kamau bobb

Being Trapped

2011-10-04T23:20:00.002-05:00

I wonder a lot what it would be like to have enormous social responsibility, what it would be like to be a leader on a grand scale and to be able to articulate the vision, hopes and dreams of people. I wonder what it would be like to exercise that degree of freedom. I sometimes wonder about the view and the pride that my daughter and wife would have of me, if I were a man of global stature.

Recently I wondered what it would be like to be trapped. There is no shortage of evidence, both empirical and anecdotal, about the urban black underclass. It is a segment of our society and a portion of our people that are underserved, undereducated, underemployed and is the definition of the American underclass. There is no doubt that the human spirit is and will always be triumphant. Indeed the story of black people in the United States is that triumphant story. There is also equally no doubt that the condition of poverty shackled to race is guilty of the murder of thousands of ambitions, hopes and dreams. What is it like today, to have little or no education, to have your ambitions and dignity constantly under public and private attack? I wonder what happens at the moment when so many young black men, for example, just say, “fuck it” and turn towards the abyss.

Surely, that moment comes at the ends of a path. It is at the end of a path where system failures, benign and intentional neglect and the bad luck of circumstance collude to undermine the spirit. The human spirit of legend is unconquerable, but the human spirit of an individual needs protection or at very least inspiration. My whole life has been on a trajectory that has kept me protected and safe from that path. I had the good luck of being born to educated parents. Their emphasis on education was similar to their emphasis on food. According to them, the substance of my body and the substance of my mind are the elements of my life – without one or the other, I would surely die.

I cannot really know what it is like to be trapped in this particular way and I do not take for granted the privilege that is. If I continue to think about being free, I have to continue to think about being trapped.

kamau

Taking Responsibility

2011-09-21T18:12:00.004-05:00

The State of Georgia is going to execute Troy Davis today. That means that a man or a woman, employed by the State, is going to kill him. This case has earned legendary acclaim. There are a slew of inconsistencies, witness recantations and questions that lead to an abundance of doubt regarding Mr. Davis’ guilt. Despite that, and appeals from former United States President and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jimmy Carter, and the Pope of the Catholic Church and countless others, a man or woman working on behalf of the State of Georgia is going to kill Troy Davis.

At the moment the United States is involved in a series of wars and conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Our supposed objectives in these places are to introduce democracy and civil society. It is easy to make the argument that we are hypocritical in purporting that we are the standard bearers of civilization while allowing state sanctioned killing here in the United States. Pointing out hypocrisy; however, to people who support murder as a form of vengeance dressed as justice is ineffective. I argue that supporters of capital punishment should not hide behind false claims of Western Civility and human decency.

If the Governor, who has the unique authority to prevent the killing of a man, chooses not to save his life, then he should be responsible for taking it. If he so supports capital punishment as an element of state justice, then he should demonstrate his core beliefs and publicly shoot Troy Davis himself. He would not hesitate to volunteer for a day to teach a 2nd grade class in support of his belief in education. He surely wouldn’t pause to throw out the first pitch for the Braves in support of his belief in sport as a critical component of society. He should personally bear the responsibility of publicly taking another man’s life. Lead by example and take his support of capital punishment to its logical and literal end.

Doing so would unmask the philosophy so we, as a nation, can be more clear about who we really are. We can align behind our leaders based on their public acts. We would be clear that our government kills people despite questions about their innocence. Regarding immigration, we could be clear that we are a nation that will round up tens of millions of working people based on their ethnicity and deport them in an Idi Amin model.

Pointing out hypocrisy to the zealotry is futile. I would encourage public leaders to simply take on more personal and public responsibility about their beliefs. Their doing so would bring some honesty to the state murder of Troy Davis and some clarity to the rest of us on the meaning of being an American.

kamau

Highfalutin

2011-09-14T00:21:00.003-05:00

I was recently invited to the Atlanta Motor Speedway by some representatives of Nascar and a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education group. They wanted me to see a program for high school students and essentially try to partner with Georgia Tech. That was all upfull and right.

Nascar, on the other hand, does not have an image that, shall we say, resonates with me and my world view. To be frank, I hold the stereotype of Nascar fans as drunk, sunburned, sweaty southern rednecks. I know that in a crowd of nearly 110,000 people that cannot be universally true, but stereotypes being what they are, that doesn’t really matter. The truth is that all stereotypes hold a kernel of truth somewhere; however, ugly they may be or inapplicable to every individual in the group.

At the Atlanta Motor Speedway on this particular Friday afternoon during the pre-race practice runs, the temperature was about 60 zillion degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently Nascar fans go to the races in Winnebago’s, trailers and tents and camp out for the few race days in this excruciating heat. Also, there are no trees within at least a mile of the track, so everyone is camped out directly in the crosshairs of the sun. Hence the sweaty and sunburned sections of the stereotype.

What struck me as I drove onto the grounds, was the number of confederate flags. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many per capita in my life. Indeed some of them were on extra thick poles, which may have been crosses in their former lives, and were at least 10 or 15ft long. At least the breeze had sense enough not to blow, so all the flags were forced to bow down as I drove by. In addition to that, I even saw a poster asking people to join the “Sons of the Confederacy.” I really was shocked by that. I thought the Sons went out with Birth of a Nation or Gone With the Wind. I didn’t know they were still around in Madea’s modern world free of stereotypes. Maybe it is Tyler Perry's fault.

The whole time I was trying to be quiet and inconspicuous. After the demonstration with the students I was standing reading some of the program’s brochures. I was wearing a Tech shirt and a guy came up to me and said, “So you go to Georgia Tech?”

Think of the most stereotypical southern drawl you can and then replay the question in your mind so you can hear what I heard. The guy was a scruffy looking white man with a huge belly that hung down below his belt. His t-shirt had a race car on it with smoke coming from the exhausts in the form of a rebel flag. He had on shorts, work boots and a hunting hat. He was both sunburned and sweating. This is a non-fiction account.

“No.” That was enough for me, keep it short and don’t say anything more than the answer to the question – standard procedure with New York’s Finest and the Sons of the Confederacy.

“So whaduya do there?”

“I work there.”

He kept pressing me. Once I explained what I did, what he said next took me in a Nascar ride back in time.

He turned to look directly at me and lowered his head so he could see me above his shades and under the brim of his hunting hat.

“So yer one of those highfalutin fellers ain’ cha?”

Pimping School Choice

2011-08-31T23:03:00.002-05:00

I was recently in a discussion slash argument with an official from a large charter school company. He was making the case that the schools of the company were schools of choice and had long waiting lists, ergo they are good schools – otherwise parents would not choose to send their children there. This despite the evidence suggesting the companies’ schools are mediocre at best. There is certainly a simple and elegant logic to that argument which I appreciate. There is another side of course, which overlooks the reality of the options available in the choice.

School choice, from the point of view of a for-profit education salesman, is a simple example of consumer rationality. A family faced with the choice between educational option A and educational option B will simply reveal their preference and select the school that matches their family interests. The extension of that logic, the salesmen would have us believe, is that if you have long waiting lists for your schools, then your schools must be good. Neat, clean and spurious.

From the point of view of education as a public good instrumental in a civil society, there is a different conception of choice. The majority of charter schools in the United States are in communities where the public school systems are poor, dysfunctional and ineffective. Detroit is a prime example. That translates into individual schools that are unsafe, unclean, undesirable dark places that have little to do with education. Of course those communities are highly correlated with populations of the black and brown poor. In many instances the families of these communities are facing educational suicide for their children if they enroll them in their local public school. In states like Georgia where students’ academic performance, on average, ranks 48th among all states, it is clear how bad local public schools can be.

Under these circumstances, parents would choose any school option over the local public school where failure is a near certainty. The salesman’s argument presents a false choice. It suggests that the waiting list for the life raft is because you offered drowning people a good raft. As long as the raft is afloat, people will choose it. The quality of option A is immaterial when certain ignorance and psychological damage is option B. Using the argument of school choice under these circumstances is pimping the concept of choice. Real school choice is when families are choosing between schools of equal caliber and different styles.

This argument allows educational salesmen to pimp choice and use it as a reason to provide poor people mediocre education while profiting from the public trough. Thank goodness for the good, regular public education I got, otherwise I might not be able to recognize the pedagogy of the pimp.

kamau

Accused of Being Racist

2011-08-18T23:19:00.004-05:00

A white woman recently accused me of being racist. She and I are affiliated with the same school and it was based on our respective approaches to this school that she accused me. It is the first time, at least to my knowledge, I have been accused as such. The dictionary definition of a racist is a person who believes that “race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” She did not confront me directly, so I am not sure which part of this double barreled definition she thinks I embody. Surely she cannot think, that in this day and age, I believe one race is inherently superior to others, so she must think I am guilty of racism definition 1(a).

If I thought that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities I would be trapped in several boxes of futility. My parenting would be in vein. The potential of my daughter would be predetermined. Her blackness would be the determinant of her personal traits and mental and physical capacities. The infrastructure of love and support that my wife and I provide her would be insignificant against of the weight of her black-based capacities. Our love for her, designed to launch her human potential, would be futile.

Another problem I would have as a racist is related to my own identity. There is no doubt that in the American legend, black men are little more than physical species of minimal mental capacity – creatures trapped by our color. As a racist I would have limited identity options. I could believe the color-based definition of myself or I could challenge it and prescribe another color-based set of attributes to black men that suited me better. I am not a physical specie of minimal mental capacity. If I accepted the American legend I would be an anomaly from the definition or somehow not black. If I challenged the American legend, even to prescribe a different color-based set of characteristics, I would have to be reflective. I would have to recognize that the prevailing color-based definition of me as a black man doesn’t fit. The very act of doing that would disqualify me as a racist.

I suspect her accusation was prompted because I am not shy about talking about race. Race is undoubtedly correlated with several social conditions in the United States, particularly in education. The correlation between black men and education is almost universally negative in the U.S. If I were racist I would subscribe to the idea that it is because of our blackness that we are destined to poor academic performance and underachievement. Clearly I do not believe that.

It may be that she is trapped in that box of futility where racism doesn’t offer comprehension of black men who don’t fit the legend. It is a possibility.

kamau

Obama 1, Osama 0

2011-05-03T21:50:00.002-05:00

It’s been so long my fingers are unsure.

I saw a sign in the Times that was a sign of the times. Obama 1, Osama 0. Nice. I certainly did not feel the urge to run out and chant “U.S.A., U.S.A.” in the streets. That seemed crass, to so vocally celebrate the assassination of a man, regardless of his crimes. I did feel that justice had been served. The question now is should the United States release pictures of the slain Bin Laden?

No.

Displaying pictures of a man shot in his head reduces us a nation. I recall when so called Iraqi insurgents gathered cheering around the dead bodies of U.S. contractors hanging from a bridge. It was barbaric. It seemed to be a lack of civility from a different era. It was reminiscent of white slave holders chopping off the feet of runaway slaves and displaying the severed limbs as a message to others. I’m sure the insurgents felt that they were exacting justice on the contractors and sending a message to others, “You invaders are not welcome here!” Publicizing the pictures of Bin Laden’s body would be an act in the same vein.

What purpose would it really serve? Those members of Al Qaeda and other extremists who believe that the announcement of Bin Laden’s assassination is propaganda will believe what they want to believe regardless of any evidence to the contrary. They are in the category of Donald Trump, a mindless lot for whom evidence and reason are just irritants. Showing pictures of Bin Laden’s body will not change the minds of that group. Not only would it not change their minds, but it raises the question of what the best outcome would be. Do we really think they will say, “The U.S. killed Osama, I guess it’s time to focus on democracy and Jesus.”? Surely not. Fundamental beliefs thrive on adversity. The pictures will serve as fuel, as a renewal of the fight.

On these shores, showing the pictures will invigorate American’s like those who destroyed a Mosque and left a sign, “Osama down, Islam is next.” That fraction of the American public is larger than we like to admit. They thrive on ignorance and violence is ever near. Like Trump and the birthers, they would have black people show our freedom papers for inspection to prove we’re Americans. They would bludgeon immigrants crossing the southern border and display their broken bodies as deterrents. This behavior in the United States is already here. It does not need encouragement.

Showing Bin Laden’s picture would be a mistake. President Obama’s order to assassinate Bin Laden was a clear display that the arms of American justice will get you. No doubt. His message to the nation and the world was what it ought to have been, Presidential. He should leave it at that.

kamau

An End to Kofa

2009-09-11T13:30:00.005-05:00

Once, the night before I was leaving to St. Kitts for Christmas, our dog, Kofa, ran off. It was a terrible dilemma. Do I leave with him lost or do I miss spending Christmas with my family in St. Kitts? I discovered how much of a connection Kofa and I had as I got sick confronted with the decision. I ruffled false feathers when he came back saying that I might have killed him myself had he made me miss the entire Christmas vacation. Now I am confronted with doing just that.

The quiet and mighty Kofa has lymphoma. About a month ago he was a 90 pound black and tan Doberman Pincher made out of steel. Today he is a ghostly shadow of himself. He weighs about 70 pounds, has stopped eating and struggles to stand up. In order to take him to the vet to confirm that I am awake in this nightmare I had to pick him up and put him the car. His suffering is such that we have to put him down. Even writing this, thinking about it and confronting the reality of having to actually do it is horrifically overwhelming. I was driving when I was explaining to my parents what the situation is and the grim decision we are faced with – deciding when to put an end to Kofa. In the middle of the conversation I was overcome with emotions and had to pull over as I could neither speak nor see.

People always talk about how dogs are man’s best friend and how the bond between people and animals can be profound. I have never dismissed those ideas, but I have not experienced their full truth until now. During the past eight years, as a function of long hours at home completing school, post doc and now working remotely, I have spent more time with Kofa than with anyone else. Needless to say we’ve developed a powerful relationship. Despite that, I am surprised by how deeply attached I am to my dog and how vicious the pain is at the prospect of having to put him to sleep in the coming days.

Our tradition says that man is man and dog is dog. In this case my dog is my man and it is killing me to think that I have to kill him. Just posting this, I'm wetting the keys.

kamau

The Beginning of the Trajectory

2009-08-07T09:01:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was our daughter’s first day of school! It marks the beginning of a whole new stage of our lives. She is now officially plugged into the public school matrix – in Georgia of all places. We will have to be hyper-vigilant to ensure that the beautiful flames of curiosity, inquiry, budding logic and self-confidence that all children have are not extinguished in her by the school system. It is a shame to have to view public schools in that way, but the reality is what it is. For so many black children, independent of class, the public school system can be a danger to their natural intellect and thirst for knowledge. The damning and persistent achievement gap between black and white students is evidence of this danger.

My wife and I experienced the bundle of emotions that you would imagine from parents sending their children off to the first day of kindergarten. We wondered about how well we have prepared her for this first step into the world? How have we supported her self-confidence? Have we encouraged her to ask questions and be reasonably critical of things? We even took bets about who might cry. The school organized a “Kiss and Cry” for parents to support each other after dropping their kids off.

Our little girl looked even more beautifulicous and smart in her crisp and clean school uniform. Her braids were interwoven with the precision and inertia of centuries of black women prettying up their little girls for new beginnings. Her face was shinny with Jergens Original Scent. Her uniform issue K-Swiss sneakers were immaculate. All was happy. She found several friends of hers in her class, her teacher was energetic, very welcoming and highly organized. The other children looked equally eager, sharp and ready to begin.

There are three girls’ classrooms in kindergarten at her school. Two of them are the same and one is for students who need a little more attention. The two regular classes (I recognize that I am guilty of assigning labels already) are very mixed as is the school. While the school is predominantly black, the incoming classes are reflecting the changing neighborhood and are increasingly white. My daughter’s class is majority white and the other is probably half black and half white. The third class is for children who haven’t yet grasped or been exposed to the basics of the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes etc.

After leaving my daughter’s class and sticking my head in the other class which is right next to hers, I was happy. Looking at all the children and the proud parents was a beautiful and emotional experience. Then I went to take a look into the extra needs class which is across the hall. All the happiness of the moment was immediately knocked out of me. That class was nearly exclusively black. Of the 20 or so girls, there was one white girl who was obviously white and two others whose ethnicity I couldn’t discern. The public school system and its specter of brutality was sitting at one of the desks smiling wickedly at me.

How is it that at 5 years old, on the very first day of school, black children are already behind? It is possible that if their teacher is exceptional, they will be able to catch up to the others and level the playing field. In this school their teacher is. The problem is that in the system in general, the worst teachers are those offered to students with the most need. As groups, the learning curves and academic achievement curves between these little black girls and their “regular class” counterparts are likely to never intersect.

Their trajectory may have already been set and their first day of school was yesterday.

kamau

Caribbean Man, Father In-Law and Golf

2009-08-03T14:41:00.003-05:00

My father in-law is a typically Caribbean man in a lot of ways. His “name” is Rugged. He is from the poor and black side of St. Kitts and grew up during the days when the English tricked a lot of Caribbean people into thinking that the closer you were to them in color, occupation and physical proximity, the better you were. He damned that whole way of thinking and came up with the distinctly Caribbean combination of poverty, pride, a burning respect for education and an impeccable sense of family values. Since I married his daughter, he and I have always been relatively close. In my mind, one of my shortcomings has been that I don’t drink and I don’t play dominoes. For a man of Caribbean extract to not do those things has not only lead me to a life of endless teasing, but I think may have put an invisible constraint on our relationship. Despite that, as far as black men in the 21st century go, having a father in-law at all is an anomaly, so being able to think about our relationship is admittedly a privilege.

Not only is Rugged really rugged, he is a life-long athlete…football, cricket and now golf. He is a real deal golfer. He wins tournaments throughout the Caribbean and is one of the recognized talented senior players at the Royal St. Kitts Golf Club. He is also one of the kind of men that wouldn’t do well trying to teach a sport to a person with no natural athletic abilities. He is patient with a lack of technical knowledge, but frustrated with a lack of talent.

Recently I’ve been encouraged to try golf. While I don’t drink and play dominoes, I do have the black man’s gene and am a naturally gifted athlete (with a Ph.D., smile. That’s in our genes too!)

My father in-law and I went to play golf together the other day while he was visiting us. It was the first time that we were playing together, just the two of us. Throughout the round he was giving me tips on this and that about the game and my swing etc. A few times he would say do such and such and I would, and the ball would take off as he predicted. Then he would smilingly talk about people who are coachable or who have natural gifts. All the while as we walked from hole to hole I was thinking that this is relationship building stuff. My relationship with my wife’s father could go to a whole new level because I am trying to learn a game that he loves and can interpret his instructions to produce immediate, and hopefully lasting, effects. I also learned on some of the walks down the fairways how much he detests the Colonial imposition on the mentality of Caribbean people. I am sure he can see my interpretation of those views too and how they have affected my parenting style.

As we approached the 17th hole he said, “Alright Mr. K, let’s par these last two holes!” I said alright and joked, “lemme lash dis ball wid a 4 iron, right now!”

As I stood at the tee, 4 iron in hand looking at the ball, I was thinking that a whole new level of relationship was on the line. Strange, what pressures and thoughts swirl through someone’s mind as they prepare to tee off. On all the other holes he had some comment – “remember to transfer your weight,” “try not to pop up,” “make sure you swing through the ball.” This time he didn’t say anything. The future trajectory of our relationship was resting entirely on me and on the trajectory of this shot. I’ve never been in a golf tournament, but I had my first experience of tournament nerves.

I brought the club back with a turn not a sway, which naturally shifts my weight to my back foot without knocking me off balance. I kept my eye on the ball as I brought the club down and my weight transferred forward. I watched the club hit the ball, which meant that I didn’t pop up and had stayed down long enough to see the contact. I looked up on the follow through which is the end of the natural swing.

Rugged immediately exclaimed, “DAT IS A GOLF SHOT MY BOY!!” “A thing of beauty to watch and remember!”

I made par on the hole and solidified a new trajectory for our relationship.

kamau

Misbehave....Go to the Office

2009-07-30T15:28:00.003-05:00

One of the things I found irritating about the brotherhood of police that lined up in support of Officer Crowley and their attempts to chastise President Obama was how crass they all seemed. They seemed like the very kind of crude police officers that would indeed engage in racial profiling and the kind that I would be afraid of. When one of them referenced the President’s signaling the history of profiling and police brutality, he brushed it off as “whatever the history may be,” we’re not stupid. Probably not, but brushing aside the history of police brutality against black people, especially in Boston, is the height of insensitivity.

Despite what might be said about that, what is refreshing is the air of change that President Obama promised the nation and has delivered in so many small and large ways. Here was a fundamental shift in the imagery of power, transgression and forgiveness. Here is something we have never before witnessed in the entire history of the United States.

A white cop misbehaves himself and wrongfully arrests a black man then he has to go the Office of the President of the United States, who is also a brother, to explain himself and make nice. That’s seismic.

Consider the message that sends to our boys in blue all over the country. They are probably in their squad cars right now, driving slowly past a brother staring him down with contempt as they usually do, but they’re thinking, “What’s the world coming to? That nigger might be Obama’s cousin. Come on Vinnie, let’s go.”

Images matter. For a white cop to have to go the Oval Office and sit down with two brothers – one of whom is the President of the United States, the other of whom is one of the world’s leading scholars at the nation’s oldest university is an image that I will cherish.

kamau

What is Javier Saying About Skip?

2009-07-24T14:57:00.001-05:00

One possibility...

Los negros en los Estados Unidos piensen que todo el sufrimiento y la injusticia es de ellos. El professor esta detenido y es una crisis nacional. El president se dice que la policia son estupido. Que lastima! Pero que paso con miles de personas Latino que estan detenido cada dia? Donde esta la crisis nacional? Donde esta la investigacion? Justicia es importante, pero no por los negros solamente.

kamau

Consequence

2009-07-23T14:39:00.003-05:00

Skip Gates’ arrest is causing a flurry of angry discussion among black people and perhaps a flurry of quiet nodding of heads among white people. For black men there is no shortage of shared experiences. Nearly all black men have been held up by the police for one reason or another whether they deserved to be or not. If not, they have for sure been the object of derisive suspicion from whoever is behind the counter, looking out the window or walking down the block in the other direction. Saying that Skip Gates is a renown Harvard Professor and if it can happen to him, imagine what could happen to the rest of us, is a moot point in the American black world. That is a lesson that doesn’t need teaching.

Once upon a time it was much easier to assume that the cause of the problem was the racist attitudes of police specifically and white American society in general. Their racial aggression, hatred and ugliness was on public display for all the world to see. In that logic, if a racist American society vilifies black men, then police feel they can enact their barbarism on black men with impunity. Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell among countless others, confirm that this logic still holds. What is increasingly troubling is the possibility of an alternative reason for police brutality in our time. The behavior of many young black men. The bad behavior of so many black men only contributes to the already foul attitudes of the police which worsens our tragically violent relationship with them.

