Don't Shoot The Messenger!!!

(God's) Timing is Everything

2011-05-01T19:44:00.006-04:00

Someone once asked me, “did it ever seem like a situation worked out so that it was obvious God was working on you or through you?” After I thought about it for a few moments, I began rattling them off. There were long-term commitments that lasted years, and short interactions that came and went in a blink of eye. There were those that allowed me to make a major impact on someone or someplace, and those where the impact on me was life altering. I have always known that God used me in special ways, even when I hand little belief and almost no understanding of Him. I’ve been told that I’m like Forest Gump in that my friends and I have had so many experiences that “ordinary people just don’t have”. Well, my Gumpishness is definitely God driven.

Of my Godly experiences, the last thought that came to my mind was actually the one of the most special ones to me. It was during my adventures in Iowa. After my first year there, I had amassed a large contingent of minority students. As the Dean of Enrollment, I had been given the job of increasing the minority enrollment from 8% Black and 11% total, to 11% Black and 15% total. Seeing as the state was only 2% Black, and 5% minority total, no other college in Iowa history had ever had come close to those levels. Well, my second fall recruitment brought us up to 25% Black, 10% Hispanic, and 7% “other minority” and international students. Having done a lot more than “window dressing”, I wasn’t very popular with many of the people who liked having mostly “normal” students (their word, not mine) on campus. Still, with the kids that came from as near as Chicago, and as far as Jamaica and China, I was pretty well respected. I did have one problem with my original class, and that was despite my ability to supplement their tuition money, a private school education was still brutal on their family finances. So two weeks into their second semester, many were faced with the prospect of getting their packing notices.

Of course, my position was that I never wanted to lead lambs to the slaughter. For them to leave school with loans and no degree because of me was unacceptable. Then, on the second Saturday of the semester, we were entertaining the last minute potential registrants… something I hated. One man came in with a potential student from Chicago. I didn’t want to be bothered with them since I was in the middle of praying for a way to keep the kids I had become really close to from having to leave. I don't like my prayer time interrupted, and besides, they came two weeks late… Grrrrrr!!! But as I listened to the counselors go through the spiel, I realized that the man who brought the kid wasn’t his father, but just a guy who went to the kid’s church and took an interest in him. Well, if he can bring a kid five hours to see a college, I can at least go out and talk to him. So I went out and made some small talk. After about three minutes, we realized that we were kindred spirits. I offered to show him around the campus, he accepted, and off we went

First we established the mutual admiration society by talking about how we got to where we were in life: I being the only African American employee at a college where I was in charge of all admissions and financial aid; and he being the only African American millionaire building contractor in Chicago. As the conversation went on, and got into the Christian realm, we started talking about serving others. He told me about how his church, a massive 20,000 member spot in Chicago, gave scholarships to a bunch of kids every year. He said he was tired of giving kids who had a support system extra support, and he had been praying for an opportunity to give some kids who were basically on their own some help... AND... he was willing to use his own money… he just didn’t know where to find the kids since there were none like that in his circle.

I’m thinking, “It couldn’t be this easy. I pray. He prays. God brings us together. Let me keep talking and find out where this thing is heading.”

I told him that if he wanted one, I could find him a kid who needs help in about 3 minutes. He said that wasn’t good enough, he wanted to help a bunch of kids. I said “that could be arranged.” I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said… “What can I get for $30,000?” [Blink... Blink... cough... cough... 30 G's?!?!}] Since most of the kids were short anywhere from $1,500 to $4,500, that gave me a chance to save about ten or so of them. We shook on it. I found the kids and sent him the list. He brought me to a banquet in Chicago where he could give me the check in front of some folks to rub it in their faces. I also got to meet Andrew Young who was the Keynote speaker for the event ,and hang at my new friend’s mini-mansion.

Hanging out with this modest, hard-working new millionaire, I found what he considers to be the secret to his success. He constantly gave away as much of his time and money to others as his schedule would allow. One afternoon, he took me and about 120 Boy Scouts, youth home kids, and others to a football game at $68 dollars per ticket, which included busses for the kids. He likes football, and didn’t want to go alone. He never did anything alone that he could bless some other people by doing it with them. He constantly planted some seeds, and watered others. Every morning, he and his wife got up at about 5:00 and had the prayer-line and counseling line of their church forwarded to their house, where they ministered to people until it was time for them to go to work. Sometimes I listen to people talk about how they question God’s ways, motives, abilities, etc. But he had proven very consistent in how God does things… at least to a layman like me. Meeting this brother and hanging out with him for the next six months showed me so many Biblical principals at work: stewardship, sewing and reaping, do unto others, etc. The only way I could not acknowledge how God works… would be if I had never read The Book. Timing is everything, and God is not only always on the clock, He is The Clock.

Try Him for yourself. Get on THE CLOCK, ‘cause time is ticking away.

What did Martin Luther King Really Say?!?!

2011-01-17T13:41:00.005-05:00

Today we will be innundated with Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech. What we will generally be hearing is the last four or five minutes of a 17 or so minute speech. We will hear him eloquently repeat a vision he had expressed on several other occassions, but never on a stage that large. I know it was God that made Mahalia Jackson stand in front of the podium nagging at him to “tell them about the dream” until he gave up his prepared text and went into it. That change in his presentation that day had world-changing ramifications, but it reduced King to a “dreamer”. What people don’t hear is the pragmatic power of the first 2/3 of the speech where he gave America a report card of our poor treatment of its citizens, and what our fate would be if we did not become accountable. What they don’t hear are the words of a man who not only dreamed of a better world, but was constantly fighting for it.

I love King. He is one of my favorite military strategists, and he was a pretty good speaker as well. I tend to hang onto every word he said, particularly, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere!” As an adolescent, I got into studying war and military strategy. In addition to The Swamp Fox of the Revolutionary War, and The Desert Fox of WWII, I studied The Country Fox of the War on Segregation. I absolutely fell in love with King's primary military strategy...Non-violent Aggression. It sounded like Judo to me. Put yourself in such a position that when your enemy attacks you, he actually beats himself. King chose cities where he knew the abuse would by strongest. He calculated the loss of blood, and how many woman and children had to be brutalized on national television to get as many as possible of the 90% of the population who were not Negroes to join his army. I imagined the pain he felt sending sheep off to be slaughtered for the sake of a better future for coming generations. He had a hard job. I couldn’t do it. At the base of the dream there was always a harsh reality.

Two of my aunts marched with him that day. Like me, they are disgusted by his military strategy being distorted by revisionist history. “Dr King preached Non-Violence” WRONG!!!! Non-violence was the adjective; aggression was the noun… ie, the thing. Dr. King preached Nonviolent AGGRESSION, and at the very least, Non-violent RESISTANCE... but both active, not passive concepts. I won’t go into who pulled this Jedi Mind Trick with his legacy, but it’s probably the same folks who convinced some of us that “they gave us the shortest month of the year” for Black History Month rather than Carter G. Woodson choosing February to honor Frederick Douglas’ birthday. The only thing worse than being denied the truth is letting someone convince you that the truth you know is a lie.

The FBI labeled King a "subversive", and targeted him with their COINTELPRO spy program. Politicians labeled him a Communist, and wanted to try him for treason. He had his home bombed. People forget that his "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" was written... from a Birmingham jail. He should not be on a pedestal because he is a mythical figure of love and peace, he should be on it as a majestic figure of fearlessness and undying devotion to doing what was right. He organized groups of people across color lines all over the country. When he died, he left his family penniless, because there was no corporate sponsorship or kickback money. He gave everything he had to his cause. Had he not started expanded his cause to include young folks being sent to an unjust war in Viet-Nam, and the rights of poor White garbage workers and other poor White people, they may have let him live. But history shows that... somehow... a man who had multiple death threat in the hours before his death found his police security mysteriously missing at the time of his assassination. Nothing happens by accident.

I hate that Marty King has been turned into a passive “dreamer” instead of a military strategist. I’m going to continue to take every opportunity I get to tell what MLK really said. Sombody’s gotta speak up, ‘cause like he said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” King had a dream, but he was not a dreamer… he was a visionary, a warrior, a strategist, a religious leader, a revolutionary, etc, who was jailed, beaten, and died to achieve his dream. If we truly respect him, we won’t allow ourselves to base his legacy on a snippet of one speech. In addition to the “FULL” I have a dream speech, everyone should also listen to his “I’ve been to the mountain top speech”. A true hero will stand in the face of the people who told him they would kill him in the next two days and make a speech about the fact that they were going to do it... just like he did. Also, read the text to his “Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool” speech. If we are still struggling to fulfill Dr. Kings dream, maybe it’s because we really don’t know what he said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs

HIV - If It Walks Like Genetic Engineering...

2010-12-12T19:35:00.004-05:00

So I was reading this book of facts on planet earth. Although it’s a kiddie book, it’s a good book with information on history, science, politics, geography… pretty much a synthesis of some of the more interesting stuff that kids learn in their first 8 years of school rolled into one 144 page book. It’s called Don’t Know Much About Planet Earth by Kenneth C. Davis – put it on your kids’ summer reading list. One highlighted article in the book showed the effect that AIDS was having on Africa. It said that by 1999, 84% of the 16.3 million AIDS deaths worldwide were in Sub-Saharan Africa. I know that the situation has only gotten worse since that time, since I’ve seen the stats updated and reprinted every year. Scenes from Save the Children came through my mind, and I felt my usual disgust with our inability/inattention dealing with this issue.

As I ran the computer known as Dwane T.’s brain through a myriad of questions and scenarios on the issue, I came across one of my favorite conspiracy theories; one that I am absolutely sure is true. AIDS was genetically designed as a way to slowly get rid of Black folks. Now, of course I don’t believe this will ever happen, because in the true Bae-bae Kids tradition, we don’t die, we multiply. Unfortunately, while we do multiply at a greater rate than we die, AIDS is definitely killing us globally.

After a few moments, the internal computer landed on something I had read years ago. Back in my cancer treatment days, while sitting in the hospital getting some outpatient blood transfusions, I came across an article in Scientific American magazine that I felt almost single-handedly proved this theory true. It was an article about whether race actually exists. I remember at the time thinking, "boy, this is sure going to open up a Pandora’s Box of research and expose’s". But after seven years… nuttin’. I thought I remembered it was in the December 2003 issue, so off to the internet I went; and this is an excerpt of what I found:

Genetic variation also plays a role in individual susceptibility to one of the worst scourges of our age: AIDS. Some people have a small deletion in both their copies of a gene that encodes a particular cell-surface receptor called chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5). As a result, these individuals fail to produce CCR5 receptors on the surface of their cells. Most strains of HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, bind to the CCR5 receptor to gain entry to cells, so people who lack CCR5 receptors are resistant to HIV-1 infection. This polymorphism in the CCR5 receptor gene is found almost exclusively in groups from northeastern Europe.

Several polymorphisms in CCR5 do not prevent infection but instead influence the rate at which HIV-1 infection leads to AIDS and death. Some of these polymorphisms have similar effects in different populations; others only alter the speed of disease progression in selected groups. One polymorphism, for example, is associated with delayed disease progression in European-Americans but accelerated disease in African-Americans. Researchers can only study such population-specific effects--and use that knowledge to direct therapy--if they can sort people into groups.

Does Race Exist? Scientific American, December 2003

Okay, so it doesn’t say that AIDS is a weapon of biological warfare. But if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and attacks your immune system based on your genetic make-up like a duck, it must be a genetic killing machine of a duck. This is not like the Sickled Cell developing in Africans as a way to combat Malaria, and eventually leading to Sickle-Cell Anemia. That developed over thousands of years. The basic argument for the development of AIDS is that it came from being bitten by, or having sex with, a monkey. Africans were getting bitten by monkeys for thousands of years without getting AIDS, and if they were having sex with monkeys in the late 1960’s they were probably doing them for thousands of years before that too. But the research shows that African Americans are higly suscesptible, European Americans are highly resistant, Northern Europeans are immune, while native Africans are being wiped out. For a disease that supposedly came into existence in the last 40 years to be that strongly defined along racial lines is the best case of racial profiling since Jonnie Gammage. By the Laws of genetic adaptation, for Northern Europeans to develop immunity to AIDS, it would have had to exist there for many generations, and a few million people would have died while that adaptation was taking place.

Hey, you have to give the evil scientists who created this thing credit… what better way to kill off a people than to poison the process by which they create life. It reminds me of an experiment that I learned about in Freshman Biology, where they tried to get rid of the roaches in Miami. They used female roach pheromones to lure the males in, then sterilized them and released them back into the sewers. They thought they were making babies, as did the females… so the roach population dropped. Unfortunately, the rat population started to grow from the extra food, and they had to reintroduce the roaches to keep the rat growth down. Anyway, my point is I would be a fool to believe that the concept of killing an entity by contaminating the procreation process began and ended with that experiment three decades ago. And as a man of preponderantly genetically African decent, I can’t afford to be that foolish.

I know that people of all races are susceptible to HIV... I've had family/friends across the board that died from it. But the reality is that HIV is one of the only sexually transmitted disease that leads to the death of its host (without treatment), and that is transmitted to the child ***prior*** to the natural birthing process leading to the death of the child. By the process by which it kills, the spead at which it spreads, and it’s resistance to “cures”, had the HIV virus existed even 100 years ago, medical science had not evolved enough to prevent the possible extinction of mankind. Scientist had identified which genomes were exclusive to which groups decades ago. Science is not perfect, and governments know that you sometimes have to sacrifice your own in a war of attrition. The Tuskegee Experiment showed that our government has no problem using sexually transmitted diseases to kill off African Americans. Why wouldn’t they, or some other First World country do it now . Basic war strategy is to identify a weakness in the enemy and exploit it. In this case, I guess my weakness is my CCR5 receptor cells.

