The American Race

Michael Jackson, In Death, Becomes Blacker Than Obama

Michael Jackson In Death
Is Now Blacker Than Obama
(Not That It Counts For Much)

Please, please  forgive the setup premise, but imagine:
It’s July 3, 2019, about two and a half years after Barack Hussein Obama’s history changing two terms as President of the United States. His challenges were many and some were not well met, and perhaps some tragic personal flaws were exposed in the process. Nevertheless, assume his objective accomplishments will have secured his place along our greatest presidents:

His legacy as an agent and avatar of a fundamental change in American socio-political identity--love it or hate that change--is now a matter of history.

Then, at age 57, he dies suddenly. I don’t even want to name the hypothetical cause, except that while it might be called tragic, it was in no way shameful. The world mourns even more openly than it appeared to celebrate when Obama was elected.

Then Black Entertainment Television decides to put on a special,  emotional tribute to his life. Denzel Washington is more than the host; he  takes it upon himself to channel for the BET audience what Obama meant for African-America. He knows he’s making a statement not just to black America, but to the non-black American majority as well as the world.

Imagine, then, the reaction when he begins by declaring, as Jamie Foxx declared in the recent BET tribute to Michael Jackson that:

“We want to celebrate this black man... (H)e belongs to us and we shared him with everybody else.”

So, what, exactly, is the existential truth that the black political psyche identity seems so desperate to defend here? Why would, in the wake of America’s embrace of Obama, black America feel so vulnerable that we would go into such open public denial of the profound hypocracy that abounds in our new-born adoration for Michael Jackson?

Watching the images on the proud chests of young men on 125th Street in Harlem —the ubiquitous Obamas now spelled for a while by the new but especially the old, young, black face of Michael Jackson—it occurs to me:
The music and good times aside, our group pride and affirmation in Michael— as in any black person that appears hermetically embraced by white America—is once again proven to be oceans wide but just inches deep.

The more the media cannot help itself from recalling the headlines from the dark side of Jackson’s post-Thriller career, the better African-America comes to terms with what has always been a troubled relationship with “The King of Pop”. (See and hear one of a very few good treatments of this by Karen Grigsby Bates on NPR today.)

As if black folks have EVER even had any use for the word “pop.”

No, we feel much more affirmed defending Michael as a transcendent victim, betrayed by his own embrace of the title and white America’s false love in bestowing it. Just remember O.J. if you doubt me.

Forget the grammys, the wealth and the legendary performances. Michael’s greatest triumph, pushing himself, his race and his music beyond the particularity of black ethnic identity, is the one thing that the beating heart of black political, ethnic and cultural nationalism could never accept.

I’m not saying anyone wanted to see him beat down so badly—the blows often self-inflicted—in the years long media coverage of Jackson’s downward spiral. But I am saying that the spectacle had much more meaning, much more empathetic resonance in the black “heartland” than Jackson’s mid-80’s ascent to the pop throne.

It’s safe, even important to own Michael now, because, it would seem, white folks have used him up and are done with him. New York Congressman Peter King decided to put a face on these white folks when he threw up a 4th of July video on YouTube yesterday calling Jackson a "low-life" and:

 “... a pervert, a child molester; he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country? I just think we're too politically correct."

News reports say Jackson fans have already started fund raising to oust the conservative Republican—one of the few left in the New York delegation—from his seat in suburban Long Island.

That’s not the brothers from 125th Street, or even Hempstead to the rescue. It’s the generation of white kids, now in their 30’s and 40’s, who assumed Michael belonged to everyone, however bizarre and tragic he had become.

The real tragedy: even after 25 plus years these branches of the global Jackson family still haven’t really met. I can't say if the fault lies in the stars or in men, but I do know who controls them both.

Diversity and Sotomayor in Obama Time-II

As this Wash Post piece notes, Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito had no problem—during his 2005 confirmation hearing—declaring that his Italian-immigrant background would influence his thinking:

"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."

But my point: we never worried about the influence of "diversity" on how judges thought until it became necessary to make distinctions about how the race/ethnicity of non-white nominees thinking might be influenced by who they were.

As it comes up in so many dimensions of understanding race at the core of American identity, nominal whiteness (including assimilated "other" European "ethnics") is the unexamined given. Rather than give this framework for evaluating the merit of leaders a well deserved funeral, the diversity/multicultural thought matrix suggests its better to value people on contribution of their ethnic particularities than their individual talents, professional accomplishments and maturation into fully-formed human beings. (The "empathy" Obama said was desirable in a Supreme falls into that last category).

Of course Sotomayor's roots as a Puerto-Rican American (redundant already) from the Bronx matter. But it mattered most in 1972, when she needed—and deserved—affirmative action to make up for the legacy of discrimination and disparity associated with those roots to help get her into a school like Princeton where her talents could find full expression for the benefit of society.

The end of the story should be a about the judge Sotomayor became, not the faux, retroactive justification for the affirmative action that helped her get there offered by the diversity establishment thinkers.