A close colleague of mine has always said that the key to solving the educational divide between black and white kids is for black kids to sit down and study harder. Simple. He does not overlook the structural challenges and racial inequity, but focuses on what we can do for ourselves. That makes all of our claims more clear and effective. When you’ve done all you possibly can do and still come up short, then the argument that you’ve been dealt a poor hand or ineffective tools or public education for black children holds more weight.

The same point holds for black men’s relationship with the police. If, as black men, we would behave ourselves, our relationship with the police could improve. Simple. Then, when their brutality persists we could more easily make the argument that their violence and aggression is fueled by their own wicked and racist nature. In the meantime our argument is undermined by our own behavior.

A woman called into one of the black talk shows in Atlanta recently devastated that the police had shot and killed her son. She was grieving as a mother, but screaming for justice as a parent of a young black boy. I take the side of black first. My immediate response was that the police are foul and here is another brother to add to the list of slain innocents. She went on to say, however, that even though he was armed and got into some scuffle with the police and then this and that happened they didn’t need to shoot him while he was running away. I clearly run the risk of sounding insensitive to her pain, but if he had been behaving himself in the first place it is far more likely that he would still be with her. Righteous behavior is definitely not protection against wickedness, but it does earn you fair to middling odds against being in trouble with the police.

In my neighborhood at the moment, houses are broken into at least a few every week. Almost without a single exception the crimes are being committed by young black men…..with short locks or mohawks, pants hanging down to their knees and long white t-shirts. The police are called repeatedly to be on the lookout for African American males who have just stolen this or that or are suspiciously walking around the side and back of people’s homes looking in their windows.

The behavior of these young brothers in my neighborhood is such that it is logical for the police to be suspicious of black men. They’ve never had a call reporting a young white boy…sandy blonde hair, Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt, dirty University of Georgia baseball hat, nasty flip flops running up the street with a flat screen. I was furious when I was stopped and harassed by the police in front of my own house…African American male, sagging shorts, no shirt, late at night. They made me go inside and show them my i.d. and then promptly threw it back at me and stormed off with, “we got a call about a black guy casing houses in the area.” The police infuriated me, but the root cause of the problem, that I grudgingly had to admit, was the brother who was looking to break into someone’s home.

This is the part of the problem that tears me up. Having been schooled in New York, by Blackful parents and by the Nation, I don’t think for a second that race doesn’t drive some of the ill that befalls black people and black men. It was racist aggression that caused the Cambridge police to continue to arrest Professor Gates after he said it was his home, but it was the logic of precedence caused by other black men that made the police suspicious of him in the first place. Skip Gates is right to be infuriated and I am along with him. But now, as James Baldwin said, “in the private chambers of the soul, the guilty party is identified and the accusing finger there is not legend, but consequence, not fantasy, but the truth.”

If, as black men, we want to improve the quality of our lives, then we have to do just that and improve the quality of our lives.

kamau

Water and Righteousness

2009-07-06T23:24:00.008-05:00

Lately I've felt that I need therapy dealing with some of the challenges of parenthood – perhaps fatherhood more precisely. I have been taking my little girl to swimming lessons for the better part of a year. She swims at the Martin Luther King Natatorium which is in the backyard of the King Center in Atlanta. It seems a righteous place to learn to swim.

She started off with a lot of promise in the beginner’s class with Miss Emma. She quickly learned the beginning skills and was ready to move to the next section. She wasn’t afraid of the water. She has even been to swim in the sea in Barbados and in St. Kitts. When the time came to move to the next level with Brother Ezra, however, she started fussing at poolside and even at school before we went to the class.

She would ask, “do we have swimming today Daddy?” “Do I have to go to Brother Esra’s class?” I would say yes and the tears would start to well up. I’m not sympathetic to fussing like that and would be well on my way to ignorant almost immediately. We would arrive at the class with her fussing and me angry. A few times she started crying and carrying on at poolside and I let my ignorance get the better of me and snatched her out of the pool and we left. Clearly not a comfortable and encouraging environment to learn how to swim – where you need your breathing to be as relaxed as possible.

One of the things that I like about the center is that it is full of black families and children swimming. One day a sister pulled my hand and said, “brother you just need to give her time.” I started to say, “but…” and she interrupted me and said, “Time. She needs time and your patience.” I felt like a school child being scolded. Not only was I being scolded at the pool by sister such and such, my wife was schooling me at home talking about how she’ll be fine and I should stop pressing her so hard. I realize how unreasonable my position was, but having seen what my daughter was capable of in the water, her fear seemed baseless – to me, a father.

I’ve stopped pressing and started just playing in the pool with her. We’ve spent hours and hours in the scorching sun this summer, jumping in the water, climbing out and jumping back in…over and over and over and over again. We’ve quietly gotten to the point where I end up saying, “ole girl, we have to go.” The other part of what the sister said was that, “now you’re mad she won’t get in, but soon you’ll be mad that she won’t get out.”

We went to a lake this fourth of July weekend. My girl jumped off the dock into lake water!! I jumped in and she jumped in right behind me. This might be one of the moments that only parents can appreciate. When she leapt off the dock, about 3 feet above the surface of murky lake water, where she couldn’t see the bottom or what was in the water, my heart leapt out of my chest.

“Righteous!!”

kamau

Closer to the Hispanic Laborer

2009-06-22T21:20:00.004-05:00

This house renovation project is bringing me closer not only to hard physical labor, but the danger involved in living as a Hispanic person in the United States. I learned today that one of the men that are working on our house was arrested last Thursday night. He was stopped at a traffic checkpoint and was arrested because the name on the registration for the vehicle was not his own. These traffic checkpoints are set up randomly throughout the city to check people’s license and registration. Apparently they are randomly far more likely to be positioned in Hispanic communities. In several instances these simple traffic stops result in people being deported, legitimately or not. The man working on our place was fortunate. He is here legally and was given the latitude to prove that. Despite his ability to do that, he still had to spend the night in jail while his status was verified in consultation with ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (I will simply mention that he was at work on Friday.)

One of the men, on their last project, was shot and robbed on his way home one evening. Another of them, during that same project, was held up at gun point, beaten and robbed. These are the daily experiences of random Hispanic men that I now know. Apparently Hispanic men are the targets for theft and assault because criminals know that they are often paid in cash and, because of their status, cannot call the police. Not only are the men terrorized, I’ve learned recently that Hispanic women attempting to cross the border are extremely likely to be raped by whatever men they encounter. The violence against them is fueled by the same knowledge of their powerlessness.

In addition to the daily street violence, they are confronting a raging anti-Hispanic sentiment in the country at the moment. It is driven in part by the poor economy and the idea that Hispanic workers are stealing jobs from willing American workers or undercutting the wage rate for legitimate services provided by Americans. It is also fueled by people like Lou Dobbs who is encouraging vigilantism and going to the border of ethnic cleansing in his zeal to rid the country of illegal Hispanic immigrants. Hispanic people are being arrested by the hundreds per week in Cobb and Gwinnett Counties here in Georgia and by the thousands across the country in ICE raids on factories where large concentrations of them work. The mantra seems to be – arrest them all and we’ll sort out their status later.

I am struggling to consider what it must feel like to be one of these men – here, in the United States, separated from their wives and children, working non-stop, without complaint, under extremely difficult conditions to improve the lives of American people who in turn spit upon them. How does this man, who is ultimately working for me, feel when I ooh and ahh about how phat he is making my house and then he goes home and is nearly deported because Georgia doesn’t want his kind to be here?

My wife and I passed by a Home Depot one day and a pickup truck with two white men drove up to the long line of Hispanic day laborers who post up there. A whole set of the men dashed to the truck to be first for an opportunity. As soon as the men were close, the truck peeled off with the white men laughing and yelling, “Look at those bastards run!”

I am seeing in these Hispanic men the dignity and quiet fortitude that American black people have been singing about themselves forever. I do not see the lessons that black Americans supposedly taught the nation about acceptance, equality and justice being extended to these newest Americans. Unfortunately, I also do not see black Americans themselves extending an arm of understanding, support or encouragement. I am sure that in the end this group of Hispanic Americans will end up teaching us how to be Americans again. When they are finally able to stand up straight and not be subject to American indecency they will greet us.

Hola amigos, Buenos dias.

kamau

Beginning to Think About Work

2009-06-12T22:29:00.003-05:00

My wife and I are renovating our house. These days in America that appears to mean contracting with a white man who oversees the work of Hispanic men. That is what we’ve done. Our contractor oversees the work of Hispanic men but, he has distinguished himself in that he works alongside them. He does not oversee the work of several crews on multiple projects breezing between them in a spotless, scratchless Chevy Silverado. Since we have been in Georgia he is the very first white man – or any man for that matter – that I have seen working directly alongside Hispanic men, swinging the hammer shoulder to shoulder in the blazing sun. His truck is scratched up and dusty and they ride together to and from Lowes hauling materials. His love of the work and of craftsmanship is laudable, but his sense of humanity and equality among men is remarkable. Watching these men work has made me think deeply about the dignity of work and our attitude towards the so-called Hispanic laborers.

This experience has brought me closer to hard physical labor than I have ever been. It has reminded me that I work in a profession of the mind. The heaviest thing I might pick up in a day is my full cup of hot chocolate. Even that is lighter after the first sip. These men put out extraordinary physical effort each day in the searing heat and then come back and do it again.

Our plan is to knock off the roof and attic of the house, raise it and rebuild it with two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. One day an enormous flatbed truck pulled up with all of the materials necessary to rebuild the floor system, all of the 2x4’s necessary to frame the entire upstairs structure and all of the rafters to hold up the roof. The flooring system is a set of nearly 50 I-joists each of which is approximately 30 feet long. The rafters to hold up the roof are solid pieces of 2x10” wood each of which is approximately 20 feet long. There were 118 rafters. Then there were hundreds of 12’ long 2x4’s. The guys from the truck used a mechanical lift and dropped all of this material on the street in front of our house.

While our contractor is righteous, he is also much older than his Hispanic crew so he left the lifting to them. These three men carried every scrap of that material to the back of the house by hand. It was thousands of pounds of wood. Each 20 foot long rafter weighs nearly 100lbs. They used cut up pieces of carpet as cushions for their shoulders. They had to pick up each piece from the middle in order to balance it on their shoulders. They had to walk through a muddy garden, navigate between two houses with only 7 feet between them, go up an ivy-covered embankment and then walk all the way across the back yard. Each man had to do this about forty times. I don’t know how many hundreds of 2x4’s there were, but two of them would carry 12 at a time up the same difficult path and the third man would carry six at a time by himself. Then there were the floor joists.

They began this work at 8:30 in the morning and continued until it was done at nearly 5 in the evening.

After they had gone I went to try to pick up one of the rafters which were stacked in three waist-high piles. I consider myself fairly strong, but it was a strain to pick it up. Once I got it on my shoulder I felt my lower back and stomach muscles trembling with each other trying to balance the weight. I didn’t even attempt to carry it from the street.

The following morning I saw one of the guys promptly at 8:30 as usual. He smiled as he always does.

“Hola amigo. Buenos dias.”

kamau

Jesus Might Wink

2009-01-20T11:17:00.002-05:00

I ran into an older brother on Saturday morning that I hadn’t seen in some time. He is part of a group of older gentlemen, in their 50’s and 60’s, who used to walk/jog in the evenings and I would see them while I was skipping rope. The set of them always made a point to greet me and made jokes after asking my name, they decided that Kamau was too difficult so my name became Young Breh. When this brother greeted me in the morning it was as if we hadn’t seen each other in years. It was as if I was a close personal friend of his or one of his son’s best friends. He shook my hand with both hands in that strong grandfatherly way. His smile was beaming as he said, “Young Breh, it is sooo good to see you!!”

It isn’t as if I wasn’t glad to see him, but his enthusiasm was contagious. I found myself thrilled to see him and I didn’t even remember his name. He asked excitedly about my daughter and wife. “Breh, take care of that precious little one. You know she holds the key to our future.”

I found myself smiling and smiling and really happy. I asked how he was. He said, “Young Breh, I’m on my way and I’m so excited I don’t know what to do.”

I was thinking about his happiness and mine; about how an incidental run-in on the street became a crescendo of excitement and expectation and understanding. It was incredible. I am not a disciple of cosmic energy and karma and such things, but I have to wonder about it now. What happens when millions of encounters like these are taking place all over the country and all over the world at the same time? What happens today during the inauguration when so much energy, so much pleasure, so much relief, expectation, pride and happiness are all occurring at the same instant focused on the same event?

It is so intense it seems likely that the clouds might part. Maybe they will, and Jesus will show his face and wink.

kamau

Kofa Dog

2009-01-17T22:06:00.000-05:00

Becoming a Dog Person

2009-01-16T18:23:00.003-05:00

We have a six year old Doberman Pincher named Kofa. We got him when he was just several weeks old and could fit in your two cupped hands. He has grown into a 95 lb black and tan, sleek and muscular dog. I was never a dog person, but early on my wife decided that she wanted a dog and Kofa is what we got. We both come from Caribbean traditions where dogs are dogs and men are men. So we don’t operate like some of our American friends whose dogs roll in their beds and on the furniture and eat off their plates and lick them on their faces and such. We don’t play like that.

Having said that, Kofa is my boy. He is not only well trained, but well mannered. He goes out and picks up the paper in the morning. At night, if it’s raining hard or too cold, he knows that I don’t want to go outside so he’ll go out by himself, take care of his business and come back. We’re tight and now that I work from home we spend our days together checking up on each other. Now, “shhhhh,” I love my dog.

I was on my way to St. Kitts for the holidays to meet my wife and daughter who were already there. We made special arrangements with friends to come to our house and take him out and spend time with him while we were gone so that he wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of being in a kennel. So you see how far along the spectrum of dog person I have gone.

The taxi was coming at 3:45 a.m. for me to catch a 6:00 a.m. flight. Of course, I didn’t start packing and organizing until late. Around 12:30, when I was done, I took Kofa out. We walked around the corner leisurely while I was thinking about being in the Caribbean sea the following afternoon. I don’t know what he was thinking about. I called him and turned to walk back home. When I got to the stairs he wasn’t behind me. I called again. Nothing. I went back around the corner and I could see his silhouette way off in the distance several blocks away. “What!! I don’t believe this moah%#kah dog.”

I went after him calling his name and watched him trot off. I went back home, got in my car and drove around looking for him. By now it was approaching 2:00 a.m. I went back home again and was like, “Yo, you got an hour and half dog.” I said it big and bad to myself, but I really didn’t know what I would do. Could I really just leave for two weeks with him lost? What would I tell the family?

I took a shower and got dressed to leave, then got in the car and drove around again where I’d last seen him. Nothing. Now it was about 3:30. I stood on the porch facing a real dilemma. Do I stay, miss my trip and probably find him or leave, spend Christmas with my family and not know what would happen to him?

Leaving a no collar, 95 lb Doberman roaming around seemed like a death sentence. Someone would call animal control and who knows what would happen then. I would also have to explain to my wife, and probably with more difficulty my daughter, that I left him. How could I do that?

If I stayed, because of full flights, I would likely miss my whole trip. Under those circumstances, if he came back after I missed my trip, I would likely kill him. So I was leaning towards leaving, where he at least would have a fighting chance at life, but deep down I felt I really couldn’t do that.

Now it was about 3:40. I felt the anxiety physically in my chest when the taxi called to say he would be there in a minute. Just then I heard him crunching leaves as he walked up to the back of the house. I called and came around sheepishly. When I looked at him, I could tell he was probably thinking, “I can’t believe you’re going to St. Kitts and leaving me here by myself.” The combination of anger, relief and anxiety told me that Kofa is really my boy and I have become a dog person.

kamau

Give Thanks

2009-01-16T17:17:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, in response to the news that everyone on the US Airways flight was saved, I was as happy as if I knew someone on the flight. Of course, like everyone, I was glad that people’s lives were spared, but it struck me how personally relieved I felt. Reflecting on that, it dawned on me that we have been living in a morass of bad news.

Here in the United States, we awake each day listening to the number of people who have lost their homes and jobs. They show pictures on the news of desperate people crying, not knowing where their next meal or check or health care payment will come from. We watch the banditry of the rich, like Bernard Madoff, leaving people destitute and powerless over their own misfortune. Violent crime is on the rise. Three people have been shot and killed in my own neighborhood in the last two months.

Abroad, we’re watching wars raging and calamities all around. There was slaughter in Mumbai. Cholera is killing Zimbabweans by the tens of thousands. 200 people drowned in the ferry disaster in Indonesia last week. I read about Afghani girls who were burned by Taliban zealots as they tried to go to school. Bombs continue to explode in Iraq killing dozens at a time. India and Pakistan are gearing up for carnage. The Russians shut off oil to the Ukraine and therefore thousands of families are freezing in their own homes. The Congo fighting teams have split yet again, further complicating that killing vortex. Looming large, like a grand dark cloud of human atrocity, is the slaughter of Palestinians by unrepentant Israeli Jews.

Closer to home, a dear old uncle of mine, my de facto grandfather, is dying a slow and difficult death. A friend of mine recently gave birth to a beautiful child, but lost mobility of her legs in the process. In speaking with her the other day, I learned that not only were they dealing with that difficulty, her husband’s father had been killed in an accident just before Christmas. Also this week, another friend of ours was hit with unspeakable horror when she learned that her mother had been murdered. That was Wednesday.

Yesterday, I was on my way to a meeting when I heard that a plane crashed in New York. When I came out and learned that everyone survived I felt like I was swooning. “Give thanks,” I said out loud and to myself. I don’t think I consciously carry around all this bad news, but yesterday it struck me that the cumulative effect of listening to it all the time has left me wanting to hear something good. It is part of the reason that I feel such happiness and relief at the end of each day when my wife and daughter and I are all together – simple, safe, with food and Grace and each other.

They interviewed one of the survivors who, with a shaking voice said, “I’m so thankful that today my daughter still has a father and my wife still has a husband.” I give thanks too, that his daughter still has a father and his wife still has a husband.

That is profoundly good news.

kamau

St. Kitts and Tipping

2009-01-08T18:34:00.008-05:00

My wife, daughter and I were in St. Kitts for the holidays visiting our family. One of our oldest and dearest family friends is a combination English (white) and Zambian (black) couple. One evening we were all eating dinner on the beach at one of St. Kitts’ new found beach bars and restaurants on the southern bridge of the island between Frigate Bay and the peninsula.

St. Kitts was one of the Caribbean’s 6 remaining sugar producers until very recently. They have since unfortunately substituted tourism for energy and sugar production as the primary fuel for their economy. Partly as a result, “the strip” is full of beach bars patronized mostly by tourists during the high season. At this particular spot, “Shiggity Shack”, nearly all of the patrons were white, and the vast majority were tourists. The dinner entertainment consisted of a black one man band, “de ban’man”, wearing the classic colorful island shirt and white pants singing reggae songs and encouraging the audience to sing along or dance. After our clawless, delicious, cut in half, delicious, grilled, delicious, Caribbean, delicious lobster arrived, “de fireman” came out. At first he was eating sticks of fire and resting them on his tongue like they do in the circus. Then they brought out the limbo stick while de ban’man encouraged the audience to yell out “yeah mon,” every time de fireman successfully went under. In the end as you might imagine, they lit the limbo stick on fire and de fireman made it under a seemingly impossibly small space while the array of sun-reddened, temporarily Carib drinking Americans enthusiastically yelled “YEAH MON!!” Then de fireman came around for tips. Apparently at our table, only English tipped him.

Later we were talking about the distinction between service and servitude in the Caribbean context and the deference that is generally paid to white people in the region. English said that it is a generally accepted social truth that black people don’t tip well. As a result, in these sorts of tip-based economies black tourists and for sure black locals are overlooked in favor of more generous tipping whites. His conclusion was that the tipping disparity is probably a cause of the deference and the deference probably contributes to the disparity. A vicious cycle to be broken, if logic serves, by black people tipping more generously. He then cited the example of de fireman.

Surely there is an array of legitimate points to argue on this unfortunate reality, but the point that I don’t think hit home deeply enough with English was how the whole staging at Shiggity Shack represents a power disparity that is repugnant. Of course I recognize the entrepreneurship, hard work and success of the restaurant’s owner, who is a black Kittician (married to a white woman). I am glad at least that he is not a white retired ex-pat from New Jersey. That said, I was almost angry with de fireman an’ de ban’man. Their brand of entertainment, so stereotypical in its modern tourist roots, is like minstrelsy to me. It offers nearly nothing of our ornate Caribbean cultural tapestry. In addition, their performance capped off a day where I saw grown 30 and 40 something year old Kittician men and women trolling the blazing hot beaches with pieces of aloe offering to massage the sun burned tourists with “de magic plant.” Some of the women’s children were just hanging around under trees kicking dust waiting for them. I watched one Kittician man who must have been about my age negotiate to rub de magic plant on a white man’s feet who also must have been about our age. Once the Kittician man started the massage the white man just put his book back up and continued reading.

My anger at de fireman is also in the context of learning that the extraordinarily beautiful peninsula of St. Kitts will soon be the exclusive jaunt of mostly white, rich foreigners. There are already gated communities under construction, many of which will likely have no Kitticians living within the gates or even nearby and will allow only those access who come in some domestic capacity – reminiscent of sections of St. Peter and St. James in Barbados. Public access to the beaches will likely be restricted, access to some of the most scenic natural vistas on the island will be restricted. Most painfully, not only Kittician, but Caribbean identity is being impaired. We are being reduced to some smiling limboing “mon” who passes a hat while the sand that we press against to get under the stick is being snatched.

I just couldn’t bring myself to tip that.

kamau

Manhood and Yearning

2008-11-28T00:38:00.003-05:00

The inauguration of President Obama will be one of the defining moments in the history of the United States. Surely it will be a long time before Americans come to personal terms with the magnitude of having a black man as President. For black men, the significance is boundless. I am hopeful about the potential impact it will have on our will to succeed, on our drive for excellence, on our world view, on our image of ourselves and indeed on our conduct as men. It does not take much investigation or soul searching to know that we have been yearning for something better for a long time. The points of improvement – from what to what – have changed, but the yearning for something better, to improve our lot as men and as Americans has remained constant.

Frederick Douglas, in his autobiography described his fight with Mr. Covey, his owner, and the transformative impact it had on his view of himself as a man.

It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free. The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom. My long crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.

Yearning then was self-evident. Under the condition of slavery, black people yearned as a function of survival, as a matter of recognizing their identity as human beings. They had to develop faith in the possibility of something better in order to endure and engage in the struggle to realize it. Their yearnings rested on that faith. While freedom at that stage in our history may not have brought physical comfort, it certainly brought a tremendous psychological improvement – an improvement from one condition of existence to another, bondage to freedom. The slave experience has indisputably marked the existence of black people in America.. The continuous examination of this experience has served to help us explain and understand our identity as Americans. This persistent inquiry has also served an invaluable function in helping the nation come to terms with itself; both its capacity for viciousness as well as transformation. It has also helped deepen our national understanding – whether we choose to acknowledge it or not – of the circumstances of black men.