A Mended Fence… More than an Apology

2010-12-02T04:11:00.005-05:00

Of my many jobs throughout my life, I still trip on my first job “on the books”. I worked as a carpenter and roof repairman in a summer youth employment program. Yes, back in the “old days”, summer youth workers didn’t file and make photocopies... we worked. I spent many a day in 90+ degree heat on hot tar roofs trying to earn my $2.65/hr. thinking, “I don’t know what I’m going to do for a living, but however long I have to stay in school I’m gonna make sure it’s inside”. I didn’t like the roofing part (fear of heights), but I did like the carpentry part. I like building and fixing things, and mending porches, doorways and fences was right up my alley.

I always thought the phrase “mending fences” was an interesting way to look at people fixing a relationship. I looked at it from a couple of ways. One way I looked at it was a fence being different parts with different purposes that have to come together for a reason that is bigger than the any of the parts themselves. In freshman psychology class we learned that was Gestalt theory: “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. So the people involved realize that they are better together than they are apart, and focus on the good rather than the bad. Another way I looked at it was the process of working on a fence together. People can often work out their issues when they focus on a mutual interest rather than on the relationship. Then the conversation can ease into and out of their issues as they feel comfortable talking about it, but as long as the fence is being mended they feel something is being accomplished, and they don’t feel the pressure of the focus being about them.

There were a couple more ways I saw it, but as I thought about them, my mind got to the point where I was preoccupied with the damage to the fence, and does mending the fence sometime gloss over the damage done. So much of mending fences comes down to one or more of the parties involved apologizing for something they said. Once the apology is given and accepted, things move on. But it is often the case that an apology is not enough. Looking at the fence as an example, if someone drove a nail in a fence in a place that it didn’t belong, it would damage the stability of the wood. You could pull the nail out, but it will still leave a whole. You can paint over the nail hole and it will look like new, but the damage to the wood still exists underneath. After a time, the stability of the fence as a whole may be weakened by that point in the fence, and may break down the line despite the fact that “things look fine”.

And so it is with hurtful words and the apologies that are given to correct them. Every time you hurt someone, it’s like driving a nail through wood. The apology then becomes like pulling the nail out; while the action to apologize/pull the nail is done with an honest effort, there is still a hole left behind. The person receiving the apology can choose to put a new coat of paint on the hole, and they may function as strong as a freshly painted, freshly mended fence. But deep inside, whether they ever show the effects or not, the damage is there. Many people look at relationships they have with people that have overcome rocky times, and they are happy about it. But for some reason it seems like despite the fact that the other person says everything is alright, they “have changed”. The truth is, they didn’t change, they “were changed”, by the nail that was driven into them.

So how do you really mend the fence? For an actual fence, there is always wood filler. If you fill the hole in with this simulated wood product, it returns the original integrity to it. Sometimes it even becomes stronger than the actual wood around it. In the absence of the wood filler, the hole can fill up with water, insects, or some other thing that will begin to hurt the good wood around the hole. When someone experiences hurtful words: false accusations; unfair or untrue characterizations; constant negativity, disrespect, or degradation; etc.; they are weakened by them… just as the nail weakens the wood. Sometimes, even after an apology, the hole becomes filled with anger, or insecurity, or sadness, or an uncaring attitude, or sometime just an empty feeling. What began as a small thing can eventually affect other non-related qualities of the person, and even their spiritual strength and health. So the hole must be filled with what was taken away by the nail. If you falsely accuse someone of lying, you need to compliment their honesty. If they were hurt by being told they can’t do something, they need to be reassured that you have confidence in what they can do. If you tell a child they are ugly, you need to repeatedly tell them they have a special kind of beauty. The bottom line is, you need to fill the hole. And what if there is not damage left after the initial apology? Actually, that is usually the case. Usually, there is no further need to address the situation. But then again, you can’t go wrong reinforcing something good… as long as it’s attention and not overkill.

Fixing the damage to the fence helps the carpenter as well as the fence. Isn’t it good to know that you care enough to make sure you don’t leave a damaged situation behind. Guilt over doing someone wrong is a tough thing to deal with, but not nearly as harmful long-term as an attitude that “what’s done is done”… or “oh well...” or “deal with it”. When your mind and heart become as calloused as a carpenters hands, it makes it just as hard to show gentleness… or to have that gentleness accepted when you do show it. You should always apologize when you’ve wronged someone, but when possible you should also make “amends”. It is good for both parties. And if the person isn’t ready to accept the apology, give it time and come back again (the key is not ready to accept vs. not willing to accept). Sometimes wood filler works better after the wood dries out a little.

I’m into chain link fences now, so it’s a lot harder for me to damage them. But while I may deal with different people, people are still the same. When damaged, they still need mending. But I also know that the best way to avoid having to mend a fence is to watch what nails I use and where I place them. As for people, the best way to avoid having to mend them is to watch what words I use and how I say them. Old ones or new ones, you can’t go wrong mending fences.

Piece O' Man

2010-10-04T18:57:00.002-04:00

“Don’t nobody want no old ‘piece o’ man’.” That’s something the older women in my family, and other older women used to say when I was a kid. Of course, when you’re five or six years old you don’t have much to say, so you just listen. I remember one time at that age, hearing them talk about men so badly that I began to cry. I never wanted to be like those people they talked about, but I didn’t think I had a choice since I knew I had be a man someday (…and yes, there will be a post someday about the negative things little boys hear around women that speak their future manhood issues into existence). Thank God my mother had a different perspective of men, and it was her view of what kind of man I would be that I tried to grow into. She thought I did an incredible job… I think I did alright… I’m definitely a piece o’ work.

I’ve heard other things that reminded me of the piece o’ man thing over the years. I had a secretary whose grandmother told her she really didn’t want to marry her grandfather but couldn’t find another man, and “half a loaf is better than none”. Her grandmother said that for the rest of her life she had what she asked for, because he was never better than half a loaf. When my mother told my grandmother that she was marrying my father, grandma asked her, “did you ask the Lord for a husband?” When my mother replied, “no ma’am”, grandma said, “well you’re not gettin’ one, you’re just marryin’ a man.” They definitely didn’t have the greatest relationship in the world. I’m glad my father had a better relationship with my step-mother.

My original social networking hangout was Black Planet back in the day. I found an interesting pattern to the pages of some of the sisters who wrote me. They let me know in no uncertain terms that:

The were strong
They were totally independent
They made their own money
They had there own house/apartment
They paid there own bills
They didn’t need a daddy for their children (if they had any)
They paid their own way when they wanted to do something
The had their sh*t together.
They didn’t need a man, because there is nothing a man can do for them that they weren’t already doing for themselves.

Then they went onto say they were just looking for that missing piece… that special someone to share their time with. I’ve been looked at as that missing piece in the past, and it wasn’t the best spot to be in. I’ve had my clothing style, my career path, my spiritual journey, and other highly personal things mapped out for me by sisters who barely knew me in an effort to make me into the person they thought I could be. When I didn’t think the changes made sense and/or were beneficial, I was being ungrateful for the love and effort they put toward making me a better person. When I suggested some changes they could make as well, I was accused of being threatened by a strong/successful woman, or not loving/accepting them for who they were. Anyway, how dare I not want to conform to their image of what they thought I should be; I was lucky they were dating my old, short, skinny, broke a$$ anyway. And besides… (see #9 above).

It seems just a little contradictory to look for a “complete man”, and then relegate him to the status of a “missing piece” (while looking down on a piece o’ man for being incomplete). Maybe a missing half if you look at it technically, or missing whole if you look at it scripturally, but not a missing piece. My belief: in a relationship you have to leave room for growth together as well as separately. That doesn’t necessarily mean giving up or ignoring what you have, or what you’ve achieved, but it does mean that you have to be open to compromise (both of you give up something until you reach a point where you can be both self-reliant and interdependent). Iron and carbon combine to make steel, which is significantly stronger than the other two alone. But it takes a lot of heat to convert them, and afterward neither the iron nor the carbon will ever again be what it used to be . So it is with relationships. Once you’re married, you can never be unmarried again. You are separated, widowed, divorced, or re-married… altered states of marriage. You can be as strong as steel, but you first have to be willing to change…. and then be willing to stand the heat.

Partner connotes equal, piece connotes lesser; if you don’t order what you really want from the menu it will leave a bad taste in your mouth. If you’re willing to compromise who you are with someone who is willing to compromise who they are so that two (wholes) can become one (whole), go for it… God will bless your effort. But hey, if you’re complete as is, and you just want that missing piece to go to movies with, have sex with, attend concerts with, eat dinner with, or any other recreational activity, but don’t want to deal with any growth/sacrifice/compromise, then it shouldn’t matter whether you do those things with just one man or rotate ten men… in fact, all you’ll really need is a piece o’ man.

The Relay Race - Race

2010-03-22T16:02:00.002-04:00

As an old Hempstead High School alum, I have a great respect for track and field events. For the last 30 years, my alma mater has had nationally ranked track stars. So… what was the secret? Is it in the food? No... Is it in the water? No… Is it that good Long Island air coming off the Atlantic Ocean? No... It’s the building itself. Hempstead high school has three buildings and plenty of stairs. Just going to class builds strong leg muscles on even the laziest kids. A special secret is our ability to train indoors in the winter time. The oval shape of “A” building allows students to run on all three floors like running around a three-tiered track. And for basic training… we just did the stairs. With year-round training, our track team always had great camaraderie. So it was a logical progression that we specialized in relay race events. Anyway, I never did join the track team because I was born velocity challenged, but I did learn a lot from watching the training and the meets.

As I like studying about greats of the past, I found myself reading about one of the greatest track events ever held. It was an amazing race because the rules for the race weren’t actually established before the race began. Just watching how the race unfolded gave me great insight into how people interact in the real world. The members of the visiting track team ran into problems right away. One of the runners hurt his foot and never made the trip. Because the bus was old and run-down, another runner got car sick and couldn’t compete. When they reached the event site, the remaining runners found that they had to compete at alternate event sites, so they could not all compete together. Then things got interesting…

The remaining group of runners was told that their race would be a relay race, and rather than the winner being the team that finished a designated number of laps in the shortest time, it would be the team that completed the most laps in a designated time. Also, each team would be required to hand-off the baton every 40 seconds. The first two opponents lined up, and got ready to run. Then the judges came out and told the visiting runner that he had to run with a ball-and-chain on his leg. Flabbergasted and confused, but ever the competitor, he lined up ready to give it his best effort. And… they were off!!!

Both athletes did their best, but the ball-and-chain made it not just impossible to keep up… it made it painful to try. After forty seconds, the racers made their first handoffs to the next runners, with the new runner for the visiting team also pulling a ball-and-chain. After about three minutes of exchanges, the host team had a sizable lead and some of the judges began to question the rules. After debating the rules and seeing the need for a change based on the problems of the ball-and-chained runners, the race was stopped at the 4:07 mark. The ball-and-chains were cut off, and the racers were restarted from the spots where they were stopped.

With the ball-and-chain gone, the visiting runner began to make up ground quickly. Having worked so hard with the weight on his leg enabled him to move that much more quickly with the weight off of him. The judges, all coaches for the host team, quickly halted the race after only 31 seconds. It was decided that the first change was too drastic, so the visiting runners could continue without the ball-and-chain but they could only run in the outside lane. Again the contestants began running. Running in the outside lane, the visiting runners stayed even on the straight-aways, but continued to lose ground on the curves. During this segment of the race the judges were still conferring. After another minute (actually 58 seconds), the race was stopped again. The judges accepted that they had overly favored the host team and told the visiting team they could again run on whatever part of the track they wanted to. Ten seconds after the runners began running again, the judges decided they needed to give the visiting team a chance to make up for the problems resulting from the previous rules. So they gave skates to the visiting team and started them off again. The next scheduled baton pass came not long after this, and the new runners gave it everything they had, with the host runner running normally and the visiting runner on skates.

Looking at his competition flying around the track, the runner for the host team ran to the judges’ booth after just 14 seconds. He told them it wasn’t fair that he had to run in sneakers while his opponent used skates. Some of the judges explained that it was to make up for the unfair advantage that his team had in the beginning of the race. But the host runner didn’t care because he wasn’t running then. He only wanted a fair race now, while he carried the baton. Some of the judges agreed, while others still differed. While the debate continued, both teams stood on the track and waited.

This race may seem crazy… and that’s because it is. This relay race has been run for several hundred years in America. While this story is a representation of what has actually happened, everything is it actually happened. If you let your mind allow seconds to become years, it will become much easier to connect this relay race with our beloved “rat race” of life in America. The visiting runners are the Africans who were brought here as slaves, and the host team are the colonists that brought them here. The runner who was hurt and didn’t make the trip was the African who was killed during the slave hunt. The runner who got sick during the trip was the African who died along the middle passage. The runners who were sent to participate at other sites were the Africans who were sent off to Central and South America and the Caribbean Islands. The forty second intervals between runners were the forty years of each generation. Now we have a framework through which to see “the race-race.”

While Blacks and Whites had lived as both free men and indentured servants in American going back to the beginning of the fifteen hundreds, the arrival of the first slave ship at Jamestown in 1618 represented the beginning of slavery as a generational institution. The 4:07, or 240 seconds, that the visiting runners ran with a ball-and-chain on their legs represents the 240 years that slavery existed before the Thirteenth Amendment ended “race-based” slavery in 1865 (the “end of slavery” issue is a story for another day). The 31 seconds after the ball-and-chain period represents Reconstruction. This period ended for the runners when the visiting team was required to run in the outside lane. Like the Supreme Court decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896, it was done with the belief that you could be Separate But Equal. But the way the rules were introduced in both situations was such that separate was inherently unequal. Thus after 58 seconds race time, or 58 years historically through the Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ruling in 1954, separate but equal was abolished. Ten seconds/years later, the Civil rights Act of 1964 was introduced, and socio-economic skates were given to African Americans in the form of Affirmative Action laws. This lasted only another 14 seconds/years before a host team runner named Allan Bakke filed his suit with the Supreme Court on the basis of “reverse discrimination”.