And the extension of such thinking to make such confessions of identity thinking, as Alito's 2005 testimony, to white ethnic or other (gay, disabled etc.) "diverse" groups a valid part of our vetting process is not justice. It's an almost cruel joke on the premise that the American dream is one people created out of many.

Diversity and Sotomayor in Obama Time

I have many good excuses for not writing much since last Fall, but here’s the one to move things forward again: I’ve been terribly bored and disappointed by the current state of public conversation on race, identity and culture that’s been the core of my writing for over 20 years.

The disappointment has lingered for quite some time. But I didn’t know how bored I was until the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, and the inevitable framing, vilification, posturing and plain stupidity—from many sides—that ensued. Predictable? Yes. But, in the age of Obama, I had expected this kind of appointment drama to take new direction, from a new script that reveals something meaningful about the turn we’ve taken as a nation.

Yet instead of cleaning up the conversation, the gush actually got more stupid and dirtier to boot. At times it’s seemed like a violent torrent, trying to swell itself to  join the pro-gun, Obama-as-Socialist, anti-abortion terrorism, Holocaust Museum assault tide.

Who wrote this into the millennium?

 Then this NYT piece in the stream—like a Proustian madeline (yes, I’ve actually been tackling Proust instead of writing to you!)—opened some sense inside me that I need to start getting out. The piece left a taste on my mind’s tounge: the promise I savored as I  walked into a store on Fordham Road in the Bronx in the Spring of 1970 to buy a Yale tee-shirt, because I had been accepted and would be attending in the Fall.

I didn’t know anything about affirmative action. What I felt was affirmation, and the sense of it extending to entire generation. I felt secure about the “better days” my mother always said were coming. 

And now there is Obama. But his triumph stands in stark contrast to the utter failure of multiculturalism and the claims of the diversity industry to making America a better place. At least the right-wing reaction—the naked terror, paranoia and race for arms against the face of change—is openly (appallingly?) transparent, if not honorable. The multi-culty left, with all it’s courtiers pressing Obama to establish their power in government, is still in denial as to what they have and have not won.

The diversity people still don’t know what time of day it is. It’s not a quarter after the ritual filling of the mosaic-tiled salad bowl of American identity. It’s a quarter to (and holding) the full reality of  America as the first truly non-racial, non-ethnically defined nation.

links for 2009-06-14

• Op-Ed Columnist - A Nation of Cowards? - NYTimes.com
  (tags: linkrollthis)
• Letters - The Post-Black Problem - NYTimes.com
  (tags: linkrollthis)
• For Sotomayor and Thomas, Paths Diverge at Race - NYTimes.com
  (tags: race identity affirmative+action Obama Sotomayor linkrollthis)
• Cover story: 'The meaning of Obama' by Michael Lind | Prospect Magazine December 2008 issue 153
  Always, for me, a seminal analysis of the big picture of race and American identity.
  (tags: linkrollthis)
• Is Sonia Sotomayor playing the race card? - Roger Simon - POLITICO.com
  (tags: race identity Obama Sotomayor diversity affirmative-action linkrollthis)

Pick A (race) Card, Any Card

It was just a one-line post on theRoot.com., and a silly one:

The whole compensation-for-slavery debate should be recast as a historical bailout.

But it's as good a place as any to jump in after a long, strange personal hiatus from the American Race, observed.
A month, of course, is no where near enough time to get perspective on where we are right now as the Age of Obama inaugurates. You can't really take in the mountain when you're still on it, still on the thrill ride as it thrust itself from the earth, still focused on your own particular hand hold, face away from the expanse of the valleys all around.
But lend an ear as you brave your way down to reality and you start hearing the sounds like when the Road Runner gets the Coyote to race off yet another cliff, only to plummet doppler down with a stupid look on his face. That would be the sound of the black pols who at first made seating Roland Burris in the Senate a racial issue despite the taint of his appointment by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Blago himself is too precious a toon to hear plummet just yet: he's still walking around on thin air as if his Howdy Doody hair is holding him up.

This piece of post by my friend Ed Gilbreath says more than enough:

I need therapy, folks. As a lifelong Illinoisian (with a brief sojourn to Florida), I’m feeling lots of shame these days. What in the world is going on with my state?

What’s really sad is the way Blagojevich is brazenly playing the race card in this situation to apparently distract attention from his own sorry plight and curry favor with African Americans, who may be his last source of support. And what’s even sadder is the way some African American leaders, both from the political and church arenas, have played along with Blago’s desperate ploy. Looking especially bad in this whole mess is Roland Burris, who once seemed like a wise and respectable public servant. Why on earth would he go along with Blagojevich’s plan, knowing that it would lead to the very debacle we’re seeing right now in Springfield and Washington?

Why indeed? Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because "that's where the money was". There is still black leadership invested in narrow-group thinking because that's where the power was. Except of course it's not, hasn't been for some time. There are in fact no assets in that bank: rob it and all you get are liabilities similar to the now disgraced CMO's.

I hope you feel me, because I don't want to waste our time trying to see through the eyes of those without vision.