Black men exist in a cloud of American contradictions. When talented and successful, those talents have to be extraordinary, because of the difficulty in having them be recognized. W.E.B. DuBois noted that, “Throughout history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.” It has always been difficult for black stars to shine in a constellation that collaborates to mute their light. Despite that, the yearning has continued. The drive to improve has remained a cherished component of our character. That does not mean that all of the damning statistics that describe the circumstances of black men since forever are not true. It means that life in the cloud of contradictions is contradictory. It is nothing new to note the frustrations of being looked at as a problem or as an other in your own country can turn inward. Even with that internalized violence and self-hatred, there is still a yearning for something better; a more beautiful model. According to James Baldwin:

This past, the Negro’s past, of rope, fire, torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for his women, for his kinfolk, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible – this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful.

That beauty Baldwin spoke of is being realized in increments. The individual successes of black men, however unsung they may be, contribute to this beauty; to the establishment of a more perfect model of manhood. The current prison rates among black men and the nearly 75% of black children being raised without their fathers tells us that it is still just a model. Despite that, the model is holding firm. It is propped up by our continuous yearning. When Martin Luther King said that he had looked over, he was assuring us that there was something better on the other side of our struggle. When Malcolm X explained black nationalism, he was describing the historical framework of our model for manhood.

So, it is with an enormous amount of preparation and struggle that we await this next incremental step, the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America. Never before has a black man been able to say that the President is a Brother. Never before have we been able to say declaratively what Langston Hughes said poetically, that not only do we sing America, we are America. The meaning of this reality to our model will be realized in generations to come. The inauguration will not be the magic solution, but it will certainly be a magic moment. More importantly, it will give us a moment to pause from yearning and relish in the realization of a centuries old dream – to have the black man as man in America.

kamau

Four Year Olds and Same Sex Marriage

2008-11-24T23:15:00.004-05:00

Apparently marriage is a big topic among four year olds in Pre-K. Nearly every other day my daughter comes home talking about who is going to marry whom. “Miles said he is going to marry Sophie.” “Gi-Gi said she wants to marry Noah, and that made Dephne mad because she wanted to marry Noah.” Yesterday she said, “Miles can marry Sophie, but he can’t marry Scottie, right? Because boys can’t marry boys. Only girls can marry boys. Right?”

Hmmm?

My wife and I were in a heated debate with a friend of ours recently about the California ban on same sex marriage. He strongly supported it. His view is that by divinity it is wrong and it should be illegal. He said legalizing it is a slippery slope. If you legalize it, you lose the justification to prevent other transformations of traditional marriage in the future. I disagree. I think each church ought to decide for itself what kind of marriage it should sanction, but legally, same sex couples ought to be able to marry and be eligible for all the rights associated with heterosexual marriage.

I find the slippery slope arguments ugly and distasteful. They often suggest that if homosexuals are allowed to marry by law, what is to prevent people from wanting to marry children and dogs? He argued that there has to be a line across which society will not cross. If you do, it introduces moral relativism. Each subsequent group will find a reason to justify their socially specific group norms.

I argued that indeed there has to be a line, but the position of the line is the question. Surely the political, social and faith communities that opposed interracial marriages would have made the same arguments – that it is morally reprehensible and therefore ought to be illegal. Their opposition, rooted in scorn for black people, blinded them to the function and premise of marriage, love. So was the line that those opponents drew legitimate? Did it lead to a slippery slope? If homosexual couples love each other, then the strength of that love ought to be the justification for their marriage just as it is for heterosexual couples. That ought to be so regardless of the difficulty that heterosexual people have in comprehending the nature of their love.

He came back with the slippery slope part of the argument. He was not ridiculous with children and dogs, but raised an interesting question. Why do we object to polygamy? If three or four or five consenting, rational adults, who profess to love each other want to marry, why is that wrong? Why should they be prevented from marrying because we, in the monogamous community, don’t understand their love? He argued, and I agreed, that there would be nearly universal opposition in the United States to that arrangement of marriage. Even homosexual couples would probably object to polygamy. In sum, his argument was that the position of the line is arbitrary and in his mind it ought to be drawn to exclude homosexual couples.

I agreed that the line was arbitrary. The problem with recognizing that is the difficulty in deciding where to draw it and defending that decision. Why draw it on one side of same sex marriage and not the other? The opposition to polygamy is based on exactly the same argument as the opposition to same sex marriage. It runs counter to some moral standard and therefore ought to be illegal. In both cases, they do not involve minors or animals and do no harm to anyone involved or anyone else. More importantly, they are both based on the same premise, love and consent. Given that, what is the real objection to polygamy? Essentially, it crosses a line that we have drawn arbitrarily. There are some societies in the world that would likely draw the lines differently where polygamy might be acceptable, but same sex marriage absolutely objectionable. That suggests that there is no universal code of human or matrimonial decency that is determining where we draw our line.

The line is drawn arbitrarily. The disagreements in the faith communities, like in the Episcopalian Church, and in society, like in California, suggest that there isn’t a consensus on where it ought to be drawn. This brings me back to my first position. The church ought to decide for itself, but the law ought to be written in a manner that reduces discrimination in as many instances as possible. The church can discriminate arbitrarily as it does in determining who gets into heaven. The law, however, based in reason and not faith, cannot discriminate arbitrarily. At the moment same sex couples are clamoring for rights that are reserved for heterosexual couples that function in exactly the same manner as they do. They should be given those rights. Society will deal with the polygamists when they start to clamor.

For now, I was comfortable saying to my daughter that it isn’t necessarily true that only girls can marry boys.

kamau

The Long Arc of Change

2008-11-10T22:21:00.004-05:00

I went to church on Sunday morning. It seemed the right place to be on The Sunday after The Tuesday. I don’t go to church regularly, but every time I do go I feel cleaner, better, stronger and more Faithful. Perhaps more importantly, I always feel more connected to the community of people. This Sunday was no exception. I attend First Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ. Coincidentally, it is in the same family of churches as Trinity United Church of Christ, Barack Obama’s embattled church of Reverend Wright fame.

It turns out that the 106 year old woman that Obama mentioned during his acceptance speech on Tuesday night, Mrs. Ann Cooper, is a member of First Church. So, when I went to church on Sunday morning I was in the congregation with one of the nation’s oldest living women. A woman who, born in 1902, could have had grandparents who were slaves. I got a chance to say hello to her and to feel connected.

The sermon was about understanding the long arc of change. The message emphasized the fact that each difficult step in our nation’s development probably appeared to be unlikely, if not impossible for those who struggled for them the most. It was Faith, the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, that enables our national endurance. The Pastor spoke of the incredible changes Mrs. Cooper must have seen in her life and how improbable they must have seemed to her. He spoke about how change comes on God’s timetable and Faith gives us the temperance to synchronize with that. He said that struggling and praying are our preparation, our making sure that we are ready and we know when God says, “change has come.”

It is a black church so of course he said, that it is the same God that delivered Daniel, it is the same God that delivered Abraham, it is the same God that we need every hour that delivered Sister Cooper to today so she could see a black man become the President of the United States. How improbable, he said, how unlikely that a young Ann Cooper could even imagine such a thing as a President Barack Obama. He reiterated that it is the long arc of change that operates on God’s schedule that makes the improbable probable and the impossible possible. He said, it is something that We’ve known. We’ve always known, like We’ve known rivers. Sam Cooke knew a change was gonna come. Our challenge is to make sure that we’re ready when it does.

There are innumerable dimensions to the significance of Obama’s presidency. Mrs. Ann Cooper has 106 years worth of experiences living in the American south to choose from. Relative to her, I’ve been alive just a blink. I left the service though, feeling connected to her, connected to the moment and better able to appreciate the long arc.

kamau

Feeling Like an American

2008-11-07T20:17:00.007-05:00

I have always been jealous of countries that have explosive occasions for nationalism. Feeling a deep sense of belonging and pride in your country seems like the ultimate perk of citizenship. I recall some time ago when the Jamaican soccer team, The Reggae Boys, qualified for the World Cup. The whole country was wrapped up in the moment. People screamed and cried and the Prime Minister declared the next day a national holiday. I remember watching on television when Nelson Mandela walked into the National Stadium after being elected President of South Africa and seeing tens of thousands of people bursting with hope for a new beginning and a new connection to South Africa. I’ve read about Zimbabwe’s independence celebration in 1980 when Robert Mugabe, as Bob Marley sang, was a real revolutionary. Those were galvanizing moments that inspired national pride.

I have never felt a euphoric sense of nationalism or pride in America, my country. Until this week, in my life the closest thing to a galvanizing moment was the attack on September 11th. The national feeling afterwards though, was laced with hatred and revenge and I didn’t feel a part of that. We don’t have a sport that rallies the whole country. Our independence is two centuries old and our super power status makes international milestones difficult to come by.

I have always felt black pride and connected to the accomplishments of black people and events relevant to our community. As much as those have served the important function of nurturing hope and fueling my sense of belonging, they do not constitute national pride. When I have traveled through Ghana, Senegal and South Africa and even Guyana, Barbados and St. Kitts where my relatives are, I am not connected by a nationalist chord. Race pride and connection are important, but they feel weak when the flags go up.

Obama’s victory has helped me feel like an American. I have never ordered my identities starting with American. I’ve never even owned an American flag. Obama’s insistence that we consider ourselves Americans struck me. In his address on election night, he used Martin Luther King’s words, “we as a people will get there.” In this case the people are Americans, not just black people. His campaign’s message emphasizing the unity that is explicit in the name of our country was profound. It wasn’t because it was novel, all campaigns stress unity. It was profound because it was based on a balanced integration of intellect and emotion. For nearly two years, I have been amazed at the variety of American’s supporting not only him, but the idea of being Americans. He forced me to think critically about how my fate is tied to some white man in the middle of America, precisely because we are both Americans. Over the course of the campaign it seemed obvious that several people are yearning for a reason to be proud, to be able to start their identity with their country and have no reservations.

I do not believe at all that we, as a nation, have arrived in a post-race state. What Obama has made me firmly believe is that a shared sense of nationalism is a pre-requisite for a post-race society. When our country can serve as the link that binds us, then our differences will be reduced to being the beauty of the fabric.

My name is Kamau Bobb and I am an American.

kamau

When I Was Little

2008-11-03T23:08:00.004-05:00

When I was little I lived in the upstairs apartment of 141 Lincoln Place, Brooklyn, America. My parents were determined that I have a balanced sense of myself, especially being a black child growing up in, “the belly of the beast” or “Babylon” as my father refers to this country. To have balance in such a system required being extreme. According to them, The Jeffersons, Tarzan, King Kong, The Brady Bunch, Good Times all had some quiet insidious message that could damage my identity as a black child.

Somewhere in the middle of my growing up, my Dad was fed up with the “nonsense” on television and threw ours out. In its place my parents filled me up with black people stuff. I had to read about and listen to messages about black people and the general “theatre of engagement between African people and Europeans throughout the Diaspora.” I was carted off to listen to people like Judge Bruce Wright, Minister Farrakhan and James Baldwin. They took me to see August Wilson’s, Piano Lesson. I went to see Sarafina with Hugh Masekela in the orchestra pit. I went to Alvin Ailey nearly ever year at City Center. I had to go to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to do reports on significant black people who have helped shape the world. They took every opportunity to bring me to gatherings of black people who were engaged and committed to positive ends. It is clear that what my parents were trying to do was to fill a void in my education, to complete the landscape of images and reality that influenced my development. They sought to specifically connect black people with substantive accomplishment and positive imagery in my mind.

I am not sure exactly what the black community is or what our boundaries are, but a lot is said about how it lacks positive images. It is an old and painful mantra that the children of the black community lack positive role models. The second part of that mantra is that it is acutely true for black boys. I can see now that my parents were conscious of this reality and went to extraordinary lengths to find examples for me. Their efforts went so far and were so consistent that the examples of black people of substance, stature and consequence were not like figures in a museum, but were just a part of my landscape. They created balance.

Sadly, the black community is still beleaguered as Ossie Davis said in Malcolm X’s eulogy. In many ways though, things have changed for the better and have helped redefine the level of effort required for parents now who were little the way I was.

Tonight I was lying down on the floor in my daughter’s room while we waited for my wife to come. I said to her that tomorrow we are going to elect Barack Obama to be the first black president in the history of the United States. She said, “I know. He is going to win and live in the White House, right?” She paused for just a second and said, “Is there still going to be swimming class tomorrow?”

kamau

A Sufferer's Lesson

2008-09-02T17:01:00.003-05:00

Neither the shenanigans of Governor Palin and her children, nor the winds of Gustav, Hanna, Josephine or Ike have distracted me from the significance of Obama’s ascendency. His being the first black man to be a contender for President of the United States is clearly a transcendent moment in the history of the country. There was ample evidence of the meaning of the moment to individual people on the convention floor. As the cameras panned around and found face after face covered in tears, the personal and private magnitude of what we witnessed was clear. Watching big black men, who are tough as nails and raised in the American South of the 1950’s and 60’s, weeping like children was extraordinary. Listening to people speaking through their emotionally choked throats about how much they wished their fathers or mothers had been alive to see this, was amazing. What was equally striking was the coalition of people – an incredible array of the disparate faces that make up America. Senator Obama has managed to find the resonant note on the common human chord. That is a sufferer’s lesson to the country.

Spike Lee, in an interview with CNN, challenged the network to pay careful attention to “the face of America” that was present at the Democratic convention versus that which will be on hand for the Republican convention. The little ticker said that nearly a quarter of the delegates at the convention were black. Nearly 7 percent were gays and lesbians. There were significant percentages of all of the groups of people that make up this country. It also said that there were more than 80,000 people on hand for Senator Obama’s address and that nearly 40 million people watched it on television. That is approximately 10 percent of the entire population of the United States.

Obama and the current political movement he has created demonstrate the potential of what black Americans have to offer the country. Cornell West has long said that black people in America have a tremendous amount to contribute to the world from our long lessons on suffering and the pursuit of dignity and redemption. Obama is a brilliant example for our time. It is clear in his message, that he understands that there are very few social issues that are defined by clear sides of good and bad. The cross section of people at the convention who all bring their respective issues was a testament to that fact. He listed some of the most polarizing social issues of our time – abortion, gun rights, same sex marriage – and easily pointed out the locations of shared space where our common human interests reside. Of course he is an individual and there are others who operate in that vein, but the ability to find that shared space is a lesson that sufferers can teach. The sufferer knows that demonizing “the other” has its place, but it is not the long term solution. Ultimately, that attitude reduces both to demons.

If there were waves carrying the contributions of black Americans to the country, one would be cresting now. The black American legacy in the United States has been one of suffering and an ongoing pursuit of success and dignity. One of the lessons of that legacy is that mutual understanding, if not reconciliation, is a pre-requisite for dignity in a polarized society. Obama will of course bring an array of political and economic tacticians with him to the White House. Quietly though, he will also bring a gift, a sufferer’s lesson, to the country and to the world.

kamau

Brooklyn in Big Sky

2008-08-27T09:09:00.002-05:00

I didn’t know until recently that there was a place called Big Sky. When I got there, I saw that the sky was really big and Montana is really beautiful. Brooklyn is still the modern Mecca, but damn, it almost doesn’t make sense how beautiful Big Sky is. When I got there I was making jokes to myself that I could possibly be the first Brooklyn black man in Big Sky. I should climb up the tallest peak and stick the flag of the Nation of Islam in the rock and claim Big Sky for the Brotherhood of Flatbush.

They have down hill mountain biking in Big Sky. It is something the natives do for fun. They take bikes on a ski lift several hundred feet up the side of a mountain, then they turn the bikes around and ride down the side of the mountain. If you’ve ever been skiing, you know the feeling of standing at the top of the slope and looking straight out into the sky and how it feels when your stomach knots just a little when you look down the slope. That is on snow. In the summertime ski slopes are mostly rocks, gravel, dirt and neglected grass. My first reaction to the whole idea was, “Yo, that’s madness!”

While I was in Big Sky I was thinking a lot about the relationship between different groups of people, as I always do: scientists and non-scientists, deaf people and hearing people, men and women. The mountain biking madness made me think about the relationship between Brooklyn and Big Sky. I was talking to one of the guys, Tom, who worked in the Bike Shop. He greeted me like Happy People do. “What’s up dude?, How can I help you?” Pleasant, smiling, engaging. “Tell me about this riding down the mountain business?” He smiled even bigger, “Where you from brother?” I told him I’m from Brooklyn. He said, “Right on,” and told me about some time he had been there and how awesome it was.

“Riding down the mountain is awesome!” He told me about it with incredible enthusiasm. All the while he was looking straight at me and talking and smiling and explaining different things that happen and how it is different than the city riding that I do. A friend of his, Will, came in and the two of them continued in the same spirit. They could see that I was skeptical of the whole thing, and I said as much. Somewhere in the middle of it, I realized that they were trying to share some of their world with me. It was a point of entry to a relationship. They kept saying, “Dude you gotta try it.” “I’ve never really even ridden a mountain bike before, let alone down a mountain.” Tom said, “Bro, you look strong and well balanced, that’s all you need.” It was a genuine gesture of welcome. Welcome to Big Sky, welcome to our world.

I said, “A’right bet, let’s do it.” There were pounds all around. “You’re gonna have a blast.”

I thought to myself that rather than stick the flag of the Nation on top of the mountain, I’ll pin it to my shirt so if I kill myself doing this madness someone could identify me as Brooklyn in Big Sky.

kamau

Listening to Sasha

2008-08-26T00:13:00.002-05:00

At the end of Michelle’s speech, Sasha Obama grabbed the mic and said, “I love you Daddy.” For obvious reasons, that little add-on pushed me to the emotional brink. There is nothing new about the continued decline of the black American family. The struggles associated with those loose ends and disconnected familial bonds are studied ad nauseum. In particular, the black father figure in the popular American mind is approaching museum status, a relic of a different time. The language connected to black men as fathers today has boiled down to – “my baby daddy,” “that sorry motha$&!#,” “where’s my daddy,” “any nigga can have a child, but it takes a man to be a father.” As a father in the middle of this morass, I find that not only does this language hurt, it is disorienting. The statistics say that nearly 70% of black children today in the United States are born out of wedlock and the vast majority of those grow up without their fathers. The reality is what it is, but I find it disorienting that in America so many black children are robbed of what should be a basic right of existence, the love of not only their mothers, but their fathers too.

Sasha’s “I love you Daddy,” stood like a breakwater against a depressing tide. Love and black men are hardly ever connected to each other in the public American landscape. Often when they are, it is despite the man, rather than because of him. If only for an instant, Sasha gave us a different view. She gave us an image of what a child looks like when she sends the love signal out…. “I love you Daddy”… and the love of her father comes raining back down on her, confirming that her message was received and that her love is cherished and connected to her father’s love of her. In Days of Grace, Arthur Ashe wrote what has to be one of the world’s great love letters from a father to his daughter. He explains a similar love volley with his daughter, Camera. He wrote it when he was dying of Aids and it ends…

I may not be walking with you all the way, or even much of the way, as I walk with you now. Don’t be angry with me if I am not there in person, alive and well, when you need me. I would like nothing more than to be with you always. Do not feel sorry for me if I am gone. When we were together, I loved you deeply and you gave me so much happiness I can never repay you. Camera, wherever I am when you feel sick at heart and weary of life, or when you stumble and fall and don’t know if you can get up again, think of me. I will be watching and smiling and cheering you on.

Listening to Sasha, I heard my own daughter’s signal, “I love you Daddy.” It made me think of the ways I respond to her. It also made me think about how deeply I love her and how that love itself is a rudder that steers my sense of responsibility and my conduct as her father and as a man. I just hope that my love and my example are sufficient to keep her sense of manhood away from the morass.

kamau

I Totally Got Popped in My Vagina

2008-08-23T16:35:00.004-05:00

I was recently at a conference on Science and Technology Policy. The theme of the conference was “Governing Emerging Technologies.” One of the main topics was how to involve the public in establishing rules to govern nanotechnology research. There are significant public health and ethical challenges surrounding nanotech development and public participation that are important. The language of the meeting, however, was incredibly inflated - $1.50 words for 5¢ thoughts. “I’m sort of looking at the junction of sort of ableism and sort of ability, and sort of the conceptual constructs that constrain the way we frame the distinction between sort of classifying technologies as sort humano-enhancement versus enabling technologies.” Several of the people who said things like this appeared to take themselves and their work very very seriously. Others who were asking questions in response to statements like these made a grand show of dramatic perplexing thought and agonizing theoretical retrieval to formulate their questions. There is no doubt that public participation in the governance of nanotechnology is important. This especially true given the temptation of lucrative profits to lead the private sector to overlook public safety. Having said that, what about clear and concise language?

I understand that every community has its own lingo (or, a sort of heuristically determined sort of canonized lexicon.) In this case, however, one of the main points was that public input into the scientific and policy process is important. I wonder how the “public” can be expected to contribute to a dialog where personal conviction and clear ideas are hidden behind layers and layers of such convoluted language? For example, I asked one conferencee what she thought about a topic she presented. “Well I’ve sort of read Haberman who sort of developed the notion that….” “But what do you think?,” I interrupted.

The meeting was in Big Sky Montana. It is a ski resort in the middle of a set of beautiful mountains about an hour from Yellowstone National Park. A lot of the staff of the resort are young, white twenty-somethings who live this stage of their lives on the happiness principle. They do things that make them happy and they say exactly what they feel. Many of them work at the resort so they can ski for free. In the summer a lot of them go down hill mountain biking. You put your bike on the ski lift and then ride down the ski slopes.

I took a break from the provisional mid-level situational categorization of neo-neuroethics and went to see about down hill biking and talk to some of the Happy People. A girl named Misty (I swear that was what she said her name was) was sitting at the bottom of the ski lift. She had on a t-shirt that said, “Barack the Vote” and electric blue shorts with knee high electric blue argyle socks. While we were talking, another girl came blazing off the slope on her bike. She took off her helmet and shook her hair out like they do in those shampoo commercials and said, “I just came down Congo and it was totally narly.” Misty agreed, “Congo is killer, you get totally hammered.” Then her friend said, “Oh my God, I totally got popped in my vagina.” Clear concise language. That’s how Happy People talk.

kamau

Who Decides "In" or "Of" America?

2008-08-06T21:24:00.005-05:00

One of the products of the Bush years is that he has helped reinforce America’s narrow view of itself. He made his rash and ridiculous claim after September 11^th, that you are either with us or against us. That has spawned a climate where the Americaness of people is questioned. In a recent article by David Brooks in the New York Times, Brooks stops one step short of asking whether Barack Obama is “of” the United States or just “in” it? The article ends by posing the question of whether “the rest of America” will accept and support this supposedly enigmatic figure who is not recognizable – to Brooks – as an American.