This is not a pro or anti Affirmative Action piece, because I have pros and cons of my own on the issue… too many to discuss at this point. But like I said, I know track, and I know how to survive in our rat race of American life. I understand the concept of fair play, hard work, and living by the rules. I also know enough about American history to know that whether you divide your demographics by race, religion, gender, age, indigenous, immigrant, or enslaved, Americans have always worked hard as individuals, groups, and as a whole. Still, while the time frames between acts and actions, and the ability or inability to benefit from the systems of rules and laws in the United States for the past four hundred years can be debated, one comparison stands out: 240 years with a ball-and-chain vs.14 years with skates. Now that the baton is in our hands, we really need to decide what is fair and get “the judges” to move on it. But in the meantime, we need to run our own individual races… and run it like we respect and appreciate the people who had to run with a ball-and-chain on their legs for 240 years, and in the outside lane for 58 years. They ran with those impediments so we wouldn’t have to, which makes them winners in my book.

Commitment: Breakfast of Champions

2009-03-03T20:03:00.004-05:00

Most folks who know me know that I’ve pretty much ridden the same inspirational phrases for the past fifteen or twenty years. Some of my favorites are:

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem
It’s not the choices in life that decide what you do, it’s the lack of choice… you got no choice, you know what you’re gonna do.
If I can’t do great things, I’ll do small things in a great way.
A man that’s always looking for a job doesn’t have time to work.
A setback is just a setup for a comeback; tough times don’t last, tough people do.

They’ve worked pretty well for me, and they seem to have inspired others a little bit too. But my cyber-buddy Kinika had one that really let me understand why I succeed at some things and not at others, and why sometimes I feel more of a sense of pride in failures than I do in successes. It’s all about commitment. It’s about doing the best you can whatever the circumstances. It’s about leaving it all out on the battlefield, playing field, crop field, field of dreams, etc. In the past, I had often confused my involvement with things and people with a commitment to them. But Kinika’s insight let me know the difference. She said:

“The difference between commitment and involvement is like a ham and egg breakfast. The chicken was involved, but the pig was committed.”

For some of you, I have to ask you to look past your hatred of all things swine-related to see the analogy. Many people believe they are committed to something or someone because of intense or long-term involvement or feeeling. But just like this analogy, they have the ability to walk away from the situation. The chicken can stay up all night giving eggs, and give the best eggs anyone has ever eaten… but it can walk out of the house the same way it walked in. The pig, on the other hand, sacrificed everything it had to make the breakfast work. Even if the pig was still alive, it’s commitment to making breakfast work would have meant it could have walked away… but it would never have been the same. It sacrificed past the level of it’s own comfort.

Folks say they are committed to a cause, a person, a goal, even a God. But they somehow find a way to walk away when things don’t go their way. I hear about people backsliding in church. Being committed is like being in a car going downhill… you can’t just slide backward… you have to make a conscious decision to stop first. People who “backslide” were either just involved with God, or they are lying to themselves, ‘cause if they were committed, they would be like Job in the Bible who said he would rather die than walked away.. You can apply that attitude to a lot of relationships. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were committed to their movements. When they were told they were going to be killed, they said what Job said.

Sometimes you commit yourself to something, and eventually you realize it’s never gonna work. At that point, walking away is the best thing to do. But if you committed yourself, as the pig did, you will still be changed forever by the experience. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be worse off, ‘cause the pig is a little more aerodynamic than it used to be. Whether you are better off or worse off is all in how you choose to deal with the experience. Actually, when you’ve given all you had, you get a sense of peace and pride that makes you feel stronger when you walk away. Some people confuse commitment to the process or path with commitment to the goal. There are times when success means doing things some other way, or heaven forbid, somebody else’s way. Now if your goal is to find a new process or path, then of course you need to see it through to the end. But you need to understand what your goal is so that you don’t commit yourself to the wrong goal..

When I think of true commitment, I think of a football game I saw Kellen Winslow play (Sr., not Jr.). He was sick and injured and still played what many consider the greatest game ever by a tight end. The special thing about the game was, when he decided to play, he knew it would take an effort he never committed to before. Although he was a future Hall of Famer, he knew he had never given 100% on every play before, and he wanted to see what would happen if he tried. In the end, his teammates carried him off the field, not because he won the game for them, but because he couldn’t walk. There is nothing wrong with involvement because that is the basis for most relationships, whether with people or ideals. The issue comes down to how much you are willing to sacrifice to get the most out of the situation. Like Kellen Winslow Senior, are you willing to put your own bacon in the fire… or are you chicken?

Come Be Black For Me

2009-02-10T21:27:00.002-05:00

I looooooove Black History Month. I love what it stands for. I love how communities, and organizations, and families, find themselves in conversations over who did what when, and what it means today. I love how, even in schools that don’t have Black students, people are focusing on the struggles, contributions and triumphs of people who look like me. I love how it grew from Negro History Week to Black History month, and how it paved the way for Hispanics, Asians and women to also have months to celebrate their struggles, contributions and triumphs. Yet, the more “conscious” we become as a people and as a nation, the more the concept of a month dedicated to Black History seems unnecessary… even disrespectful in some way. There are so many questions about the need/validity of a month dedicated to Black History. I hear so many things that are anti BHM, that I almost question my love for it; things like:

Why did they give us the shortest month of the year?
Why do we only get to celebrate Black History one month out of the year?
We always talk about the same people over and over again, what good is that?
Everybody already knows Black History, we aren’t stupid. Let’s talk about the future.
We’re all American, so we should talk about American history and not just Black history.
Why don’t we have a White History Month… Why do we only celebrate Black History?

Although many of these things contradict each other, the people who say them sometimes make good points. But then I think about Carter G. Woodson. What would Dr. Woodson think about these opinions? How would he feel if he heard people saying “they gave us” the shortest month of the year, when in reality he chose February to celebrate Negro History Week to honor the birthdays of Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. He would probably feel disrespected that people didn’t know enough about Black History to know that. What would he think about the fact that he started Negro History week to introduce topics that would encourage people join his Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and read his Journal of Negro history as part of their year-round study, only to find that people still don’t join educational societies or read educa ational journals, and just want others to spoonfeed them information on a regular basis. What would George Washing Carver say about people being tired of learning about a man who “invented the peanut”, knowing that getting respect for Black people’s intelligence was so important to him that a real study of his life would include something about allowing himself to be castrated so that he could work at Iowa State University without them fearing he would sleep with any of the White women there. He would probably feel pretty disrespected that people couldn’t even get his inventions correct despite his sacrifices. I know all the people who made history would be broken-hearted to know their sacrifices were seen as something that has nothing to do with the future, since everything they did was to make sure we had a future. Then again, the families of all our mixed race presidents before Obama (there were six) are probably glad that we still see American history as separate from Black History.

I remember back in college reading an article written by a woman who was a known historian, and well-versed on all things “Black”. She talked about her love/hate relationship with BHM; she loved being able to reach a wider audience with her information, but she hated the fact that her phone barely rang until December, and by the end of January it rang off the hook. Then in March it was quiet again. She talked about how, when someone called to schedule a presentation, no matter what they said to influence her to come speak, all she heard was: “Come be Black for Me.” I thought it was hysterical, yet insightful. Even moreso, years later when I was making the rounds during Black History Month. I would speak at grade schools, colleges, community agencies, and churches. After a few years, I recognized the pattern of calls. When someone asked me what I was doing on a particular evening in February, I would say I had to go be Black for ____________ (fill in the name of the group).

It was fun being Black for people. I loved being Black for Black people, because after people thanked me for telling them something they never knew, they would complain that they should have learned it in school. I took that opportunity to tell them to push their school board members to make sure that it’s included for their children… or just take their children to the library to learn for themselves. I loved being Black for Hispanic/Latino groups because it gave me a chance to emphasize the aspects of our cultures that were similar, as well as how we were connected in our roots. I loved being Black for White people, particularly the kids, because it gave me a change to plant multiple seeds to question why history is presented the way it is and then point them in a direction to find the answer, rather than just beat them over the head with us good / you bad facts. I remember speaking at a school that I will not name, but it rhymes with South Shore Christian High School in Levittown, N.Y. I was their first ever BHM speaker, and they really didn’t want to celebrate the day, but the growing Black student population demanded it. In the negotiations, they said I had to speak for free… which they knew would deter me… except they didn’t know me. So I paid for my flight from Buffalo to NYC. By the time I got there, I had decided to teach the faculty that voted not to pay me a lesson on the depth of Black history by using the students in an interactive presentation.

After a basic introduction, a few jokes and a few interesting facts, I gave them my affirmative action relay race analogy… which always makes White Folks go… “wow, I never thought of it that way.” I went on to say how honored I was to be there since, as a former Hempstead High Student, I knew that back in HS I wouldn’t have been allowed on their campus unless there was a sporting event. Then I told them I wanted the students to represent recorded history, with each student representing 100 years. I had two Black students line up along the wall. “These two students represent America since its independence”. Then three more Black students lined up. “These students represent the time since Columbus’ arrival, and also the time since the first arrival of slaves. These 500 years represent US History. Then I lined up a mixed group of 18 students (I wanted to use Black students, but I ran out). “These students represent the approximate duration of time going back through ancient Greece and Rome that our 500 years was patterned after.” Then I lined up 17 more White students. “These students represent the period of time that Ancient Egypt and Kush existed as modern organized societies before Ancient Greece. So as you can see, our time in the US accounts for only 1/8 of Black History, just five out of 40 students. Yes, Africans were brought as slaves 27 years after Columbus first arrived, and 12 years after Roanoke and Jamestown were settled, so we were here from the beginning of US history. But Black history is more than slavery, and abolition. It’s more than Abraham Lincoln and MLK. It’s 8x more (not including “pre-history”)

I said a lot more, but the words were barely heard because the visual was so stunning. The Black kids represented American history, and the White kids represented Black history… and there were obviously more White kids to look at. The Social Studies teacher was pissed, ‘cause he knew he had to deal with this mess when I left. But the students, Black and White, were amazed. And the principal was... impressed. Do you know that man went to his office and wrote me a check to cover my plane fair!!!! Of course, he wrote it from the students’ activity fund, but he paid me under the Little Rascal’s policy: "If we like the show we pay as we exit!" And the Black kids were proud to be Black that day. They should have been everyday, but the reality is… they weren’t. When you’re in environments that are hostile to you’re Blackness, particularly when you are judged based on the coonage of others being portrayed in the media on any given day, it isn’t always easy to be proud. That’s not self-hate, just negative affirmations having the same effect as positive affirmations. You shouldn’t need positive affirmations all the time… just once in awhile… like maybe… one month out of the year. I enjoyed being Black for you here, now you can go and enjoy being Black for someone else… you don’t even have to be Black to do it. Happy Black History Month! Let it be the inspiration for you to continue learning and sharing for the rest of the year… just like Dr. Woodson intended.

Behind The Glass

2009-02-03T11:30:00.008-05:00

I have had time to reflect now on what the nomination, election, and inauguration of Barack Obama means to the past, present, and future of da brovas. Riding the “hope train” has taken my mind more places than it has my body or my wallet… but then again, if your mind can’t conceive it, there is no reason for the other two to attempt to make the trip. Time hasn’t allowed for a summary as much as it has for a symbol that stands out in my mind. Where Obama is, where the brothers are, was brought to my attention by a conversation I had with my middle boy the day after Presidential acceptance speech. I was talking to Alexander, aka - Xantastic, about the election; did his friends watch the speech, and what were the kids in school saying about having a Black man as president. He did his usually commentary… a few disjointed facts broken up by a bunch of jokes. Then he got quiet, somewhat somber and reflective, and asked: “Dad, will he always be behind the glass?” Being an empathetic 13 year old, Alexander was disturbed by the same sight I saw. Usually the camera was either too close or too far away to pick it up. But for a moment as the camera panned away, you could see it… the glass. It was high and wide. It wrapped around the stage, and Obama.

It was ironic, that on a night when hundreds of thousands of people had traveled from across the country and around the world to see a man they had grown to love, a man who was willing to risk his life to serve them, they could not touch him… nor he them. The reason: although there are millions that love him, there is a handful that would be willing to kill him if they get the chance. They had made their intentions known early and often. According to the FBI, by the time he was sworn in, Obama had broken the record for presidential death threats… more than any two term president. And thus, he was where he would be for the next four years: behind the glass. The glass represents the life that Obama has taken on for himself. In order to serve the people who love him, and even the people who hate him, he must live behind the glass. As time goes by, he will be seen as out of touch… and in some respects, it will be true. It will be said he won’t know what the common man… particularly da brovas… are dealing with. It will be said that he has left his people behind to deal with issues of Afghani soldiers, North Korean missiles, African AIDS, and South American oil… even though those issues are part of his job. And on the rare occasion he comes out from behind the glass, it will be seen as window dressing… a photo op. Even being “as Black as he can be” in a White world… he will be accused of becoming whitewashed.

And so goes the life of every brother who lives behind the glass. Make no mistake, if a brother goes far enough in this world, he will have to choose whether or not he lives behind the glass. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, as it was with Obama… it comes with the job/purpose/mission. The glass separates you from the people you love. Sometimes from the community you had to leave, because you could not walk into your destiny if you continued to stand in your past. Sometimes from your own family, because what you’re doing is too dangerous/safe/traditional/innovative/long-term/short-sighted for them to understand. Sometimes from your boys, or your girl, because you’ve changed (rather than you’ve grown), and they want things to be the way they were. Then the glass is also there for your protection, because you don’t know who to trust in the place your traveling, so you keep a wall… a glass wall… so you can interact on a personal level, but they can’t get close enough to hurt you. The truth is Obama was behind the glass long before he got where he is… It’s just visible now. Sometimes a brother will choose not to live behind the glass. He does not want to be separated from the people he loves. Also, by not putting himself in compromising situations, he won’t have to compromise… and staying true to himself is a key to his survival. The reality is, the duality of the complete exposure and complete confinement inherent in life behind the glass would kill many brothers. Thus, those brothers do excellent work on a small level, but never make the major impact on the world that they could if they moved into the realm where the glass comes with the territory.