Instead, I point you to something that fed me richly on HBO last night-a rerun of "The Black List, Vol. 1"

It's the first 21st Century projection of the essence of black American humanity and mission. "Simple elegance" does not do the production justice. It's a series of straightforward interviews with a range of figures who are leaders, athletes, businessmen, artitsts and intellectuals. The work, in fact, reveals the truth that signature African-Americans have always combined these gifts to create themselves, and create America in the process.

My favorite, for the moment, was Richard Parsons sober pronouncement of the black man's mission to, constitution and declaration of independence in hand, move on for the race "and be sure to take care of the white folks too". It brought home something I've always known to be true, now embodied by our president elect.

No one has more invested in meeting the challenge thrown down to history by the framers than the decendents of their slaves. Securing the truth of the first nation based on equality before God is why we have been here. Put that frame up against the next race-card cartoon you see.

Oh, and whatever you have to do, beam up the jaw dropping interview with Susan Rice, our UN ambassador to be. Nobody, I mean nobody, could have been ready for this!

Post-Election TV

I was honored to talk about race, identity and politics in the age of Obama on the Brian Lehrer Live show in New York recently. Check the show's blog here.  My friend and former colleague Jim Sleeper of Talking Points Memo and I compared remarkably similar notes during the segment, which originally aired on November 5th.

Enjoy!

Race Relations with Leon Wynter and Jim Sleeper from Brian Lehrer Live on Vimeo.

Barack Obama's American Skin

"Oh what a morning
I feel so good
Oh what a morning
Of brotherhood...."

(—from "Brown Earth," by Laura Nyro, from my "People Get Ready" playlist)

So much to observe, to think about and to feel. I'm not ready to write very much new.

So, in my next few posts, let me quote some from what I wrote in American Skin, published in 2002.

The game has changed. For years I've been convinced that the future is not about black people leading black people, in the old mold that was first stamped for black preachers and teachers. The future is about black people leading all Americans, especially white Americans. That leadership will be accepted only if it comes from individuals who only happen to be black. Just ask Colin Powell....

Transracial popular culture has created a new mold for black leadership, one that is based on individual example rather than on group allegiance. Tiger Woods may have no politics that an old-school black nationalist would recognize, but he leads white people, and not just on the golf course.

And if you can imagine somebody like Tiger Woods selling you a car, how about somebody like Opra getting your vote for Congress or even president? You heard it here first.

Hey-What If...?

Here's a new, quick hit category just to tickle your right (as in renewed) brain:

What if the United States saw a man with a white mother and an African (or otherwise black) father the way they do in most of Latin America?

Well..then Barack Obama would be on his way to something other than the first black President of the United States. He'd be on the verge of something like the first mestizo or mixed-race President, as many, many people would prefer.

In Brazil, for example, most people with much less "white" blood than Obama are not considered (and definitely do not consider themselves) black. They actually call themselves white.
Ditto most other Latin countries with significant amounts of African "blood" running in the national veins.

Now, Brazil of course has never come close to putting someone of Obama's hue in as head of state. But if (or when) it happens, the "white" (i.e. the whitest, most entitled) part of the electorate will not have as far a bridge to cross as American whites do. They would be far more culturally (if not politically) prepared to say what Americans still have a hard time saying: "He's just as much one of 'us' as one of 'them'. "

Because "us" and "them" are far more fluid concepts in Latin America, where race is as much about your family name or what an individual makes of themselves as mere skin color.

In other words, when Brazil's Obama rises and puts it all together the way America's has, his merit will immediately overrule the question of his race. If we here had a different perspective—i.e. if we saw no "One Drop" rule—it would be the same for our Obama.

And we would then move way ahead of Latin America, because this revelation about the falsity of race would follow and complete the ordeal of the civil rights movement that's barely begun in Latin America.

The Best Of (the) Times

Two great columns on race and American identity, to ourselves and in the world, in today's New York Times.

Roger Cohen delivered another inspired, nearly rhapsodic piece about what the idea of Barack Obama means to the world.

And Nicholas Kristof here presents some intriguing (however intuitive, at least to me) research on nature versus cultural nurture in our perception of race. My favorite finding:

A flood of recent research has shown that most Americans, including Latinos and Asian-Americans, associate the idea of “American” with white skin. One study found that although people realize that Lucy Liu is American and that Kate Winslet is British, their minds automatically process an Asian face as foreign and a white face as American — hence this title in an academic journal: “Is Kate Winslet More American Than Lucy Liu?”

 More evidence of the amazing year of Obama opening once hidden doors in the American mind. 

Obama's Not Black (again)

First, just get your yuk-yuk on with this bit from Comedy Central's new "Chocolate News"

Now for why I went there. From time to time—ok, pretty much daily—I just have to check the modest stats on this blog. Over the many months since I first began writing about Barack Obama and the presidential campaign, at least 10% of my hits have been from this Google search: Obama not black.