It is the assumption that there is some group of people who can decide whether someone is in or of America that I find repugnant. That assumption is based on the idea that there is some standard set of Americans against which the rest of us can be measured to determine how American we are. Brooks gives examples of the blue-blooded New England Kennedy clan, and the small town value systems of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and the backwoods background of Andrew Jackson. Those are all examples of traditional American lineages, true blue American backgrounds of the Norman Rockwell imagination and my eighth grade history books.

Speaking for non-Norman Americans, Langston Hughes wrote that, “I am the darker brother… and I, too, am America.” In claiming to question who is in or of America, Brooks overlooks the fact that one of the products of small town American virtues was lynching on a grand scale and that backwoodsmen brutally took those woods from Native Americans and fashionably absorbed that brutality into their famed rugged persona. He overlooks the fact that the Ku Klux Klan was as much of America as was the Kennedy clan. He does not pause to consider Hispanic Americans who are being criminalized both for being of America and for being in America.

People who were subject to America despite being of it, have the right to determine for themselves how American they want to be. It is a right that they have earned through time and through the contribution of traditions without which America would not be what it now is. Quite apart from the legality of citizenship, nationalism rests in an individual’s heart. The sense of being an American or feeling like one, is just that – a sensation and a feeling.

Brooks and other standard bearing Americans will have to make room for the emergence of other American identities and other American traditions that have been arrogantly cast aside as alternative. The reference points that undergird the American identity are shifting. Norman Rockwell did not capture the image of the true American any more accurately than did Langston Hughes. “The rest of America” will have to make room for the rest of America.

kamau

Having Had Some Time

2008-07-25T11:25:00.002-05:00

Having had some time to reflect on the ascendency of Senator Barack Obama has been an enlightening experience. For me, he has been a rebate on the so-called black tax. The black tax is the ever present burden of consciousness associated with being black in America. Once you are aware of the stifling realities that cut short the ambitions and dash the hopes and dreams of so many black people in the country, it seems that your feathers are never really in full splendor. Every happiness and accomplishment is ever so slightly diminished by the knowledge that – here, by Grace am I, but there by the complexities of America are so many of my community. Somehow, in Barack Obama’s rise, I feel I’ve been given back some of those fractions of happiness and slivers of satisfaction that I’ve left on the path. My happiness and exultation in his success is unburdened, it is free, full and overflowing.

To that end, he has already made an immeasurable contribution. On the eve of the final primaries I was speaking with the security guard at my daughter’s school. He is an older black man who came to Atlanta in the late 1950’s. As we stood and talked he told me about the various places in Atlanta that black people couldn’t go when he was younger. He rattled off places that I know and frequent. He told me about the changing street names because white people didn’t want to have the same addresses as black people. He went on to say that, “Breh, I can’t believe I’m seeing a black man running for president in my lifetime.” With that, tears welled up in his eyes. He finished by saying, “I hope he wins. It would mean a lot.”

I don’t profess to know, nor do I even have the tools to help me appreciate the humiliation that black people must have gone through in those days. What I could see in the security guard was the effects of the staggering taxes he has had to pay in order to maintain his dignity and his manhood in the midst of such an antagonistic society. What I am learning to appreciate about Obama’s success is what he means to ordinary black people like me and the security guard.

Quite apart from the public slogans and the political fracas, Barack Obama has a meaning for a lot of black people that is quiet, private and profound. His dignity, intellect and comportment are things that we can be proud of. In his eulogy to Malcolm X, Ossie Davis suggested that, “It is not in the memory of man that this beleaguered, unfortunate, but nonetheless proud community has found a braver, more gallant young champion.” In a manner similar to Malcolm X, Barack Obama has given us another opportunity to hold our heads high, spread out our arms as if on the mountain top and experience hope, pride and happiness without reservation.

kamau

The Requirements of Reconciliation

2008-05-08T11:19:00.003-05:00

It is universally understood that reconciling conflicts requires humility. It requires exercising the heavy human bundle of vulnerability, sensitivity and forgiveness. In minor personal conflicts demonstrating these qualities can be difficult. In longstanding bitter social and racial conflicts demonstrating these qualities can be nearly impossible. Sensitivity to the “other” is a particular challenge in this bundle.

I was recently in Minnesota for a meeting. Upon arriving in the hotel, I was confronted by a convention of the National Indian Children’s Welfare Association. There were nearly 200 Native American people in the lobby. It immediately struck me that I may have never seen more than one or two Native people together at the same time in my life. I was instantly conscious of being an “other” among so many Native people. I found it odd that at this stage of my life I was experiencing this kind of social first. It almost seemed silly to be saying in America, that I had never been face to face with more than one or two Native Americans.

I left the hotel and traveled to Harmony, Minnesota, a town about two and half hours south east of Minneapolis with a population of approximately 500 people. As I walked out of the meeting there I saw a man dressed like a farmer from the 19^th century coming down the street in a horse drawn buggy. I went back inside and asked the receptionist what he was about. She laughed first, and then explained that he was Amish. Apparently, Harmony is home to the largest community of Amish people in Minnesota. I’ve heard about Amish people in social studies - in Pennsylvania with their farmer’s markets and such - but I had never seen an Amish person in real life.

I left the meeting and went to an ice cream parlor to see about chocolate shakes in Harmony. I got into a conversation with the lady working there. I asked if there were any black people that lived in Harmony. She said no. The closest black people live in a town that was about an hour and half away. It didn’t surprise me that there were no black people in Harmony, but I was surprised that she knew where the closest ones were. Then she said that Harmony is a really small town and a lot of the people that live there have been there for generations. She said that she herself had never seen a black person face to face until she was in her twenties and that even now there are very few black people that ever come there. This was a lady in her early 40’s.

In a single day I had seen two sets of people I had never seen before and been a rarity, an “other” myself. On the drive back I reflected on the potential differences in our world views: views of Native Americans on themselves in America, views of the Amish and the complexity their simplicity poses for them, views of a white woman who had never seen a black person until I was in high school and my views on myself as an urban black man. I had never really thought of myself as having a relationship with any of these groups of people. I suspect that being a black man and the child of immigrants, my Americaness is not forefront in my identity. Somehow though, this unusual experience of firsts in Minnesota made me think of America, its complexity and how much about other Americans I don't know.

With that experience so fresh in my mind, I find Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s public comments gross. I think he is right in his two principal themes – that a change will come and that different does not mean deficient – but his tone, posture, language and examples, demonstrate a profound lack of sensitivity. The subjects of race, theological tradition and social experience are necessarily difficult to discuss. There is nothing new in that. They are even more difficult to discuss when the objective of the discussion is reconciliation – reconciling disparate world views of different groups of people with limited exposure to one another in a landscape that explicitly treats different not only as deficient, but with contempt.

Reverend Wright’s address demonstrated that he has forgotten that otherness is necessarily a mutually occurring reality. There cannot be just one other. The degree to which one group misunderstands or is simply ignorant of another is often paralleled by an mutual misunderstanding or ignorance. Certainly for me, Native American and Amish people could not be more strange. I have no idea what words, phrases or posture they use to articulate their experience as Americans or what conclusions they draw. I also don’t know what views they have, if any, of black people. As a result, we need to be introduced to one another.

Introducing an unknown element of black identity and world view to the country in the manner of Rev. Wright is not only ineffective, it trivializes the complexity of our experience here. Indeed, it confirms the stereotype held by another white Minnesotan that I spoke to, “a lot folks around here think African Americans are kinda loud and scary.” Introducing some aspects of black identity to groups of people with limited exposure to black people, requires patience and sensitivity to the mutual sense of “other.” Taking this approach is not weakness, it is human courtesy. It avails our neighbors of the treatment we would expect for ourselves. This is how reconciliation works and more importantly how relationships are built. Barack Obama’s rejection of Reverend Wright is an endorsement of this later course – a course that will facilitate my relationship with Native Americans and the Amish; a course that will better help me understand what it is to be an American….

…living under the Obama Administration!!

kamau

A Shining Example

2008-05-07T11:09:00.011-05:00

I have trouble describing what it feels like to see this picture and to realize that this is the face of the future First Family, the Obama Administration, the likely captains of the free world as we Americans like to think of our presidents. Images matter. During Obama’s address in North Carolina, he referred to Michelle’s father and his work ethic. He said that her father worked hard because he had to and his work was important to him. His work was important because it was a component of his self-respect and self respect is the right hand of dignity. That message is something that every person knows, recognizes and can appreciate whether they experience it or not. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, but without works it is dead. Hard work is the bedrock of honest living. Having that seminal principle delivered to the nation by a black man who is the future president of the United States was personally overwhelming. It signals the quiet contributions that a first family such as theirs might bring to our nation.

Black people have been climbing up the rough side of the mountain for some time. Our problems are studied and researched, our outbursts scrutinized and our allegiance to each other questioned. In the midst of all of that it is often forgotten that the ability to survive despite all of these social plagues requires an ardent belief in the non-negotiable standards of faith, hard work, honesty and decency. Whether those standards are met or missed is human probability. The survival and success of black people, however, is evidence that they do exist. This is one of the fantastic contributions the Obama Administration will make to our nation – a universal lesson learned from a lifetime of being black. The Obama family exemplifies this quiet feature of the black American experience. The beauty is that the circumstances that imposed this lesson on the Obama story are those that stand to be corrected by their example. We have finally reached a point where a black family can quietly exemplify the lessons learned from the American experience.

kamau

Meanwhile in the Congo

2008-04-29T21:40:00.002-05:00

There was a documentary on HBO recently titled, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. It is about the long standing systematic use of rape as a tool of the endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of thousands of Congolese women have been raped, sodomized and killed during this conflict that has been going on for more than ten years. The stories of the women, told in their own voices, are excruciatingly vivid and painful. To the credit of the film’s director, Lisa Jackson, there is equal emphasis on hope and the few, but important, sources of support.

What struck me deeply, once I could see beyond the pain of the women, was the barbarism of the Congolese men.

I grew up influenced by men such as Cheikh Anta Diop, Chinweizu, Louis Farrakhan, Bruce Wright and certainly my own father. One of their collective and abiding lessons to me was that of counter example. In different ways they all pointed out that the attacks on black people, and black men in particular, are incessant and ubiquitous. They made the connection between black people in the Diaspora and Africa and pointed out that criticism of our intellect and cognitive abilities are legendary. There are also centuries old questions about our decency, civility and basic standing as human men.

What these mentoring men did was make sure that young black people like me did not fall victim to the assault - that we did not begin to believe that African men have a monopoly on human weakness and indecency. They prompted us to take the offensive and point the questioning finger at others. That is not to condone bad behavior, but to recognize that it is manifest in everyone, particularly white men who were held as sacrosanct in our public education history. In doing so we find that the black male persona – whatever that might be – is not disproportionately prone to wickedness as the history books, the news and all manner of messages would have us believe. No, the human spectrum – our capacity for both good and bad – is found in everyone. That is a simple intellectual conclusion, but a very difficult psychological challenge.

The function of the counter example is not only to know the positive sides of the black experience, but to be aware of the far less examined instances of human wickedness among white men and others such that in arguments of history and human capacity we are not bowed into a corner of shame and broken pride about ourselves.

Armed with that balance, I sat down to watch The Greatest Silence. I was conscious that it was directed by yet another well intentioned white woman going deep into the heart of Africa to expose a social reality that I might otherwise not see. But I did see a reality that I would not otherwise have seen. I saw the intimate destruction of African women by African men. I saw barbarism. Some of the men spoke dispassionately about the number of women they had raped and how it was destiny and magic that made them do it. This was after listening to stories of how some women had their anuses and vaginas cut open with machetes after having been raped and others had burning embers stuck inside them.

In this case the counter examples couldn’t help. The African continent is virtually in convulsion under war, rape, pillage, looting and human fracture. There is scarcely a continuous line that can be drawn from one coast to another that will not cross some incident of gross human barbarism meted out on African people by African men.

What I wonder now is what the next set of examples will be? What will the mentors of black boys in the coming generations be able to draw on as examples of our heritage as African men?

kamau

A Gift for Hillary

2008-03-27T12:06:00.004-05:00

Dear friends, supporters, colleagues and fellow Democrats. I am here today to announce that I am withdrawing from the contest for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. This has been a very difficult decision for me to come to, but difficulty ought not stand in the way of what is right, what is prudent and ultimately what is best for the Democratic Party and for the country.

This campaign by any measure is historic. We have seen record numbers of Democrats, both young and old, of all races, ethnicities and creeds come out to vote and express their desire for a new way for our country. I am deeply honored to be a part of that excitement. To be the object of such national civic enthusiasm is a rare privilege for any American citizen. I profoundly appreciate that embrace and enthusiasm and recognize that is part of a public trust that I have tried to the best of my abilities to uphold.

Having said that, there is a larger issue at play here. Enthusiasm, when stoked incorrectly, is the substance of mobs and the enemy of rational thought. This competition, between myself and Senator Obama, has positively energized Democrats to levels that we have not seen in generations. As I have gone criss-crossing this great nation of ours, I have seen the excitement in the faces of Democrats of all kinds – excitement that is anchored by a faith in a new way. The growing discord that is fueled in part by the media and in part by the reasonable exasperation of ambitious people threatens the positive nature of the enthusiasm we Democrats now enjoy.

It would be criminal to have this enthusiasm become the fuel of factional mobs as we turn to attacking each other. That outcome would dash the hopes of newly energized voters and worse, undermine their belief that this time the process is indeed about the well being of the individual American person and not about the personal ambitions of an already privileged candidate. We cannot, and we must not let that happen.

I do not underestimate the historical significance of my being the first woman viably contending to be the President of the United States. The symbolic meaning of that for my own daughter, for daughters and mothers and sisters across this nation is extraordinary. When I look into the eyes of women who say to me, “Hillary, it’s our time,” I understand the feminine core and yearning from which that sentiment comes. I say to those women, it is our time. It is our time and the Democratic Party is our best hope.

I am conceding this race to Senator Obama. The competition has been fierce, well fought and demonstrated the very best of our democratic process - not the least of which is the simple principal that he or she with the most votes wins. In addition, this campaign has allowed us to clearly articulate and sharpen the body of Democratic principals and policies that we believe will help this nation recover from a prolonged period of darkness and dissension.

Not only do I concede the race to Senator Obama, I endorse his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. The collective enthusiasm of our respective campaigns and bases is a political force unlike any seen in this country in living memory. It is our responsibility to ensure the Democratic principals that both Barack and I stand for – as endorsed by so many million American voters – become the guiding principals of the United States again beginning on day one 2009.

Thank you so much for your love and support and now let’s go to work and make sure we Democrats can carve a new way for our country. Thank you so much and God Bless you!!

kamau

America, Patriotism and Mediocrity

2008-03-13T15:47:00.006-05:00

Recently several members of congress and large segments of the public have berated the United States Air Force for awarding a $30 billion contract to French-based Airbus over U.S.-based Boeing to build a fleet of airborne fuel tankers. Here in the south, the criticism was laced with language suggesting that the Air Force’s decision was unpatriotic, that by choosing a French company, they were turning their back on the United States, its workers, its economy and all that our flag represents. Overlooked in much of the criticism is the Air Force’s statement that the quality of the Airbus proposal bested Boeing’s proposal in every significant criteria. What would these patriotic protesters prefer? That Boeing be awarded the contract despite the subpar proposal, despite the fact that Airbus’ attention to detail, quality and cost rendered it a better choice?

American patriotism is fast becoming a descent to mediocrity.

We seem quite willing to shut down our collective intellect in the face of some crude definition of what it means to be an American patriot. Not only does this trend run counter to the supposedly American ideals of merit and just deserts, it promotes nepotism and dim thinking. Awarding Boeing the contract simply because it is an American company is tantamount to nation based affirmative action. The very patriots protesting this award are those who vehemently oppose race based affirmative action with the argument that it undermines quality and is a breach of the contract with merit. Their crude patriotism blinds them even to the simple contradictions in their positions.

Under the banner of patriotism, we yell at Hispanic immigrants to learn to speak English. The implication being, that it is beneath us proud Americans to learn Spanish. The patriot angrily asks, “Why should I learn to speak Spanish to these illegals, this is America?” Indeed it is America and the outcome is that the patriot can only speak English. That renders the American patriot virtually alone in the industrialized world in our inability to communicate in more than one language.

This brand of popular patriotism that we now have is making us average. It is not a proud and bright pursuit of positive competition in the name of collective American improvement. It is a shutting down of reasoning, critical thought and the appetite for learning. Unfortunately this lowly brand of patriotism is being aided and abetted by an equally crude political landscape. Senator Clinton’s crass and derisive campaign does not help. President Bush’s sophomoric reasoning and his ‘us versus them’ ideals are equally culpable.

This brand of patriotism is not the only kind. There is another kind that is based on an appetite for learning and a fundamental respect for the world and all its complexities. This second kind promotes high achievement, cultural and social maturity and ultimately a reason to be proud of the country in which we live. That nation pride is pure and is a sustainable foundation for real American patriotism.

As such... Obama '08!!

kamau

Words and Statesmanship

2008-02-19T21:21:00.004-05:00

One of the mounting criticisms of Senator Barack Obama is that he is full of nice sounding words and inspirational and erudite speeches, but that he lacks substance. The merit of that argument is weak at best, but it overlooks the significance of his words. The argument overlooks the fact that the spoken word of a leader is part of their representation of the people. What Obama’s critics fail to see is that one of the principal pillars of statesmanship is the ability to demonstrate intellect, insight and class – in the form of manners and sense of occasion - in the spoken word. These critiques of Obama are distinctly American. They are reflective of the degree to which manners, refinement and a sense of what is appropriate have degenerated in American society. The popular conception of Americans as crass and crude people is confirmed in our criticism of Obama’s ability to communicate tastefully, thoughtfully, correctly and effectively.

The enormity of the difference between Obama the statesman and all others was highlighted again today. In response to Fidel Castro’s yielding power in Cuba, Mike Huckabee said that,

Until Fidel Castro is dead, there can be no significant movement towards reform in Cuba. Raul Castro has proven that he’s as much a tyrant and dictator as his brother Fidel.

That language is crass and unbecoming of a candidate for the presidency of a nation. There are innumerable ways to convey the same sentiment with language that is worthy of a head of state. Huckabee’s statement exemplifies the demeanor of President Bush and the decline of American class. Referring to the terrorists in the aftermath of September 11^th, President Bush said that, “we’ll smoke ‘em out” and that, “we want ‘em dead or alive.” By contrast, the language of the statesman Tony Blair was that, “their barbarism shall be their shame for all eternity.” One is the language of a local mechanic after a car has been stolen from his shop, the other is the language of a head of state.

The ability to communicate effectively with the masses does not require speaking and behaving like the masses. The president need not be viewed as a common man or woman in order to be able to communicate with common men or women. The ability, as Rudyard Kipling put it - to walk with Kings nor lose the common touch – is indeed an ability. It indicates that they are two separate skills. Being a statesman requires both, in addition to the ability to know when each is appropriate.

Obama represents what has become elusive in the American political landscape. He is a statesman. He stands head and shoulders above the coarse and derisive language of the media and other politicians. Not only is his oratory appealing and effective, it rests on top of a giant intellect which is guided by his real concern for the well being of common people. That concern is the all important link with the common man and woman, not a folksy swagger with street talk. Statesmanship is the bundle of communicative abilities, vision, intellect and human compassion. Obama has them all and his words serve as a window for us to see them.

kamau

John Lewis Sees the Light

2008-02-15T10:24:00.005-05:00

An excerpt from, “A Letter to John Lewis”….

Your public support of Senator Clinton was not especially linked to specific thematic differences between her campaign and Senator Obama’s. Rather, it was based on your belief in her ability to lead. If their political differences are slim, then you ought to lend your support to Senator Obama. It is a logical continuance of our support of you. Again, the possibilities that you always speak of are made real because we believe in each other, because we have believed in you. Your leadership opportunities were born in the black community embracing you and willing you forward, bolstering the “courage” that is so often attached to you. Leadership is only partly innate. We also bestow it upon each other by believing in one another. For you to deny Senator Obama that belief and the force of your will in his support is a contradiction of identity. Even more unsettling, it is a violation of the basic trust between you and the community of people like me who have supported you.

I hope that in the spirit of other iconic Movement heroes like Malcolm X, you would reflect and reconsider. Feeling that you have to prove to white people that you are not bound by race by supporting Senator Clinton over Senator Obama is not courage, it's cowardice. Senator Obama’s political skills and intellectual acumen are obvious. His agenda is in keeping with the best tradition of the Democratic Party and its support of the common citizen. People like you, better than most, can deeply appreciate what he means; what this moment means. We are indeed well past being asked how many bubbles are in a bar of soap and all things are possible, provided we believe in each other.

An excerpt from, “Black Leader Pulls Support from Clinton”…

Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention.

“In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last fall. “Something is happening in America, and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”

Mr. Lewis, who carries great influence among other members of Congress, disclosed his decision in an interview in which he said that as a superdelegate he could “never, ever do anything to reverse the action” of the voters of his district, who overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama.

“I’ve been very impressed with the campaign of Senator Obama,” Mr. Lewis said. “He’s getting better and better every single day.”

His comments came as fresh signs emerged that Mrs. Clinton’s support was beginning to erode from some other African-American lawmakers who also serve as superdelegates. Representative David Scott of Georgia, who was among the first to defect, said he, too, would not go against the will of voters in his district….

kamau

Meanwhile in Kenya

2008-02-01T23:52:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow is my daughter’s fourth birthday. She laughs more often than she smiles, she sings more often than she talks and she cries about twice a month. My wife and I relish in the obvious fact that she is fundamentally happy and we give thanks for that. One of the challenges that we face, alongside all parents, is trying to navigate the developmental path that keeps her identity as a child safe and her psyche and fundamental happiness protected. In thinking about that, I am concerned about the images of African and Pan-African people that she will be exposed to.

In the last few weeks it has dawned on me that my own psyche requires some protection from exposure. I can feel that my defenses are being worn down. The story and the imagery of Africa and African people that I grew up with do not match those that I am being bombarded with now.

I grew up reading about freedom fighters and Pan-Africanists – the heady and courageous days of Dedan Kimathi, Patrice Lumumba, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah (Osagyefo) and Nelson Mandela (Madiba). I read about their intellectual fortitude, their courage and their visions of Africa and African people. I read about their influence on Caribbean leaders like Eric Williams, Walter Rodney, C.L.R. James and Michael Manley.

Conversations about them, their influence on the world and the identity of black people within it were an integral part of my household growing up, a part of the development of my identity. My own name, Kamau, is a Kikuyu name. I suspect that my parents were inspired by the Kenyan Mau-Mau rebellion and thought that a Kikuyu name, meaning quiet warrior, would forever connect me to this formidable Pan-African identity. What my parents did was to choose a developmental path that hardened the walls around my psyche, my humanity and my identity as Pan-African person.

