprisingly, he brought a bit of dance into my husband’s life for a few weeks.  Instead of watching wrestling, dirty jobs, or bizarre culinary treats he watched a story told through body movements and music.  Okay, it was only for Hok’s dance and then he turned immediately afterwards, but it was something.

I wonder if Hok’s popularity as a dancer might signify a slight change for Asian male masculinity on the small screen.  For years there were rarely any Asian men on television.  I think I saw an Asian or two  on Hawaii 5-0, but then I was a toddler when that was on.  Then in the late 90s Sammo Hung got his own show right at the time Newsweek asked the question were Asian guys on a roll.

Then everything went flat.

It started to pick up again right around 2004 when people realized that diversity could be more than just black and white.  Lost has three main characters that are Asian (although I’m pretty upset that the black folks have disappeared from the island –what’s up with that?  I cried, I mean cried when they killed off Mr. Eko.  I still can’t talk about it).  And then last year on the show Heroes their most popular character was Hiro.  Now suddenly Asians are all on the reality tv shows;  an Asian guy finally makes it onto American Idol but is immediately voted off; a Korean American wins Survivor; and this summer, along with Hok, there were Asians competing on Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen.

When Hok was voted off I went upstairs to break the news to my husband.

“Are you okay,” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?” I wanted to be there for him and be a shoulder he could lean on.

“Yeah, now be quiet you’re interrupting my show.”

But a couple of hours later the conspiracist in him came out. Yeah, he knew why Hok got voted off.  First, it was because they couldn’t have Hok on the tour and he cited how Hok has been in the bottom three for the last two weeks.  Then it was because Hok was just too humble; he didn’t have the same aggressive personality as the other breakers on the show.  Third, its all scripted and they already have the winner picked. 

“Its not rigged,” I said.  “You need to stop watching wrestling.  Not every dramatic competition is scripted.”

So we have made a bet.  He’s going to find the “spoiler” sites he thinks leaks the SYTYCD secrets and if he’s right he wins.  If I had known he could get into dance I would have taken him to some shows before this.

Hopefully we’ll see Hok break into the movies after this.  Maybe he can be in Breakin’ 2008: Millennial Boogaloo.  They’ll get Shabbadoo out of whatever nursing home he’s in and it can be how he’s given up breaking or something.  And then he meets some young street toughs who want to bang with some other street toughs but he teaches them the true art of war: breaking.  It doesn’t matter if Hok has any acting skills or not; the old Breakin’s were pretty cheesy and with his British accent it could take the series up to a B movie level.

They can jettison everything I said above for the storylines (especially Shabbadoo) but they gotta bring back the parachute pants.  What’s a Breakin’ movie without parachutes?

Off the black bloglines, folks are talking about what 50 Cent said in XXL Magazine about fellow rapper, Nas.

What percentage of MCs in hip-hop do you think are actually intelligent?
You have different kinds of people. You have people that are extremely book smart that lack common sense so they don’t know what’s going to affect their audience. They have more information than me based on reading. For instance, Nas is a really smart guy. He reads books constantly. We were around him on the Nastradamus tour. He was almost weirder than me ’cause we would go to breakfast and he’d be there reading a book. Conceptually, I think that’s what made him drift away from what his initial audience enjoys from him and why he’s not hot right now.

Because he reads too much?
Yes. He’s feeding you too much information in the music and they don’t actually want it. He’s like a teacher. I was in love with KRS-One when he came with “Criminal Minded” and “The Bridge Is Over.” That was theme music to what was going on at that time. And when he started teaching, he lost them. ’Cause it was like, “What is he talkin’ about?”

But you’re obviously really intelligent.
Absolutely. Smart enough not to overwhelm people with information.

I’m trying to parse what information he felt he has given us through his music.  That he’s into having sex not making love?  That he takes women to the “candy shop”?  That you only need two good beats to rap on for a song to be original each time.

Inquiring minds needed to know all of that.

Perhaps he’s right.  As much as I hate to admit it, maybe 50 Cent has sussed out the situation and I’m not giving him the credit that he deserves on this.  Politic music, with its gospel infections and conscious fervor, reigned  for a long time in the black community.  During slavery we sang about the overseer, the whip, the burden of living and our rewards in heaven although mostly in code.  During Jim Crow days we poured our heart and soul into the Blues and Jazz.  In the sixties and through the seventies, we influenced pop with Motown and other singers who weren’t on the label like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin.  A lot of the time, especially with Motown, the music was light but every now and then they sang a song that spoke to what was going on in the community like Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and Sam Cooke’s “A Change ’s Gonna Come”. 