I think this comes up because there are a great many people who don't want Obama to be both black and president of the United States. Their number may well include Obama opponents and many disinterested (read : people in other countries who just don't get the contradictions of the American way of race) folks as well as die-hard Obama supporters.

The American Race turns up on these searches because of this post —"If Obama's Not Black..."—from way back in (gasp) January 2007!

I wrote in response to what I (correctly) called the opening round of artillery concering race and American identity in what was already the beginning of the political two years of our lifetimes. My take; forget about determining  whether he's really black.

If he's not "black", I wrote, so what? 

Up To Our Ears In A Sea Of Race...

...and to be honest, I'm losing my will to swim across the current.

I don't know where to start, but I resist reducing this to yet another "moment" metaphor.
It's an old, old school temperature reading of the American character. I'm talking analog, and I'm talking rectal.That's been my emotional takeaway as I've listened to and read SO much first ever reporting on race and the closing days of the 2008 presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain.

I'm not talking about the reporting and bloviating on the inescapable racial context of both campaigns' strategies and tactics, as worthy of thumb-sucking attention as it is. I'm taling about all the white people talking about their own race feelings, and that of their white neighbors, friends and relations.

My friends, as John McCain might start, I've been following this subject pretty much since I could read; I've never seen anything like this. I have never heard an "average Joe" white man squirm in abject frustration from repeated confrontation with the racial ignorance and animus of his own "people." That moment alone, part of an amazing episode (as there were any unamazing episodes) of This American Life on the McCain and Obama "ground games" in Pennsylvania.

Listen to "Dan's" story here and see what I mean.

Mind you, I'm not exultant. I'm empathetic. For the first time in a long time I felt like I might have been in that man's skin, because it sounded and felt like he had spent some time in mine.

Other good stuff, also on public radio (of course) has been the team up by NPR's Michelle Norris and Steve inskeep for an extended series of "focus group" report on race and the election. Their cross section is also taken from the Keystone State. Which goes to prove that, surprise, surprise, Washington and New York reporters need not traipse to all the way Missouri to discover authentic America, warts and all. Listen to the latest in the series here.

This categorically better than hearing talking heds like Cornell West or Abigail Thernstrom (or me) on this stuff, thoughtful and credible as they were on WNYC's Brian Leherer show Monday morning.

Here's the audio:

Why? Because THIS  is the conversation I'm talking about. People talking peer to peer, not party to party or philosophy to philosophy.

Take Your Deep Breath (here)

When this adjective defying season began in earnest—I'm calling it last November, 2007—nobody was sure about Barack Obama's race, religion or the meaning of his emerging candidacy, but everyone who was awake, across a wide range of viewpoints and media platforms, knew something very, very big was up.

Check this post from exactly 11 months ago, when the Times Roger Cohen and the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan separately declared a major paradigm shift in the making.

And the earthquakes have kept on coming. Obama's racial ambiguity has melted into the comfortable (however loathsome) reality of the One-Drop Rule in effect: he is now unambiguously black. But, notwithstanding the increasingly rabid passion in some quarters to paint him a similar shade of black as old bogeymen like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson or Louis Farrahahn, he remains a black man with no black baggage. The teflon I saw coating his blackness last January has hardened into steel.

Hilary Clinton's racinating (ok, my word) bullets ultimately bounced off, though they made enough of a dent to confirm the McCain strategists best worst instincts. The only way to beat Obama was to make him the alien (as in "he's just not like us") threat. Here's a partial list of the attributes that were supposed to prove it:

• He's an eloquent Ivy League intellectual
• He's a Muslim
• He's a friend of (a) terrorists
• He's a Chicago machine pol
• He's hiding something
• He can't really be known, much less trusted
• He doesn't share our culture

 McCain tapped the perfect pair of high heels on which to mount this barrage in Sarah Palin, and the base has been fed a rich diet of red meat ever since. But the problem is that the Republicans misread the depth and breadth of resonance for these race-rooted attacks in white America. In another year, even as recently as 2004, it could very well have worked. But not with the full fury of eight years of Bush Administration near-criminal negligence coming to a crecendo as the financial crisis hit.

Meet Aneesa

Aneesa is a teacher in Minneapolis who heard some of my 'conversation' with Greg from Rochester from last August here in The American Race, and later here on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday.

When she first wrote, she was:

...struck by the fact that both you and Greg have ten year olds attending racially isolated schools.  I too teach at a racially isolated school.  That racial isolation in schools insulates white kids and black kids from a world that is not racially isolated.  I believe justice can prevail, and our society could be set up to heal our racial wounds if we could figure out how to intentionally plan integrated schools.

To that end, and a larger goal of harnessing her faith to the challenge of racial reconciliation, Aneesa is  a leader in ISAIAH, the Minnesota chapter of the faith-based Gamaliel organizing network. She summarized ISAIAH's belief and mission:

To create our health and the health of our democracy, major societal change is necessary.