Now I find myself besieged by images of African barbarism with white celebrities like George Clooney, Mia Farrow and Bono raising the flag on behalf of African humanity. The leaders and images that were the cornerstones of Pan-African identity are gone. What is emerging is an image of black people as fractured. We are victims of each other and of a global system in which we have precious little influence. The constant slaughter of black people by other black people, across Africa, in Jamaica, in Haiti, in Baltimore is becoming too much to bear. It is becoming difficult to protect my own psyche against those messages that say that we are a fractured people, somehow less than that oft referenced Other.

I learned my lessons from Minister Farrakhan and Malcolm X, indeed from the very leaders that were part of my growing up. I know the barbarism and deceit that white people can exact on each other and certainly on the rest of us and I would not reference my humanity against them. That isn’t the problem that I have. I find no solace in comparative suffering or joy in pointing out the weaknesses of others. I have a problem finding the far reaching examples of humanity coming out of the African world that originate and are articulated by African people.

These kinds of examples of African and Pan-African intellect and humanity are simply gone or are very difficult to find. They have been replaced by the images and realities from Kenya, from Sudan, from Liberia, from the Congo, from Haiti, and from Rwanda. In light of the pictures just from the last few weeks, I am searching for the developmental path. I am searching for the armor for my daughter’s psyche so that her identity can be linked to a broader Pan-African identity that is rooted in faith, intellect, courage and fundamental human decency.

It is a growing challenge….

kamau

A Letter to Congressman John Lewis

2008-01-13T17:05:00.000-05:00

Dear Congressman Lewis,

I live in your district and am profoundly disappointed in you and your support of Senator Clinton over Senator Obama for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. On one of the local community talk shows, on 1380AM, your voice is continually broadcast recalling days when black people were asked how many bubbles in a bar of soap in order to be able to vote. You conclude that message by saying that you, a black man, are now a member of the United States House of Representatives and that is evidence that, “all things are possible.”

Your ascendency was based on the black community’s support of you. In many ways that support is a just reflection of your long years of service on our behalf. As you surely know; however, it is more than that. You are part of an era where your visible and public leadership is a representation of individual black people’s capabilities and an embodiment of our hopes. You serve as you do, because black people believed in you. We did so at a time when that belief itself was a demonstration of courage. The possibilities that you speak of were born directly from our believing in one another.

Under those circumstances, it is your duty to support Barack Obama. He is the personification of your life’s work; a living validation of the first two thirds of your resume. He is a post-Movement black man who has taken advantage of the educational, social and political opportunities that you have believed in, bled for and were willing to die for. More importantly, he has taken advantage of those opportunities and honored you and the spirit of the Movement by maintaining a courageous and explicit concern for justice and fairness for all. As you know, privilege and accomplishment often presage self-righteousness and an insensitivity to those who do not have them. There are several examples of people who have fallen victim to that trap. You, Congressman Lewis, ought to recognize that Barack Obama is not among those.

kamau

When No One Is Listening

2007-12-14T12:03:00.000-05:00

When I go out around my way at night, to the store or the gas station, more often than not I get approached by someone asking for money for some reason or another. “Ay breh, I don’t mean no disrespect, but I just got out of the hospital and I need some help to get this prescription. Can you help a brother out?” “Excuse me brotherman, I don’t mean to step to you like this breh, but I’m hungry, can you help me out with a dollar so I can get me something to eat?” “Sir, you look like a righteous black man, so I ain’even gonna lie to you, I just got out of jail and I need some money to get on the bus. Can you spare a dollar or something to help me out?"

I realized recently that this happens so much that I am becoming blind to the men on the other side of these questions. I am failing to look at them and see them as men, but rather I see them as obstacles to my getting gas or milk or dental floss. I realized that with each encounter my increasing insensitivity is a reduction in my own humanity. Typically, if I have money in my pocket I would give it to them and if not I would say so. I often do not give it much more thought than that.

Last night another brother stepped to me while I was out buying some aloe for a mark on my face. As I pulled into the parking lot I saw him in my rear view mirror quickly limping up to my door. I got out quickly so I would be out of the car and standing up by the time he reached me.

Excuse me breh, I don’t mean you no harm. I’m just hungry. Can you help me out with some change, please?

He was a young black man, he looked like a teenager. His clothes were filthy, he smelled bad and he only had on one shoe. The other foot was broken and in a cast which he had covered with a sock. Rather than the usual – keep walking you’re a nuisance posture – we were standing still and face to face. Before I could answer, he said he had been hit by a car and broke his ankle. He proceeded to pull up his pant leg and show me the top of the cast and the skin on his leg that looked infected and awful. I asked him how old he was and he said that he is 21. I asked him why he was out there like this.

Where are your people?

I ain’ got nobody. My Mama died and I never knew my father and I ain’ got nobody else.

He was speaking softly by now and he opened his jacket and pulled up the sleeve of his t-shirt and showed me a crude tattoo on his arm of a picture of his mother. Underneath the picture of her face was a picture of the prayerful hands together with R.I.P. and the dates of her life. I asked him where he sleeps and he said in an abandoned house somewhere on the other side of the park. I gave him the name and address of a church that is nearby that has a system for helping people.

Thanks breh, cause I need some help, with my foot and to get me some food, I’m hungry. I just need some help youknowwhatimean.

I hear you blood, but make sure you go to the church. Those folks can really help you.

I gave him the money I had. He took it, looked at me and then grabbed me. He put his head on my shoulder and hugged me hard for a long time. I could feel him breathing and shaking. When he let go and faced me he was crying.

He extended his hand to me and said his name is Charles. He said that its rough “to be out here and don’ nobody want to listen you.” Then he promptly hobbled off.

I sat back down in the car for a moment to hold back my own tears and collect myself. I felt ashamed that I had stopped seeing these brothers as men; that I had stopped listening.

kamau

Jesus, God and Rice Krispies

2007-12-11T22:16:00.000-05:00

A real conversation between a man, me, and a three year old girl, my daughter….

________________________________________________

Daddy, did Jesus die?

Yes.

Where did he go?

He went to heaven.

Mommy said he went to heaven to be with God.

Yeah, he went to heaven to be with God and to help him.

What does he do? I thought God doesn’t need any help.

Um, I don't know, but they both want you to eat up these Rice Krispies before they get soggy.

kamau

If I Were A Jew

2007-11-30T23:41:00.000-05:00

If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired. This reconciliation would be particularly difficult now, in November, 79 years after Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass. The anniversary of this dreadfully monumental day in my history would bring me pause. It would force me to reflect on the legacy of extraordinary human suffering. I might wonder how the vicious eruption of cruelty in the mid-twentieth century has influenced the shape of my identity as a Jewish person and our collective identity as Jewish people.

Suffering and oppression typically give rise to sympathy and compassion among the oppressed. I can look upon the sufferer and know that, “there but for the Grace of God, go I.” During this period I might well reflect on the redemptive qualities of suffering that my people have learned through a ghastly set of lessons. I would not have to reflect alone, I could read the lessons explicitly from Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, or Chaim Potok. I would conclude that my Jewish faith and the history of my people render me closer to human compassion; closer to the instinct to offer healing to hurt, patience to anxiety and understanding to confusion.

I don’t know how I would reconcile that identity with the behavior of fundamentalist Jewish extremists or of Israel as a nation. The details would confuse me. I wouldn’t understand those who suggest that bombing Lebanon, slaughtering Lebanese people and largely destroying Beirut in retaliation for the capture of a few soldiers is justified. I wouldn’t understand the notion of collective punishment, cutting off gas, electricity and water from residents in Gaza because they are attacking Israel who is fighting against them. It would be unconscionable to me to watch Israeli tanks donning the Star of David rumbling through Ramallah destroying buildings and breaking the glass.

I would be confused in concept too. My faith would lead me to believe that Israel is the homeland of my people. My intellect would convince me that it cannot be that simple. The faith and reason of the Palestinians or of Muslims cannot simply be baseless. I would have to believe that the degree of animus, vengeance and violence that they now carry is not rooted in their identity, but rather in their experience; in the sordid nation shuffling and rebuilding that took place after World War II. It must be rooted in their hurt, in their sense of displacement, abandonment and hopelessness.

My reflections on Kristallnacht would lead me to feel that these are precisely the human sentiments that I as Jew would understand; that I ought to understand and feel compelled to help alleviate. It cannot be that the sum total of a history of suffering and slaughter places such a premium on my identity that I would be willing to damn others in defense of it.

If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity.

kamau

White Values and Convergence

2007-11-19T22:56:00.000-05:00

Recently National Public Radio reported on the results of a national poll that suggests there is a division among black people about what it means to be black. NPR’s Juan Williams’ report, Redefining What It Means To Be Black In America accompanied the poll results. In short, the poll suggests that black people these days think there are two sets of black people in America – one set, those ensnared by poverty and donning the trappings of the thug life and the other, those financially better off, genteel and more visibly responsible.

The results of the poll are what they are, an indication of the desperation that all black people feel about the abyss swallowing up so many of our kind. This abyss is creating a value system and a mode of being in the world that is unrecognizable to many black people. Hence, many black people feel that two separate sets of black people are emerging. There is nothing spectacular about diverging classes of people thinking that they possess divergent value systems. In every society in the world class has served as a proxy for all manner of divisions, not the least of which are value systems.

The real problem with the report is its core claim, that the group of black people who work, are civic minded and oriented around responsibility are converging on a white value system. The claim is essentially that the value system of "good" blacks is converging with the value system of whites.

The degree of arrogance and paternalism in this claim is astonishing. Does it need to be explicitly pointed out to white and black people alike that white people are not the model against which the rest of humanity is referenced? If the value system personified by 50 Cent is supposedly representative of a separate set of black people, why is not the value system of avarice, deceit and ignorance personified by George Bush representative of a separate set of white people? Why are not the dishonest, unethical and inhumane value systems of Jack Abramov, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney and Tom Delay representative of a separate set of white people? Why aren’t the redneck whites who hang nooses from trees, who dragged James Byrd to death, who rapped and sodomized Megan Williams, who rape and ravage Mexican women crossing the border and Indian women on their reservations considered a separate set of white people?

White people do not have a monopoly on righteousness or on sound value systems. They are every bit as susceptible to the frailties and ugliness of the human spectrum as everyone else. The claim that responsible black people are converging on a white value system implies that I am converging on a white value system – that somehow the values ingrained in me through the particular journey of my family, my faith, my life and my own critical thought has led me to the doorstep of the temple of white values. Not only is that notion ridiculous, it is personally offensive. Indeed, that idea scorns the morality born of my ancestors’ resistance to oppression meted out to us by the very white people whose value system is now thought to be impeccable.

I find it shameful to have to make this argument so far along on our supposed path to enlightenment. White people and the value systems they employ are neither the standard nor the metric. Value systems ought to be referenced against goodness, against kindness, honesty and human decency. Acquiring that system is a human challenge that we all face.

kamau

Halloween and Surrender

2007-11-01T23:59:00.000-05:00

There is no end to the discussion about the failures of No Child Left Behind. A lot of it centers on the systemic failure and persistent underachievement of black children. The President and his men have reconstructed the education debate so that it revolves around metrics and statistical trends on meaningless standardized tests. Ironically, it is the disguises of Halloween that reveal the real damage that society has inflicted on black children. Multiple sets of black kids came to our door on Halloween night trick or treating. Several of the encounters demonstrated the degree to which black children have been reduced.

My wife and I were eating dinner with a too cute “biting scary cat” when there was a loud pounding, not knocking, on the door. The biting scary cat dropped her broccoli and flew to the door screaming, “the trick or treaters are here, the trick or treaters are here!" When we opened the door there was a group of six or seven black kids ranging from about 3 to 13 years old. None of them had on costumes. One of them boldly and gruffly said, “trick or treat” and they all extended their plastic bags. I said, “But hold up, none a yall have on costumes. What’s up with that?” The biting scary cat had the bowl of candy in her hands and turned to my wife and me and asked, “how come they don’t have on costumes?”

“Cuh we broke.”

I was instantly crushed. Creativity does not cost. On the contrary, it supposedly flourishes in the face of limited resources. Apart from that, listening to this little girl look us straight in the face and say, “cuh we broke,” hurt. What I heard in her response was, “because we’ve surrendered.” They were not bothered by their lack of effort. It did not seem to occur to them that they ought to be uncomfortable, if not embarrassed, to be asking for candy on Halloween at a stranger’s doorstep without a costume of any kind. The compounding weights of low expectations and poor education are not only stifling their creativity, but are undermining their pride in themselves.

When my wife told the biting scary cat to give them some of the candy they grabbed handfuls each and we had to tell them not to take it all. They turned to start down the steps without a word. The biting scary cat looked back at us again and said, “Mommy, they didn’t say thank you.” On hearing that, one of them threw a thank you over her shoulder as they continued down the steps.

I turned back inside in a combination of anger and sadness. My wife suggested that we take the biting scary cat trick or treating to some of our friends in the neighborhood. As we turned up our block we saw the same kids riding in a car with the radio blasting 8Ball & MJG’s, “Alcohol, Pussy and Weed.” A three year old in a car listening to alcohol, pussy and weed? How does that happen? and what does it say? In my mind it says the same, that we have surrendered.

And the night got worse.

When we came back, the biting scary cat returned to a little girl and went to sleep around nine o’clock. At about ten o’clock I was watching HBO on-demand boxing, Manny Pacquiao versus Marco Antonio Barrera, when there was another pounding on the door. I couldn’t believe it. This time, there was a young brother maybe 14 years old with a little boy that was either 3 or 4. Again, neither of them had on costumes. From the same bag of gruffness as the other girl he said, “trick or treat.” I said, “Yo!! You don’t have on a costume and its 10 o’clock.”

He smiled and said, “I’m a crook.”

“What do you mean you’re a crook?”

“This is how crooks be looking, I got on a black T.”

I think its surrender.

kamau

An Order of Magnitude

2007-10-26T09:09:00.001-05:00

[Also in the Atlanta Journal Constitution 26 October issue under the heading, Assessing the Magnitude of Our Skewed Priorities.]

During the last year, I have spent a considerable amount of time in Atlanta high schools. These visits occurred under a public outcry concerning the absence of young black male teachers in public schools. The outcry is tied to the idea that black youth generally are wanting for male guidance, discipline and posturing. That is a consequence of the claim that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of all black children in the United States live in households without their fathers. As a result of all that, on several occasions I was offered the opportunity to teach. In one instance the starting salary would have been $41,000.

An order of magnitude is a multiple of 10. In this case, an order of magnitude more than $41,000 is $410,000. Ten people working at $41K earn as much as one working at $410K. Alternatively, one person working for ten years at $41K earns what another working at $410K earns in one.

I recently was at a meeting at Harvard and visited some students in the business school there. One of the students told me of a potential job offer with a private equity firm where the starting compensation package was approximately $410,000. It was pure coincidence that the offer was exactly an order of magnitude more than the one I had been offered to teach. In the face of the magnitude all I could say was, “wow!”.

I wonder about the implications of such a difference, about an order of magnitude difference between financial management and teaching young people. In the most simple comparison, if two people at these respective salaries work for five years, one will have amassed nearly $2.5 million and the other just shy of $250,000. Let me write those numbers: two million four hundred sixty thousand dollars versus two hundred forty six thousand dollars over five years.

What is really happening that can create such an enormous difference? Since when is financial planning and the buying and selling of companies so astronomically more important than everything else? If we dig beneath the standard arguments in support of the free market and its aggressive promotion of individualism, what does this order of magnitude really say about our collective instincts? In many ways the occupations dealing with social justice and education and the laying of hands on people are so devalued monetarily that they appear almost trivial, a wasteland for the less talented. Why must wanting to make an immediate difference in someone’s life require an almost cherubic sacrifice in your own?

A teacher holds on to a young person, looks at them in their eyes and battles with them day in and day out to ensure that they learn, that they grow, that they can comprehend the system into which they are born. In many ways they serve as guards protecting young people from the darkness of ignorance. How do we really say that that activity is on par, in terms of money, with picking up garbage? Indeed, that it is ten times less valuable than a financial modeler? Ten times?

Clearly I am biased on the side of social justice, education and personal contact. Having said that, I do not underestimate the significance of a viable business class and sound financial markets. I am baffled though, by a whole order of magnitude.

kamau

Morpheus, Neo and Believing

2007-10-17T13:51:00.000-05:00

Several years ago I was invited by one of the Associate Vice Chancellors of the University System of Georgia to address a group of graduating college seniors who were interested in attending graduate school. I spoke about the discipline involved in succeeding in graduate school, but more importantly the need that the country and the world have for talented people. Human suffering at the moment is so rampant that it will require an extraordinary collection of skills to help alleviate it.

The Associate thought that my message was fantastic and that it was important for the students to listen to it from the voice and mind of a young man. He embraced me long and hard and said that he had every faith that I would become a significant force for good and an important public intellectual. I took that in stride and appreciated his kind words. Since then, whenever we reconnect he says the same thing. He says it so much and with such conviction that at times I say to myself, “C’mon man, ease up.”

Recently, I have been battling through a crisis of confidence – a fractured belief in my ability to matter, to influence people and things that I care deeply about. At the bottom of the valley of that crisis, an almost divine combination of opportunities presented themselves to speak publicly on the very issues about which I was struggling. Part of the serendipity of those opportunities, is that they resulted in another meeting with the Associate.

He is a short, hard edged black man, former college president and generally high ranking academic official. I explained to him what had been happening. He looked at me so hard that it hurt. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Kamau, you are it. You have the combination of vision, the analytical skills, the honesty and a remarkable ability to communicate with people.” He was speaking in a soft gruff voice, and it seemed that he was willing me to believe in myself. I blinked as the emotions surged. I felt like Neo must have felt in the face of Morpheus’ all consuming faith in him.

I have always believed that mentorship and cheerleading are important. When I can, I try to serve in those capacities just because it is my way and I generally believe in the capacity of people. It is clearer to me now, however, that in order to really be Morpheus, I have to be Neo. The experience of having a relative stranger believe in you so fiercely is incredible. The Associate said that he owes me because I’ve helped him to keep hoping and to keep believing. His belief in me is somehow loosely tied to his belief in himself and his mission. Listening to him and grappling with how what he said made me feel was an awesome experience. The timing and the setting created the drama, but it helped me better appreciate the tremendous significance of playing his role – of holding a young person, believing in them, telling them that you do and making them understand the force of your belief.

kamau

Brother Malcolm, We Need You

2007-10-03T14:20:00.000-05:00

_____________________________________________________

kamau

Rasta and Cinderella

2007-10-01T20:19:00.001-05:00

This weekend Cinderella stormed our household like a Chechen terrorist. I took my daughter to a birthday party for a friend of hers, another little girl. One of the party favors was a little purple plastic watch. The party was at one of those jumping warehouses where children disappear into big inflatable tents with slides and bumpers and emerge yelling and giggling and tired. My little girl disappeared and somewhere along the line arranged for someone to put this purple watch on her wrist. She came running out, “Daddy, Daddy look at my watch!!” Then, with all the cutsie of an already cute 3 year old she cocked her head with her chin on her shoulder and slyly asked, “Do yooooou know what time it is?”

My heart was bursting the way only parents’ hearts burst. I said, “Nooooo, what time is it?” Then she ran up and said, “look, its seventeen o’clock.” When I looked, Cinderalla jumped off the watch face and slapped me in my eye. I felt like a conservative middle aged white woman must feel if Rza from the Wu-Tang Clan suddenly jumped in her window while she was eating dinner. I smiled – deflated. “Nice, but I think it is 12:30.”

I cannot stand the blistering intensity with which the images of these white princesses are pushed upon everyone. Seeing Cinderella on my girl’s wrist was like poison. I call my daughter Rasta. “Rasta, who loves you?” “Daddy does,” she answers. Behind that, in my mind, are the images of strength and beauty and grace and femininity that are embodied by Rastafarian women in particular and black women in general. There could be nothing more antithetical to that image and my image of my little girl than Cinderella and her crew. More broadly, it really upsets me and simply hurts that the images of white girls, royalty and beauty are all inextricably bound together and injected into all little girls heads. My wife and I feel like guards protecting the clean and impressionable space in her psyche from that biased and exclusive imagery. For the little while that it lasted, it burned me that Cinderella was marching around on my girl’s wrist.

Needless to say, the watch came off at the first opportunity where I could do it peacefully. “You can’t bathe with the watch on ole girl.” At every conceivable opportunity after that, she asked if she could put it on. At every opportunity I said no and then had to withstand a slew of why’s. I just kept saying because I don’t like it. She pleaded, “but Daddy she’s not wearing pink.” Herein lies the challenge. I don’t want to address the issue directly because I’m not sure you can explain these reasons to a three year old. I also do not want her to develop, as my wife said, a chip on her shoulder. It isn’t that we fail to see the beauty in white dolls, little white girls or Cinderella for that matter. We simply want her to develop an appreciation for beauty that is as nuanced, various and personal as beauty itself is. The Cinderella cocktail is an expanding poison that sucks out the space for alternative images of beauty -for all little girls. Whenever do you see a little white girl wearing a t-shirt with a black girl on it thinking that the girl on her shirt is beautiful?

The onslaught has backed us into a corner. It has forced me to resist these images in ways that I find uncomfortable. I don’t want to deny my little girl party favors – that is almost cruel. The intensity of the siege, however, has dictated the intensity of our resistance. To the extent that we can provide a variety of images of beauty we will. That variety will include Cinderella and her ilk, but they will be just one of a number of images of beauty and of royalty and of femininity. Even then, while her development is still delicate, my Rasta will never wear Cinderella.

kamau

Looking at Locks and Links

2007-09-27T22:35:00.000-05:00

I realized this past weekend that I have the privilege of a black perch – a position from which to see a range of black people. My wife and I went to a wedding this weekend in New York. The groom is an old and close friend of ours. He is an MIT grad and the wedding was populated with black MIT and Harvard alum. The migratory pattern of black birds like these are such that a host of us flew west to Stanford and Berkeley as well. So there we were, a slew of black people with the best education the country has to offer.

In this group of people there were no locks, it was a cuff-link crowd at a cuff-link venue in the Bowery in lower Manhattan. Many of the brothers were immaculately groomed with short professional afros or low cuts edged with laser precision. The women also brought out the sartorial big guns. A few even had on the same dress, which looked like one that Kimora Simmons might wear.

The conversation canvas of snippets yielded an interesting picture of this group. It consisted of Microsoft professionals, neurosurgeons, private equity big leaguers, corporate executives, high end management consultants and venture capitalists. The concern for the proverbial “community” was at the level of continents and regions. “We’re placing particular emphasis on investments in the Caribbean basin.” “We’re trying to strengthen capital markets in West Africa.” “We’re dealing with closing the epidemiological divide.”