In the 80s, the burgeoning rap genre had light-hearted rappers like The Fresh Prince but also philosophical rappers like Public Enemy.  Until rap hit the mainstream rap was a pastiche of different influences and you could hear it in the voices as well as the music.  But as the music moved into the mainstream it has become streamlined; its been boiled down and reduced to its basic elements for mass consumption.  The majority of the listeners, black and white, want pablum.  If they even listen to the words they don’t know what KRS-1 is talking about because they have no cognition about the black condition.    Especially the black kids who are living it; they are just in it, they don’t want to challenge the status quo they want to become it.  So rapping to them about something that is beyond their comprehesion is just like talking to a plant.  You will get the same results.

50’s disdain for books isn’t very surprising, but to me indicative of what a lot of young blacks feel about education.  What exactly is it good for?

A few years ago there was a debate between two factions in the black community about what young African Americans are facing.  The firestorm was started, by all people, Bill Cosby and soon enough everyone queued up to choose sides.  Cosby criticized the young for their lack of couth and their (seemingly) rejection of learning.  Cosby’s detractors said he didn’t know what he was talking about; they are kids just being kids.  They said Cosby was old and out of touch.

But then shouldn’t we look at our attitude about education and learning?  Echoing 50’s sentiment above, although a bit more eloquently, John McWhorter writes, “All through modern black American culture, even throughout black academia, the belief prevails that learning for learning’s sake is a white affair and therefore inherently disloyal to a proper black identity. Studying black-related issues is okay, because learning about oneself is authentic. But this impulse also implicitly classifies science as irrelevant, which is the direct cause of the underrepresentation of minorities in the hard sciences. The sense that the properly “black” person only delves into topics related to himself is also why you can count on one hand the number of books by black Americans that are not on racial topics. “

But then, like Cosby, McWhorter has angered some people with his views on the failings of African Americans.  I have heard McWhorter called a sellout and an oreo because his views don’t adhere to what the mainstream has been advocating.  But then, if one of our popular rappers is voicing a somewhat similar opinion, that black people reading is weird and a lot of the population don’t want something that is in-depth can people like McWhorter and Cosby that far off the mark.

I don’t think so.  And I don’t think 50’s cd sales will flag because of the statement he has made.  Some would rather buy that than a book, anyway.

Ten years ago Steve Sailer wrote an ariticle for the National Review titled “Is Love Colorblind“?  The article looked at the dating disparity in the black, Asian, and white communities with  Asian females and black males being in popular demand and black women and Asian men being at the bottom.  The article developed a life of its own on the net, generally resurfacing mostly on Black female/Asian male message boards as a general reason for the two groups to get together.

So in the years that have followed has much changed for the two groups?

Well…

Asians are more visible on television with a couple of actors as main characters on popular shows.  Halle Berry won an academy award for best actress.  There are more Asian American males playing football, basketball and baseball.  And the most powerful women in the country is Condoleeza Rice.

But for dating, no I don’t think much has changed.  It’s probably stayed the same. 

As I mentioned before, the marriage rates for black women is low and the interracial marriage between Asian women and white males is high.  So, you would think that with the two groups being unpartnered it would be an easy hook up, right.  No.

We still don’t see one another as prospective partners, although I think it may be more so for Asian males than for black females.  Searching around the net to different interracial sites they are overpopulated with black females looking for males of varying hues and there are some dedicated to black female/Asian male pairings.  There are hardly any Asian males in those groups and the few that are stay lowkey because, face it, they can be.  They are at a premium so they can pick and choose the women they want.

But then, out in the real world just like Asian men aren’t looking for black women, the same black women aren’t hawking Asian males.  On Tierney’s Lab, John Tierney cited a Racial Preference study that used speed dating sessions to gauge the interracial interests of the participants.   Of the men that the black women interacted with the study found:

African-American women said yes about 30 percent less often to Hispanic men; about 45 percent less often to white men; about 65 percent less often to Asian men.

The study also showed (but not conclusively) that black women have a strong preference for black males but black males didn’t exhibit a preference for black females over others.  It also said that Asian males received low attractiveness ratings from the female participants, disregarding race.

So the two groups are still on the outs and aren’t looking at one another.

A few years ago Rinku Sen wrote an article for Colorlines magazine about the match ups of Asian women and black males on television.  At the end of the article she said, “The real breakthrough would be to pair a Black woman and an Asian man.”  She notes that both groups rank low on the desirability scale and thinks that a television romance might help them.

So, with that said I don’t think I’m going to be running into too many other bf/am pairings in my city.  But I’m always on the search. Since J and I have been together the odd looks and double-takes have waned or maybe its just that I don’t notice them as much as I used to when we first got together.  Every now and then I notice a smile from black women when they see us together and a few weeks ago a good friend of mine who is an Asian male confided in me that he has a crush on a black female.  He asked me if he should ask her out; I told him to go for it but I doubt he will.

