Slips of the Lips

Often what we say and the words we use reveal a lot about who we are as people. We are a language oriented species. We have a strong desire to communicate. So what was Harry Reid trying to communicate when made his statements about Barak Obama?

Reid was outed recently in the news media by the release of the political trails gossip manifesto, Game Change, written by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. He used what some would consider inflammatory language, or rather an inflammatory word. He used the word “Negro”. This, coupled with the phrase, “light skinned”, definitely opened the doors for some criticism.

The problem with the news media is that statements made are often divorced of their context. Reid, in his own twisted way, was actually trying to pay Barak Obama a compliment. This is the quote from the book:

"He (Reid) was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama - a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' as he later put it privately,"

The GOP and their Right Wing Army of Justice have been calling for Reid’s head. In their view he made a racist statement, yet they have failed to identify what part of the statement they consider racist, or how the whole statement in itself is racist. Everybody knows they don’t give a damn about racism. They saw an opening to bring down someone on the opposing side and went for the jugular.

Somehow for them it is all about Trent Lott. Like I said they could care less about racism or if black people were offended. They and the news media never came to talk to any of us or asked how we felt about it. It just political gamesmanship. Every story I have read about the GOP’s viewpoint always mentions Lott. They are making the most noise and their issue is not if Barak Obama or black people were offended, their issue is their perception of a double standard. Their mindset is, if our guy can’t get away with it, neither can theirs. The “it” being a racist statement. They aren’t concerned with the racist statement, they are concerned with the fact that they can’t get away with making racist statements. Lott didn’t step down because his party was ashamed and embarrassed by what he said, he stepped down because he made his party look bad due to the public reaction.

Well, what did Lott say?

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either,"

Lott said this in December 2002, on Capitol Hill, during a celebration for Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday. It was in reference to Thurmond’s failed 1948 presidential bid, running on a pro segregation platform. What was Lott implying by his statement? Was he trying to pay someone a compliment? Doesn’t seem like it. It seems to me he was saying he was a supporter, and still is a supporter, of legal segregation. It is a statement that is going to get a lot of people fired up. It brings up images of school kids being escorted to school by National Guardsmen. It brings up images of Leave it to Beaver Families holding up signs with some very ugly and hateful language, containing words way worse than “Negro”. It is a period of American history that Americans of today look back with shame and embarrassment, except for people like Trent Lott, who seem to be bitter because of that era’s passing.

When you get down to the bones, who wants to go back to how things were back then? Or maybe more precise, who is willing to publicly admit it? It’s the kind of thing people only say when they are angry and lose the ability to censor themselves, like Michael Richards when he lost it during his live comedy show. Americans have a lot of racial baggage. It is unfortunate because we live in a country with people of many different ethnic backgrounds who have to live together, but some don’t want to live together, some want to be separate. “White flight” replaced segregation when it was legally ended and still continues today. There are a lot of “white flight” people out there, silently supporting people like Trent Lott.

Harry Reid could be one of those people. Barak Obama and the Democrats are giving him a pass, but he doesn’t deserve it. He is not getting a pass from me. What he said does deserve some scrutiny. What he said gives insight to a broad issue that is not discussed very often, something that is overlooked in favor of bellicose reactionary behavior and finger pointing. Anger does not always have to be the reaction to racism, real or perceived. Incidents like this are the perfect opportunity to bring out of the shadows and into the light, something that really shapes people’s racial views, and that is myopia and tunnel vision.

Myopia is something that affects all groups of people in how they see other groups of people and individuals, different from themselves. It is the fallacy of solely focusing on any set of undesirable characteristics that are exhibited by a group or individual and completely ignoring all the rest, even going as far to paint all individuals associated with the group or individual with the undesirable traits. It is one thing to be indoctrinated into a way of thinking about certain groups of people as a child, where for the most part one is just parroting what they experience. At some point as the individual approaches adulthood and claims responsibility of their behavior and thought processes, they can choose to change as they accumulate life experience and learn and adopt progressive philosophies that deal with human thought and behavior.

Most people who do not change, it is because they have given themselves over to the authority of their peer group. It is the peer group that defines and sets the boundaries of thought. Peer groups are the oldest dictators and purveyors of propaganda on the planet. It is the empire and domain of hypocrites. It is not surprising in a world where people of independent thought are often chastised, ostracized, and belittled, while adherence and blind following to the peer group is often rewarded. How often has this been the case in school or in the workplace?

