The American Race

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