14th St, NW, Wash., DC

I snapped this on the way to work today on 14th and P NW DC. It is the window lettering of Bob Gold Mitchell Williams which is some bourgeoisie furniture store. It speaks volumes for the transition of 14th Street in this decade.

Yeah, it is about slip covers, sheets, and towels, but sheesh.

More from Hoogrrl  Read more 

Today is an interesting and important day to remember, especially this season:

On June 12, 1967, the United States Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a married couple named Loving – he was white, she was black. They lived in Virginia and had violated the southern state’s law against inter-racial marriage. The high court’s decision made interracial marriage legal in all 50 states. Today, the Loving decision is celebrated as an important victory for multi-culturalism and democracy.

With temperatures topping 35 degrees centigrade, it wasn’t just the music that was hot at the 5th annual New York City Loving Day Celebration, one of several such events around the country.

Kathleen and David and their two cocoa-colored children were among the estimated 1000 people gathered under a big tent along New York’s East River. The group included many interracial couples like them.

Kathleen and Dave Graham, and their children Max and Miles are a healthy interracial family. Kathleen says she is grateful that the Lovings helped pave the way for their freedom
“There are a lot of people who had to fight really hard so we can be legally married,” says Kathleen. “We can own property, we can have the kids and we don’t get hassled about it. We’re normal now.”  Read more 

Tonight’s Tom Ashbrook on a local public channel topic was the primaries in light of race and class. The discussion turned around Obama vs Clinton with respect to race and the lower class. First, guys wake up, race is not black and white only. We have more brown than black now. Second, guys there is the issue of sex also and it is not less important than the other two mentioned issues.

Ms. Newman from the LAT demonstrated again that most journalist are born without an intellect. According to her: Clinton “brings” the white lower class. If she is right, the Obama won California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, etc. She did however mention women, but accordingly they became an issue only the last month.  Read more 

My thoughts started to coalesce from a thread on TalkLeft titled “Politics Has Always Been Stupid which brings up an NYT Op-Ed piece by Bob Herbert titled “Overkill and Short Shrift. This article laments the media play of Jeremiah Wright as a diversion to discussing the real issues of this political season.

It’s not accidental that the discussions of race have been systematically dismissed from this campaign. From the very start, Obama has been the first black candidate to nationally campaign with the premise that no where in his agenda is there a desire to hold white Americans accountable for the past.  Read more 

Examination at The Root of the perceptions and personas of Oprah and Obama, and how unrealistic stereotypes and expectations—and meeting them and molding yourself to fit them—provide very fragile and shaky foundations for trust.  Read more 

Must read: DU poster McCamy Taylor’s massive takedown of the Obama campaign’s abuse of the race card.

Update: Meanwhile, WaPo harvests what Obama has sown:

The protracted and increasingly acrimonious fight for the Democratic presidential nomination is unnerving core constituencies — African Americans and wealthy liberals — who are becoming convinced that the party could suffer irreversible harm if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains her sharp line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama.

Now, someone remind me, which of the Democratic candidates is constantly accused of being Rovian?

Racism or prudence?

MSNBC* has some footage up of a panel discussion about race. Without judging the relative merits of those who share their views, I was struck by two things: one, we’re still fucking up the children who so many of us say must be cherished, and two, the negative issues of race and ethnicity will not vanish without a whole lot of work. Perhaps they never will, but that is no excuse to not address these issues and attempt to build a better world “for the children.”

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*A brief commercial precedes the discussion footage. Render unto Caesar his wee taste…

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Part 4 of Misogyny, Sexism, & the Gender Gap in the 2008 Election

In choosing a nominee, the Democratic Party will not merely be deciding who deserves to win, or who would make the best candidate. It will also be a decision about which poisoned landscape the Party wishes to compete upon —- one in which toxic wildflowers of misogyny and sexism are in full bloom, or one in which the poisonous weed of racism is a constant part of the environment, and needs the merest watering to completely despoil the land.  Read more 

Americans constitute 5% of the world’s population but consume 24% of the world’s energy.

Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.  Read more 

This bit of white entitlement has been widely cited as evidence of the horrible opportunism of the Obama campaign, but actually it shows something rather sad about some of the opposition to Obama.