When I paused to absorb the circumstance, it was fascinating. Here was a group of young black people impeccably educated whose influence is slowly gaining strength and sending long wave shocks out into the world. It is a group that is seldom talked about and certainly rarely seen together in the same place. It was amazing to see and even more humbling to be a part of.

Last year around the same time my wife and I went to another friend’s wedding in California. The difference in the venue reflected the difference in the people. It was held in the Berkeley Botanical Gardens at an outdoor alter in a Redwood grove. There, there were not only locks, but locks that were laced with cowry shells. There was a sister with a small tattoo of Che Guevara on her back. There were several people dressed in African clothing and several others who were grads of the Nation of Islam and alum of the Five Percenters.

The conversation canvas there presented a picture of street level activists for whom community meant the people that can be seen and touched whose lives are obviously connected to their own. There were teachers, Freedom School workers, youth program coordinators, social councilors, artists of all sorts and old sages from the Black Panther Party. “I’m trying to get some of these brothers to recognize the beauty in themselves.” “At the Freedom Schools, we try to teach these kids that our community is either going to flourish or perish, but whatever it does, it will do it as a community.”

At that wedding too, I had to pause and appreciate the significance and the beauty of the group of people. It is a group that is more visible than the cuff-links set, but its influence is quiet and steadily growing. It was also amazing to see and humbling to be a part of.

From locks to links, the parties at both of these weddings went well into the wee hours of the morning; they were dark, hot, full of reminiscing, full of love and most importantly full of hope.

kamau

The Utility of Mirrors

2007-09-14T09:57:00.000-05:00

I recently went to a screening of the documentary, The Price of Sugar. It is about the slave-like working conditions of Haitian cane cutters in the Dominican Republic. According to the film, which chronicles the advocacy work of Father Bill Hartley, there are thousands of Haitians who are brought into the Dominican Republic to cut sugar cane every year. They are brought in by a Dominican sugar company and stripped of their Haitian papers and never given Dominican papers. They exist essentially as stateless people and are forced to work and live in horrific conditions that are reminiscent of slavery. The film also spends considerable time showing the anger and hostile attitude of Dominicans towards the Haitians. Their vitriol was laced with racist venom as they decried the “Haitianizing of the Dominican Republic.” It was an emotionally difficult film to watch as it showed malnourished children and black people cutting cane barefoot with severed fingers and limbs and all manner of awful disease and dysfunction. During the scenes where they showed the protests of the Dominicans against the Haitians you could feel the anger of the audience and their mounting scorn towards them.

The audience at the screening was a very cultured set of predominantly black people with a number of the academic street conscious crew too. The high end set had ornately arranged dread-locks and were adorned with golden Egyptian scarabs on their hands that poked out from expensive looking cuff-linked French cuff shirts. The street conscious brethren and sistren were crowned with their black, gold and green tams, bathed in Egyptian musk and carried their signature weathered leather satchels with two heavy books that contain the “knowledge.”

What was striking about the public discussion that followed the film was the combination of a sense of victimization among black people and anger directed towards the Dominicans. There was a lot made of the negative consequences of “globalism” and the detrimental effects it has had on African people throughout the centuries. The scorn directed at the Dominicans was palpable. Members of the audience scolded the Dominicans in the film for looking down on the Haitians as being “blacker and poorer” than them, while failing to see the mutuality of their collective plight. That idea seemed to capture the attitude of the audience.

What was interesting about the dialogue is that we failed to look into the mirror that was presented to us. The Dominicans in the film are us. The attitude that black Americans have largely adopted towards Hispanic immigrants is identical to that adopted by the Dominicans towards the Haitians. The analogy is almost perfect. The working and living conditions of many Hispanic immigrants in the United States are atrocious and largely unknown to black people. We don’t really know where they live and what they are subject to in their working lives. Hispanics are broadly viewed as lower down on the totem pole of respectability than we are. We tend to see their limited proficiency in English as an indication of limited intelligence. We don’t understand the difficultly of having families split between countries. Our instincts probably hint to us that they are not, in general, living comfortable and peaceful lives; however, that hasn’t muted our resentment. Many black people have taken the side of conservative white people who decry that America is for Americans and we have to resist the “Browning of America.” We tend to view Hispanics as “browner and poorer” than we are and therefore we derive some distorted sense of self-importance by denigrating them. Essentially, we fail to see the mutuality of our collective plights.

This small screening made it abundantly clear that in the absence of critical thought, mirrors are useless.

kamau

Damn This Imagery

2007-09-10T10:03:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning and saw a picture on the cover of the New York Times of an obviously African black woman lying on the ground. There is one little bird, standing by the corner of the sheet, looking at her as if to say that everything is not going to be alright. To confirm the message of the picture the article begins by describing the woman’s condition.

Mrs. Sesay was sick. She had breast cancer in a form that Western doctors rarely see anymore – the tumor had burst through her skin, looking like a putrid head of cauliflower weeping small amounts of blood at its edges. (Donald G. McNeil Jr., NYT. 10 September 2007. Drugs Banned, World's Poor Suffer in Pain.)

I found the expression of disgust at the grossness of the description and the sadness of the situation stuck on my face. Even as I write this now it has returned. This woman’s face could be my grandmother’s face. There are several women in my family and my wife’s that resemble her. What bothers me most is the constant reinforcement of the link between a face like hers – that is reflected in us - and intolerable pain. The title of the article is, “…World’s Poor Suffer in Pain.” I look at this picture and my face contorts. I won’t speak of what it does to my heart, but the imagery is damning. I would be deceiving myself if I did not think that the connection between images of black people and bad things in general were not being quietly sewn together in my psyche. When you skip onto page A12 you find the following picture of a woman holding her young son who had been burned with boiling water.

The point of the article was to say that families like her’s, poor black people, cannot even get morphine to ease their pain. We are then left to imagine what it must be like to have a 2 or 3 year old child, as I do, and have her be burned with scalding hot water all over her body and not be able to offer her anything for the pain. I do not underestimate the quiet and incremental contribution to the relationship between black people and pain that this article has made in me. The imagery is so powerful that it must be having an effect.

This morning’s story comes on the heals of a local news story last night about a set of young black boys that vandalized a daycare center. They broke into the building and just destroyed it. My wife had tears in her eyes as she watched it. I could only imagine that she was thinking about how could our children, black children, become so mean. They poured paint over the computers for the children, broke the tables and threw the little chairs all over the place. They even defecated and smeared their feces on the walls and windows and urinated on the toys. The image associated with this was a meeting of the children’s parents – a room full of black women crying and wondering what evil had befallen them and what they would do with their children while the center recovered from the damage.

That whole story is in the context of an incessant barrage of pictures of ridiculous looking young black boys as legislation is being discussed in Georgia to criminalize the way they wear their pants. The image of black boys with sagging pants, unkempt clothes and foul behavior is another that is being steadily driven into our psyche. It is making it hard to distinguish between the images and the full story.

Reality is what it is – but damn this imagery. Had those boys not done what they did, there would be no story. There would be no association between them, their image and such reprehensible behavior. Similarly, the convergence of western exploitation and domestic corruption in Africa is real. The world’s poor are suffering. That lady did not lie down on the ground to pose for the picture, she lay down to die.

The images of us are tilted so heavily in the direction of things bad that it is hard to find balance. It is becoming difficult for me to pit the positive imagery of my personal experience against the wave of negative images that I am confronted with and still expect not be deeply wounded.

kamau

Random Righteousness

2007-08-21T15:39:00.000-05:00

At the heart of Cooper’s faith and sense of righteousness was his firm belief that Jesus Christ is the singular pathway to salvation. He made reference to a biblical dictum that says that in order to be saved you must declare with your mouth and in your heart that Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior. Baring that declaration, a person is doomed to damnation. Cooper was reluctant to say that outright, but in the end he coyly said, “Yeah. I guess so, if you don’t accept Christ you’re damned.”

In my view this doomsday edict is undermined by the randomness of human circumstance. A person’s particular faith and spiritual orientation is significantly influenced by the family and social circumstances into which they are born. Both of those enormously powerful developmental influences are random. Cooper could no more choose to grow up in a subdivision with super Christian parents than I could choose to grow up with super Christian parents in Brooklyn with a church on every block. The whole process by which we became conscious of ourselves took place under a Christian social order. Our Hindu or Muslim analogs who are born in India or Indonesia have a spiritual orientation that is equally a consequence of the circumstances of their birth – over which they have no control. Is salvation then, dependent on the randomness of birth?

According to Cooper, those people have the opportunity to learn about the opportunity for salvation, shed their spiritual belief system and accept Christ. That is why he spends time spreading the Word, so that they will be informed. I find this argument painfully simple when it comes from people who do not know anything about the other major religions. Quite in keeping with my stereotype of him, Cooper did not. In fact, he was momentarily confused about whether the Torah and the Koran were associated with Judaism and Islam respectively or vice versa. He himself did not make an informed decision to accept Christ. He accepted Christ, in part, because that is all he knew. His options were Christ or no Christ; not, Christ or Allah or Shiva. That constitutes a faith randomly determined. Had he been born Saladeen Amatuallah on the outskirts of Mecca his deep seated spiritual belief system and the anchor of his faith would almost certainly be different. Not only would his spiritual belief system be different, it would be equally strong and likely far more disciplined. The only difference is circumstance, the randomness of birth, yet one is damned and the other saved.

Cooper didn’t really have a response for that. “I don’t know, I guess I just know that Christ is right,” he said. In a classroom when it boils down to, “I don’t know, I just know,” nine teachers out of ten will assume you just guessed. If you have no further explanation than that, the random nature of the selection is apparent.

I would never argue against the power of revelation. As a consequence of that, it is easy for me to accept those that believe that Christ is the path to salvation. I have trouble, however, when that revelation is coupled with ignorance of the possible alternative paths and an adamant declaration that those unknown paths are not righteous. Faith can be the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. It ought not be the prosecutor of things unknown and the constraint on human variation.

kamau

The Girl, The Dragon and the PhD

2007-08-20T09:27:00.000-05:00

Legend holds that the Doctoral Degree lies beyond the forest, beyond the mountains and is the sacred possession of the Dissertation Dragon. Tales are spun and spun again about travelers' quests for the degree and the ferocity of the Dragon. The Course is the path leading to the Dragon’s lair. It is strewn with the bodies of noble intellectuals unsuccessful in their bids. The Course for some was too long, for others too steep and for still others, simply too difficult. Before even reaching the Dragon’s lair the traveler must face the attack of the Questions. The Questions attack one’s sense of purpose, of competence, and in extreme attacks, one’s self-worth. The Questions lay in wait, in the darkest sections of the path. It is from there, when the traveler is most weary, most beaten, and most in need of a balm that the Questions launch their attack. They coordinate with the Vicissitudes of Life to maximize the destructive force of their arsenal. The Vicissitudes periodically clamp down and inject life forces to undermine the concentration of the traveler. These forces are the Too-Forces. They inject too much sorrow or too much happiness. Illness and misfortune are legendary foes of concentration and the Vicissitudes bring them both to the siege. They also bring life pleasures of love and lust which are equally dangerous to the focus of the traveler.

In addition to the attacks from the Questions and the Vicissitudes, the traveler's persona is threatened. In the struggle to traverse the Course, the Course itself vies to steal the persona of the traveler. It tries to capture the voice of the traveler. It attempts to replace the traveler’s native tongue with a jargon-laden, hypersyllabic, abstract intellectuo speak. That voice, unnatural to the traveler, is the language of the thief. It is a language that complicates the truth and hides conviction. The process is a slow-moving heist. Once the voice is gone, passion is next. The passions that drove the traveler to challenge the Dragon are somehow dampened. Each of the traveler’s thoughts begins to commence with “it depends” and ends by trailing off into relativism. The absolute stand of conviction that is born of fiery passion is gone, the theft of the persona complete.

The lucky and tenacious traveler will survive these trials. She may well have to step over the fallen bodies of her partners but she persists. She meets the attacks of the Questions with uncertain answers backed by unshakable faith. She remains sufficiently resilient such that the Vicissitudes are reduced to mere impostors like triumph and disaster. She holds onto her voice such that the connection between her words and her meaning remains clear. Most importantly, she is successful in beguiling the Course. She turns its trials against it and uses it as fuel for the fire of her passion. While absolutism may be the property of the extremist, the position and conviction of the traveler is clear and unmistakable. She remains true to herself and an honorable representative of the clan from which she has come.

After having warred with Shaka-style ferocity, the traveler has simply survived the Course. The degree still rest in the bowels of the lair guarded by the Dissertation Dragon. Despite apprehension, the traveler opens the comprehensive gate and in so doing alerts the dragon of her presence. Everything that the traveler has learned, everything that she has endured is designed to prepare her for this last battle. The dragon they call Dissertation, however, is a dragon indeed. Its lips drip with the complexities of interposition and operationalization. Its skin is an elusive problem that render it difficult to see and more difficult still to characterize. In addition, it is singularly armed with all of the weaponry of the Course – the Questions, the Vicissitudes and the Heist. It is also armed with the psychological weapon of boundlessness. The Course had a visible end. The traveler was spurred on when, from the mountaintop, she could see the end. The dragon at first sight is boundless. On top of the awesome sight of the dragon are the terms of engagement. The traveler must first devise a cogent plan by which she intends to slay the dragon. This plan, devised under the pressure of the looming dragon, must survive the attack of the Guardians of the Degree. The Guardians are themselves dragon slayers. They are the sages of the journey. In attacking the traveler’s plan, they push until the brink of capitulation to ensure the readiness of the traveler for the battle at hand. Out from the clamoring of swords and the posturing for power comes a potion of guidance and encouragement. Armed with this potion, a symbol of the blessings of the Guardians, the traveler attempts to slay the dragon. Legend has it that the potion renders the traveler unconquerable but not uninjurable. There are those, however, that have gone in to fight the dragon and have neither been seen nor heard from since.

There is a traveler poised to absorb the attack from the Guardians and hopefully earn a sip of the potion of potency. She hasn’t done it yet so we’ll see if there is any truth to all this legend shit.

kamau

If Jesus Lived in a Subdivision

2007-08-07T23:27:00.000-05:00

On the flight back from New Orleans I happened to sit next to a white guy named Cooper. When he told me his name I laughed to myself. He fit the image of a Cooper that must be in the American book of stereotypes. He had long curly dirty blond hair. Every minute or two he took off his cap and brushed his hair back and then put the cap back on. It was a nasty University of Georgia baseball cap. The brim was bent and frayed at the tip and there was a sweat stain all around the bottom. He had on those big cargo shorts that they sell at Target and Old Navy that are a favorite of white boys just like him. He was also wearing flip flops and a close fitting t-shirt that said, “Property of Abercrombie and Fitch.” He couldn’t have fit the stereotype any better.

I learned that he was on his way back from New Orleans having completed a church mission to help rebuild damaged homes. He said that he had spent the earlier part of the summer in Guatemala doing missionary work with people in some small village. I asked if the work he was doing in New Orleans was missionary work too. He said yes, that while they were helping to rebuild people’s homes, “we were spreading the Word too.” Indeed, the airport had been full of these church groups going and coming from all over the place. There were whole gangs of white kids with matching t-shirts emblazoned with an old rugged cross on the front and some bible verse or another on the back wearing Livestrong and What Would Jesus Do? bracelets.

Religion is not a chitchat topic for a plane conversation, but you don’t learn much from chitchat topics. I asked what personal philosophy drove his missionary work. He immediately responded that he wanted to help share the keys to Christ and salvation with people. He followed that by saying, “that life with Christ is like such a beautiful thing and like it is based in so much love that like it only seems right to share that with people, and like give them a chance to experience it.”

I always assume that white boys that look like Cooper are super privileged and equally sheltered. Their worldliness, which is sometimes extensive, appears to be undone by the sense of superiority that they exude. They might go into Guatemala, for example, look at the people and say “By the Grace of God, I have the opportunity to make a difference in these people’s lives.” They do not say, “There, but for the Grace of God go I.” Nothing in their experience can help them relate to the circumstances of poverty and exclusion that they are so fond of visiting to spread the Good News. Based on that assumption, my reaction to him was that poor people in Guatemala and New Orleans and wherever else he had been do not need his faith, they need his privilege. They need the comfort and safety of his subdivision and the luxury of not being preoccupied with surviving. In New Orleans they need the sense that they as individuals and their communities matter, that if they are hurt someone will care. In Guatemala, those devout Catholics do not need faith, they need peace. In my view, the appreciation of faith born in privilege always seems weaker than the appreciation of privilege born in faith.

In my mind I was careful not to dismiss the fundamental goodness of what Cooper spent his summer doing – helping. It was obvious to me and he said as much, that his ability to do all this Christian good work was based on his parents’ ability to pay for him to travel all around the globe to do it. Despite that, what he chose to do with the resources available to him was significant. It bothered me though, that he was so steadfast in his belief that his experience of the righteousness of Christ was something that he felt compelled to share with poor people. In spiritual terms, what did he really have to offer? If these poor people accept Christ the way he had, that they would experience the righteousness of Christ the way he does? I wondered if it is possible for him to decouple the component of his identity that is privilege from the component that is faith? His faith was born in subdivision safety where all his needs were met and the righteousness of Christ’s love, if not its bounty, may have been fairly easy to focus on. Pastors are quick to say that Christ’s faith was not born while lounging by the side of a pool, but while nailed to a cross between two thieves.

I found the confluence of class and faith confusing. I also realized that not only was I bothered by Cooper’s professed evangelical righteousness, it made me angry. That triggered the need for me to reflect on the relationship between faith and privilege in me. Cooper left me with that personal challenge. He also left me wondering if Jesus’ word would be the Word if he had grown up in a subdivision?

kamau

When Nigger Means Nigger

2007-07-24T15:50:00.000-05:00

The survival stories of Katrina were heart-wrenching emotional ordeals. Traveling around with HANO, it seemed that he spent half of his day sharing storm stories with people and relaying those of others with me so I could better appreciate what people had been through. For those people he hadn’t seen since before the storm their reconnection with each other was like people reconnecting after a war. They embraced each other like neither one expected to see the other alive. They held on to each other long and hard. HANO said there were unspeakably terrible things that happened to people during the storm so when you see folks alive, “you’re just happy, you know?”

One brother that we ran into was a huge hulking man. Between he and HANO they split the plus side of a quarter ton about sixty forty. Big Man survived the storm and started off with jokes. He told us that his wife didn’t want to evacuate.

“I said to her, I said, looky here. I got you and my Mama in this house and I’m the only one can swim. I can only save one a you, an’ you don’ want me to choose between you an’ my Mama.”

He and HANO burst out laughing the way only enormous black men laugh.

“HANO, she packed her bags with a quickness, you know. You don’t make a man choose between his wife and his Mama.”

We laughed and then he repeated that he had survived. He said that he had survived, “those Goddamn rednecks too.” When he said that, he stopped smiling. He had gone back to his neighborhood to look after other relatives. He said that towards the end of the storm at the beginning of the flooding he was racing to get back to the house where his relatives were and one of, “those white boy police” told him that he couldn’t go in that direction. “I told him I lived down there and I was going to get my family.” Then Big Man told the story like this:

His car was in front of me. He got out of his car, walked over to me and drew his gun and aimed it right at me.

Nigger, I told you you’re not going down that fuckin’ street.

I told him, I said, ‘Officer, my family is down there.’

Nigger, if you open your fuckin’ mouth again it will be the last time.

By now Big Man was telling this story as if he were in a trance. He was not really looking at us. He said that it was the first time in his life that he felt like slaves must have felt. “You standing there with the white man sticking a gun in the temple of your head, making you watch your family die or get sold off or hung.” He said to HANO, “Breh, when that white man called me Nigger like that, with that gun in my head, it was like a hundred years of poison.”

Big Man said that he was thinking about his family up ahead and explained to us how some of them were old and would definitely drown if he did not get there to help them. He tried to explain the combination of feelings, but he couldn’t really. He said that he was raging and wanted to smash the police officer but he knew that if he opened his mouth he would be killed. Again he said to HANO, “Breh, you know I ain’ no weak brother. But Breh, I just cried. I couldn’t stop the tears from falling.” Big Man continued, and said he just nodded yes and sat there crying. He said the police officer told him, “Now Nigger, get outta here,” and turned away from Big Man to walk back to his car.

During this whole story I was trying to comprehend all these emotions, particularly coming from a man looking like Big Man. He was not one of those soft looking oversized Bluetooth-wearing black men with expensive shoes and a Blackberry clipped to his belt. He was huge, looked like he was made out of steal and could be rough as hell. I felt in that moment, like I was from another planet and I spoke a different language. I am a black man and have grown up in this country, but I’ve never been so close to the degree of hatred bundled around the word Nigger when it really means Nigger. The whole time I was keenly aware of the fact that I was in the south and his description of surviving the rednecks made the whole experience more intense. Since I’ve been in the south I have seen real rednecks with their leathery skin, southern drawl and confederate flags draped all over themselves. I can’t imagine one of those type of men holding a gun to my head and with blinding hatred calling me Nigger. In the middle of those thoughts, Big Man’s story went from the intense to the surreal.

Big Man said that when the policeman turned his back on him and was walking back to his car, he hit the gas and ran him over. I’m sure my mouth fell open. For a second I doubted the story. Then I could see the water coming to his eyes and his lips starting to tremble. He said, “Breh, I been praying about it and crying about it ever since. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t turn my back on my family. And the way he called me Nigger filled me with so much hate.”

Throughout the day HANO always had a wise and insightful summary of the various experiences. This time he didn’t say anything and we just stood there.

kamau

A White Girl Slapped Me

2007-07-17T14:56:00.000-05:00

Late into the evening HANO took me to the French Quarter. He said that I couldn’t come to New Orleans and not go the French Quarter. We were walking down the main strip where there are bars with upstairs balconies that overlook the street. The balconies were packed with white people drinking and throwing those colorful beaded necklaces down to people walking by. As we walked under one of the balconies a necklace hit me on the head. When I looked up I caught the eyes of the white woman who threw it. Her face had those sharp non-fat features. She was tan with jet black hair and green eyes. She was pretty. It being the French Quarter most of her breasts were exposed and I noticed that too. She looked slim and fit. She was already laughing and waving her beer around when our eyes met. Then, while we were looking right at each other, she yelled the white girl yell.

“WOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

Her yell and her smile and her appearance shook me. I had spent the day like an apprentice studying the suffering of black people. I’d listened to the woman with her child in her arms declare she was homeless. I’d seen scores of young black boys in sweaty long white t-shirts aimlessly smoldering in the shade of FEMA trailers all over the city. I’d been to the processing pen for Section 8 returnees and watched depressed looking black people sitting for hours waiting to be processed by government workers. I’d also been through the destroyed wards and seen whole swathes of people’s identities and backgrounds still destroyed, now overgrown with weeds to insult their injuries. I’d listened to a brother explain that he goes to a funeral every couple of weeks because, “the depression is getting to be a little too much for us.” I met the director of one of the homeless shelters who explained that most shelters that accept women and children do not accept men so several men sleep on the streets nearby to be close to their wives and children. I’d watched the soldiers like HANO and Sister hold hands with each other and promise to protect the fragile hope.