• We will move our democracy and public institutions to:
• Create racial and economic equity with reparation for past harms
• Expand and protect that which must belong to all of us
• Pool our collective resources into public investments for the common good
• Create deep democratic participation in all aspects of our common lives
• Ensure hat "citizenship" extends to all stakeholders in our democracy

On Sunday, ISAIAH sponsored the fourth in a series of events  gathering people of faith, public officials and other leaders in Aneesa's community to rally and share the new vision. Some 4,000 people attended the third one; Aneesa had every hope that the latest one would draw at least that many.

I hope to get a report from Aneesa soon on how it turned out. Thank God for the means to seek His revelations from a much wider range of people than one could ever reach naturally, and the means to propagate the works of the Spirit in this way.

Like me, from this blogs Vision and call to The Revival, Aneesa says she feels called to bear witness and serve, "a special moment in history; a call to the revival first issued during the Civil Rights Era."

I very much welcome Aneesa to The Conversation.

Finally: The Bottom Line

When last I spoke on race and the race for the White House, I was sick in a few ways—including with myself—about the divisive roar of the Sarah Palin meme.

What a difference a little less than a month makes!

We've seen the race/culture war resentment factor swell the Palin-McCain ticket prospects to near bursting, only to see them deflate even faster as the financial crisis, and Barack Obama's cool performance during the last 2 weeks, bring a large chunk of the electorate to their senses.

I'm not the only observer who has said for months that the only factor explaining why Obama hadn't been winning in a walk, even before Hillary quit, was race. It was glaringly obvious as the madness of Palin mania first hit, but nobody wanted to say it.

Now, apparently, it can be told. Now that the true stakes of the choice between McCain and Obama have been brought home to the average Amereican pocketbook.

It's all here, in this MUST SEE video of AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka's passionate, address before the Steelworkers union.

Ta-Nahesi Coates (H/T to him, and Andrew Sullivan before him) calls it the "John Brown 2008" moment we've all been waiting for.

Judge for yourself. Now.

Truth On Its Way In Baltimore

Any headline with "transcending" and "race" gets my immediate attention. Here's one from the New York Times, and some key excerpts:

Transcending Race and Religion to Rebuild the Ruins of Baltimore

They were the black ministers whom Mr. Graf, a white Jew, was trying to persuade to join him in community organizing.
... conversation stilled at Mr. Graf’s arrival. “I don’t know if we should be talking about this stuff with an outsider here,” one minister said, ...Then the Rev. Vernon N. Dobson, one of Baltimore’s legendary civil rights leaders, replied.

“He’s with me,” Mr. Dobson said. “And who’s blacker than me here? The man is my brother.”

Nearly 30 years later, Mr. Dobson’s judgment on Mr. Graf has been ratified and redeemed. Mr. Graf, 64, has built a striking track record of crossing the borders of race and religion to organize among black Christians. His current effort has brought together millions of dollars from black churches and Jewish philanthropies to build or repair up to 1,200 homes in the ruins of East Baltimore.

There's more.

“There is something special about the black church,” Mr. Graf said. “Vernon Dobson, more than anyone, got me back to God. Not to organized religion, but to a Creator. He had an intellect and a spirit that seemed integrated in a way I’d never seen. The way he understood that his religion called for him to ‘be for the least of these’ — it struck a chord with me.”

Graf, who is married to a black woman, thought about joining a black church, but decided it would violate his deep sense of Jewish identity. But the power of this is not about religion--the institution and denominations. It's about the Spirit of God, as it reveals itself in our hearts--whether we also discover it revealed in the bible or not.

Graf may not be a Christian or an observant Jew. But he did quote scripture about "for the least of these."

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

 37 "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' 40 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.

 —Matthew 25:35-40

Reinventing The Black Racial Wheel

According to this very fresh piece of NPR reporting,  the "black is beautiful" Negritude consciousness movement building just below the radar in parts of Latin America has a new beachhead, especially for teens and young adults: Reggaeton.

What's interesting to me is that "blackness" infused in this very popular fusion of dancehall reggae, rap/hiphop and several Latin styles could very well be a bridge to would be Afro-Latinos in the United States. Barely 3% of US Latinos identify themselves as black, despite the fact that a great many more would appear to be of at least as much African descent as the average self-identified black American.

Puerto Rican reggaeton star Tego Calderon

challenges Latinos' black "unconsciousness"

God knows Latin America needs to come to terms with this truth: African heritage is the third leg of their racial/cultural stool. One speaker in the story tells of confronting a "black" Dominican policeman standing near the border with Haiti holding a big stick "to beat the blacks" who might be crossing the border. The confronted with the truth that if he was there to beat blacks he should start with himself, he insisted that he wasn't black, he was Dominican.

This denial, a clear inheritance of the Spanish colonial past, is the basis for a pernicious intranational/intraethnic racism in many Latin American societies. The further away you are from "pure" white, or the closer you are to Afro or Indio, the lower your class of citizenship.

The piece suggests black consciousness will deliver Afro-Latinos from their oppression. But going through the looking glass to emerge somewhere in 1969, at the start of the black consciousness/black power movement here, will not bring the true healing that is needed. And while it could have a strategic political impact in some Latin countries, I don't think it actually plays to the US Latino political reality.