A little progress is better than none.

My city is stagnant.

We stop, we start.  Then we stop.  Still stopped.  Small movement here.  Nope, my bad, that was just the wind blowing debris around.

It’s a veritable ghost town.

A decade ago Main street was hopping.  Everyone was everywhere, you couldn’t drive down the street because cars were stopped and honking and the night clubs were packed.  Then the riots happened, after that it was 9-11, followed up by a bootleg boycott, a police slowdown and suddenly everyone stopped hanging downtown.  It didn’t help that a new entertainment complex went up right across the river.  Soon everyone was going there or making a beeline to other suburban haunts.

The population has decreased, too.   First people were leaving the city, then people made an exodus out of the county.  The whole state of Ohio is shifting; some people are following jobs, others are looking for warmer weather, and a few just want to be in a more open culture. 

A few years ago a small group of organizers read Richard Florida’s “Rise of the Creative Class“.   Following the precepts of Florida’s book they advocated for the inclusion of gays in society by helping to get an issue repealed that discriminated against gays.  They opened up clubs and promoted the arts.  They even organized special young professional events and walks around the city, but to no avail.  My city is still dead.

Now Richard Florida has a new study out that again underlines the need for the inclusion of homosexuals and artistic populations to make a viable city.  His argument is that places that are diverse and open attracted intelligent and creative people, which in turn create jobs that boost the economy.  By using an equation to measure the “Bohemian-Gay” index of cities, he proposes that cities that have more acceptance of artistic/creative/homosexual lifestyles helped to increase the housing values in metropolitan areas.

I’m trying to figure out how this will help my city.  We definitely aren’t that gay friendly.  Or black friendly.  Or outsider friendly.  Its the type of place that when someone asks you what school did you go to they mean high school, not college.  We want downtown to have a night life as long as it ends at a proper hour and everyone heads directly home.  We want diversity just as long as things aren’t too different.  We really want to change, but not too much.

I hold out hope.  There’s still a few of us around who think the place is worth saving.  Besides its home.  We see one another every once in a while at events.  We don’t kick around ideas like we used to or blather on about the uptightness of those who surround us.  We’re feeling a bit pinched ourselves and wonder if those around us wasn’t right all along.

In Boston, Chinese Americans are rallying to have some of the names transliterated into Chinese characters.  Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin filed a challenge in federal court against changing the ballots in order to protect Chinese voters. 

“Elections have to be precise,” says Galvin, who wants ballot instructions in Chinese but candidate names in English. He says transliteration — using characters whose sounds approximate the way the names are spoken — can have “unintended negative inferences.” (Candidates Lost in Chinese Translation, USA Today 11 Jul 07)

But Asian activists disagree say that its an effective way to have some voters to vote without the need for a translator.

There’s not a big Chinese community in my city so I don’t think it will effect anyone here, but I am definitely for it just for comedy alone.  I think for ballots across the country they should translate the names into Chinese and then translate them back into English.  I think the Chinese names capture the true nature of the candidates.  Hilary Clinton equals Upset Stomach, Barack Obama is Oh Intellectual Overcome Profound Oh Gemstone and Fred Thompson means Fortune Virtue Soup.  Well, maybe not for Fred Thompson, there’s nothing soup-like about him.  He’s more of a stew man.

And Romney is Stickey Rice.  Yeah, he’s sticky alright.

On July 16 John Edwards began his 8-state poverty tour, viewing the downtrodden areas of the country to help bring attention to the poor.

“This is not a political strategy. This is a huge moral issue facing America,” Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina and the 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate, said in New Orleans. (Reuters 16 July 2007)

Edwards isn’t the only Democrat who is making poverty part of his political platform.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both made speeches that touched upon their ideas to tackle the inequality in American incomes.  Previous Presidential candidates such at Robert Kennedy and Jessie Jackson have put emphasis on American indigents, but with Clinton campaign of 1992 the focus changed to the middle class.

And the middle class have an agenda of their own.  Although they list poverty as one of their concerns it doesn’t come before education, health care and the economy.  Most people consider them and the rich a more important than the poor, who vote less than any other economic group and the poor are less likely to contribute to political campaigns.

But that doesn’t seem to stop Edwards from highlighting their struggle.  In Cleveland today Edwards announced his plan to promote economically diverse schools. 

“We still have two public school systems in America, and millions of children are separated from opportunity by their race or their class,” said Edwards.   “We need to do everything we can to improve their education, and that includes economically diverse schools.  More low-income students should have the opportunity to go to schools where they are likely to have experienced teachers, parents who are more involved and classmates with high aspirations.” (Edwards Press Release)

Every time I talk to my mother she tells me a news story that shows that we are living in the last days.