First, let’s note that the publisher of the Wilentz piece is notorious for its use as a “liberal” place to attack the left left and here for its hyping of Bush’s war and so on.  Read more 

So I was babbling recently about race and being “mixed,” and I wanted to share a couple thoughts I had while at the grocery store. You can’t do anything publically in America and not have a ’race moment,’ if you’re non-/not all/less the fully white.

I once had an advisor who was really, really brainy and smart. If you’ve seen Defending Your Life you’ll understand* when I say she was one of those who use “51% of their brains.” She played a big part in getting me into the grad program of my choice, and loved me a lot as a person (and I love her still to this day). Once, when my marriage was breaking apart and she was worried about me flunking out of the program as a result, she took me to see a play.

I was so bored. I’m not really a ’theatre person,’ and the subject matter went waaaay over my head. To this day I’m not sure what it was about. It was a play written by one of those rarified, high brow literary types- the kind of material fewer and fewer people in this country can appreciate, let alone understand, but that people like herself loved. Afterwards, I said as much. Politely, of course, I don’t insult people who are trying to help me.

It was a watershed moment in our relationship. She said to me, “you’re not really that clever after all, are you?” And I wasn’t insulted- in comparison to people like her, I’m a dim witted, slack-jawed clod. Here on the intertubes, I can get away with pretending to be a Real Intellectual, but I don’t kid myself, I’m not, not even close. Not by the Olde Standards, at least. Certainly not by hers (Oxford, Berkeley, Chicago, multiple PhDs, ~12 languages, London Review of Books, etc.)

Anyway, at that time (and of course I kept it to myself) I thought, “you’re really and finally perceiving me for the first time, aren’t you?” It hurt a little, to realize that even this great mind hadn’t really allowed herself to “see me” for what I am, I really am, and not what she wanted, or believed me to be. I think the reason why she overestimated my love for bookish, dialogue-centered plays on the history of po-mo writers was because of my ’race.’ People look at people who look like me, and assume we’re “different.” Different than white, different than black, different in whatever way people need to understand how ’the races mix’ and to what result.  Read more 

Glenn Ford, found atBC and I don’t agree on everything, but he hits this one out of the park. Please read it all, but for the time challenged, here’s the really important part:

Faith-based initiatives and private school vouchers, they theorized, could provide portals directly into the realm of Black grassroots politics. If generously funded and working in tandem, the twin strategies had the potential to subvert a portion of the Black clergy and create a wedge to divide inner city residents from teachers unions and other pillars of the Democratic Party. The synergy of bribed clergy plus a phony voucher “movement” would give the appearance of an authentic conservative “groundswell” among African Americans. Corporate media could be counted on to provide a narrative lifted directly from the position papers of the same think tanks that crafted the faith/vouchers strategy. The stage would be set for the media-hyped emergence of a “New Black Leadership” – Democrats as well as Republicans and “independents” – reflecting the supposedly growing conservatism of the Black middle class and youth.

All this, of course, came to pass. Once Republicans won the White House, the full resources and prestige of the federal government were made available to the preachers, hustlers and voucher operatives of the new, corporate-invented African American leadership.  Read more 

[This will likely be first in a series if Obama goes all the way]

So I have this thing in my life’s history, in which I’m often “in the right place at the right time,” although rarely can I claim to have planned it. I won’t bore you with a list, but since the Iowa results, I find myself in that position again. So you think you know Obama? Well, I know I do, and not because we’re good friends or spent a lot of time together. I have met him and his wife, but I can’t claim that means I have a special insight into them. OTOH I can say that in terms of trajectory, he and I have a lot in common. And one thing I’ve learned is something I’m positive he’s learned too. That is: life is pretty messed up, interesting, and funny if you’re a “mullato” in America, and most especially in American politics.  Read more 

The media has been going on about how what happened yesterday in VA is the “worst ever” massacre in American history. There are a few moments in American history that belie that. Here’s one:

Although official counts put the number of dead at 39; 26 black, 13 white, it is generally accepted that this number is substantially higher, especially among black victims. Estimates range from seventy-five to over three hundred. Based on the evidence available, most experts agree that the actual number of black citizens believed to be killed during the riot number around 300.  Read more 

So I’m having a private discussion with some folks about public intellectuals on the Right. What is an intellectual? How are they understood by society at large, and what role should they play (if any)? The heart of the discussion: I don’t think anyone who is well-educated but still racist deserves the label “intellectual.” Racists can be smart, but to me, part of being an intellectual is accepting facts and analyses even when they don’t fit with your social or political agendas. To be a racist in this day and age is to ignore both science and history, and the intellectuals who taught me convinced me that to do so is a luxury no honest intellectual can afford. Readers? What do you think?