Before I started writing, I bounced this concept off of two minds I respect greatly, and was given insights that I wouldn’t have gotten on my own. My friend the former Harvard student government official for the federal government said, “Don’t forget about the brothers behind the glass ceiling!” She has definitely seen it in her travels. Brothers who could not move past the invisible barrier between them and the positions they are qualified for but cannot access. Obama’s presidency is making folks consider removing the ceiling in some places, and at least raising it in others. But the ceiling, as a concept and as a practice, will be there long after Obama’s presidency. My wife gave the opposite side of the glass. She asked, “what about those guys behind the prison glass?” Wow... she makes sure I don’t forget that there but for the grace of God... It is an experience talking to a brother from behind the prison glass. The look in their eyes… no matter how “hard”, “conscious”, or “spiritual” they may be, there is always an element of regret. Not guilt, because not all of them feel guilty or are guilty, but the regret part is consistent. If only they had done differently, or if someone had done differently for them. Good men + bad circumstances + bad choices + bad/no guidance + no vision = prison + regret. Obama was one college drug bust or drunk and disorderly arrest away from a life where “community activist” would have been his ceiling and not his jump-off point.

When you live behind it, the glass can become like the hall of two-way mirrors at the county fair (I’m in the south now… so that reference applies). You see yourself differently depending on which direction you look, and you know that’s how people in that direction see you. Then when the light gets brighter on the outside than on the inside, you see the people and only a faint image of yourself. “Dad, will he always live behind the glass?” I had been thinking about it for almost 24 hours when he asked me, and I still didn’t have an answer. Caught between my knowledge of what is, and my faith in what I hope for, I gave a long answer that amounted to: yes, but he will step out from behind the glass more as time goes by… all great leaders do. Obama proved me both right during the Inaugural Parade, when he stopped the car and jumped out. Shades on, one black glove on and the other in his hand, and his woman coming to his side, my man, Mufasa “44” McCool had stepped out from behind the glass a lot sooner than I or anyone else expected. Later, my wife asked, “do you think he will get out again?” I said, “Absolutely!”…and of course he did. By that point I could why he is where he is. While life behind the glass does confine him, it doesn’t define him. With that in mind, I think I’m going to have another talk with Alexander.

Single Dadhood… Raising the babies

2009-01-08T09:59:00.002-05:00

I love watching my daughter do her thing. Whatever she is doing at the time is her thing, because she does it with her Sydney Rae flair. I particularly love watching her perform along with her “The Aristocats” video, or “The best of Elmo”. She is not much for singing, except for the long notes, but she loves to dance. When her brothers watched these videos a decade ago, they weren’t much for dancing, but they would sing every note… no matter how unintelligible the words were. That is part of my enjoyment with the new baby, reliving the past with the old babies. It is interesting now that what was such a painful period in my life has become something more wonderful than I ever could have imagined. Definitely, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

The worst of times:

My wife had left and I was taking care of the kids on my own… at least half the time. She was taking care of them the other half of the time. I was fortunate to get a court order that allowed me to have split residential custody so I could keep on doing my daddy thing, but more about that later. As I never imagined that I would one day be the head of a broken home, the same fate that befell my father, it was the worst of times. I devoted every moment that my boys were with me to them, then when they weren’t around I tried to catch up on issues from work, my community involvement, and other personal issues. It was tough, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Based on the fact that I had to pay child support while still providing for half of my kids direct care, people expected me to last in that situation for about six months before I either burned out, went broke, or had to give up the kids to get a part-time job to meet expenses. But I was determined to make it to my youngest son’s fifth birthday (it was a developmental psychology thing…), so that six month agreement lasted 2 ½ years.

The best of times:

Two and a half years with just me and the X-Men, Xavier and Alexander. King Xavey and Commander Xander. IQ and EQ. Nang and Nugget (their out-the-womb names). Xae-U and Xanmander (their Poke’mon names). During that time, I got to teach them and learn from them in a sterile environment… my home. My rules, my values, my standards, my discipline, my games, my ability to give them as much love as they could handle. I had always been critical of how my father handled my older and younger brothers, probably the two most talented individuals I have ever known (me and the baby brother are good, but those two were freaks). Well, God is a just being, so he gave me two sons who looked like my brothers, and had similar talents. He basically said, “you’ve got so much to say… you do a better job”. So while I didn’t do a perfect job, I did my best. They were clean, well-fed, and generally happy when we left home in the morning. Nite Nite time meant singing two songs if I was lucky… but five songs if they couldn’t decide which ones they wanted. Playdates, trips to Long Island to see the family, playing Hungry Hungry Hippo, going to the park or the science museum, and putting together life-sized Winnie the Poo puzzles made us a tight-knit crew. They admit they don’t remember much from that time, but they remember how they felt: Loved, wanted, and secure. I remember those times vividly though, and how much pride and joy I got from making them feel loved, wanted and secure.

Having raised kids, and been raised, in both two parent and single-parent homes, I have to say that when both are done right the two-parent home would always be best. But when it comes to parenting, you can’t always give a child the best, but you can always give them your best. And believe me, kids know when you’re giving them your best. They may brag when you do, or make excuses for you when you don’t, but they know. Giving them your best is a no brainer if you realize that they are a gift first, and an obligation second. And if one parent is giving their best, and the other is giving them crap, it’s probably a better idea for them to just be with one good parent. Also, the best of what you have to give may change over the years like it did with me, but I love being a father, so whatever I have to give, they’re getting. Eventually, because she got remarried first and I wanted my kids to see a husband and wife running a home, I backed off and let my ex keep the kids. And after they moved away, I began parenting by phone and email, and in-person on monthly visits, holidays and during summers. I explained to them that it was for their best, and based on our relationship, they trusted me. That trust was built by consistency... which is something that kids need as much as love and food. Whether you’re an angel or an idiot... be consistent…... it will allow your kids to learn how to work with you, and/or work without you.

I still can’t believe that God allowed me to be my children’s father. My kids are the bomb. If all I ever have are the four I have now, I did alright for myself. I encourage every parent to give your kid(s) your best. Not the best of what you have left over after you’ve taken care of your own needs/wants/desires… your best off the top. Kids are always gonna give you some kind of headache or heartache, but the type of stress they bring home is always tempered by the type of love and guidance they take out of the house. I would much rather be upset over my kids getting a “C” in a class than over having to bail one of them out of jail. I love them even when they’re being knuckleheads. Most of all, I love the fact that they look at me with pride… with reverence. What I get from them, you can only get from your children. Like most fathers I know, my children have made me, and continue to make me, a better man. If you want to be the best person you can be, raise your children… by any means necessary.

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For you folks, particularly you brothers, who want to do your half of the raising but don’t have the privilege of sharing a home with your children’s other parent, here is the way I worked it out in court. I presented a plan to split up the week and the weekends equally. My kids were with their mother every Monday and Tuesday, and with me every Wednesday and Thursday. I made the weekend consist of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That way, I had them for five days one week and two days the next, or seven out of every 14 days. The kids primarily changed hands through daycare/school. Whoever “had them” would pick them up and drop them off. When they came to me on Wednesday, their mother would drop them off in the morning and I would pick them up in the afternoon, and vice-versa when they would go back to her. So for parents who don’t get along, you don’t have to have much contact with each other, just the kids. Because you know which weekends you will be getting your kids months in advance, you can plan activities with them and without them. And hopefully both parents can get along well enough to cover for each other in emergencies and on special occasions. This system worked for us, so I’m sharing it. However you do it though, raise your kids.

Gassin’ My Head with Sub-Prime Talk

2008-11-19T00:19:00.002-05:00

The traffic over by the mall was crazy… just like in the old days. Skibo Road had taken on ghost town qualities since the middle of the summer. I was confused about it for awhile, sitting there trying to get to my daughter’s daycare in a reasonable time. Then I saw the sign for gas at the station one block up the street. One dollar and ninety-eight cents!!! I realized then what all the traffic was about… people were going shopping. It had been so long since I had seen “shopping traffic” that I was caught off guard. Then my thoughts went back to that morning when I got my gas… $39.00 to overfill my tank. This compared to the max of $80.00 that I paid around the first of September. I remember doing the simple math standing at the pump. A $41.00 difference is $164.00 a month…

…$164.00 a month... that’s a lot of money. At least for me it is. That is the cost of my phone, internet, cable, and water bill each month, with enough left over for a pack of Pampers (I go as cheap as possible with local cable, Vonage, etc.). As a commuter, I’ve had a $300.00 per month gas budget for the past five months, but I suddenly find myself with a surplus of $160.000. I just happen to now own a new, blue, long-overdue, $160 suit… not directly related, but the timing is perfect. Of course, clothes for me are not important; this money means I have a slight cushion for monthly expenses, so things like car repairs won’t cripple the family finances like they did last summer. It’s amazing when you think about it, how big an effect gas prices can have on a family. Then when you think a little more about it… it’s not amazing, it’s frightening…

I know I make a pretty good salary. Along with the wife’s salary, things are tight, but we don’t miss any meals. It really makes this whole thing with the sub-prime mortgage crises take on greater meaning. We are just a few bank closings away from a complete financial collapse, and everyone is pointing the finger of blame at folks who bought houses that they “knew they couldn’t afford”! Talk about infuriating… One thing we know we can do well as a country is blame the victim and protect the system. I remember when I bought my first house. I was 33 years old with a 10-month old baby, and one on the way. I had just started my first job as a “Director”, and I was in graduate school. I was way too busy to learn the housing business, and really had no interest. I just wanted to buy a house for my family. I got a real estate agent, a lawyer, and a loan company, and I expected them to do the job I paid them to do. It was the first house closing for my lawyer, but he was a college buddy so I knew he would do his best not to let me get screwed.

In the same way that people trust me to provide the best educational environment for their kids, I trusted the people whose job it was to help me purchase a home for my family. The phrase, “predatory lender” had not yet made it’s way into our national conversation, but if they wanted to screw me over there was no way that I could have known. So I can sympathize with those folks who did get screwed with these crazy mortgages in the last five or six years. To expect them to know about prime lending rates is idiotic… and I think anyone who feels that way is a pompous, insensitive @sshole… with all due respect. Those same folks would scream bloody murder if a refrigerator repairman, plumber, or car technician screwed them. No one is expected to know enough about refrigeration or plumbing to keep from getting screwed, you expect the person you hire to be reputable. And even though there are “predatory plumbers”, there are unions that keep that kind of behavior in check. Well, we didn’t have that kind of thing with predatory lenders, because all checks and balances were deregulated. People who went for those mortgages were considered “prey”, i.e., creatures that another creature sought to attack, subdue, and feed off of. Owls prey on Rabbits. When a rabbit gets caught and eaten, it’s not the rabbit’s fault. Rabbits are victims of the system. That same owl will not attack a puma cause he knows he can’t win. Predators pick on people based on their inability to defend themselves. There were people who believed that they were blessed from God because “someone who was in the housing business” said they could get them approved for a home loan. There was no way to know that person was actually working for the devil. Professional criminals are professionals… whether lending agencies or pick-pockets. There is no such thing as a professional victim. Victimizers always have the advantage. Don’t blame the victim.

Anyway, I can imagine what would happen to me if gas went to $6.00 a gallon. I would have to give up my phone, internet, and baby cable. Then I would have to choose which bill not to pay, or what part of what bills not to pay. I would be on a slow financial decline that would eventually find me car-less, then jobless, and finally homeless. For folks that make half my salary, with the change in gas prices from $2.20 when they bought, their homes to $4.10 last September, that is exactly what happened. Many would have found ways to cut corners if there was just a rise in interest rates. But coupled with a rise in gas prices, which affects their ability to get to work and pay their bills, etc., they were completely undermined.

Now gas prices are dropping… rapidly. And the one thing that is being passed over in our post-presidential election euphoria is… why? There were a bunch of reasons given for why prices kept rising: the war in Iraq, China blocking the ports in the Middle East, hurricanes hitting the US, etc. But none for why gas prices are falling so fast? The Dwane T. theory is because the people who artificially/arbitrarily inflated the prices know it was the basis of our economic collapse, so they are cutting back on the profits in the short term to keep making money in the long term. The traffic over at the mall proves it. People who have jobs are shopping again… and what do you know, just in time for Christmas. A healthy shopping season will save many of our struggling businesses… particularly the chain stores. Gas prices going down is, economically, like getting a pay raise… for those who still have jobs.

Dropping gas prices will also help the oil companies get both Congress and the public off their backs for awhile. They will show a dramatic decrease in forth quarter profits, making it look like they were affected by the recession as well. Then, if they want to sabotage Obama’s first year in office, they can slowly inch prices back up through the second quarter of next year. Whatever economic plan Obama introduces will be sabotaged because rising gas prices will steal any benefits his plans have. Back in the day, we used to say that if someone was trying to convince you that something unlikely or ridiculous was actually true (for their personal benefit), we said “stop gassin’ my head up, son” (although brothers gassin’ girls heads up was the most popular use of the term). Well, Bush and the other oil millionaires/billionaires who run this country have been gassin’ our heads up about why we are in a recession, but in this case the truth is… in the gas.

The Re-Enfranchisement of Da Brovas

2008-11-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

Like a lot of folks, I’m still on a post-election high. It’s only been a week, but Barack Obama is quickly establishing himself as a man who is capable of leading not only the United States, but the free world. He is a great visual, and great to listen too. I watched the replay of him and George W. meeting yesterday, and while W. is known for the confident bounce in his step, which is still evident, the only way to describe Obama’s gate as he walked next to him is… swagger. He had on $1,500 suit, and walked like he was coming off the basketball court after a 21-8 one-on-one victory. I know his lineage, but whether by nature, nurture, or a combination thereof, that man is all brotha.

This brother is soon to be the leader of the free world, but he is definitely the new leader of Black men. I realized this when I was standing in line to early vote. Being late in the day and obviously going over the time allotted to vote, they moved everyone on line into the gym of the youth center where we were voting. There were so many folks there, we wrapped around the wall and still went out the building. I saw my wife pointing and counting, and when she finished she said, “14”. Of course I asked what she was counting, and she said, “there are 14 black males in this building between the ages of 18 and 34.” Yeah, it was an estimate, because brothers down here age quickly and there could have been about five more. Also, she didn’t count the seven or so Hispanics that I like to include in the brother count. Those brothers had dreads, and bald heads. Some had their hats forward, some had them backward. One or two were obviously a little preppy, others looked like they wouldn’t know Izod from Ipod. But they were all there together. As a percentage of the crowd, they were small, but as a percentage of black men in society, they were definitely more than the national average. Can I say, as an older brother, I was proud.