Then the white girl, let’s call her Ashley – or Brittany or Kirsten or Molly or Hannah - takes a drink, drops some beads on my head and yells the white girl yell.

I’m not even sure how to continue and explain what that felt like.

It is unfair, if not simply mean, to begrudge people their happiness so I won’t. I struggle; however, to understand this class of white women. Admittedly I don’t know any of them personally, but they appear to be like canaries – whistling and happily chirping along on top of American life. Atlanta is a haven for them. They can been seen on any given evening jogging all over the place in the Virginia Highlands, in Midtown, in Grant Park with blond pony tails bobbing back and forth underneath their khaki colored caps. They go to tanning salons. They say, “Oh my God, that is sooo true,” instead of, “You know what I’m saying.” They drive Jettas and BMW’s and drink complicated long explanation drinks at Starbucks. Their images are plastered on all the billboards and ads for high rise condominiums – be white, live, work and play in the Aqua Towers or in the Spire or in the Such and Such Luxury Lofts at Buckhead. Indeed they serve the traditional mining function of canaries in some neighborhoods. When you see single white women walking their dogs or jogging alone, you know the neighborhood has been adequately transitioned and is “safe”. In so many ways they appear to be a protected specie, living an insulated life on a balcony with their friends throwing decorations or charity or whatever they feel like down on the passersby.

Having this enigmatic and chipper white girl drop those beads on my head felt like she slapped me. She was chirping from her perch right in line with my stereotypes of her and then she threw the necklace on me to make sure I knew she was up there. It seemed like Ashley lived in a different world, was from a different planet and spoke a different language. Even when I’m happy, I don’t understand that yell.

I hadn’t said anything during all these thoughts. When I looked at HANO he was looking right at me and said, “Breh, if we could take turns on the balcony, we wouldn’t be suffering so much down here.”

kamau

Where Are The Men?

2007-07-11T14:30:00.000-05:00

Black men are typically portrayed in the media with some combination of banditry and simplemindedness. The local news in Atlanta, for example, is full of B.O.L.O. (Be On the Look Out) photographs of ominous looking cornrowed black men that shot this or that person or raped this or that woman. When they are witnesses to a crime they often give out of breath, inarticulate and illogical accounts of some sordid event or another. If they are not criminals or witnesses to a crime they are often cartoonish diamond-laden entertainers offering much ado about nothing. Within the black community it is broadly accepted that these images are disproportionately presented to feed the popular white American distaste for and discomfort with black men. The television coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was no different. This, by now, is nothing new. There has been ample discussion of the media’s use of the term “refugees” as well as the willingness to label black men as “hooligans” and “looters.” The role of black women; however, has been largely overlooked.

Apart from graphic coverage of the destruction and hapless victims, the dominant images after the storm were largely of men. There were innumerable stories and pictures of Mayor Ray Nagin. He was largely presented as an emotional and ineffective mayor whose weaknesses and failure to prepare contributed to the degree of devastation in New Orleans. He was disparagingly compared to the American Sir Lancelot, Rudy Guiliani. Coverage of the mayor was sandwiched between images of young black men stealing televisions and sneakers. When the United States military finally arrived, Lt. General Honoré dominated the airwaves. He was credited with bringing some order to the situation by cursing and ordering people around. In addition to them were Michael Brown, George Bush’s Brownie and director of FEMA and Michael Chertoff, Bush’s boy and Director of Homeland Security. The only prominent woman visible was Governor Kathleen Blanco. She was grouped with Mayor Nagin as emotional, incompetent and irrelevant. In the midst of all the fuss and coverage in the long aftermath of the storm, black women have gone largely unseen in the popular media. It is as if the destruction and resurrection of New Orleans has nothing to do with them.

While in New Orleans, my HANO man explained that there is a network of community leaders organized to help various communities rebuild themselves. He explained that the community leaders serve as advocates and conduits for information and resources to predominantly black and poor neighborhoods that are still largely rotting. It so happened that there was a leadership training session happening for these community leaders while I was on tour with HANO. The session was organized by a polished black woman consultant for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in D.C.

When we entered the room there were about 35 tough looking black women eating and waiting for the session to begin. The consultant had three super polished women with her too; so it was a room full of women. I commented to HANO that I didn’t realize it was a women’s leadership organization. He chuckled and said, “Breh, it ain’t.”

“Where are the men?”

He looked at me and smiled and didn’t say anything. Then he introduced me to Sister. He said, “this here Breh, is what you call a solider.” She said that if I’m down with Brother HANO, I’m on the right team and then she hugged me so hard our ribs got all tangled up. Sister looked like a Native American. Her skin was reddish brown and she had long, bone straight, jet black hair. She was short, squat and strong looking. Her back was straight as an arrow and power was dripping off her.

She said, “I ain’ no soldier, but I’ma fight for my people right here in New Orleans.”

HANO said, “Ain’ nobody else gonna fight for us.”

“You know that’s the mothafuckin truth.”

HANO explained that Sister had always been a community leader and organizer. She had made improving the living conditions for black people in New Orleans the cause of her life. Sister said that the storm is a challenge but survive is what black people do. She said that she had battled breast cancer and “beat that bitch with the bullshit care they give us poor folks.” One of her two sons drowned during the flooding after the storm and another had been shot and killed last year when he was caught up in a gun fight. “I’m surviving for a reason, so I’m right here fighting for my people.”

HANO said, “Sister, Breh walk in and the first thing he asks is, ‘where the men?’”

They both laughed and then HANO held Sister’s hand.

“These women here Breh, are holding us together. Whatever little hope we have, we have it cause of them.”

kamau

Self Absorbed in New Orleans

2007-07-03T14:31:00.000-05:00

I was riding in a car with a man I had never met, in a place I had never been to learn some things I didn’t know. For me, that was a righteous setting for my introduction to post Katrina New Orleans. The story is so complicated and interconnected among so many things that are deeply human and passionate that it will have to come out in bits and pieces.

Before my wife and I were married, a lot of people joked that, “Once you get married, my brother, everything changes.” “Marriage will change your life,” I was told. It did change my life, but not in the dramatic way that all these warnings led me to believe. Having a child on the other hand, profoundly changed our lives. The practical changes are obvious. More importantly for me, has been an emotional change. Now that we have a child, my feelings about most things are more intense. I find that I don’t chuckle anymore, I laugh out loud; happiness goes straight to bliss. Rather than getting frustrated, I get infuriated. I don’t like things or people anymore, I either love them or I can’t stand them. I experience sadness in my bones and I cry. I think it is because everything I experience is somehow translated into the ever deepening love I have for my daughter. What if that were her?

The guy that was taking me around works for the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), a division of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. We were driving around in a van with HANO emblazoned on the side. At one point some women saw the van and flagged us down. They were all black women with two or three children among them. They had been sitting in the shade of a FEMA trailer which was parked in front of a destroyed house. The lady that came up to the van had her permed and dyed red hair brushed to one side. The heat, sweat and humidity had taken their toll on her hair. When she was walking over to the van I could see that the heels of her flip flops were worn through. Her skin was very dark, she was really black. Her lips and her gums were both dark. She had an array of small bumps and boils all over her face and a long scar on her cheek. She had hoop gold earrings in her ears and the gold looked like a brass plated doorknob after years of use. In one ear she had an enormous keloid that was swollen around the post of the earring so much that the earring didn’t swing freely. She was wearing a tight pink baby T-shirt. Her shirt left her midriff exposed and I could see that her stomach was big, laced with stretch marks and creeping over the super tight top of her jeans. On one of her arms she had the tattoo of a face and some words. The ink was that bluish green ink that old military vets often have. Hers was puffy and hard to see against the darkness of her skin. She looked poor.

I do not detail her appearance to make a spectacle of her. I describe it as part of my response. Obviously, I noticed what she looked like and it left an impression on me. I felt intensely sad. I am just now beginning to understand the intensity of my own emotional responses and am trying to align my behavior and actions with those responses. I wonder though, how her appearance affects institutional responses to her condition?

“How you get on section 8?” she asked.

HANO asked her if she was on section 8 before the storm. She said no. She had been living somewhere and making due before the storm but then when she came back, the place was in terrible condition and the landlord had increased the rent.

“I had to leave cause it wasn’t no decent place and then there was a fire anyway. I called the city to get on section 8 and they just telling me some silly shit.”

“If you weren’t on section 8 before the storm sweet heart, you got a better chance of winning the lottery than you do of getting on it now. All of those folks who were on it before have to be placed before we start dealing with new people.”

In the middle of HANO’s explanation the lady’s daughter ran up to her smiling. “Mama!” She must have been about two years old. She had on a pink sun dress that was dirty in the front. Her pink dress matched her pink sandals and the pink bobbles in her hair. Her hair was pulled back tight and the part in the middle was straight as an arrow. The lady picked up the little girl and cocked her on her hip.

“So I can’t get on section 8?”

“It ain’t gonna happen. I’m just being real with you. Take my card though and call me and we’ll see what we can do. We have to get you in the system first.”

“I’m homeless.”

When I listened to the lady say that she was homeless while holding her little girl on her arm I felt the sadness in my bones and struggled desperately to keep the tears back. When we were driving off, I couldn’t really speak as I was trying to get my voice under control. I was thinking about my daughter running up to me smiling, calling me Daddy and jumping into my arms. I was thinking about the significance of what I say while I'm holding her. How much of what I feel does she absorb from my body? And how much implication does she take from the meaning of my words? I don’t know, but watching this lady and her little girl was breaking my heart.

kamau

Middle East Tutorial

2007-06-16T16:41:00.000-05:00

I need a refresher course on the teams and places in the Middle East. I am an average American citizen and want to be supportive of my government but I really don’t know who is who anymore. In the aftermath of September 11^th, the government told me that Osama bin Laden was responsible and we “want him dead or alive.” bin Laden was supposed to have been a Saudi who trained in Sudan and the captain of Al Qaeda. Shortly after the attacks though, U.S. troops were on the ground in Afghanistan fighting people called the Taliban. I never really understood the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Who are the Taliban? Some time later the government said they almost caught bin Laden in a place called Tora Bora. Tora Bora? That sounds far away. So it was bin Laden, captain of Al Qaeda, who master minded the attacks, but it was the Taliban in Afghanistan that we went to fight. I need some remedial clarity on this already. It doesn’t help that the public education that I received in this bastion of freedom and democracy didn’t cover any of these places or people.

Some time later another guy, Saddam Hussein, was introduced and the government told me that he was connected to the attacks on September 11^th. They said that Hussein was the captain of the Ba’ath Party in Iraq and that we had to change his regime. He was from a place called Tikrit but lived in Baghdad. Now, not only do I have to figure out the relationships between Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Ba’athists, I have to figure out if Hussein and bin Laden were friends. Hussein comes with some really complicated attachments to his file too. As soon as our soldiers got rid of him all these other teams popped up. They said there was factional fighting between the Shi’a and the Sunni Muslims. They also mentioned the Shi’ites, but I think the Shi’ites are the same as the Shi’a. Maybe Shi’a is plural for Shi’ite – one Shi’ite, two Shi’a? If so, there would be no need for Shi’ites plural. Need some help on that one. I also do not understand the relationship between either of those groups and the Ba’athists. Are the Ba’athists a secular team or a religious team? Or a secular team with religious leanings like the Republicans? More help needed. Then they said that the Ba’athists didn’t like the Kurds. They hanged Saddam Hussein because he killed Kurds, but we invaded Iraq because he helped destroy lower Manhattan. Who are the Kurds anyway and where did they come from? I’ve heard Kurdistan. Another place I never learned about in school. If Kurds are from Kurdistan, why were they in Iraq? Are they Kurdish-Iraqis like African-Americans? And why don’t the Shi’a, the Shi’ites, the Sunnis or the Ba’atists like them? I have also heard that there are some of them in Istanbul too - that is in Turkey, not to be confused with Turkmenistan. The Turkish Turks don’t like the Kurds either. I don’t know how the Turkmenistanian Turks feel about the Kurds. Something smells fishy about these Kurds. Need some more learning on them too. I am not even clear about all the things I need clarity on.

The government told me that part of the reason the fight in Iraq is still going on is because there are insurgents who keep bombing things all over the place and won’t graciously accept U.S. occupation of Iraq. I know the definition of the word insurgent from my SAT prep course, but I don’t really understand who these insurgents are. Even though I don’t know who the insurgents are, the government told me that the chief insurgent is Muqtada al Sadr. He is a Shi’a and is so bad that his team has his name, they call them the Sadrists. Just as I am trying to sort out if the insurgents are Shi’a, Shi’ite, Sunni, Ba’ath or Kurd they tell me that Iran is sending care packages and weapons to them. In the middle of dealing with bin Laden, Hussein and now al Sadr, they introduce another guy from another far away place. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the president of Iran and lives in Tehran. I’m lucky I can write his name because for sure I can’t say it. Need some linguistics training too. Ahmadinejad is the president, but he isn’t really in charge. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is in charge. What is an Ayatollah? Do people vote for an Ayatollah? Or does God just put him in charge? Need some answers there as well. Iran, they say, is a Shi’a team. So if Ahmadinejad is supporting insurgents in Iraq, maybe the insurgents are Shi’a because they’re all on the same team. But Ahmadinejad has said that he just doesn’t like George Bush, like Kanye West said that George Bush just doesn’t like black people. If that is so, them maybe Ahmadinejad is just supporting Arabs in Iraq and not worrying about which team they’re on, in which case we still don’t know who the insurgents are. More things to be clear about. Now there are bin Laden, Hussein, al Sadr, Ahmadinejad and Khamenei and all their affiliated affiliations. I have questions about all of it because I don’t really understand any of it.

My government tells me that Ahmadinejad is whack. They say he doesn’t like Jews. That’s not nice. I suspect that he might not like the Jews because the Jews don’t like the Palestinians and the Palestinians are Arabs. Since Ahmadinejad is an Arab and the Palestinians are Arabs and the Jews don’t like the Palestinians, then Ahmadinejad doesn’t like the Jews. If I try really hard I can follow that logic. But I have trouble with the Palestinians. They are another people that never made it into my free and democratic history books. If Israelis are from Israel, Iranians from Iran, Iraqis from Iraq where are the Palestinians from…Gaza? And how come their name doesn’t start with an I? But now the Palestinians are fighting each other. Hamas-Palestinians versus Fatah-Palestinians. Now I feel like I need Special Ed. More teams, more people and I have to make sure to remember who bin Laden is because he is going to be on the test for sure.

They said that Hamas is fighting Fatah in Gaza. Gaza? Mahmoud Abbas is the captain of Fatah. They sometimes call Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Mazen. Arabs are brown people and brown people like nicknames. If he were from L.A. they might have called him “L.A.” for Lil’ Ab. Anyhow, Mahmoud Abbas is lucky they didn’t call him Abu Abbas. Someone killed Abu Abbas because he was down with Hamas. But why is Hamas fighting Fatah in Gaza? The government told me that we supported the Israelis when they attacked the Palestinian National Authority. Yasser Arafat – a.k.a. Abu Ammar – was the captain of that team. I thought that Arafat was down with the P.L.O. Not sure anymore. Now we have the P.L.O. and the P.N.A. They might just be old and new versions of the same thing like Windows XP and Vista. Another point to be cleared up. I think the Palestinian National Authority used to be the Palestinian Liberation Organization and had some kind of relationship with Hamas, but was best friends with Fatah. Since the Israelis killed Arafat, Hamas and Fatah had a falling out. Apparently Fatah and Abu Mazen were trying to be nice and negotiate with the Jews. Hamas was like, F*$k That!! So now Hamas is fighting Fatah and my government and Israel are on Fatah’s team. The tricky part is that supposedly Ahmadinejad in Tehran is down with Hamas in Gaza. So my government and Israel are trying to step to Hamas in Gaza but Ahmadinejad in Tehran has Hamas’ back. So, we started just outside of Brooklyn with bin Laden and now we’re in a place called Gaza with Abu’s Ammar and Mazen, and Fatah is fighting Hamas. This is really a lot.

And then there is some more.

Not only is Hamas backed up by Tehran, there are these other people called Hezbollah who are on their team too. I know bin Laden will be on the test, but I really have no idea how all these others are connected. Hassan Nasrallah is captain of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Another place somewhere over there. The other day Israel went ballistic on Lebanon and smashed the whole place. My government told me that I should support Israel against Hezbollah. “Why?” I asked. They said because Hezbollah is on Ahmadinejad’s team and Ahmadinejad is down with Hamas and Hamas is friends with al Sadr and al Sadr is down with the Shi’a and the Shi’a are insurgents and the insurgents are down with Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda is down bin Laden and it was bin Laden blowing things up just outside of Brooklyn. “Oh!” I said, “that’s why mosquitoes buzz in people’s ears”; but I still don’t really understand. What about the Taliban?

I am trying to support my government and I’m smart, really I am. But I have no idea who all these people are, where they live, how they are connected and how they pose a threat to me. I think President Bush should pause for a minute and give us a little tutorial so we can know who to root for. In the meantime, I’m trying to stay focused on important domestic matters that I can truly understand.

Are Paris Hilton’s breasts fake?

kamau

A Letter to Reverend Sharpton

2007-06-14T09:25:00.000-05:00

Re: June 13^th, 2007 show on Keepin’ it Real with Al Sharpton, “Who is an Uncle Tom? And what can we do about them?”

Dear Reverend Sharpton,

Greetings. My name is Kamau Bobb. I am a Brooklyn native and have been listening to you and admiring your defense of black people since the days of Tawanna Brawley. I have been present several times over the years when you’ve sounded the call to action. Notwithstanding that, I have a criticism of you today.

One of the topics on your radio talk show on June 13^th, 2007 was, “Who is an Uncle Tom? And what can we do about them?” This type of discussion is far beneath your caliber as a black man of such credibility with such a prominent public voice. Asking people what an Uncle Tom is and who they think is one invariably leads to slanderous, counterproductive name calling. I fail to see what productive ideas or insights could come from such a discussion. That type of conversation always degenerates to a mindless witch hunt as anonymous people publicly belittle other black people who are not there to defend themselves.

Michele from Detroit, who do you think is an Uncle Tom?....

Unless the discussion is about the very specific actions of a public figure who has influence over the living conditions of black people, there is no productive answer to this question.

I do not doubt that there are people who fit your description of an Uncle Tom, but I would challenge you to identify the benefit of having people call in to name people they think – based on their own very personal and individual criteria – are Uncle Toms. Your discussion invites slander and keeps us as a community practicing the techniques of belittling each other.

Your topic is particularly distasteful in a presidential election season that includes Senator Barack Obama. You are well aware that there are considerable segments of the black community that have questioned his “blackness” for a number of reasons. Some of that set have suggested that he is an Uncle Tom simply by virtue of his high brow education. They argue in part, that he cannot possibly have the genuine interests of the black community in his heart because he went to Harvard and Columbia. The implication is that elite educational accomplishment is incompatible with allegiance to the black community. I trust you would agree that the logic of that argument is asinine. Your discussion gives voice to such backward thinking. More dangerously, it helps create an environment that constrains the definition of high achievement, questions the motives of those who do not adhere to it and ultimately undermines the spirit of collective black advancement that you have been struggling for all these years.

I trust your motives and always have. I am also keenly aware of your special skills at identifying the hidden forces that affect the black community. In light of that I would hope that you do not allow your show to descend into the abyss. There are more than enough black talk shows that rely on minstrel antics and base foolishness to whet the appetite of the thoughtless. You have always stood above the fray and I hope that you continue to.

In support,

kamau

Thank You Jesus

2007-06-04T09:39:00.000-05:00

It has become a rite of early spring to announce the latest state of the gap between black and white students on national standardized tests. Each year right after the Dogwood Festival, we are presented with a new data point on the persistent racial achievement gap in education. These springtime statistics constantly reinforce the challenges of urban education and the relative underachievement of black students. The grim numbers never tell nice stories. They do not reveal how these students, their families and friends experience positive accomplishments – high school graduation for example.

I recently attended a high school graduation in a South Atlanta high school where I had been tutoring. It was a fantastic experience. Several students in this small academy reflected the grinding face of black Altanta poverty. One of the girls I tutored, for example, had an all too common R.I.P. + name and date tattoo on her arm. She was a 17 year old senior and the “Rest In Peace” tattoo was in memoriam of a still born child she had two years prior. Among some of the other students there were all of the problems with academic fundamentals that create the depressing springtime statistics. The circumstances of these students made their accomplishment so special.

At the graduation, the guests reflected the condition of the community. There were several very young girls that were pregnant. There were hosts of young black boys – friends and relatives of the graduates – whose top and bottom front teeth were covered in gold caps. Several of the parents had the names of friends, relatives and partners tattooed on their necks. There were whole selections of braided extensions ranging from copper color to blue. Many of the men, both young and old, donned the contentious style of wearing enormous beltless jeans while others sported oversized purple suits with hats and shoes to match.

This is the experience that lies beyond the numbers. This is the face of the black community for whom these graduates are potentially first generation college students. The significance of the graduation and the accomplishment that it represents relative to the community is extraordinary. It is in stark contrast to north county schools where accomplished parents and families gather at high school graduations and reminisce about their days before college and graduate school. In those circles high school graduation is certainly a happy occasion too, but it is an expected and unspectacular milestone in the lives of their children. Here, where high school drop out rates can move between 30% and 40% and college is a prayer not an expectation, high school graduation is extraordinarily special and the significance is reflected in the emotions of the community gathered to witness it.

There were prayers and heartfelt renditions of gospel songs which reflect not only the accomplishments of the graduates, but the obstacles they overcame to get there. The guests were painfully aware of the challenges that the students had endured. As such, the audience was there not only to congratulate the graduates, but to corroborate their story. Some of the young mothers looked at their sons and daughters on the stage and cried and seemed to mouth silent prayers of thanks that their children had survived.

As I sat in the auditorium with tears in my own eyes, it was clear that this graduation was extra special. The children of the siege had succeeded; at least in limited measure. The numbers can't tell us how special accomplishments like this are to communities that have so few. One grandmother standing close to me, wrapped herself around her grandson and with tears running down her face said, "Thank you, Jesus."

kamau

What If...(circa 2003)

2007-05-31T14:23:00.000-05:00

For months there were rumors that the Arab League was planning to punish the United States for invading Iraq. In truth CNN, along with the many voices of Rupert Murdoch, dismissed it as utterly foolish in their standard manner of dismissing non-Anglo messages. This time though, the alternative news outlets seemed to bring a level of seriousness to the claims that were worrisome. The messages were that the United States was to be punished for our violation of international law by invading a sovereign nation that is aligned with the League. In addition, the messages made claims about the tyrannical behavior of our president, George Bush, and their intentions of liberating us from him. These messages, their dismissal and our collective sense of invincibility persisted for months and months.