There are two things to look at in Reid’s statement. First is his need to inject “light skinned” into the conversation. For black people this opens up an can of worms that goes back all the way to slavery. Light skinned slaves were often “house negroes” because they were closer to the standard of white, able to live in the house with the Master and serve him directly, literally, making his beds, serving his food, rearing his children, and attending to the Master’s families intimate needs, including sexual duties for the Master himself. The House Negro was treated much better than regular slaves and often identified with the Master, seeing themselves as a part of the family. They might even be taught how to read and write. The dark skinned negro, or the “field negro” was the regular slave who labored hard in the fields and mostly dealt with the Master’s foremans who’s tools of control were the gun, the whip, the branding iron, shackles, and hound dogs. The Field Negro was considered an animal, like a cow or a pig, to be treated and bought and sold as such. Obviously there was friction and animosity between the House Negro and the Field Negro because of the difference of how each were treated. In post slavery, segregated America, light skinned blacks attempted to “pass” themselves off as white to get better jobs and living conditions and to be free of the harsh treatment that was the everyday life for people who obviously identified as black.

W.E.B Dubois and Marcus Garvey were enemies, and much of that was rooted in the fact that Dubois was fair skinned and Garvey was as black as coal. Jesse Jackson didn’t call Barak Obama a House Negro, but saying he wanted “cut his nuts off” arose from that bitter soil. It may be something we do not want to talk about but it is something we all know about, even Al Qaeda second in command Ayman al Zawahiri, who called Obama a House Negro when he won the election. Michelle Obama has had to endure many crude comments about her looks and personality because she is not light skinned. If she looked more like Halle Barry, Thandie Newton, or Zoe Saldana, she would have all of America eating out her hands and she would be the most adored woman on the planet. Many of the first successful African Americans were light skinned because they were more acceptable to the white standard. This is directly what Reid was referencing when he chose to focus on skin color in his assessment of Barak Obama, positive or not.

The second thing to look at in Reid’s statement is “negro dialect”. WTF is a negro dialect? Can somebody please tell me because I’ve been black my whole life and I do not know what a negro dialect is. I am aware that black people from New Orleans speak differently than black people from New York, who speak differently from black people in Chicago, who speak differently from black people in Los Angeles, but none of those ways of speaking is a negro dialect. Those are regional differences, just as it is with when comparing the speech of a white person from West Virginia to a white person from Massachusetts. So what the heck is Reid talking about? Ebonics? I think the man is suffering from a myopic view of black people. Can someone please tell Harry Reid that is is 2010 and he needs to get an update. If he is still using the word “negro”, it indicates his views about black people may be stuck in the past. He may not be as far from Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond as many people are trying to portray him.

So continues the saga of President Barak Obama, the first black man to hold the top office in the allegedly most powerful, and perhaps racially sensitive country in the world. We have made much progress in our views on race, but I think much of is more like the child who cleans up their room by throwing all the dirty stuff in the closet. Every so often something causes that door to open, even slightly, and the crap just spills out on to the floor in a heaping mess.

The Princess and the President

It’s 2009 and we have a half black President sitting in the White House and Disney has released it’s first African American themed animated feature. In the minds of many these two events represent significant watermarks for the progress of black people in America. I beg to differ. I haven’t sat down with other black people to discuss this nor have I gone into any black community to gauge their collective feelings and opinions about these matters. This is strictly my own viewpoint, my own opinion, as one black person in America.

I vividly remember election night, November 4, 2008. I happily purchased two bottles of champagne to celebrate the soon-to-be President Obama’s victory. Unlike many people I knew he was going to be victorious. I wasn’t worried or nervous. I was 100 percent certain that Obama would win. When John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate, in my eyes it sealed the presidential victory for Barack Obama. Up to then I was concerned the GOP would pull off another masterful cheating scheme to win the presidency as they had done in 2000 (Florida) and 2004 (Diebold voting machines). When the GOP allowed McCain to select Palin it was a true sign of their desperation. It’s not like they had a lot of great choices. Their new up and comers like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee couldn’t beat out retread McCain. Giuliani couldn’t hog enough of the 9/11 spotlight from George Bush to cash in on the patriotic/fear vote. Ron Paul was an outsider who really never had a chance. Fred Thompson, I don’t know what he was thinking. He wasn’t a leading man on fictional tv shows so why would anyone buy him as a leading man in the real world?