That is the effect that Obama is having. Brothers recognize when another brother is putting himself out there, and they will rise up to hep dat brova out. In sports, it’s called making those around you better. Brothers who felt they were in this country, but the country was not in them, are feeling… American. Brothers are also feeling the need/desire/pressure to be better and do better, because they have the ultimate example of how to do it from the Commander/ God-fearer/ Husband/Father/Brother/ Professional/Community Activist/Educator–in-Chief.

This is the Re-enfranchisement f the Brothers/Brothas/Brovas/Bros (depending on where you are geographically externally and/or internally). It even affects older brothers more than younger ones. Church service this past Sunday was a celebration of Veteran’s Day. Since my pastor, most of the ministers (male and female), and probably 1/3 of the adults at the church are Vets, we take this holiday seriously. They all agreed that in many respects, this exemplified the change they were fighting for. After church, I went to visit my Uncle Jay, the WWII Veteran, to tell him about the service. He came over to me and showed me the giant poster of the Obama Family in the Fayetteville Observer and said, “this is what makes today special”. He agreed that this is what he was fighting for six decades ago when his hearing, sight and mind still worked the majority of the time. Then he did something I didn’t think he could do… he told me a story he hadn’t told me before.

Uncle Jay said that when he got back to Georgia from Asia after the war, an old White farmer told him he needed to come work for him. The man had a reputation of being abusive and not paying what he promised, so my uncle told him “no, thank you”. The man was irate, and told my uncle, “So you went away to the war, and now you think you’re too good to work for me. You just need to be beat one good time, that’ll fix you. You’ll work for me then”. My uncle asked him, “why do you want to beat me, I didn’t do anything wrong?” Pleading your case was the standard response to something like that back then, because if a White man felt justified in beating you, he would do it. While he spoke, my uncle said in the back of his mind he was thinking, “I spent the last three years of my life driving weapons and ammunition to fellas fighting on the front line with people shooting at me, and this is the thanks I get?” Then he poked the newspaper picture with finger really hard a couple of times and said, this is what it was all about… this is the thanks I get!”

After two years of prime time coverage on a Brother that represents what is good about Black men… not perfect, but good… our country is beginning to see Brothers differently. Even more, the world is beginning to see Brothers differently. But best of all, Brothers are beginning to see themselves differently. Welcome to America my brothers, and make yourself at home.

Hope, Obama, and a Harvest for the World

2008-11-04T12:42:00.002-05:00

The Great Experiment… that’s what our system of government was called. After almost 250 years, we are still trying to work out this experiment… but I think it’s going pretty well. I often cringe when I hear about spreading democracy, considering the fact that we were founded as a republic. In a democracy, majority rules, and in a republic, a system of checks and balances is in place to make sure that the majority does not become so powerful that they deny equal rights to the minority. But by the fact that we are trying to make sure majority will is protected at the same time that the minority rights are protected shows we are still in the active process of making the US a great country. The important thing in America, whether you consider us a democracy or a republic, is that our goal is to get the most people involved in the system, whether by their direct action, or by their choosing someone to act for them.

Policy-wise, I gave a full breakdown of the type of candidate I would want in my blog, “Who Would Jesus Elect?” But on a more practical level, what do/should we want in a president? A president should be able to pull together the greatest minds available and place them in associate positions of leadership (like his cabinet), develop the appropriate programs and strategies to solve problems, and mobilize the citizenry to support these efforts. If a president can effectively do this, he will be able to deal with issues from taxes to foreign aid. The president is not necessarily an economist, or a soldier, or a city planner, or a farmer, or an ambassador, etc., but he is expected to have studied those areas and debated the merits of various philosophies pertaining to those areas in some meaningful way at a regional or national level. Based on these criteria, Barack Obama is the best of the five candidates we have to be elected president in 2008. I think Huckabee was probably the best candidate overall, and Edwards was the best for what I wanted our next president to do, but Obama has proven himself, even to me.

A wise pastor once said to me, “if you don’t know what to do next, find out what God is doing, and do that.” He was basically saying that the best way to get something done is to work with a person or person that was already doing it. People don’t walk into a job and magically take on new skills, philosophies, and personality traits. Whether taking on a partner, hiring an employee, or looking for a mentor, you want someone who already exemplifies what you want. Going back to the previous paragraph, Obama’s campaign is presidential in nature, and is based on who he is professionally and personally. Although highly educated, he is professionally, first and foremost a community organizer. His campaign was truly a grass roots effort, organized from the ground up. He has the biggest “ground game” of door to door workers ever assembled. He is a visionary that saw online communities as true communities, and met with his fellow Americans on Myspace, Facebook, and Blackplanet. He included all fifty states as part of his campaign target area, something that no party candidate has done in a very long time. And he has successfully, through his national effort to get people involved at the local level of the political process, brought more first time voters into the process than anyone in history. Win or lose, he has forever changed the way campaigns are run, because he proved that he could do it without lobbyists or political favors as long as you involve the people you plan to lead.

He was not successful at this alone. He was successful because he was able to bring in the best minds available to him to plan out his strategies, to plan out his platform, and to serve as his “cabinet” and his sub-leaders. There is an old saying that Democratic presidents are brilliant men who surround themselves with idiots, and Republican presidents are idiots who surround themselves with brilliant men. Obama is a brilliant man who surrounded himself with brilliant men and women. Obama’s presidential campaign is a great example of someone already being presidential. All of his policies, whether economic, or foreign affairs, or education, involve bringing people to the table and getting them to understand each others’ perspectives first, then implementing change from the bottom up. He is consistent… you want that in a president.

There really is no thing as “being prepared” to be president. That’s why they all go gray in their first two years in office. But you can be presidential in how you conduct business before you’re elected. Obama has done that. . To say he is inexperienced would be like saying Ross Perot would have been incompetent as president. But as a non-politician, Perot was accepted across the board as a viable candidate, and if he were on a major party ticket would probably have won. Experience has to be taken in the context of level of exposure, level of success, and ability to translate success in one area to success in another. Although his is constantly compared to Sarah Palin in experience, if you take accomplishments by age, he is closer to Bill Clinton. If you make the same comparison by age with Palin, at age 24, when he a community activist, she was a sports reporter. At age 30, when she was serving on the Wasilla town council, he was graduating Magna Cum Laude from law school as the president of the Harvard Law Review. At age 32 she became the Mayor of Wasilla, and he was Founding Executive Director of Public Allies Chicago (and organization that trains youth to become future leaders) while teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law school. Regardless as to what they did in their first two years as Governor and Senator, respectively, Palin has devoted her life to mastering where she is, and Obama has devoted his life to learning from the past to help create a better future. Also, Palin has spent her life pushing people who don’t agree with her out of power, and Obama has sought to win those who don’t agree with him over, or finding common ground.

Some things that have been issues with him, really just aren’t issues To say he is a socialist is to define him by sentences rather than by track record. He has offered no socialist legislation at the state or national senatorial level. He has no socialist advisors in his inner or outer circle. But beyond that, for him to have any impact as a socialist, he would have to have a socialist leaning Senate, Congress, Supreme Court and Governorship. Even if the Democrats control government, unless you can equate being a democrat with being a socialist, any change to socialism is IMPOSSIBLE… particularly changing 242 years of government in four years. No president in recent times has had any meaningful impact on the “direction” of our country in only one term… except for maybe Kennedy… and that was because Kennedy was primarily a visionary who was able to get his vision to be excepted by the people from the ground up so it lasted beyond his life. The only way we will become a Socialist country is if we are conquered by Russia, otherwise it is IMPOSSIBLE. Is Obama a closet Muslim, or a Hateful Christian? He can’t be both, because no Muslim would sit in any Christian church for twenty years. Based on his track record of “his” actions, he is neither. If he was, someone from some mosque would have come forward by now, as would someone who feels that Obama had acted racist toward them. Neither has happened. The majority of his advisors over the past fifteen years have been/and still are White, as was his mother and grandparents who raised him. In the Bible, the Hebrew boys stayed in the oven, but since they were focused on Jesus who was in there with them, they couldn’t get burned. It’s the same with Obama hearing occasional race-based talk from his pastor. As far as being a terrorist, working on a committee with Ayers no more makes him a terrorist than working on a committee with Dick Luger makes him Republican. Obama works with people on the commonality of a goal, and not on of their philosophies other than that goal. He is also criticized for not going against his party. When your goal is to find common ground, you work to bring people together rather than “go against” anyone. I could go on, but hopefully that’s enough.

There are actually six candidates in this race, and two of them are named Obama. They are Hope Obama, and Fear Obama. The majority of voters are either voting for Obama because he represents Hope, or voting against Obama because he represents Fear. The republicans have spent so much time and money pushing Fear Obama, that the little time and money spent on promoting McCain relegated him to third party status. While this may have worked in the past, people have lived in unceasing fear for the past eight years already. Whether the Axis of Evil, or Terrorists, or Orange Alerts, people are tired of being governed by Fear. That is why Hope Obama speaks to crowds of 100,000, while McCain talks about Fear Obama to 6,000.

In terms of what he is currently doing and how that will translate to his presidency, I think McCain made two major mistakes. Sarah Palin was not one of them. As I stated in my blog, The Brilliance of John McCain, I think Palin was an excellent political move. If the bottom hadn’t fallen out of the economy, McCain would have won. One thing he did wrong was to bring in Karl Rove, and his campaign strategy. Rove destroyed what would have been McCain’s best chance to be President in 2000, by all but destroying his good name. Its true that those who live by sword die by the sword, but those who die by the sword cannot be brought back to life by the sword. McCain should have left Rovian politics alone. But even before then, McCain made the decision to “go after the base” that had never accepted him. Your base is always a fringe group, and you have to have confidence that they will come through for you regardless. He didn’t have that confidence. When Obama was being pressured to bring in Hillary, he didn’t go with political expediency because he would have turned off his base of young folks looking for something different. Biden may be old as dirt, but he was not the familiar face for Obama’s base that Hillary was. If McCain would have stayed focused on the Independents from the beginning, he would have cut into Obama’s growth factor, and almost ensured he would have won the numbers game. To summarize, what McCain is currently doing is changing who he is on the fly and not sticking to any plan of attack long enough for people to rally behind it. Thus, he is currently getting more Fear Obama votes than pro-McCain votes. He is not being presidential.

Obama would not have been a great candidate four years ago, and may not even be one four years from now, win or lose. But he is the best candidate for what our country needs today. We need to not only be proud to be Americans, we need to be happy to be Americans. Obama makes people happy to be Americans. Bush destroyed Kerry over his “global litmus test” line four years ago, but we have failed it, and we need to rebuild our international image. McCain has a good reputation with leaders around the world, but Obama has a good reputation with citizens around the world. That’s what we need in our global community. I took my soon-to-be two year old daughter with me in the booth Saturday, because I was voting for her future. I thought I would tear-up, but I didn’t… I felt relieved. But this morning I heard Harvest for the World by the Isley Brothers on Tom Joyner’s show, and I did tear up. I remember listening to that song on 8-track when I was a kid, knowing I planned to devote my life to making that song come true. I used to tear up on the line, “Dress me up for battle, when all I want is peace. Those of us who pay the price, come home with the least”, just like I did today. Like those who came before me, I don’t mind coming home with less if my children get to reap the rewards of my sacrifice. Hope Obama doesn’t just represent the possibility that we will heal our divisions as a country, he represents hope that their will be a Harvest for the World… my daughter’s world… and that’s why I voted for him.

Dedicated to my boy Zachariah

White Extremist Terrorism and the Jack Johnson Effect

2008-10-30T10:23:00.004-04:00

Currently, The Butterfly Effect is probably the best know of all the effect theories. It basically says, if you change the smallest thing in the past, it can effect major changes in the future. As a person who believes heavily in Chaos Theory, it makes perfectly good sense to me. One of the funniest episodes of The Simpsons was a Tree House of Horrors episode that parodied the Butterfly Effect. Homer, after going back to pre-historic time and killing an insect, then returning back to the present and finding his world turned upside down, continued going back and forth making changes, with increasingly worse results. When he finally had the perfect world, family and home, better than ever before, he found out that this world didn’t make donuts, so he screamed and left that scenario before it started raining… but it just happened that in that scenario, when it rained - donuts fell from the sky. Finally, Homer reached a version of the present where everything looked normal, but when his family started eating, they all had tongues like frogs. After Homer thought a minute, he said “ahh, that’s not so bad” and went on with his meal.

The basic premise of an “effect” theory is that something happening will cause something else to happen based on some related factor or factors. The most talked about Effect recently is the Bradley Effect. The Bradley Effect is the theory that White people will “say” they will vote for a Black or other minority candidate if s/he is qualified when polled, then vote for that candidate’s White opposition when they get in the voting booth. The Bradley Effect is named after Tom Bradley, who ran for Governor of California. He was ahead in the polls among White voters, but lost decidedly on Election Day. It is believed that happened because White voters who never intended to vote for him said they were going to, or claimed they were undecided, because they didn’t want to be seen negatively as racist. Political pundits are now wondering whether Barack Obama will be subject to the Bradley Effect.

Some Pundits have created a new and very interesting theory called the Obama Effect. This theory states that, Conservative Republicans who say they would never vote for Obama when polled, will actually cast a vote for him in the booth. The premise behind this theory is that, while they don’t want Obama for themselves, they will elect him for their children because their children believe that Obama offers hope for their future, and Conservative Republicans will choose their childrens’ hope over their own fear. I think this one is a stretch, but I can’t say it’s impossible. Only time will tell.