“That’s why you gotta pray, Nay,” she says.  “You gotta go to church, because he’s coming back soon.”  She then recites Luke 12:53 to me as proof prophets knew what was coming around the corner.

I wonder what she will make of this case.

Cincinnati Police are on the lookout for a young black male who stomped his unborn child out of his estranged girlfriend.  They broke up because he was prone to flights of anger and jealousy and after the split he wanted her to have an abortion.  He spotted her standing at a bus stop and with the help of two friends kicked and stomped on the girl’s stomach.  The young mother was taken to the emergency where it was found that the fetus didn’t have a heartbeat.  After induced labor the child was delivered dead with a crack on the right side of the skull.  

Did I mention that the person who instigated this crime is only 15 years old?

I’m like damn.  DAMN!  DAMN!  It’s like a effing Florida Evans moment.  I can’t believe this isht.  I send it around to friends and friend sends me an email backing saying a common friend feels sorry for dude.  He needs help, she thinks.

Yes, he does.  He needs to be help directly into a jail cell.  Preferably one close to his mom so she can continue to illustrate the merits of living an upstanding life.  (Yes, I’m being facetious.)

Can someone please go and explain to these young girls that just because a man has a penis it doesn’t necessarily make him excellent father material.  And that age is not just a number; it can be a very telling measurement of a person’s maturity.  She’s 18 with one child, why would she want another one with someone who has to get a school work permit just to work a part-time job? 

My summer reading list for everyone who lives in the PJs.

Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America — and What We Can Do About It by Juan Williams

The Pact by Drs Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt

Think Big by Dr. Benjamin Carson

Actually, it should probably be an parent/child read together thing. 

My mother might be right.  We might be living in the last days, but that should mean that we try to save all the souls that we can.

Since more people get their news from Jon Stewart and Jay Leno this may be a good way to get the issues out to people who like sugar to help the medicine go down.  Barely Political released this new video of the debate they hope to see next year: Obama vs. Giuliani (good idea to put the black girl for Giuliani, considering his record).

I wonder just how much of an influence this will have on the elections.  You can look at it and think, this is done in good fun but the sheeple are all about the cult of personality.  In 1992, Clinton garnered the democratic nomination because he was more charming than the other candidates.  His smile, his sax playing and the way he could take the ideas of others and make it seem like his own just resonated with the people.  Eight years later when Bush ran for president he wasn’t as charismatic as his predecessor, but compared to cardboard Gore he Don Juan with the public.  A lot of people who voted for him said he was like someone they could sit down and have a beer with.

It’s hard to gauge who a candidate really is by the timed debates and “in-depth” interviews with reporters who ask innocuous questions.  We are always worried that the hyper-extroverts will be able to con us with their charismatic ability to manipulate the media.  But we have to force ourselves to pay attention to the issues.  The presidency shouldn’t be a popularity contest; the privilege to be president of the greatest country on earth should be earned by merit.  Does this person have a track record that is in line with my values?  Will he set aside his own beliefs to do what he feels is in the best interest of the country?  Will this person help to set goals that will insure that even the poorest among us feel as if they are just as important as the richest tycoon?

I want to see a music video address that.

The op-ed piece by Uzodinma Iweala in yesterday’s Washington Post was excellent and there is not too much to expound on it except I wish that the author didn’t succumb to the Western way of seeing Africa as a country instead of a continent.  There are countries in Africa that doesn’t need to be “saved”.

I can also see the reaction to this by those good Samaritans who will read this article and wonder why even help them at all if this is the thanks they will get?  People seem to help others now not for the sake of helping them but what they get out of it themselves.

Last week I thought I was sufficiently grossed out when J called me to watch this show with him on the Discovery Channel where this man drinks his own urine.  Yeah, the dude claimed he had to drink his own urine because he was lost in the outback of Australia and the heat was bearing down on him, but I bet you anything the camera men were sitting back and gulping their Perrier while filming Bears diddlying into his canteen.  You’re trying to tell me they couldn’t slip him a bit of the H2O with the camera’s turned off for a moment?  Yeah, right.

Aside from dude being totally gross, there are other shows that provoke us into watching by showing us what the rest of the world is eating.   There’s Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” which is basically mild compared to Andrew Zimmerman’s Bizarre Foods.  When he ate this one dish of foetid meat mixed cooked with scrambled eggs he made me want to vomit.  Then he made the speech of, “I defend the right of…” I’m like, dude that’s cool, but it would go over better if you weren’t just gagging the food up.

Even Terry Gross is getting in on the gross food act.  I’m driving around Sunday afternoon and then I hear a revised airplay of this story.  And all I could think was I’m so glad J wasn’t here with me because he would try to make up a dish with the maggot cheese.  “Don’t you think it would taste good as a sauce over linguini with clams? “

I’m trying to figure out when did all these shows gain an element of Fear Factor?  I expect Mountain Oysters from Joe Rogan, but et tu, Terry?