I had barely gotten home from work and uncorked the bubbly when the networks were already declaring Obama the winner. I remember turning to my girlfriend Denise and saying, “Do you know what this means? Now when we tell little black kids they can grow up to be President it will actually mean something.” In the next 10 minutes every network’s token African American analyst said the same thing, except for the FOX Network which had no prominent or token African American analyst. All they had was that deer-in-the-headlights look on their face as they mumbled in disbelief over the election results. Two bottles of champagne, $35. The look on the Fox Network newscasters after the election, priceless.

All over the world people were celebrating Obama’s victory. They were saying, “Look what America did”. The French news was querying why had they not produced an Obama ( I guess the French see themselves as the THE nation of western progress). In the eyes of the world America had redeemed itself, at least somewhat, for eight years of the Bush administration and what it wrought on the planet. Around the world Obama’s victory was not seen as a victory or validation for black people, it was a validation for the country as a whole. It was not an indicator of black progress, it was an indicator of American progress. That’s kind of how I saw it too. We didn’t put him into office. Yes, we voted for him but there aren’t enough black votes to put him into office. If you look at the voting record of black people over the last two elections we voted in almost the same numbers for Obama as we did for Gore and Kerry. The next day, sobered up from the champagne, I knew that the world would still be the same for everyday African Americans. I knew that the problems that plague our communities would still be there. I knew that just because we had a black President it wouldn’t mean that black issues would get top shelf treatment. A government for and by the people had changed over decades by war and globalization, into a government for and by the wealthy and powerful, who’s main instrument of control was the corporate structure, debt, and taxation. I didn’t see Obama as one who’s Presidency would be about radically altering that shift or changing that system. Presidents change but the corporate lobbyists remain. It’s a revolving door for elected and appointed officials to go from public service to private lobbying or to sitting on boards of large corporations, using their influence to dictate legislation that helps the rich get richer and stay richer. When the economy collapsed where did the all the bail out money go? Who was given all those hundreds of billions of dollars? It wasn’t the average, everyday, working American.

If anything the election of Barack Obama has ratcheted up the intensity of the hateful race rhetoric that has always been part of post Civil War America. The mindset of many Americans is since we now have a black President there is no excuse for black people not to be doing as well as other groups. It was like the election was supposed to make all of our problems and the history and legacy of racism, segregation, and institutional violence, disappear overnight. Don’t get me wrong. I was very happy that Obama was elected because I have a history of voting for people who don’t win (Nader, Camejo) and to be honest I never thought I would see a black President in my lifetime. I think Obama’s election was a greater nod to the country as a whole than to the black people of America. It proved to me that there are many many tens of millions of Americans who have moved beyond the politics of race and are willing to elect anyone to the office they feel can do the job.

Did Obama’s election have any influence on Disney’s decision to make its very first ever black themed animated movie? Maybe, maybe not. Was it due to years of pressure from organized groups of African Americans? Maybe, maybe not. If there has been a pressure put on Disney by black groups it hasn’t been on my radar. In my opinion, being recognized by Disney is extremely low on the priority list. We don’t need to be validated by the Disney corporation. Disney, like any other corporation, has one primary function and that is to be profitable and reward its stockholders. The only color that concerns them is green. I am completely ok with that. This is America where capitalism trumps all, including democracy, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. I do have a problem with that last part but I do understand and accept that making money is the most important thing happening under the banner of Americanism. Disney’s choice to make a black themed animated film is simply a matter of diversifying its assets and tapping into and widening new markets. Although almost completely absent from the American media, there is a black middle class that exists and its consumer habits are no different than any other middle class. I'm sure Disney is counting on this movie to have audience appeal beyond the black middle class. They are counting on it to appeal to the majority of the middle class, because ultimately, that's where the big bucks are.