The one effect I fear during this run for the White House is the Jack Johnson Effect. Jack Johnson was the first Black Heavy Weight Champion of the world. He was an intelligent and dapper man in his casual relationships, but when he was in the ring, he was known to taunt and brutalize his White opponents with his superior skills and strength. The term “Great White Hope” originated based on the effort to find someone who could beat Johnson. Jack Johnson was a source of pride for Blacks in the first decade of the 1900’s… to a point… because he also brought a great price tag. Johnson not only held the title that was considered to represent the greatest athlete in the world, but he also dated and married White women. The concept of a Black man beating a White man in public, and then walking off with a White woman afterward, and doing both legally, was too much for many White men of that day (I got jokes here, but I’ll let it… goooooo…). So every time Johnson won a fight, and reminded them of his superiority in “their” sport, White men would go out and indiscriminately brutalize Black people. Lynching, drowning, rape, mutilation, and other atrocities were all part of the reaction to Johnson’s victories. Thus, the Jack Johnson Effect: When Blacks experience a victory over strong White opposition, White Extremists will retaliate violently.

History has shown that there are White Americans that will fight and die for the right of African Americans to pursue their goals and receive their rights as Americans. History also shows there are White Americans who take pride and pleasure in showing their feeling of superiority, whether socially, or physically. I have stated several times that there will be repeated plots/attempts on Barack Obama’s life. That is an accepted part of a Black man running for president. I don’t fear for Obama, he made his peace with God when he decided to run, and three exposed plots to kill him so far haven’t slowed him down yet. I do fear for the safety of his wife and children, because anyone who kills the wife or children of Obama will become either a White Extremist cult hero or martyr like Byron De La Beckwith did when he killed Medgar Evers. But that’s not the Jack Johnson Effect. I fear for what will happen to regular ole Black folks after Obama wins.

This latest plot to kill Obama also included the bombing of a school. School and church bombings were a staple of white retaliation during the Civil Rights movement by those who felt that Blacks who wanted to be seen as equally human were taking something away from racist Whites; technically what they were taking was the “feeling” of superiority and entitlement. Taking personal offense at something that was not done to you personally, and then attacking innocent people in retaliation has been part of White Terrorism from before the Ku Klux Clan until now. And don’t believe for a moment that every act of violence against Blacks is Klan related, anymore than every shooting in the Black community is drug/gang related. There are just some sick folks out there, and the “rogues” are often the most dangerous. White Extremist Terrorism is not subject to just Black victims either, as the Oklahoma City Bombing proves. There, the victims were predominantly White, and the attack was done on a building that was known to have a daycare operating on the premises. The previous Oklahoma bombing of Black Wall St. in Tulsa, as well as race riots in East St. Louis, N.Y., and other cities, shows White Extremist Terrorism knows no bounds

White’s aren’t the only people who practice retaliation. Back in my teen years, when a carload of White kids shot me and my boy Tito while we were walking his sister home from work, my brother and some of the other Warlords went over to West Hempstead and gave a healthy beat down to pass on the message that behavior of that type was not allowed (beat downs were all we had since most Black kids didn’t have guns in the ‘70’s). Hey, Blacks and Latinos definitely do their share of killing, and sometimes they target Whites. But there is a major difference between going eye for eye based on a personal attack, and bombing churches and schools at random. Even the most vicious gang-bangers in Black and Latino communities know that churches and children are off limits. If a Black kid shoots another kid in school, it’s because he has a conflict with that kid, but Black kids don’t shoot up the whole school because they are bullied, or have a problem with their teachers, or they aren’t understood by their parents. Black kids understand that shooting a bunch of people for no reason can get your family wiped out. But I digress…

In this season of celebration, remember to be vigil. The origin of the Watch Night church service was that when news of the Emancipation Proclamation came through, being together and in God’s presence was the safest place to be… ‘cause there were White folks who would have done bad things to the newly freed slaves if they caught them. Just like in the Bible, the children of Israel had to fight their enemies most after they got in the Promised Land. Our battle should be first - spiritual, second - moral, third - intellectual, and “last” - political. And it should be fought with an army that is multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious affiliation, and multi-economic class. Obama’s victory is a major step in the battle for America to live up to its ideals, but the war is far from over, and the White Extremist Terrorists will be attacking, ‘cause the Jack Johnson Effect will be in effect. Be proud, but humble; fearless… but vigil…

Last note:
In interviews with people at the McCain/Palin rallies, many good Americans express a fear of what an Obama presidency will “do” to their country. They say that if Obama is elected president, it will be the end of America as they know it. The reality is, America as they know it has already ended, and a new one is emerging. THAT’S WHY Obama is being elected president.

WWJE... Yes, I'm Going There!

2008-10-12T01:06:00.003-04:00

This is something I had to write. I was working on about five separate blogs, and couldn’t really tie down what I wanted to say for any of them. Then my wife came to me one night and said, “you need to write a blog about Who Would Jesus Elect… I don’t have the details, but I just know you need to write it. As soon as she said it, I knew that it was exactly where I had been going, and would tie together many of my loose concepts. It bothers both of us that we profess to be a Christian country, and our politicians talk about Christian values; yet so much of what we hear on Sundays in church contradicts what the politicians say before church on Meet the Press. So taking what I got from the pews, the Bible, and some conversations with my Lord and Savior, Here are the platforms for the candidates I believe Jesus would elect.

Education - Jesus went to synagogue every day. He went to teach and He went to listen, so He was into lifelong learning. He started His ministry by saying that education should not be just for the elite, but the common Jew. He ended His ministry by saying that His teachings should be available to anyone around the world. Jesus was all about knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, and equal access to all three. So Jesus would vote for the candidate that advocated providing equal access to equal education across the board.

The Economy (The role of government) - Joseph had the job of organizing the government to make sure that the productivity of business was maximized, and the needs of the country were met long term. Through encouraging the growth of business, the collection of taxes, and the redistribution of the money and resources to areas of community and individual need, he got both Egypt and the Children of Israel through a major crisis. Had business been allowed to run without governmental oversight, the empire would have collapsed. Likewise, without a strong private sector in the seven years before the famine, the country would still have collapsed. Jesus would vote for the person who promoted the most comprehensive government that promote the growth of business within the framework of strengthening the government for the good of the people.

Job Creation – Jesus had no preference for private job creation or government job creation. Some of His disciples were private businessmen, others were government workers. Who created the jobs was not as important as how the business contributed to the benefit of society. The Bible promotes work and creativity in earning a living, and the responsibility to feed oneself to the best of your ability. God’s use of rich men in building His kingdom shows that he respects private business and their ability to create jobs. God also says that all leadership is of him, and he used kings, governors, tax collectors, soldiers, and other employees of the government for great tasks. Jesus would vote for the person who would promote the most comprehensive plan of using government and the private sector to create jobs.

Taxes – Jesus asked that everyone pay tithes and everyone pays taxes. Both send a share of your earnings to a common pot of money to be used for the common good. Jesus said of taxes, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Jesus pulled money out of a fish’s mouth in order to pay the taxes for He and Peter, and He chose a tax collector (Mathew) to as a Disciple and traveling companion. That means that he accepted that the government needed to have funds to maintain itself, and He needed to be abreast of the tax laws in the lands He traveled. He also said that the rich should sell what they had and give it to the poor based on who had most need. Jesus would not be thrilled with the rich withholding their fair share, as shown in chapter four of Acts, when Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead after selling there stuff, lying about their profits, and giving less then their share. I believe that Jesus would expect the rich to pay more because they were obviously blessed more (and that doesn’t go to effort, because every coal mine worker works harder than every corporate executive), and people who tried to provide tax breaks to allow the rich to keep more than their share would be seen as aiding and abetting an Ananias/Sapphira situation. He would vote for the person who would uphold these principals.

The Poor – Jesus loves all people, but the Bible does not really address the middle class, or money and quality of life for the people in the middle, as opposed to how to live in a way that God can prosper you in terms of money and quality of life. He speaks greatly about the poor though. He expressed that you should help the poor. Jesus said the poor will always be among us (Deuteronomy 14:11 and Mark 14:7), so poverty is not necessarily a punishment for what you have done, but more a result of what you have not done, and what others have chosen not to do for you. The Beatitudes, say blessed are the poor; well, a major part of how they will be blessed is that those who are rich bless them. The candidate who most wants to reward the rich for helping the poor would be the candidate that Jesus would vote for… and dare I be so presumptuous, but limiting tax breaks to only those associated with giving to religious and/or charitable organizations would probably make Jesus really happy.

Equal Pay for Women – Jesus recognized that women had the right to divorce men. That was unheard of at the time. Jesus said that his Kingdom would not give preference based on race, sex, or anything else. All are free to come, and all will receive equally. Some may argue that Jesus’ parable about the workers who came in the evening getting the same money as those who came in the morning is justification for differential pay for the same work, but again, it was not based on any personal trait the workers had. The candidate that wanted to give women their due would be the one that Jesus would vote for.

Supreme Court Appointments – Jesus believed that you should study to show yourself approved in an area. The person that showed the best background in understanding the constitution would be the candidate that would be best able to choose people who knew enough to serve in those positions. He didn’t get farmers to be “fishers of men”; He got fishermen. This is more important for a Supreme Court Justice than for a Cabinet Member because the Justice would still be there after the president is gone, and the Justice would not be working directly with the president at any time after appointment. Jesus would vote for the candidate that had the most proven understanding of the original purpose of the constitution, and its creation as an amendable structure that could adapt to the growth and change of the country while holding onto it’s initial intent.

Roe v. Wade – Deuteronomy 30:19 says “…I have set before you life and death, the blessings and the curses; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” Based on this, I would say that Jesus was anti-abortion and pro-choice. Jesus would believe that abortion was wrong for any reason and at any point, which goes directly to “that you and your descendants may live”. But Christianity is based on teaching toward choice, ie. “choosing life”, and if you take away choice, it takes away the gift/responsibility to choose that Jesus places before us. God didn’t put a fence around the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, because he wanted Adam to choose to respect Him and not the fence. The candidate that advocated a comprehensive plan of education about the sanctity of life without taking away the ability to choose life would be the one Jesus would vote for.

Foreign Policy – The Great Commission, Jesus’ main foreign policy, was to go throughout the world preaching the Good News of Jesus. Within this is the overarching concept that Jesus is Love. Jesus would want our country to be a leader in doing the work that Jesus believed in, like feeding the masses both physically and spiritually, establishing systems of support for the lesser of His children, and teaching what His principals are in a way that would promote others to choose to do things our way.

Military Force – As a carpenter, Jesus had to understand the value of strength… particularly in a time when tools were primitive. Paul said to "lay hands suddenly on no man", so the Bible respects that you should neither attack, nor retaliate, without thought. It follows this up with “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger”, again saying that conversation should come before conflict. Moreover, Jesus said in the Beattitudes, “blessed are the meek, for the will inherit the earth”, and “blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.” As a member of a country that wants to be a world leader, Jesus would vote for the candidate who would be willing to speak to his enemies before striking at them, even if they laid hands on us suddenly.

2nd Amendment - The King of Kings believed in turning the other cheek when it came to conflict. He would respect the dictates of the government in which he resides as along as it did not make him compromise His values. He would probably support the candidate that best tied gun ownership to an educational program of the sanctity of life and the dangers of gun abuse, and punishment for those who chose to ignore what they learned or chose to use guns without education. Jesus also preached temperance, so He would probably advocate hunting weapons for hunting, and restrict assault weapons to military and police use (those for whom “assault” is part of the job).

If you don’t agree with me, that’s fine. But if you don’t think I have a right to speak for Jesus, you’re wrong. I know Jesus… I have a personal relationship with Him. What I covered here is what He told me personally. If he told you something different based on your relationship, that’s fine. If He didn’t talk to you at all, you need to spend a little more time reading His Word and listening to Him. Just make sure that if you speak for Him you are doing His will, and not your will in His name. He doesn’t like that second one very much.

The Brilliance of John McCain

2008-09-03T11:47:00.003-04:00

I’ve been a John McCain fan for a long time. Yeah, I know it’s kinda weird to be a fan of a politician, but there are certain personality traits that just seem to pull me in. Ted Turner from his Captain Outrageous days, before Jane Fonda domesticated him the way Tarzan’s Jane did to him, had that personality. Also, folks like Adam Clayton Powell, Richard Branson, and Master P, who all said, “I think I can circumvent the old way of doing things, and change the game in the process,” have that personality. I like people who do conventional things in non-conventional ways… not just to be different, but because the conventional way just won’t work for them. Bill Clinton changed the game when he went on Arsenio Hall and played the sax; now all politicians make the late night circuit. Obama changed the game with MySpace, Facebook, and Blackplanet; don’t think that won’t be standard operating procedure from here on. Well, McCain has been doing similar things in the Senate for a long time. He always kinda messed things up for everyone, Republicans and Democrats, but always with a goal of making things better in mind.

If you had asked me 18 months ago, my dream ticket was either Obama/McCain, or Obama/Wesley Clark. My undergraduate chapter of my fraternity used to go neophyte/prophyte as President/V.P., with the young, smart energetic guy having an older, wiser guy to bounce ideas off of, and I was thinking the same thing would work with our top officials in government. Having Obama, who understood more of what was going on and where we needed to go as a country, team up with an old war vet and politician who could have been a great president in his younger years and still had enough knowledge of the past to make sure we didn’t repeat it, seemed like a great idea… kinda like Lion-O and Tygra in the ThunderCats. I wanted Gore in '80, but I would have been happy with McCain. I didn’t like a lot of his positions, but I knew where he was coming from and trusted him to be consistent and not spin his actions into some surreal act of God when it was just his choice to go off page.

I watched John McCain over the last two years, and I know this race has been killing him. He had to downplay what he really stands for, particularly in terms of his personality, and try to be the good party man in order to keep the Conservative faction of the Republican Party from Swiftboating him and getting a replacement. He was forced to take on all of Bush’s advisors to try to get him to be George W. with a McCain mask on. Well, like with any mask, the expression never changed. There was no joy in that mask. McCain is not the type of guy who gets off on a good smear campaign. I know deep inside, he admired and desired Obama’s ability to stay out of the mud, and use honor, dignity, and the issues to win over voters, rather than look to destroy his opponent’s character and track record, and attack his wife and children to do it. I remember when Sean Hannity tried to get McCain to say that Obama was not a loyal American, and McCain refused and kept saying that he knew Obama, and he knew he loved his country. Hannity showed the frustration of an old school Rovian who couldn’t get McCain to play the game, and McCain showed the frustration of having to deal with old politics.