As I've said many times, nobody comes here from Latin America to be part of a racial minority group, especially not the black racial minority group. It's one thing to wake up in, say, the Dominican Republic, realize that the vast majority of your countrymen are a shade of brown, not pink, and rethink your aspiration toward whiteness.  It's quite another to wake up in the still 74% white US and be persuaded to discard your identification of upward mobility with whiteness.

Moreover, it's just plain dumb. The axle of the wheel being reinvented is the 19th century "one drop rule". It's a formulation that I believe will not (and does not deserve to) make it past 2020. Afro-Latinos in America, like the rest of us, are going to have to find their way past this false black-white dichotomy, to land in a place where culture, nationality and ethnicity exist in separate planes and so-called race is beside the point.

Class, Culture or Race War: Pick Your Poison

"Ah ha!" I heard myself shouting—inside. "White trash!"

Not like my "good" white friends, people I know personally. Not like white people who, for the mercy of knowing their politics, education or cultural preferences (e.g. conservatives who nevertheless listen to NPR) I would never think of thinking of "that way." Not the people with whom I worship the Lord who just happen to be white.

No, this was the pure racial/political "other," jumping in my face after some many months absence from the center ring of the American political circus.

It was just after the ovation for Sarah Palin's proud self-caricature of a hockey mom as pit-bull with lipstick died down during Wednesday's coming out speech.

So, now we all know the difference between a pit-bull and a hockey mom.

"What's the difference," I heard my worst self screaming, between a hockey mom and a soccer mom?

Class.

Michelle Obama could very well be a soccer mom, as I could be a soccer Dad. We hate pit-bulls. We shudder at the thought of our kids being caught up in hockey's uncouth culture of gratuitous violence. And like most Americans, didn't notice when the NHL went dark a few seasons ago.

(To be sure, we don't actually watch soccer when it comes on TV. But we want our kids playing it with the children of the "right kind" of neighbors.)

And mothers of a certain class and breeding, regardless of race or even wealth, would rather die than bring up a daughter that would rub spit on a baby sibling in public, much less on national TV.

In that moment, the Palins became a meme--a witting and utterly calculated meme in my opinion-- for the nemesis of everything the Obamas—that is to say me and my whole generation of black upwardly mobile professionals—have striven and sacrificed to stand for.

And in the same moment, I realized I'd swallowed the sucker bait, right along with (if the post-convention blather is even half-right) most of small town, red state America. Nixon's silent majority, especially in the South. Reagan's democrats.

Sarah Palin got me to see them as my enemy, again, and to call them a dirty name. If the RNC convention delegates, in their cowboy hats and other anti-New York-Chicago-Los Angeles regalia, hadn't been so passionate about chanting Obama was a zero, maybe I'd have seen Piper's move as cute, if a little tacky. But in that moment...all I want to do is dehumanize her and her family and lash out in return.

The call of Christ to love one another above and beyond mere politics went right out the window, for a minute.

What The White Man Means by "Ghetto"

A must read post by Ta-Nehisi that fits PERFECTLY in between the two parts of my meditation of race, class and Sarah Palin.

(I'm getting to be a BIG fan of his!)

A White Trash Moment, And A Shameful Epiphany

"They" are doing it to me (us) again.

Or am I doing it to myself???

Spent too much time looking for these few seconds from Sarah Palin speech last night.

It may have been the Devil's errand. But I just had to post and then confess a  moment of very sinful pleasure amidst the pain of her big speech last night.

What did YOU think when little Piper Palin started licking her palms to slick down her new baby brother's hair during his national close-up?

Be brutally honest, as I'm about to be.

Not long before that, almost ready to hurl from the non-stop disparagement of everything Barack Obama—like his politics or not—had achieved, I was thinking:

Wait a minute; which member of the McCain team ever came CLOSE to being president of the Harvard Law Review???

With all the talk about experience and relevance, whatever happened to the value we supposedly place on academic achievement in our leadership and in our society. We've had 8 years of a president who seems to take pride in the lack of impact his free pass through Yale had on his intellect. Yet, the Republicans don't think twice about comparing  Palin's scant academic or professional accomplishment most favorably with Obama's. What message do we send to our kids about the value of education?

But that's not what this is really about. This is about the beast of racial resentment--my racial resentment--gnawing on me all through Giuliani's diatribe and into Palin's speech without pause until I was ready to roar.

And when I did, as Piper did her thing,  guess what I screamed?

(hint: it wasn't "Go Yanks" for beating the D-Rays at that very moment.)

Next Post: Class, Culture or Race War-Pick Your Poison

Not Who's Next...(more)

Did you catch Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton at the big Democratic Convention finale on Thursday??

If so, shoot me a You-Tube link, and pat yourself on the back 'cause you're damn good.

If, in fact, it's even on You-Tube.

(I tried, but I had to settle for this still.)