Like any other kid I grew up watching and enjoying Disney movies but I never drank the Disney kool aid. I never was one to pine for Disney trinkets and memorabilia. Growing up in LA I loved going to Disneyland. One of my earliest traumatic memories was going into the mouth of the whale on the Storybook Land canal ride. I can still vividly remember the frightening whale eyes, the humungous whale teeth, and the big thing that hangs at the back of the throat that I do not know the name of. I literally thought I was about to become whale food and it scared the bejeezus out of me. It was scary but it also was thrilling and I liked thrills. On my 8th grade graduation field trip we went to Disneyland and it was one of the most exciting days of my entire life. Space Mountain had just opened and there were no crowds on a beautiful May day in Southern California. Me and my classmate must have rode Space Mountain about 10 times. We would get off the ride all hyped up and get right back on to ride it again as there were literally no lines. Up to then it was probably the most thrilling thing I had ever experienced. I was also a huge fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates was less about thrills and more about atmosphere. It was the kind of environment that transported me to another world and another time. It was a fantasy come to life. That’s what Disney meant to me. It was all about the “E” ticket rides of thrills and adventure.

The movies on the other hand, especially their animated features, I didn’t think much of. Even as a kid I knew they were tame and sanitized. Because I do animation for a living I do respect Disney for what they have done. They practically invented the genre and works like Fantasia and Snow White are true masterpieces from a technical standpoint, but I was never drawn to them by the stories being told. When I think back to my childhood and what animated features really stuck with me, none of them are from Disney. Watership Down, Fantastic Planet, Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings, and The Yellow Submarine were the animated films that captured my imagination. There is only one Disney movie that ranks among my all time favorites and that is Dragonslayer which came out in 1981 and is a movie that breaks the Disney mold as it has much violence and a princess that actually meets a dire fate and literally becomes a meal for some not so cute baby dragons.

Watching these movies as a kid I was not at all concerned with skin color. I didn’t expect to see black people in Disney movies, it was just something that was understood about movies and television in general. To me movies and television seemed segregated. Whenever I saw black people on screen it was usually in what are now called, “blaxploitation” movies. On tv it was shows about living in the ghetto, shows like Sanford and Son, Good Times, and The Jeffersons. I watched them anyway because black people were in them. Something was better than nothing. As I became older and more knowledgeable about media I began to notice that when black people were in mainstream productions they were always playing the role of a low class person, like a drug dealer, pimp, or criminal. When a black person appeared in a film and they weren’t playing a stereotype it was very noticeable. In the movie Bullitt, George Stanford Brown played the role of the lead doctor. In Planet of the Apes, Jeff Burton played the role of one of two astronauts accompanying Charlton Heston. In the Omega Man, Rosalind Cash plays the role of Charlton Heston’s love interest and featured the first interracial romance I ever saw in a movie. The Outer Limits, a very progressive early 60’s sci fi tv show, featured a few black actors in the role of scientist or astronaut, and of course there was the original Star Trek series featuring Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura. These characters stood out to me more than the gangsters, pimps, and drug dealers. I would actually wonder to myself how the actors obtained the roles. There is always the exception to the rule and of course that was Sidney Poitier. He was the only black actor who consistently played a wide range of characters that weren’t supporting the stereoptypes. It was almost shocking to see him paired up with Bill Cosby in the urban ghetto comedies, Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do It Again, that were produced in the mid 70‘s. I love both of those films, first and foremost because they were hysterically funny and secondly because of the presence of Poitier and Cosby which allowed the films to rise above the stereotypes.

So now we have The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s first black themed animated movie starring a black princess. There’s been a lot of hype over the film because of this. Really, what is the big deal? Is a black princess supposed to be meaningful to black people? If I remember correctly this country was created as a result of rebelling against a monarchy. In the Thomas Paine version of the Declaration of Independence(which Jefferson used as the foundation for the actual DI) one of the main reason for declaring independence was because of the African slave trade business that had been imposed by the monarch of England, King George. Many of the first Europeans that came from England to the Americas were indentured servants. You would think that Americans would have no interest in royalty, yet we do. How do you explain the American fascination with Princess Di? As a nation we are fascinated and thrilled by royalty and royal blood. Having a black princess does nothing for black people in America. If a black princess is supposed to be a boost to black self esteem then we are in serious trouble. You can’t grow up to be a princess in this country. You can grow up to be the President, an astronaut, or a doctor, but you can’t be a princess no matter what you are told. A black princess in a Disney movie serves Disney more than anything else. They get to take a crack at expanding the market for their movies into the black community and I think it is working. I’ve seen many parents with little boys and girls saying, “finally”, but really you think the kids are going to care? Is one black princess in a Disney movie going to have a profound, life changing effect? I think it’s the parents who are being affected more than the kids. They have probably struggled with trying to find positive black images in mainstream culture to bestow on their children and will seize upon anything halfway suitable in our highly visible, heavily saturated, 24-hours-a-day, digital, pop culture (even babies have i-phone apps now).