I’m all for diversity but I will be stay an adamant segregationist when it comes to my plate.  I don’t even like for my food to touch and I implement strict boundaries between my meats, veggies, and breads.  Of all the available food out there in the world, Americans eat probably a small percent of that the rest of the world considers delectable.  You won’t find insects on purpose on our plates.  Offals usually are not everyday cuisine of even the poor here in America and the only thing we want pickled by our liquor is ourselves.  There is something to be said for dietary blandness and I think that one thing might be called a “healthy colon tract”.

(holding up my flouridated, overly processed clean glass of tap water)

So, here’s to us. (a big gulp)  And the water still tastes funny.

Okay, I know.  Again with the NYT.

But, there’s an article in Sunday’s paper that discusses how some school systems are handling diversity by choosing income diversity over race.

That’s one way to go.

I guess I always did have my qualms about shoving low income blacks in with low income whites and then expecting higher test scores.  From where I stand, those who have the wherewithal will be capable of taking themselves from the situation and go to a better school system.  There are quite a few poor white areas in the burbs that are close to enriched white suburban areas so that although the school may be monoracial it could still be viewed as socially diverse because of the different classes that are in attendance.

But I have to admit I did find this part disturbing:

Another problem is demographics. Mr. Biegel said public school students in San Francisco were relatively low income over all, whatever their race or ethnicity, so the diversity index produced less mixing than hoped.

The wide ethnic diversity in San Francisco’s schools, which are about one-third Chinese, also introduces calculations among parents that make it easier to get income diversity without racial or ethnic diversity.

At Willie L. Brown Jr. College Preparatory Academy, a fourth- through sixth-grade school in the predominantly black neighborhood of Bayview, 75 percent of the students are black. Most are poor.

Tareyton D. Russ, the principal, said students from other neighborhoods did not seek to go there so the diversity index did not even apply. “Poor Chinese kids don’t want to go to school with poor black kids,” Mr. Russ said flatly.

Conversely, one white parent interviewed as she dropped her child off at summer school said some white parents avoided schools with a heavy Chinese concentration, like Lincoln, believing they would be too high-pressure for their children. She declined to be quoted by name.

 Them that’s got shall not get and them that ain’t gots don’t want to be with those who ain’t got that don’t look like them.  Where is the sense in that?  And in the above sentence? 

The hype for Harry has been building up for quite a while now. 

First its the movie that is breaking records and at the end of the week the last installment in the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” will be hitting the bookstores at 12:01 am on July 21 amid a fanfare of parties in bookstores and a flurry in public libaries.  This book is really the summer blockbuster.  Athough it seems to be a daunting 700+ pages I have no doubt that by day three, avid muggle fans will be embarking on their second reading.  Kids are reading for fun, so it seems.

But its not the case.  A NYT article examines the effect that the Harry Potter books have had on the reading habits of children 8-17 and it find that they don’t read more than they did before the series started.  One girl said she has read and re-read all six books but she isn’t interested in reading something else.   She even admits she probably won’t read when the series is over.

I find it kind of sad, of course, since I work in a library and I like to read myself.  When my daughter was younger it was hard getting her interested in the books and authors that I enjoyed as a kid (Madeleine L’Engle, Paula Danziger, Carolyn Haywood, Mildred D. Taylor….).  When she was younger it was easier for me to read to her than for us to read together.  Now she says she is so busy with school work that she doesn’t find time to read for luxury although I see she always has time for the internet, text messaging, and television.

Its the same for my stepson.  Its harder to get him interested in reading.  Reading doesn’t hold his attention; its easier to put yourself into a movie or video game than to become engaged with the characters in a book. 

In the article, Stanford University professor believes that reading for information, similar to what is done on the Internet, is just find.  If you look at what most people need to read for their occupation, it’s zero narrative,” Kamil said.  “I don’t want to deny that you should be reading stories and literature. But we’ve overemphasized it.” (Potter Has Limited Effect on Reading, NYT,11Jul07)

Although I know my kids aren’t alone if choosing social activities over reading it still doesn’t make me feel better.  I’m constantly trying to find new writers, new books that will make them want to turn the page and hate to put the book down.  There are a few read alikes out there who are similar to Harry Potter, although J2 has yet to pick up on the books and my daughter got bored with the series after the 5th book (although she still has a huge crush on Daniel Radcliffe).  It doesn’t seem to dampen their interest in seeing the movie, though. 

A recent study from Cornell University shows that ”in African-Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the last 15,000 to 100,000 years, when people began migrating from Africa.”