Actually I did see them, way past the midnight hour on CNN or MSNBC. I'm sorry ( but no longer ashamed) to say I wasn't really listening; I thought it... strategic...to give my wife some full face time, after gorging my eyes and ears on the 6 hour Obama-fest.

Not that I wish them anything but every minute of life God spares them. But I couldn't help thinking about how my recent post, noting the passing of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, also applied to them. The Revs. Al and Jesse may not have a foot in the grave, but they definitely have one whole leg and a few additional toes in retirement.

It does not make me happy, much as it causes their haters joy. It doesn't make me sad, either. The word for what I feel, as I see them clawing for a little bit of reflected light, long after the confetti has fallen, is wistful:

wist*ful : having or showing a feeling of vague or regretful longing

Yeah, that's what I feel. But this, like so many feelings in this head spinning year, is fleeting. Too many others to process...

Blessed by Greg's Comment

A few posts ago I opined about a recent media current of dueling black versus white victimhood. One of my examples was this story by one  Greg Harden, as told on the new NPR  omniblog (ok, I just made that term up) system.

At the end, I believe I praised the honesty and candor of these white writers, and I wrote:

What it says is that the starting point in today's race dialog ---or rather serial monologues-- is a struggle to claim victim-hood. Or at least to disclaim the 'other's' victim-hood.

It's hard to say where all this will lead, but the honesty, at least, is promising.

Well, I've been especially blessed by a long comment in response from one writer named Greg. Please see it here, at the bottom of the post.

Greg, I'd love to have a real dialog on this. Not to prove any points, but to share. As I meant to suggest at the end of my original post, any place an honest conversation on this most tender and timely subject starts is a great place, as long as it starts.

And at that start, let me say that your comment reminded me of something that I rarely forgot as a newspaper reporter when interviewing real people in real time: it's just a story in a reporters head, but it often comes from other people's guts. I can't imagine the grief and rage I'd feel if my 10 year old were the victim of ANY kind of violence, but especially racial violence. So please start with my sincere sympathy, no matter the politics or sociology.

Shoot me an e-mail at: leonwynter@leonwynter.com and let's figure it out.

Tubbs Jones, Upshaw...It's Not Who's Next, But What

Thinking about the recent spate of prominent African-Americans passing. And it dawns on me: it's death, not Matt Bai, that will be having the last word on the end of black politics. And sooner than we think.

Think about it. Without naming names, think of any long tenured black 'leader' you know meeting their maker as per the inevitable actuarial schedule. Think of who's on or close to the doorstep.

Then think of their replacements.

Done straining your brain yet?

Soon and very soon the only people who might be pointed to as black leaders are gonna look more and more like Barack Obama, and other what have been called Ivy League "no mustache niggers" than Jesse Jackson or Maxine Waters or Al Sharpeton. I 'm not saying it's a good or bad thing, though I'm always hoping for better. But it's just fact.

I don't know what comes after that. But I do know what we've called the post civil-rights period of American history will be over, and without a conclusive, defining battle determining who won the war, or even what we were fighting for.

Hilary or Not, Here It Comes

On the eve of Obama's vice-presidential announcement, here's a quick hit, adapted from a note I just had to dash off to one of my favorite shows.

I'm sick and tired of a few things:

1-You know I was a working journalist for over 20 years, and taught it for about 6. So I know how you feel about charges of media bias, because I generally feel that way too. But I have to say that from the start much of your coverage of the presidential campaign was like the way the local announcer covers the hometown baseball team: you've sounded like 'homers' for Hilary.

I would concede a rationale for that during the primary--she is still our senator. But as coverage makes its way toward the convention in Denver, with all the continuing emphasis on the white Democrats who loved Hilary but, strangely, can't abide Obama,  I have to conclude you're still at it; the reporting feels like all that mattered was that Hilary carried New York.

2- If nothing else,you need to remember that while Hilary got about 60+ percent of the state as a whole, Obama got 90+ percent of black New Yorkers. Every single show you do on the whole Hilary angst, and her die hards, that does not even mention the equally deep passion of black New Yorkers feels like a wedge in the heart.

I once really admired Hilary (and Bill) and voted for her gladly for Senate. Then, though I didn't have anything against her, I preferred Obama for President.

But since the rest of the primary season played out with her as Lady Macbeth, I've come to dislike her strongly. And, as I hear stories of how some of her supporters would still like to bring Obama down, for reasons that always sound tissue thin, when they are articulated at all, I've begun to HATE Hilary Clinton. Funny thing: I realize it's not all her fault; this kind of coverage aggravates a sentiment that violates my personal morality and professional ethics.

3-I'd like to see you go after the root of all this, as journalists. Call the freakin' question: are people who support Hilary, can't articulate a real policy difference between her and Obama yet can't bring themselves to vote for him (despite her so-called urging) motivated by racism?

Because that, I think, is what the black New Yorkers (more and more I've noticed) listening to your show are screaming as they follow this and similar coverage.

4-Finally, though I now almost loathe her, and the racist blackmail that could possibly still press Obama to select her, I'd almost like to see Hilary on the ticket as VP.