McCain wanted to get back to his old maverick ways; the question was, how to do it without ostracizing the Conservative Right that already hated him for not embracing them. McCain flirted with the idea of putting Joe Leiberman on the ticket to get the Liberal and Conservative Democratic voters, but the Conservative Republicans told him they would cut him off if he did. His second maverick option was to get more women voters. McCain has been trying to figure out how to get the Hillary women for four months now. He didn’t make a decision on his VP until he saw the looks on the faces of Hillary’s Obama Haters during Obama’s acceptance speech. He could see their hearts melting like the Winter Warlock's when Kris Kringle gave him a toy. He immediately went to the playbook page that says, "…to divide White Women from Blacks, offer the opposite of what they have." Don’t think if Hillary didn’t win, he wouldn’t have considered Allan Keyes, Colin Powell or Condeleeza Rice… he may have even pulled J.C. Watts out of mothballs.

Well, it looks like the old McCain is back. With the selection of Sarah Palin, McCain has destroyed the Conservatives’ ability to play Rovian politics, and re-established his maverick approach to getting what he wants. The Conservatives can no longer attack Obama’s family, because he has made attacking families off limits based on Palin’s daughter. He has made Obama’s experience and readiness to lead a dead point, because anything that is said about Obama can be equaled or bettered by attacks on Palin. On the other side, he has countered the pick of Biden as the attack dog, with an attack dog of his own… but one that wears a pink collar. Palin has already won the VP debate, something no Republican male could have done against Biden. If Biden goes after her, women will move to one of their abused sisters in solidarity. If he lays off of her, she will live up to her nickname, Sarah Baracuda, and eat him alive. He’s lose-lose all the way.

The most brilliant aspect of choosing Palin is her daughter’s pregnancy. Many folks think he chose her despite the fact that her daughter was pregnant, or really didn’t know she was. I believe he chose her because her daughter was pregnant. He knew that he couldn’t just bring in some Hillary knockoff, because people would have seen right through it. He would have lost more votes than he gained, and probably some self-respect at the same time. The Rightwingers can’t attack Palin, because it will show that they are the mean nasties that people say they are; besides, on paper she represents their values. The Leftwingers can’t attack, because Palin’s daughter is the type of at-risk teen whose cause they are supposed to be championing. And the women can all rally around one of their own… except better. A woman who is a successful mother and wife and businesswoman, but still has problems, is just like them. She is like an episode of Desperate Housewives, or a "You can have it all... including great sex!" segment on Oprah. She is almost just like Michelle Obama… but even better… because she’s White. Besides, the Conservatives didn’t give him a distracting issue of God and country like 9/11 or same sex marriage to rally around for this election, but now he has his pregnant surrogate grand-daughter to rally the hearts of "real Americans" around. If not voting for Obama means you don’t like Black people, then not voting for Palin means you don’t like your own mother, daughter, sister, next door neighbor, co-worker, etc.

Of course, Palin is far from the best candidate the Republicans had to offer. She isn’t even the best female candidate they have. Linda Lingle is the Republican Governor of Hawaii. She has been governor since 2002 (this is her second term), and has been in politics since the 80’s. Being from Hawaii, she is even more of an outsider than Palin, and she has more than twice as much experience. My first thought about him picking Palin over Lingle was, “they were right, senility really has set in.” But McCain needed qualities, not qualifications. Now with Palin, McCain has his dignity back. It was noted that in the first three days after he chose her, neither McCain nor Palin mentioned Obama by name. Their focus has been to talk about their maverick backgrounds, and how they are going to attack the big dogs in Washington to bring about change. Right at the moment when Obama started to fight back in a more Rovian style, McCain and Palin took a page out of Obama’s playbook and started ignoring the opposition and attacking voter apathy with a message of hope and change. I am happy to say my respect for McCain is back! And his brilliance is back. But he still plans to use his maverick style to continue the same failed policies as Bush, so I’m still voting for Obama.

Black Women Have More AIDS... Not More SEX

2008-08-07T22:42:00.003-04:00

I remember sitting on the bus going to the suburban campus back in my first year at the University at Buffalo. Being one to read anything within eyeshot, it was not hard to see what was written on the back of the seat in front of me. “90% of American college women sleep around… the other 10% go to U.B.” That writing on the back of the seat proved to be the writing on the wall for me over the next two years. Not that it was too different than the twenty years before, it was just more noticeable now that I was considerably over the age of consent, and I still had no one to consent with. As time went by, things got better… much better. But I have to admit, it was always a struggle considering I was short, skinny, average looking and broke… with no rap to speak of. But I could make ‘em laugh, and I could make ‘em think, so I had a chance.

I always had White roommates back then; there were reasons… but that’s a blog for another day. One thing I did get a chance to see, going to a predominantly White university and having White roommates, was the dating pattern of White guys my age. Business was always good for guys like my boy Todd, who had women coming through like tag-team wrestlers; one would leave, and another would immediately jump in the ring. Other guys would just sit around watching Letterman and getting drunk. What I realized was that White guys dating habits may have differed from me and the Brothers, but the levels of success and failure with our women was exactly the same. As I progressed out of my younger years, and my relationship with my White brethren moved into the business world, I noticed that our styles became less distinctive, but our results were the still same. Even into more recent times when the White guys I know are almost equally as likely to hook up with sisters as the brothers I know hook up with White women… the results are the same. I don’t know much about the dating for my Native and Asian brothers, but the results for my Hispanic brothers have always been equal to the Blacks and Whites from my observations.

So if brothers of all shades are experiencing the same level of success and failure with the ladies, women of all shades must all be doing the same things… well… they may not be doing the same things… but the things they are doing, they’re doing just as much of. With that thought in mind, it greatly disturbs me that whenever there is a discussion of “the face of AIDS” in this country, there is a Black female face under the caption. This was evident again in the Black in America series, where they spent an extensive amount of time spent talking about Black women and AIDS. Now it doesn’t bother me when the discussion centers on the fact that Black women contract HIV at a higher rate than anyone else, facts are facts. And I do find it encouraging when the discussion extends to finding inexpensive treatments, or even a cure for them. What bothers me is the fact that the discussion generally migrates to them being involved in riskier behavior than other folks who contract the disease at a lesser rate. The conversation will then emphasize them dealing with down-low brothers, being less precautious, or being overly promiscuous. The “they must be victims, careless, or morally depraved” assessment of their situation is insulting, infuriating, and socially and scientifically wrong.

I addressed the scientifically wrong part in depth on another blog page in terms of Blacks in general (http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-ljfLM1M2c6ljNECeftsAgdk-?cq=1&p=329), but I’ll touch on a little of it here as it pertains to Black women. First of all, women in general are physiologically more susceptible to HIV than men. Some studies show that woman may be 2000 times more likely than men to contract HIV, as sexually they are a natural receptacle for fluids. Second, people of African Ancestry are genetically predisposed to contract HIV, Northern Europeans are designed to resist it, and everyone else kinda falls in between. Now whether this is a happenstance of biological adaptation or biological engineering, I addressed in the previously mentioned blog. But the reality of it is absolute, as stated in Scientific American Magazine:

So a being that is designed as a receptacle for fluids has a cell in their bodies that is a prime receptacle of the HIV virus which is transmitted through fluids. Based on that information, it is really easy to see why Black women contract HIV at such a great rate. Now since this article is almost five years old, and the information contained is even older, why isn’t this yet given as a reason for their susceptibility to HIV. Unfortunately, it probably goes back to the line of thinking used for the Hottentot Venus (Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman), the African woman who was paraded around Europe in the early 1800’s as a side-show freak because of her big butt (Beyonce’ would have made a fortune), and pronounced vaginal lips. Although she was by all accounts a highly intelligent and respectable woman, it was said by the scientists that “studied” her, that based on her physical appearance the essence of African women’s sexuality was in their genitals, while the essence of European women’s sexuality was in their brains. They even went so far as to have her genitalia removed and put on display in a museum after her death. …And there it began, the concept that Black women are nothing but a big butt, and a big… vagina (no, the disrespect was not started by rappers). Before Sarah’s time, and definitely since then, Black women have been reduce to or dismissed as sexual being on various levels. So them dying of a sexually transmitted disease can’t be a big deal, can it?

Now I’m not a Black woman, nor do I play one on TV. So why is this issue so important to me. My daughter, my nieces, my goddaughters, and every other Black girl and young Black woman that I have dealt with in my personal life and professional career! They see and hear far too many negative images of who they supposedly are, and not nearly enough positive ones of who they actually are. To see them portrayed as stupid and careless is highly offensive, but the immoral part really pisses me off. When I have seen them torture themselves with guilt over basic mistakes of life in their attempt to do what is right, even when they are fed information that should convince them without a doubt that wrong is right… shows me that they have a high intrinsic level of morality, even when they don’t know why. I like to believe it is the Holy Spirit whispering in their ear, but that’s my explanation. Whatever the explanation, they do not need to have some physiological issue explained as everything but that… particularly while they are trying to avoid, or live with, some life threatening disease. Black women are not necessarily more or less promiscuous than anyone else, they just suffer worse for their actions than everyone else. Physical death from the disease is bad enough. They shouldn’t have to endure moral execution by society as well.

Drug Laws: Fair? Maybe... Profitable? Definitely

2008-07-25T13:33:00.000-04:00

In terms of material that gets me going to the point that I have to write it out to find some peace of mind, the Black in America series may have me spending more time writing than I spent watching the show. The panel discussion on the second night takes center stage right now. The comment made by Conservative Columnist Tara Wall, that there is no racist intent in the sentencing of minority offenders, prompted me to write her a letter. Since her comments were made publicly, I felt it gave me the responsibility to reply publicly as well, so I’m reprinting the letter here. To be consistent, I’m using my usual blue background with red highlights on my opening middle and closing statements.

Dear Ms. Wall:

I wanted to first thank you for serving as a panelist for the Black in America Series. To be chosen as such, where only a small fraction of our nationally known representatives had an opportunity to participate, was obviously an honor to you, and thus an honor for those of us who were represented by you.

Second, I wanted to share something with you. Watching the young district attorney in the expose’ and hearing how conflicted he was in serving a system that is often “flawed”, my heart went out to him. Anyone that works within “the system” or any system that has unresolved issues of fairness must deal with that conflict at sometime. I have been in that position far too often myself. For the sake of sanity and retaining your self-concept, you eventually have to take a side, and to that end, the more information you have to be comfortable with whatever truth you may accept for yourself, the better. To that end, I share this with you

The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation

In terms of the fairness of our legal system, and in particular the legal ramifications of the War on Drugs, our national legislature did what was in their legal remedies to continue our growth as a capitalist nation. You were right on one hand with your assertion that the sentencing of drug related crimes was not done intentionally to be racist. The root of it was economics, but the pathway to get there, its secondary motive, was indeed racist.

Interestingly, the initiation of the war on drugs coincided with the divestment from South Africa by US corporations. The companies that divested from South Africa, in various ways, invested in prisons. New prisons were built in areas where there was not significant crime to fill them, funded by many of these corporations. Immediately afterward, free base cocaine was replaced with crack as the drug of choice for those wanting an intense high on a budget. Then mandatory minimum laws were put in place to crack down on people who were selling the less pure version of an old drug, i.e. 10 year sentences for an ounce of crack, two years for an ounce of coke. This would be the equivalent of a credit card company charging 5% interest for an item bought at Sach’s, and 25 % interest for an item bought at Wal-Mart. It’s not inherently racist; it’s punishing the poor for being poor. But when the dominant numbers of Blacks are poor, and when there is no Sach’s in the Black community to shop at even if they wanted to avoid the higher penalty, it is systematically racist.

From slavery, to Jim Crow/Share Cropping, to Apartheid, to the prison industrial complex (I despise that term, but I’ve had to accept it as it is the commonly accepted terminology), to undocumented workers, our country has always had free or reduced cost labor to allow our capitalist system to thrive. Those who drafted the thirteenth amendment understood this, and they also understood that there was never going to be a better system of free labor than slavery. So rather than abolish slavery, they merely changed the tenets of slavery from race-related to crime-related, and left themselves (Congress) the ability to resurrect it at a later date if it were ever needed. And the ending of Apartheid brought about that need. I do need to emphasize one thing: slavery was never abolished, it was set aside. If more people understood that fact, many of the disagreements about the intent of our legislative and law-enforcement systems would indeed be abolished. Anyway, enterprises within the prison walls include, auto parts production, call center operations, computer hardware production, and other would/could/should be unionized jobs. Economically, non-unionized prison labor hurts more working Americans than undocumented worker labor, but again it goes to the root word of capitalist system being not capital, but capitalize; the only way for me to make more is to take advantage of someone else.

The kids at the youth detention home associated with my job create some of the most beautiful hand-crafted furniture you will ever see. It’s a shame they had to go to jail to learn those skills… no… actually, it’s as criminal as the activities that got them locked up… no… it is constitutionally established, and therefore allowable and acceptable. But it’s not fair, it’s not right, and it is racist. And that’s the truth… at least that’s the truth that I have accepted for myself that allows me to sleep at night. Thank you for allowing me to share my truth with you.

Sincerely and with the utmost respect,

Dwane T.