Ten percent is really not a lot, especially when you have some groups (through history and even now) that stake their claim on the races being dramatically different.  The scientists even go as far as to point out, “that the research does not state that one group is more evolved or better adapted than another.”

So we are closer than some of us would like to admit.  Maybe there should be a big family reunion each summer.  I’ll the potato salad.

A DiversityInc report is wondering if Republican Rudy Giuliani is diverse enough to become our next president.  In the June issue DiversityInc found that of all presidential candidates, Giuliani’s campaign was being run entirely by whites and now one of them has their background in question.

 Arthur Ravenel Jr, former US congressman, is being accused by the Democratic National Party (DNC) of being racially divisive.  According to the DNC, Ravenel has referred to the NAACP as the National Association of Retarded People and “proudly addressed” the white nationalist organization the Council of Conservative Citizens”.  The DNC would like for Giuliani to condemn his racist co-chair.

While all eyes are now on Obama and H. Clinton (the first viable minorities to run for office) the focus is off the Republican Party at the moment, except for the financial troubles of McCain and the Hollywood glam of Fred Thompson.  So far Giuliani is looking like the frontrunner for the Republicans, but he doesn’t seem to promise the racial diversity that Bush’s administration has brought to the White House.  As we head into the second decade of the 21st millennium and the country becomes browner, you have to wonder why a nominee wouldn’t want advisors that can help reach out to different groups.

Walgreen’s settled a civil rights lawsuit by agreeing to pay $20 million to 10,000 black employees for denying promotions based on race.

Now, if they would just take off the little sensor tags off the black hair care products.  They don’t put them on the white hair care products!

I’m probably one of the people to blame.

I can easily be diverted with infotainment passing as news stories.  I know more about dancing on a platform thanks to SYTYCD than the stated platforms of John McCain, Barack Obama, Guiliani, and H.Clinton.  Someone’s for the war, someone was for the war but isn’t anymore, someone was never for the war –but don’t ask me to match up which ideology with which name because, to tell the truth, I’m not following that closely.  That’s the shame of it.  I’m not following it.  It’s important, it’s my civic duty but uh…. I just ain’t moved.

I blame Hollywood.  I blame my mom.  And, most importantly, I blame PBS, Tom & Jerry Cartoon and everything else that helped to create my short attention span and the need for quick gratification and simple resolutions.  I’d take the blame myself but that’s not one of the lessons I have learned from television.

I am part of Gen X, that generation that is not talked about as much anymore because we aren’t young and roaming the malls like the Millennials but not on the verge of breaking Social Security like Baby Boomers.  We are known for our inaction –words like couch potato and slacker became widely used in my youth towards me and my peers.  Although we didn’t have the Vietnam war to protest or come of age with computers at the ready we have probably had the greatest impact on society of all –inadvertent insouciance.  Its not that we don’t care about the world, its just hard for us to sustain that focus for more than a certain period of time.  If it took a season (back when a television season was actually nine months) to find who shot J.R. then that is about the right amount of time to come up with solutions, put them into practice and then move on to the next dilemma.

The House of Representatives want a pull out of Iraq in four months.  The President wants to give the surge of troops more time to be effective.  Recent polls show most Americans are growing tired of the war because a slight majority think that going to war was a mistake.  The war has lasted a longer than our attention span can retain.  We thought it was over years ago, really, when Bush was on the deck of the USS Lincoln in front of the “Mission Accomplished” banner positioned for photo-ops.  Although Bush warned in the beginning it would be a long war against terrorism, no one really listened and those in favor gave it a time length of six months, eight months but not a year.  In tv series time it would come out to ten hours. 

But now the war has gone on for a long time and instead of a quick in and out of Iraq like a penile challenged one-night stand we’ve set up camp like we are in it for the long haul, for better or worse.  Mostly we’ve seen just the worst.   And I can’t watch it.  I selectively tune out the news of the war because they are just to sad to listen to.   Everyday there’s another car bombing taking out large groups or there’s a suicide bomber or there’s a ticking of the death toll. The carnage is just too much to think about and let in and if I was to add in the innocent death of civilians then its even more mind boggling.

And then I have to wonder, for what?  Al-Qaeda has re-emerged and recently there was a thwarted terrorist plot in England and Scotland.  I repeat the mantra, we are over there so we don’t fight them over here, but what if I don’t want to be tethered to the states?  What if I want to freely roam to another country?  What about the safety of citizens in other countries?  And whose to say that they aren’t here?  How do we know they aren’t here?  We can’t even keep out illegal immigrants and to the average American brown is brown is black is beige is…

Click.

I turn off the fear in my mind by surfing an inoccuous message board or a vaccuous gossip page.  The plight of Paris Hilton has never meant so much to the American people, you would think she was our Eva Perron.  Set her free, we cry as if she was locked up in Guantanamo Bay instead of a comfortable American jail cell.  Set her free!  This is something we can understand; this is something we can do something about. 