Why? Because then all those suspected  Democrat racists out there in the so-called heartland will have to put up or shut up. They'll have to tell Hilary to her face why they're still not voting for Obama.

I hope to heaven they prove me wrong.

New Census 'Race' Numbers: Stop the Madness (pt. 1)

There is so much to shoot at in the big story of how we're on track to become a so called "minority majority" nation by 2042 instead of 2050.

Let's start with this:

Ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation’s population in a little more than a generation, according to new Census Bureau projections, a transformation that is occurring faster than anticipated just a few years ago.

When so called non-Hispanic whites are a mere plurality, will we STILL be according them the (white) privilege of identifying everyone else as part of a "minority group"??

As Wynton Marsalis once said, "I'm an American, and no one is more American than me. So how can I be a minority in my own country?"

See the NY Times story here. See the Census Bureau release (strangely unlinked in the Times) that started the madness here.

Latino Identity and Obama vs. McCain

On July 25th I joined Roberto Lovato of New American Media (see sample of his work on the subject here) at the 2008 Unity Convention of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American journalists in a panel discussion: Cooperation, Competition or Coopetition? : Black-Latino Politics In the Post-Southern Strategy Era

I'm not sure how much we resolved. My take was based heavily on this Pew Hispanic report about the centrality of whiteness in Latino identity. But moderator Ray Suarez (of PBS NewHour fame) did leave me pondering one thing I hadn't considered before.

Latinos may be climbing a ladder into the American social mainstream that, despite our accomplishments, African-Americans have not really been permitted to ascend. But, as Suarez pointed out, in today's global sweatshop economy, the ladder is constantly sinking as the price of the American Dream rises out of sight.

Here's a link to a story about the panel in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder

The Inexorable, Ineffable Heaviness of Race-pt. 3 of 3

For the most part, most white people's experience with race isn't one of racial discrimination. They can only relate to racial discrimination in the abstract. What white people can relate to is the fear of being unjustly accused of racism. ... This is why allegations of racism often provoke more outrage than actual racism, because most of the country can relate to one (the accusation of racism) easier than the other (actual racism). For this reason, in a political conflict over race, the McCain campaign has the advantage, because saying the race card has been played is actually the ultimate race card.
                                             —Adam Serwer, "Obama's Racial Catch-22"

It's the above quote that made me tip my hat to Adam Serwer's recent "Obama's Racial Catch-22" in The American Prospect. I called it "the best analysis of race and the 'race' I've seen yet," because, with the above graf, it brought us one layer closer to the heart of the onion: the white experience with race.

We said with race, not of race, but the two are clearly, intimately related. I think white folks have experiences with race all the time—especially on television. But, unlike black folks, and other non-whites to varying degrees, they do not have a near continuous experience of race as a fact of daily identity.

Except, that is, when black charges of racism are in the news. (Or when the black complaint catches them unprotected) And especially when the first black in American history is making a credible run for the White House. The last thing people who accept no personal relationship, much less responsibility, for the basic nature of American racism want to hear is that John McCain and/or his supporters are trying to appeal to white racism for votes.

But what I want to explore is: What light might Serwer's insight lend to our Vision?

links for 2008-08-09 [delicious.com]

• Jewish Steve Cohen Beats Back Black Race Hater Tinker in Memphis Primary (Bob Herbert Op-Ed, NYTimes.com)
  What better place than Memphis for what Dr. King would want to be done? Let's take this as a sign, by faith.
  (tags: race politics identity African+Americans racial+reconciliation)

links for 2008-08-07 [delicious.com]

• Race Takes Central Role in a Memphis Primary - NYTimes.com

links for 2008-08-06 [delicious.com]

• Magazine Preview - Post-Race - Is Obama the End of Black Politics? - NYTimes.com
  (tags: 2008+presidential+race Barack+Obama African+American identity race)
• Obama's Racial Catch-22 | The American Prospect
  The best analysis of race and the 'race' I've seen yet.
  (tags: race racism politics Obama 2008+presidential+campaign)

The Inexorable, Ineffable Heaviness of Race-pt. 2

I was about to refer to the recent explosion of media talk about race. Then I got distracted by the very logical absurdity: an 'explosion' presumes a preceding relative silence. If there's been any doubt about the depth, breadth and increasing volume of race talk going on, do check out the latest, perhaps state of the art, digital culture channel for plugging into it.

It's the Sunday Soapbox on NPR. I won't bore with the details, some of which are a little confusing, anyway. But they seem to have a month-long project delving into race and the current politics that combines in-depth (or at least long, even for NPR) reporting, and a built in multimedia blogging system that anyone can join. I did, and if you're interested in contributing or just peeping you can get started here.

That said, while cruising this new wealth of race talk, on NPR and a few other places, I have been struck by two things. One is the frankness, however depressing, of white people who are mighty cynical about "blacks-and-whites-together" happening anytime soon.

The other was the number of whites writing that they despair because they, and/or their children, are frequent victims of black racial animosity and/or violence.