Go Ahead Obama, Take Me For Granted

2008-07-22T11:24:00.000-04:00

No one can give you power, you have to take it!!! (Jock Ewing, fictional character on Dallas)

If you let them do this to me and get away with it, then you’re giving them the eternal right to do the same damn thing to anyone of you!! (fictionalized real-life character Bufford Pusser in Walking Tall)

I’m old enough to command a certain amount of respect, and I’m young enough to take the rest! (my older brother Gerald… a real-life character of fictional proportions)

Every news channel has begun to re-examine the theme: Does Obama take Black people for granted? It’s a long way away from, is Obama Black enough to represent African Americans, but it has the same divisive quality when you repeat it enough. On that issue, one hundred-fifty years ago, octoroons (look it up) were still considered Black enough for use as slaves, and Obama is four times blacker than they were (I hate myself for saying blacker, but I had to make a point). But back to the real issue, that being Obama taking Black people for granted. Where Obama is, and what he has to do to be successful for where he is going, 1) it is impossible for him to take Black people for granted, but 2) to whatever extent he can, I believe he should be able to.

As my quotes above show, I understand a little about power and respect (I’m still working on the money thing). I could have used Frederick Douglas’ “Power concedes nothing…” quote, because it is definitely the best, but I was in a mass media state of mind. I know that life in general is a struggle to be accepted, respected, protected and empowered. I generally don’t take anyone or anything for granted, and I don’t like folks taking me for granted. But there are exceptions. When my daughter says “Da?!?!” at 2:30 in the morning, she expects me to come. She doesn’t know if the monitor is on in our room, she doesn’t know if I’m sleeping, she doesn’t know what my day was like the day before or what my schedule is the next day. She knows I need to be there because of our relationship. Our lives are intertwined in a way that, regardless of how we may feel about each other at any given time in our lives, we are one. To get her to feel it before she can understand it, I play the You Tube clip of the song “We Are One” from Lion King II for her a few times a week. From now until the day one of us leaves the earth, if I am the father I should be, she should be able to take me for granted in the same way she does now. Having said that, let me get back to my points…

1) It is impossible for Obama to take Black people for granted. The top candidate for president, universally accepted, in the last three elections was Colin Powell. There were very few people who didn’t love and respect him, but his wife knew that a few of the ones who didn’t would try to kill him the first chance they got; so she killed his presidential run before it got started by saying, “no, you ain’t runnin’. Obama undoubtedly had that conversation with his wife before he started this run. They both understand that he can die at any time for no other reason than he is a Black man running for president. He cannot escape the fact. There is nothing in his personality that shows that he is so self/power obsessed that he would risk leaving his daughters fatherless unless he believed in a cause greater than himself. Obama is Black everyday, and he proves it by his willingness to die representing his people everyday. No greater love hath a man that he should lay down his life for his brother… look that up too if you need to.

2) Obama should be able to take Black people for granted. In the same way that he is willing to sacrifice some or all of his life for da brovas and sistas, they should be able to do the same for him. Black people will never be a homogenous group with one set of values and thoughts, and they never should be. But as the radical brothers used to tell us youngbloods back in college, more important than unity is mobility. We can’t always agree on an issue, but we can recognized its significance beyond our philosophical differences and mobilize to do what is best for the greater good. Obama being president is for the greater good. If its not, the alternative would be…. What? I’m not saying that he should completely ignore us. But like I said before, he can’t ignore us, he is actively Black all day, everyday (unlike some other folks who are passively Black). Some folks make the comparison that Bill Clinton actively sought the Black vote. But Clinton could reach out to Black people and still be seen as pro-White. Obama reaching out to Black people will be depicted by many as being anti-White. For those who don’t think that’s true, it may sound crazy and/or offensive, but it was just as crazy and offensive for Obama giving his wife dap to be seen as a terrorist fist bump.. LOL LOL LOL LOL… anyway…

Barack Obama is running for president of the United States, not president of the inner city, selected suburbs, and a few rural pockets. He is running for George Bush’s job, not Rev. Al Sharpton’s. It does not make sense for him to apply for a job that effects 300 million people by focusing on the issues that effect 35 million of them. Do I want him to address police brutality, redistricting, redlining, gang violence, lack of grocery stores and fresh food, and other issues that directly effect me and many other folks I love? Absolutely! But if he addresses jobs lost overseas, a living wage, cutting tax breaks for the rich, equal access to quality education, higher standards for landlords, and other issues that effect 285 million Americans, including me and those folks I love, I would love that too. And if talking about the first set of issues prevents him from getting elected so that he can’t get anything done at all, then Barack he needs to let Rev. Al do his job, and focus on his own. When a general is trying to conquer new territories, he doesn’t need civilians sticking notes in his pocket telling him who shot at them, what he needs to do to protect them and who he should get first. He needs to focus on winning the new land. After that, everyone can assist the general in making the resources of the new land benefit the inhabitants of the old land… get it?

I would not be making this argument if Obama was not qualified to be president. No one wants the first Black president to be an unqualified screw-up that sets Black folks back 100 years. To be able to put together a team of leaders with the skill and vision to develop, implement and maintain a system that changes society is the function of a president, and his successful campaign against all odds has proven Obama has that ability. I believe McCain has those skills as well, just not to the same extent. I also believe that there are at least 500 people in this country who would be more qualified than both of them to be president… but those folks aren’t running. I believe that Obama will be a fair president, which will piss off people of all races because many want to get their share of “fair” off the top, with the rest of “fair” being distributed equally to everyone else. But I also believe the majority of us, from all races and ethnicities, understand what fair is, and will support him being fair… even when we have to give up something for the greater good of the many. I hope Obama does take me being there for him for granted right now, like I will take him being there for me for granted later on, because ultimately we both know this thing is bigger than both of us.

Jesse Got OutFOXed!!!

2008-07-22T11:15:00.000-04:00

I am not a fan of FOX television. FOX news, FOX Sports, FX, or plain old FOX, I don’t like them. At best, they are a necessary evil, since NFC football games are shown on FOX (and I have to watch the Giants), the King of the Hill, Simpsons and Family Guy come on Sunday Night. Other than those shows, there isn’t much they offer me. My dislike (disdain) comes in how the separate channels and programming are all tied together. Forgive me if I insult you here, but… FOX makes its money programming for the non-intellectual masses on all of its channels so that it can afford to finance its’ news channel. Fox News then reinforces stereotypical fears among the non-intellectual masses, so that they move our government to protect them from the would be destroyers of their non-intellectual way of life, giving corporations like FOX the power to continue to take money away from the non-intellectual masses.

This is not new information. FOX was built on programming for Black people and dumb people (some would say dumb Black people). Once they made enough money to challenge the big three stations, they threw Black programming to the side… except on FOX news, where you could always find a story about some black thug, baby mama, heartless murderer, etc. And if they couldn’t find a story, they’d spend hours speculating about one. So, with this basic history in mind, I have often wondered… why do Black folks go on FOX News? With the adage, keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer, in mind, I occasionally give myself a 15-20 minute dose of FOX News. I watch them talk down to, cut off, disregard, and blindside their Black guests. And those folks keep coming back… and bringing friends!!!

When gatekeepers masquerade as moderators, talking about having fair discussions with no spin, while having a scroll of the topic being discussed running along the bottom or the side of the screen that contradicts whatever the Black guest is saying, you may want to stay away from that environment… or at least come up with a counter attack. Bill Clinton came with a counter attack last year when Chris Wallace tried to blindside him. Even though Clinton’s defense, in the form of an attack, was portrayed as borderline hysteria by the other news channels, it didn’t change the fact the Clinton tore Wallace a new one. Fox left Bill alone after that one.

Slick Willy knew enough to be on guard at all times, so how did Jesse Jackson get caught out there? As many times as he has been misquoted, misrepresented, and had his statements just twisted into an entirely different point before his eyes, Jesse should have known better than to trust anyone at that network. An intelligent Black person going on FOX news and expecting not to be attacked is like the Crocodile Hunter going into a swamp with the same expectation. They don’t care who you are, you are food to them… and they will feed on you to make their cause stronger. That insanity reminds me of a joke from my childhood watching Hee Haw (yes, Hee Haw… alas, I can’t lie…):

Patient: Doctor, I just broke my leg in three places!
Doctor: Well boy, I suggest you stay out of those places!

Even on Hee Haw, they understood that it didn’t make sense to treat the injury without treating the behavior that brought it on. Brothers and sisters need to stay away from FOX. At least with CNN, you know they are going to going to show everyone in a negative light… because they know that to combine fairness with high ratings, you have to have drama, and nothing brings drama like negativity (the desire to make a joke comparing the FOX and the Wolf [Blitzer of CNN] is strong, but I’ll fight it off). Even Obama knows enough not to go on FOX. They can talk about him all they want to, call him every name in the book, but they can’t use his words against him if they don’t get to talk to him.

I don’t fault Jesse for saying what he said. He has earned a right to feel how he feels, and say what he wants to say. Had he said the same thing at the barbershop, some brothers would have agreed, others would have disagreed, but everyone would have laughed. I do fault him for saying it where he said it. I have never heard a proponent of FOX News say, “boy that Jessie Jackson sure changed my mind on that issue!” On FOX, Jesse could add to the argument, but he cannot win it… and he does not need to be anyone’s additive at this point in his career. Jesse does not need to risk his past accomplishments looking for present relevance. Jesse will always be relevant. I remember sitting 10 feet behind him on the podium as he addressed a crowd in Buffalo, NY, during his 1984 presidential run. The man was larger than life. And when I shook his hand afterward, his hand was larger than life as well. I actually met one of my heroes… not everyone can say they’ve done that. I want to hate Fox News for tarnishing his image, but I can’t. They just did what foxes do… drag their pray back to the den, and bite them on the neck and back until they die.

Get On The Bus, Sit Down, and Shut Up!

2008-07-22T11:05:00.000-04:00

“Free speech is an inalienable right to avoid prosecution for your views, not persecution because of them”. The Mo’ Kelly Report

A few months back, Mo’ Kelly wrote an exceptional blog about Rev. Jeremiah Wright (http://mokellyreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/mokelly-report-fully-supports-jeremiah.html). I hope he wins the Pulitzer Prize of bloggery (or whatever it’s called) for it. But in reading his defense of Rev. Wright, it brought back to mind his own quote from a different blog, which I quoted above. Everyone is accountable for what they say, not only when they said it, but when others hear it. Of course, no one should be held hostage at age 55 for something they said at 25. But you are still accountable for the good or damage that is done. That is why people go back and thank or curse teachers for things they said years ago.

I am a fan of Barack Obama for a lot of reasons. Being just over six months apart in age, and knowing his story as I do, our milestones toward getting where we are mentally are very similar, even if our paths toward getting here are totally different. Born at the middle of the Civil rights movement, we watched Watts burn by Molotov Cocktail, and Viet-Nam burn by napalm, as children. We listened to former Black Panthers on the Speaker’s Circuit, while in college. We ignored corporate America to work for the uplifting of the people as a first (and second, and third) job. We’ve gone into middle age with one foot in the past and one in the future, holding onto the Black culture we represent with one hand, and the mainstream culture that we hope to influence with the other hand, while keeping our minds on Jesus so we don’t lose this psychological game of twister. Yeah, Obama is my brother.

Just like my brother Obama, I’m also a student of history. I love, admire, and respect those who came before me, and the work and sacrifice on their part that allowed me to be where I am, and who I am. I have a special appreciation for those who know when to pass the torch. I love the scene in The Rundown, when Arnold Schwarzenegger walked by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the beginning of the movie and said, “Have fun”. He openly passed the torch. The Apostle Paul spoke about running his race, and finishing his mission. He knew he had blazed a trail, and that people had trained for such a time to build on his work, and was at peace with that it was that time. Aside from what he represents to everyone else, sisters/brothers who have struggled to build us up to where we are now need to understand that this is Obama’s time.

I was watching the movie, Get on the Bus, last week, and it was the perfect metaphor for this time. There was a passing of a torch, in the form of an African drum, from the oldest brother, to the second youngest brother on the bus. Why the second youngest? Because he was the one that had shown the most interest in carrying on the legacy! There are brothers now that were driving the bus before Obama even knew where the bus stop was. Jesse Jackson, Maxine Watters, Charles Rangel, even Jeremiah Wright, drove the bus that was built from Crispus Attucks and Phylis Wheatley, through Shirley Chisolm, MLK, and Malcolm X. But now it’s time for those folks to get on the bus, take a seat, and see where Obama is going to take them. No one knows exactly where this ride will go, but no one knew when the last wave of drivers took over either.

Anyone who has ever ridden on a bus knows that backseat driving is not accepted. That is why, for the most part, folks have kept their mouths closed. Recent remarks, like Jesse Jackson’s, and previous remarks by Jeremiah Wright, are just unacceptable at this time. I’m not talking about Wright’s sermon; that was in the past, and regardless, he should say whatever he feels God leads him to say in the pulpit since he is directly accountable to God. But his post-media-hype road show was uncalled for, and unproductive. Obama has other things to do with his time than having to make statements distancing himself, or accepting apologies, from folks whom he has admired and aspired to be like. Even his contemporaries like Tavis Smiley, and me, need to recognize that he can take us someplace that no one else can right now. We may not like his driving style, but without him, the bus keeps running it’s same old route. As I find every time I leave a job, and as Tavis is learning from the applicants to his spot on the Tom Joyner show, there is always another talented sister/brother waiting to do what’s already been done. We can ride shotgun on the bus, but there can only be one driver.

Jessie Jackson, Jr. gets it. Any problems he has with Obama will be voiced after he finishes working to get his brother elected, and he will ride shotgun to protect him until then. Junior knows that, whether Obama wins or loses, it will make things easier in the future for brothers like him and Harold Ford. Like other’s times have past, they know their time has not come yet. Until it does, they need to do like the bus driver told them back in grade school: stay in your seat and keep your mouth shut, because any negative thing you say about the driver might get you suspended from school, or whupped by your parents. It’s the same now. Our leaders who are not currently running for president need to watch what they say about the man who is, because they will be held accountable… and it may get them a whuppin’. Another way to think of it is, by choosing not to get on the bus, you may be choosing to get thrown under it. Those folks are still viable, honorable leaders, and have earned their right to, and made their mark by, speaking their piece. But weakness being the absence of power, and meekness being the control of power, can they allow us to inherit the earth by showing they are strong enough to be meek. Can they just sit back and enjoy the ride?