Let the rest of the world take care of itself.  I can only deal with things in 10 minute intervals and besides,  Entertainment Tonight is on.

Sometimes it does seem like there’s a conspiracy.

Yesterday my friend Dani came down to see me.  I haven’t seen her in the longest time and she doesn’t have the leisure she once had to email me every ten mintues like we used to do since she’s working two jobs because her one job laid her off last summer.  I asked her how her youngest son was doing.  Two years ago I convinced her to enroll her son into a local charter school.  Usually, I have no use for charter schools, a lot of them seem like they are fly by night.  But the school I told her about was different.  I saw the difference in them when they came to the library; the children would come into the building quiet, wearing their uniforms and get right to work.  They rarely came to me with questions and when they did they didn’t need much help.  The fact that it was a mostly black school in the heart of the inner city touched me and I began reading up on them.  The school was year round, the children wore uniforms (even on the hottest days) and they had long school days (from 8am to 6pm) but the hours weren’t all work.  A lot of the classes included fencing, martial arts and tutoring.  The kids never had homework because of their long school day and weren’t latchkey kids because the parents could pick them up after work.  The school was the concept of an African American educator who felt that inner city school children could learn if given the chance.  And they did. There were a couple of newspaper articles here and there and the school was rated effective.  But then two years ago the school was the only charter school in the state to get a rating of excellent.  The children were doing more than learning, they were excelling. 

That’s when everything started to go down hill.

Suddenly the state demanded their money back.  Now the school has been a year-round school since its inception but the state claimed they didn’t know it and the money wasn’t intended for it.  In actuality, said the state, we’ve overpaid you.  In addition to giving the money back we want to know what you’ve done and they began an investigation.  They said that the money given wasn’t going towards the children’s education but instead into the pockets of administrators.  Teachers and administrators  left, the program is now a nine month program, and things quickly changed.   I could tell it by the way they came in.  They still studied hard but they weren’t the same well groomed children, studious kids.  These kids had their clothes in a disarray and quite a few spent time roaming around instead of looking up information.  I was shocked to find out those kids went to a school I regarded highly.  So I had to find out on the inside what was going on.

Dani told me that she has decided to take her son out of the school.  Things weren’t the same as they were at the beginning of the schools year, when the remnants of the old regime was still in the children’s heads.  She said she spoke to a couple of the parents who were with the school since the beginning and how they are saddened how quickly things deteriorated.  They don’t understand why the state messed up a good thing.

Which is not to say that the school didn’t have its detractors in it’s hey day.  I know of two different families who had children who went to the school but pulled their kids out because they thought the curriculum was too hard.  They wanted their children to have the after school time to come home and watch television or play with friends.  They thought it was unfair if one kid was caught talking then all the kids lost their free time for that day.  There was a lot of things expected from them, too, and they didn’t have the time or sometimes forgot stuff or thought it was too much.  They did appreciate how the school raised their child’s learning level but they didn’t want to pay that high of a price for it.

I wonder where the school will rank on the next statewide tests.  I hope they will still be able to keep their ranking, despite the changes that has taken place.  It might take a while, but someting tells me that they may not be able to maintain their high stature and in just a few years, in less time it took for them to earn their reputation, they’ll be known as just another charter school that can’t cut the muster.

A few years ago I interviewed a couple of elderly women for the black newspaper in the city.  They were teachers back in the early to mid twentieth century.  One of the women told me about a black high school she taught at that was like a dream.  It had a high graduation rate and they garnered visits from Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson.  They offered vocational classes as well as a general curriculum.  She spoke of the school in glowing terms, but I had never heard of it.  The place where it was had been abandoned for years until a media company came in.  What happened to it?  Why did it close?

Because they didn’t want it, she said.

Its imperative that we never forget the lessons of the past.  We must remember that there was a time that it was against the law to teach a black person to read.  We must remember that our grandparents and some of our parents walked to schools that were miles away from their homes and were taught from books that were substandard.  We must remember the Little Rock Nine and Ruby Bridges.  We must remember that ignorance is expensive.  We must remember that some people hate to put money into building new schools but can reach deep into their wallets to build new jails.

I don’t know what really went down with the school.  I just know the things that I have seen and the changes that I have witnessed.  But sometimes things just don’t seem right and you have to wonder… 

While driving in this morning we listened to the TJMS show.  They brought on Michael Eric Dyson and his wife Marcia to discuss who they are supporting for the democratic nomination.  And I have to say that Marcia Dyson put something on my mind, I never looked at Hillary Clinton that way before so maybe I have to give her another look.