The Angry Black Woman speaks for me:

It’s February. Black History Month is upon us again. *rolls eyes* Huey Freeman (of Boondocks fame) summed it up best when he said:

Every Black History Month it’s the same thing - the Underground railroad and George Washington Carver. Like nothing else ever happened to black people!

The next frame of the strip then shows the teacher bringing up MLK and Rosa Parks as Huey shakes his head in disgust.

I’m with McGruder on this one. True, it’s good to learn about African American history from the roots of slavery to the triumph of Civil Rights. But the focus is all too often narrow, the topics clichéd, and the point missed entirely. Plus, I haven’t seen too much emphasis on black folks since Civil Rights except to update us on those in the movement who are still alive.

Word. One of the problems I’ve always had with “official” recognition days/months/awards is that they reduce the complex into the simple, the controversial into the inoffensive, and ahem, whitewash the problems to which they are supposed to be drawing attention. ABW asks that we talk about our own families and histories, the better to remind everyone that there is no one narrative of Black history.

So I’ll tell you part of the story of one of my family members, my grandmother.  Read more 

How can you not love Maxine? Matt does some good work here with this post.

Hillary Clinton's strategy is to scoop up money from the elites, keep enough women to hold off from losing badly in Iowa and New Hampshire, and rack up huge margins in the black vote in the later states.  She's very strong among African-Americans and women, but that could change.  This is a big deal.    Read more 

Sundown towns. Excellent MLK Day reading. I’d make the point that people often forget that this whole “give them a middle class!” thing has been tried before; white folks tend to get twitchy with the guns and torches when middle class communities of color get “too big.” Progressives should never forget that the more recent history of white oppression is just as ugly as the antebellum version.  Read more 

So I had a nice afternoon with an area blogger who went with me and a friend to see the Josephine Baker exhibit at the Smithsonian. I had a couple of thoughts while there.

Inky Oceans have been spilled on the woman, and I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination. But I came away from the experience feeling very much “la plus ca change…” First off: so did she enjoy some gay sex or not? You wouldn’t really be too clear on that from the exhibit, which made little sense to me in this very gay town and with all the gay people who were there (like, 70%). They mentioned how she was a “groundbreaker” in terms of race, gender and sexuality, but left out the details for the last part. Um, why?  Read more 

Well, I was willing to only make a couple of comments about it, but it seems other folks are motivated to make this an issue, so I might as well join in. Steve and Liza and Pam and T and folks at the Crack Den have all chimed in about it, and I have to say that I’m on the list of the deeply disappointed. It’s just not that hard to find bloggers of color. The excuses I’m reading just don’t hold much water.  Read more 

I am a fortunate Black American; I can honestly say that I’ve never had a problem finding employment when I try hard enough and look for it. Part of that has to do with the way I speak, and look, and the fact that the areas in which I’ve worked have usually been places in which ideas like “diversity” hold sway. But for many, many African-Americans, this is not the case. In response to this brave Alternet piece, Cyrus responds:

There are some lies that go down easy and some that are just brutally, shall we say, un-lubricated. One such yarn is that of black unemployment. For years Black males have been described as endangered, lazy, shiftless, more obsessed with flash and bling than with opportunity or substance, but … there is another side. When are we going to talk about the systematic discrimination that creates a forty percent unemployment rate for Black America? Why? Forty percent is higher than the unemployment rate for the depression. Black America has endured this for over a decade even in the middle of one of the greatest economic boom cycles to date.  Read more 

From vastleft.com:

In George Will’s recent Newsweek column, he does little more than echo Shelby Steele’s controversial comments about race from his book, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.  Read more 

God hates losers. Heh.

The best part: “easily.” Eat that, stone worshippers.

We should never forget that. How stupid? Here’s one report about the nature of the peoples of the world:

…humanity can be divided into four “general ethnic groups.” These, it says, can be defined as follows:

“1) Caucasian (people from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, Russia, and Australia), 2) South American, 3) Oriental (people from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Singapore), and 4) other Asian (people from India, Philippines, Thailand, Laos, East Indies, etc.).”  Read more