Being young and American, I was eight in 1980, it really did seem farfetched to me that anyone could punish the United States for anything, regardless of the merit of the punishment. We are told and have seen time and again that the United States is singularly the most powerful military nation in the world. Particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the apparent victory of western style democracy and capitalism, who could test the U.S.? In addition, the preponderance of conservative news and media is sufficient to make you forget that America is not in fact endorsed by God to rule the world. The tragedy of September 11^th made us know that we are vulnerable to random attacks but that still did nothing to shake at least my confidence that we could not be punished militarily.

The first incident occurred and shook our collective confidence to the core. A single military plane was able to evade detection long enough to fly over the continental United States. It flew over Chicago and dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets. The news media covered the story with intensity. How could a foreign aircraft penetrate U.S. airspace? Where did it come from? What further threats did that imply? The line of questioning became increasingly feverish as the contents of the leaflets became widely known. They put forth three points in English and in Arabic:

· George Bush is not your popularly elected president.

· He is leading you down a course toward painful confrontation.

· If you do not rise up against his administration and stop the

transgressions in the Arab world, you will be punished.

Of course we do not take threats lightly. The president himself came on T.V. immediately after having heard the news and addressed the nation. He said that, "...if these thugs think they can make us rattle in our boots they've got another thing coming. America's got heart, you can bet your ass on that!" Never before had a president used such language on television. He was heralded in the press as a real American responding to a real threat. Tony Blair commented that, "punitive threats are destined to fail when hurled against formidable resolve." "You can bet your ass on that!", however, was splashed all over the front pages of newspapers the next day. CNN analyzed the three points ad nauseum. They brought on Arab linguists to determine what region of the Arab world sentences written in that manner might have come from. They brought on an array of old military personnel to speculate on the nature of the punishment. They brought on historians to determine what sort of nation to nation punishments had been meted out in history. The analysis and counter-analysis circulated furiously. It was a field-day of sorts for the right-wing pundits to exercise their unchallenged suburban bravado. They said that "America has God and glory on her side"; "this nation's might is unparalleled in the history of the world"; "the United States is a beacon of freedom and light in the world and every American will stand firm in defending that" etc., etc.

All the while the news of this impending punishment continued. Periodically on BBC America, they would show clips from Al-Jaseera showing very stoic Arab leaders laying down the case for the punishment of the United States. What was disconcerting about these men was their very clear and metered language and the very plain and logical case they made for the punishment. It was a far cry from the fanatical folks that CNN and Fox News showed. The fanaticism of those men was almost comforting. They seemed so irrational that they could scarcely be taken seriously. These Arab leaders, in contrast, seemed meticulous in their construction of argument, patient in their delivery of passion and the case they made was largely indisputable.

Over the course of several months they methodically built their case. They began by saying that George Bush was not the popularly elected president. Indeed he was not, however, he was lawfully elected which they overlooked. They went on to say that he was pulling the United States out of the very international agreements that foster safety and balance in the world. They cited his refusal to have America be a signatory on the Kyoto Protocol. That was true. They cited his refusal to have American forces be subject to the judgement of the international war crimes commission. They also mentioned that he scorned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. These were all true. They then went on to try to make him out to be divisive among American people. They said that he wrote a friendly brief to the United States Supreme Court against affirmative action, a stance which would enrage black people and other minorities. They also said that he quietly and repeatedly attempted to appoint Charles Pickering to the federal appellate court despite his being clearly sympathetic to anti-black hate crimes and crude in his opposition to women's rights. In addition, he attempted to appoint Michael Estrada to the federal bench. They said that Estrada was a partner in the Florida law firm that helped sway the national election in his favor by overlooking the numerous black and Hispanic areas that were unable to vote. These things also were true.

Meanwhile, despite President Bush saying that we could not be "rattled in our boots" it was clear that our national feathers had indeed been ruffled. Tom Ridge was brought before a congressional committee appointed to investigate the incident. How, with his new department of 186,000 federal employees and an Orange Alert, could a plane fly over Chicago and drop threatening leaflets? Suburban machismo is only as deep as bankruptcy protected property in Florida however. Ridge immediately pointed his finger at the Pentagon's Director of Information Awareness Office, John Poindexter. Ridge claimed that Poindexter's people ought to have been able to intercept any information movement that would have indicated such an action. Poindexter, of course, was loathe to be involved in any public scrutiny lest his sordid past be rehashed openly. The conservative media looks out for its own though, they did not mention that Poindexter had been indicted for lying to congress and the president about selling arms to Iran and using the money to support the Contras in Nicaragua along with his friend Oliver North. The arguments stayed centered on the difficulty involved in tracking the information on millions of American citizens who are now all potential terrorists. In efforts to calm American anxiety, the president stepped in on behalf of both Ridge and Poindexter and said that, "America is complex, her freedom is simple. We are plenty capable of protecting ourselves, it just takes some doing."

The Arab leaders made use of the ranker to add to their message. They said that the Bush administration was hypocritical in that it has criminals and deceitful men claiming righteousness and the backing of God in attempts to free Iraqi people. Again, what was so disturbing about the case they made was the words they chose to use and the meter in which they delivered it. They did not call President Bush evil or a thug or even suggest that they had the backing of Allah in presenting their punishment to the United States. They simply pointed out information that is readily available to everyone. While all evidence is value-laden, their language was simply not provocative. It was the type of language used by someone who is absolutely convinced that they have right on their side. In that situation, there is need for neither insult nor reference to spiritual righteousness. The case was clear, logical and patient. They even agreed with the United States that Iraqi people are oppressed by Saddam Hussein. They did not overlook, however, the role of the United States in the suffering of the people there. The U.S. imposed sanctions have led to the starvation of countless thousands of Iraqi children and the under-nourishment of significant portions of their population. In addition, they pointed out that the weapons of mass destruction that the U.S. was so convinced were there, were there because the U.S. sold them to Mr. Hussein to aid in his campaign against Iran. These leaders went further to acknowledge that Saddam Hussein's dictatorial zealotry reflects badly upon the Arab League and Arab world generally. They stopped demonstrably short, however, of suggesting that those conditions warrant invasion.

While all this news and jousting continued, life here in Atlanta carried on as usual. Some of the obvious features of the city were as clear as ever. Young black men in Cadillac Escalade EXT's on 26" rims with pornos playing out of screens in the back of the headrests were still on their nighttime cruises up and down Peachtree Street. White women with their dyed blonde hair and false breasts were still carelessly drinking in Buckhead. Hispanic men were still standing out in the rain on Buford Highway waiting for some suburban Suburban to pick them up for a day's labor. White men in Dockers and golf shirts with corporate logos that stretched over their desk-job bellies continued to keep Atlanta's corporate sector limping along in these troubled times. Black and Hispanic children were still being hit and killed by cars in their neighborhoods with no sidewalks and no traffic lights. BMW X5's and Volvo V70 Cross Country's with the huge numbers emblazoned on the windscreens continued to pick up little white kids from their various private schools. Working class black Atlanta was still on MARTA wearily hustling between their day jobs and their permanent "just to tied me over" second jobs. The SUV's of the perimeter patriots in Gwinnett and Marietta donned American flags and their little black W stickers on their trunks while the Impalas and Cutlasses in South West were aching at the $1.51 a gallon gas. The Salvadorenos were still cutting the grass in Vinnings' sub-divisions in the day while white women with Abercrombie and Fitch caps, pony tails and diamond-laden ring fingers walked their Chocolate Labs, Molly and Maggie. The leading story on the local news was about a shooting in a black neighborhood and the reporter was interviewing a disheveled inarticulate adolescent who was trying painfully to describe what happened. Indeed, everything was normal in Atlanta when the inconceivable happened - a second air drop of pamphlets.

The second air-dump of pamphlets hit right in metro Atlanta. It was a phenomenal experience. The city was littered with hundreds of thousands of red 5x5 cards. This time the message was far more ominous. The cards had a single bullet which read:

· The army has already been formed. It is among you and poised to strike.

With the CNN building itself awash with the fliers the news frenzy was indescribable. President Clough sent out a message to the entire Georgia Tech family. His message was classic Clough in its concern and compassion. It could not betray though, his sense of fear that we all shared. In his closing lines he said, "if the United States faces a domestic challenge, it is my prayer that members of the Tech family will remain steadfast in their dedication to freedom." It sounded as if he were saying, "if the bullets start flying, its each man for himself and God for us all." The folks at CNN were visibly afraid now. Paula Zahn and Jack Caferghty no longer made their glib morning jokes. They began to ask the questions of each other that their embedded reporters had been asking Iraqis for weeks, "So Jack, give us a sense of how you and your family are feeling with the threat of the Arab League hanging over our heads?" As Jack responded, "I'll tell ya what Paula, we're afraid;" it finally became clear to them both how foolish a question it was despite the thousands of times they asked it to Iraqis.

By now the threat was sufficiently real that even the news of the Red, White and Blue began to pay attention to the Arab Leaders that had been making their case for months. CNN and Fox News reported that the message now was that United States' aggression had continued therefore the moment had arrived. In mockery of our President, the Arab leaders said that the instant of delivery of justice would be of their choosing. Panic really began to set in when the President addressed the nation and reinstated the draft and Vice President Chaney disappeared again. The U.S. military was caught with its wings spread far afield. There were nearly 300,000 troops in and around Iraq. Although it had not yet been publicly acknowledged there were two other massive build ups of troops around Syria and Iran. Although the President did not say so directly, it seemed that the United States for the first time was ill-equipped to defend itself. Democratic Congressman Charlie Rangle from New York came out saying that he hoped all the boisterous backers of Bush would be equally anxious to register for the draft. While he was saying that, the Governor of Texas suggested that prisoners could be used to fight under strict military supervision. The suggestion brought forth a storm of criticism and cries of racism. People quoted the statistics that 12% of all black men between 24 and 35 were in prison compared to 1.6% of white men of similar age. They said too that it was projected that roughly 28% of all living black men currently in the United States will at some point in their lives see the inside of a jail. The critics said that America was far to willing to lock up black and Hispanic men and let them out to do dangerous work but remained opposed to rehabilitating them.

The Arab Leaders struck upon that national discord as well. They dissected the popular war stance, that support for the troops mandates support for the war. They suggested that Americans are so deeply self-interested that we were goaded into uncritical support of the war, in part due to our concern for the troops. The news broadcast countless scenes of battalions shipping out and the tearful good-byes. They leaders suggested that indeed soldiers are people, however, their mandate is to follow orders. Taken to its logical end, soldiers are simply weapons, they are theoretically incapable of making their own decisions and certainly have no say in the destination, duration or purpose of their deployment. The "support our troops and therefore the war" mantra, they claimed was simple and characteristic of American simplicity. They brought to light the conundrum raised by the Texas Governor. The largely black and Hispanic prisoners that he was volunteering for the draft would then become troops. If that were allowed to happen, then overnight, Americans would be forced to support a population that they have made a practice of forgetting. The Arab Leaders said that the U.S. is in no position to judge the social conditions of rest of the world.

Then one night it began. As Americans were settling in to watch Fear Factor's D-cup white women in spaghetti strapped tank tops eat slugs and drink cow bile for $50,000, the punishment began. Soldiers of the Arab League marched on various cities in the United States. From the sketchy bits of news it appeared as if the army had been amassing in the U.S. for years and years and there were hundreds of thousands of soldiers already here. The call to arms was immediate, particularly here in the South. The suburban patriots showed that indeed they were patriots of mettle. They called on everyone with arms to draw them in protection of our way of life and our homes and families. When it became clear the Punishing Forces were going through county by county assaulting and killing people they thought were in support of the United States aggression, pandemonium ensued. The Punishing Forces were going door to door. They would surround a home, storm it and then interrogate the occupants. Of course their interrogations were terrible experiences. The soldiers did not speak English well, if at all, and they entered homes screaming and pointing their guns and people's families, in their kitchens and dens. After a moment or two of terror, they drew their own conclusions about the leanings of the people and would take away those that they thought were supporters of the aggression. If people fought back or resisted they would be beaten into submission or simply shot.

As news of the practices spread, the local instructions to only allow uniformed United States National Guardsmen or soldiers engage the enemy seemed ridiculous. Why should we wait for the soldiers if our families and livelihood were under immediate threat. The Punishing Forces declared that they wanted information on people who were war supporters. Although the divisions in the country were deep concerning our involvement in the war, no-one was willing to speak to these invading soldiers. In instance after instance people began devising methods of killing them. American citizens resorted to the ultimate practices of self-defense. Individual people would approach the soldiers under the guise of corporation and then try to shoot as many of them as possible. This invariably led to their own death. This became common as the punishment became more and more gruesome. Americans generally began to wholly embrace the stance of slain Muslim leader Malcolm X, we will defend our claim to our position on this earth and in this society, "by any means necessary." A self-proclaimed patriot drove a truck, under heavy fire, into a Punishing Force enclave and blew himself up and killed nearly two hundred of the invading soldiers. Every man woman and child was involved in the resistance to these marauding forces.

These horrific conditions continued for weeks. The Arab Leaders were claimed to have said that civilians engaged in fighting their forces would be viewed as unlawful combatants and would be treated accordingly. With the blood flowing in our streets and the death and terror tolls rising it was clear that it was unlawful not to fight. It appeared in that moment in our nation's experience if you did not fight, you were committing the highest form of treason. Everyone brought to bare every piece of courage they could muster if not to fight, to merely survive. All forms of guile and deceit were employed in resistance. It seemed a logical human response. When finally the news media were able to broadcast, the very voices of war, the hawks as it were, all agreed that we use every bullet and stone in defense of our great nation. Those citizens that blew themselves up and got themselves killed in the name of the United States were recognized as national heroes. President Bush said, "we're gonna fight like we did at the beloved Alamo, but this time we're gonna win."

The siege did not last very long, the full weight of American forces returned in haste to defend the American homeland. As the punishment began to subside with the arrival of American forces returning from abroad, the terror, devastation and palpable fear was overwhelming. With the return of our military forces, the Punishing Forces were devastated. Those battles were long, ugly and gruesome, however, in the end it was the United States men and women who were left standing. There were dead of all sorts in the streets. Access to news and communication was spotty at best; not entirely because communication had been damaged but because survival had been foremost in people's minds. Our behavior quickly had returned to its most visceral level. When cornered in our own homes and cities we fought desperately with everything that we could. All levels of human emotion were threadbare; from cowardice to bravado. Nerves were frayed and suspicions, blame and accusation were rampant; however our flag was still there.

kamau

If I Were Arab

2007-05-18T11:28:00.000-05:00

When the students at Virginia Tech were killed recently, the entire American nation paused to reflect and to mourn. The nation, as a set of individuals, took a moment to consider the grief of their families and the terror each student must have felt when they stared at Seung-Hui Cho just as he shot them. Premature death of young people is a universal point of human sorrow. The outpouring of grief for these students; however, was particularly intense because they are Americans. It was a shared nationality and sense of connection that intensified our instinctive human reaction to grieve. It hurt more and we grieved harder because they were Americans.

If I were Arab today I would be unconscious with grief. If the Arab world had a collective spirit-voice to speak to the heavens, it would be screaming in agony. The number of individual voices of family members and friends everyday yelling in pain at the death of a loved one might be too much to bear. If I were Arab, the news clip images of an Arab woman running and screaming with the dead body of her child in her arms would make me consider my own mother running with my dead body in her arms. That kind of pain is unconscionable. If I were from Lebanon, for instance, not only would I see the image of the woman, but I might recognize the backdrop as a familiar neighborhood – somewhere I played or went to school. If I were Palestinian I might have a grandfather would could tell me with tears in his eyes about life before 1948 and his inability to reorient himself to the current state of occupation, dehumanization and carnage. If I were Iraqi, my emotional capacity would simply be spent.

My personal anguish would be compounded by the overwhelming sense of injustice and the staggering imbalance of power. The ability of the United States and Israel to not only dictate the terms of my subjugation, but characterize my desire to be free as rooted in hatred would burn my intellect and my sensibility as a human being. Their demands that my world submit to the terms of their existence runs counter to the very spirit of freedom and justice that they proclaim to be defending. The combination of resistance, violence and terrorism that is now rampant in the Arab world is evidence that those terms are not acceptable and they never have been. You cannot beat a people and demand that they not fight back in order to peacefully negotiate an end to the beating. That is not how justice works. The power imbalance between the Arab world and the west; however, is such that these are the terms. They are obviously unacceptable and therefore the personal pain and the humiliation of injustice are compounded by a growing sense of hopelessness.

If I really were Arab, I might know more about instinct and the long cycles of history. I might be better able to understand the instinct towards hope embedded in me as a result of being part of a people whose civilization dates back several millennia. With that understanding, a 60 or 80 year convulsion of pain may be tempered by the length and breadth of my identity. Maybe.

kamau

Colored People's Time

2007-05-14T11:04:00.000-05:00

CPT is an old acronym. It is probably getting to be a little outdated. There is a growing class of black people who are absorbed in the corporate, financial and consultant worlds who don the uniform of that world – golf shirts, Dockers, BMWs and Blueteeth, ample senses of their own importance, Fossil watches and a commendable respect for time. That’s righteous, but culture is what it is. I recently attended a forum on diversity where the expert on culture was explaining the various cultural relationships with time. According to him, in general terms white cultures or western cultures are far more concerned about punctuality than are brown cultures or southern cultures. One of the reasons he gave was that brown cultures place a higher value on social consensus than white cultures do – unilateral action probably doesn’t have its origins in brown people’s lexicons. I loosely interpreted that to mean that white people like to go off and play by themselves, while we like to play in groups. There is nothing novel in any of this or inherently good or bad. It just corroborates the special relationship between colored people and time.

I visited Ghana some time ago and took a ferry on Lake Volta to see the Akosambo Dam. Ironically, the rivers that flow into Lake Volta are the White Volta and the Black Volta. It is up for debate which water shows up for work at the dam on time. The ferry had a schedule posted which said that it would leave at time t = such and such. Time t came leisurely strolling up the clock and continued to stroll right back down. The boat, nearly capsizing under the weight of what seemed like a whole community of people, didn’t move. After waiting for nearly an hour, the captain of the boat ran out from a group of guys politicking on the dock. He was laughing and yelling his last joke to them as he unhitched the boat and got us going.

After we had been underway for about 10 minutes, a smaller speed boat came blazing to catch the ferry. There were three or four women in the boat, each of whom had those enormous crocus sacks that only women from brown parts of the world would carry. I think those bags are correlated with culture too. You only see them with women at check-in counters on flights to South America, the Caribbean or Africa. And the women are always of – shall we say – substance; a different version of woman than Blonde Becky of Abercrombie and Fitch. You really have to have a deep sense of community to even think of carrying a bag that big. Anyhow, the speed boat drove right up alongside the ferry – which, if it slowed down I didn’t notice. Two guys from the speed boat heaved each of the sacks to two other guys on the ferry. Then with the help of a pair of strong arms on both sides, each of the women proceeded to step across from the speed boat to the ferry. It was incredible. Water was splashing up between the two boats and the speed boat was rocking wildly under the shifting weight of the substantive women and the choppy water. While the last woman was still bringing her second foot onto the ferry, the speed boat swerved and turned back.

I asked a fella next to me what the story was. He said that the ferry runs late because they don’t want to leave people who are late. The speed boat picks up people who are late for the late ferry and carries them out to meet it. I joked that the whole system is based on being late. He laughed and said, “Ah!! My American broda, in Africa people are more important than time.”

kamau

Mentorship, Humility and Ego

2007-05-08T09:38:00.000-05:00

There are innumerable studies focusing on the afflictions of black men in the United States. Many of these studies focus on the lack of mentorship for young black boys. A popular argument in the education community is that the shortage of black male teachers is a contributing factor to the poor academic performance of black boys. A similar argument is put forward to explain the demise of the black fatherhood. The argument goes that black boys grow up without the example of responsible fathers and husbands. These arguments suggest that there is a special element of personal connection that is only attainable between black men and boys. I would not challenge the merit of those arguments. Open for challenge is the willingness of black men with gifts and talents to offer themselves as mentors.

Mentorship is a universally understood concept. Socrates was a mentor to Plato. Jesus was a mentor to John. Malcolm X was a mentor to Muhammad Ali. It is the time honored process of imparting wisdom and guidance by example and instruction from one generation to the next. One of the necessary characteristics of an effective mentor is humility. The mentor must have the ability to recognize and be comfortable with the fact that the mentee’s light may ultimately shine more brightly than his own, indeed that is the point. Progress hinges on the outcome that the mentee improve on the achievements, understandings and accomplishments of the mentor. Such is the progress of knowledge and such is the progress of men.

In the context of black men, the conditions are so dire that mentorship is often targeted to the least experienced among us. Successful black men are enlisted to serve as examples to young black boys in hopes that they will consider college as an option. The hope is that the boy will see possibilities for himself in the towering figure presented to him. I argue that this component of the mentorship game is the most popular because it is the easiest. Often the separation between the mentor and the mentee is so vast that there is little challenge involved for the mentor. Indeed the mentor is not a mentor, but an example – a one time, feel good, ego feeding display of what is possible. Further, the expectations are often that the boys just be decent. This is a consequence of the dire circumstances. The conditions are so bad that often all that is hoped for young black men is that they not grow up to be local terrorists and biological fathers to functionally fatherless children. These are important, but painfully low expectations that make it easy to be a mentor. The mentor can feel good and feed his ego by simply presenting himself as a visible example to the mentee and discussing the benefits of having his life. There is little challenge in that.

On the other side of the accomplishment divide among black men there is an entirely different level of mentorship that is necessary. At this level, an effective mentor is required to give more substantively of himself. Young black men with Ph.D.’s and other professional degrees have already reached academic heights. Mentors – older black men – are needed to help them navigate through a world of dollars and smartness to a place of integrity and contribution. Simple presentation of themselves is no longer sufficient. At this level the difficult features of mentorship become more clear. The mentor is forced to evaluate himself and reconcile the balance sheet between his success and his contributions. He must ask if he is willing to have the young mentee stand on his shoulders to achieve greater height. That is a different proposition than presenting himself as a polished example to a rough child.

The willingness to have a young star stand on your shoulders is rooted in humility. In that circumstance the mentor is not visible. Photographs are never taken of the foundation of a building. It is the spire that appears in magazines. This brand of mentorship is a bit more difficult to come by. While our community continues to raise the alarm about the crisis of black men, the state of high level mentorship is often overlooked. Is there a quiet network of old sages nurturing the next generation of stars such that when the time comes they are ready to receive the baton? Or has ego taken mentorship hostage in the battle against humility?

kamau