But then J had to jump in and say, “His wife is wrong, she lost the argument.”  Which got me and J into our own disagreement.  The TJMS is trying to get my husband killed is all I can say.

So tell me, who do you think won this debate?  Listen here.

I don’t know what it says about me that I find this video hilarious. It makes me laugh so hard.   

Okay, it says I’m mean.  But I don’t approve of her actions.  (shaking my head and wagging my finger)

When I saw the episode I wanted to do an intervention and convince Archie not to marry her, especially after I saw the Dr. Phil episode.  The Marsha and Archie wedding has to be the most watched episode of Bridezilla ever. 

But dudes, its a hint and a half for your ass if your fiancee tells you she wants to go on Bridezilla.  If she thinks of herself as a Diva either get to groveling or bounce so she can find another sycophant.

Supposedly they are getting divorced.  Here’s a letter floating around that is allegedly from her.

Hi there handbagqueen,Since you would like an update from Marsha & Archie season 3, you should straight hear it from the source. Yes you have guessed it right! Well Archie and I are no longer together and we are in the middle of a divorce now. Yes TV has protrayed me to be the bad character, and I must say they did a very fine job of doing it. If I wasn’t protrayed as the bad person then their would be no ratings. It all started out as fun & games, but ended up dramatized and real.

The reason he and I are no longer together is because Archie had a very dark secret called “CHEATING”. And yes he was blasted on match.com with a photo he took of himself in our home, with the digital camera he bought me when we were engaged. Any day a wife walks in her house and finds another womans sanitary napkin in her trash can, is the day I will walk out of your life forever. Yes he was tooo cheap to take her to a hotel, motel, Hell holiday inn!The truth is I was dealing with this from day 1 even before the wedding, but I thought I loved him enough to forgive and forget and marry the man that I thought I was in love with. Since I haven’t been invited to express my true feelings of what really happened on a tv show. I’ve been inspired to write a book about the before and after effects of the wedding. The day Archie cried on national tv, should have been the end of our relationship BOTTOM LINE. I tried to put him on blast by submitting my case on cheater’s, but there was a conflict on interest “DAMN”. I had a slight relapse of him cheating in the past, and called the wedding off and that’s why he cried and said I left him, but I decided to marry him anyway. What I fool I was. Archie knew the person I was before he agreed to be on bridezilla, and it didn’t all happen on the day I married him. At the end of the day, before and after the wedding, there is no justifying cheating by any means.

Yesterday at the NAACP national conference in Detroit, demonstators held a mock funeral for the N-word.

I am sure as soon as tomorrow or even today the N-word will be popping out of the mouth of some black person.  Rumors of it’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Unlike the Jim Crow laws, which it held a mock funeral for 63 years ago, black people are a bit more attached to the N-word.  Jabari Asim, author of the book The N-Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t and Why is all for giving free reign to artists to use the word.  But then I guess that might bring an argument to who is actually an artist.  The Last Poets definitely (I love their poem Niggers are Scared of Revolution) but then what about Kanye West?  Is he an artist?  And if we open up the door for Kanye won’t that sanction the majority of rap artists to use the word?  What if you are an amateur?

No need to worry, the word isn’t going anywhere for a long, long time.  And now with an older generation battling against it, its popularity is now ensured with a young generation. 

The state of Ohio is experiencing “brain drain”.

And in order to combat it they are putting money where their mouth is by giving scholarships to students who want to study math and science in Ohio colleges.

For those high school seniors (or parents who have kids good in math and science) and you live in OH here’s a head’s up for you.

Today on NPR’s show Day to Day they ran a story about teaching in South Korea.  And it sounds like a good opportunity for those who want to go overseas to teach English.  All you need is a college degree (in any subject) and teaching experience is not a prerequisite.  It sounds like a good deal –oh, yeah.  You have to be white.

Because the stereotypical image of an American is blonde and blue eyed, schools are rejecting applicants who can’t give them something close to that visage.  Because the perception of African Americans speaking nothing but ebonics many schools pass over their application.

But then they also reject Asian faces to teach English there.  They obviously want the English voice to come from a foreign face.

So check out the article.  Link here.

A few years ago a local writer named Kathy Y. Wilson put a picture of a mammy figurine on her first book.  A small contingent of people were upset and insulted that she would do something like that.  Didn’t she know the history?  It was an affront to black beauty and desexualization of the black female image.  They wanted the image off her book and for her to recognize its significance to history.

To them she wrote,” Get this: The Mammy belongs to me. She’s my lieutenant, my Barney Fife, my road dog, my Seeing Eye Mammy…  How dare I reverse the white-owned concept of marketing my culture back to me by selling it to them first? It’s on my word.   I own the Mammy. I am not the Mammy. “

Not everyone feels the same way as she does.  For a lot of us