That’s what I am at issue with. We shouldn’t need to turn to the media for positive role models. Black people have been succeeding in America since the earliest days of its formation. We have a great legacy in this country of black achievers and it would be great to shine the spotlight on that. They aren’t going to see these people on movie screens and they won’t learn about them in school. We have been succeeding in this country long before Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. I love the reality of Sojourner Truth, an ex slave that went to live among the Dutch and learned their language and became a powerful spokesperson for women and black people. Even more intriguing is the story of John Horse, a man who escaped slavery and went to live among the Seminole tribe and became one of their most important leaders. He organized ex slaves and Seminoles to fight against the U.S. Army using guerilla warfare tactics. He is the only enemy combatant to fight on U.S soil and earn a peace treaty with the U.S. government. They could not beat him. How about Marcus Garvey? He began the pan African movement in the United States and was one of the very first black entrepreneurs. He was born in Jamaica but came to the United States to organize black people all over the world under one movement to advance African people. He started several successful businesses in pre World War II America. The first successful open heart surgery was performed by Dr. Dan Hale Williams, a black doctor, in 1893. In 1909, African American Matthew Henson along with Robert Peary discovered the North Pole. Today we have famous rappers and entertainers like P. Diddy and Kanye West but long after they are gone and forgotten people will still be influenced by the works of Langston Hughes. Barack Obama was only the fifth ever black Senator and only the second in the last 20 years. The first three black U.S. senators made it to that level in the Nineteenth century. Usain Bolt is the fastest man possibly ever but before him there was Jesse Owens smashing the myth of Aryan supremacy by winning four gold medals in the 1936 in Germany, humbling Hitler and severely undermining his philosophy of white supremacy.

Africans have proven they can succeed in America long before Barack Obama and we don’t need validation from the Disney corporation. I’m not saying that the Princess and the Frog is a bad movie, on the contrary, I have heard it is a very entertaining film, but it isn’t a significant indicator of anything happening with black people in America. If anything it’s time we took control of telling our own stories. It is time to start teaching our kids the legacy of black success. Much of what I have learned about black heritage I have learned through my own research. There is more to our history than Martin Luther King and slavery and we shouldn’t have to wait until Black History Month to learn about black history. In this new age of information everyday is an opportunity.

Accidental Careerist Part 2

...continued

When last we met I was unfolding most of my early childhood and adolescence trying to lay the groundwork on how I came to choose a career in my adulthood. Let’s get right to it shall we.

In my quest to show the world I had a brain I decided I wanted to go to college, not on a sports scholarship but on the strength of my academic record. I was recruited to play basketball by all the local junior colleges and a few small colleges. Interesting enough one of the schools that showed the most interest was Occidental College in Los Angeles. Had I gone there I would have just missed our current President Oback Barama by one semester. Had I gone to the school when he was there we would have surely become friends since there were very few blacks at Oxy and he was a basketball fanatic. According to the book From Promise to Power by David Mendell, when Oback was at Oxy he was in search of his black identity and made an extra effort to become friends with the entire black student body (not that there where a whole lot of them). Well that will be left to a life in an alternate universe. I almost ended up going to Lewis and Clark University in Portland. The small school approach was not one of selling me an NBA dream, it was about connections. I could attend one of these small, prestigious schools and meet lots of people who could be beneficial to my future in terms of business and career.

The truth of the matter is I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself after high school. Career counseling at St. Francis was a joke. It wasn’t all that important because most of the students career counseling came from their parents and it was all about following in the footsteps. When it came to college my parents really couldn’t help me. Having both grown up in the segregated south they never attended college. My father wanted me to play basketball at a local JC and get a scholarship to a major Division 1 school. I had an older brother who was in college but it he wasn’t in a position to help. College for him was an escape and that’s what he did. He started out local but eventually landed at LSU where he joined the Omega Phi Psi fraternity. He’s Omega branded and still bleeds purple and gold to this day. Despite going to a college prep school I was completely clueless about college. I applied to Arizona State, Marquette, USC, and UCLA. How I chose the schools is a mystery to me even to this day. I really only wanted to go to UCLA. A lot of my friends were applying there and the UC system had a good reputation and it seemed affordable compared to the private schools. USC was out of the question. The cost was something I could not relate to since I knew I would be paying my own way to go to college. I ended up being accepted at all the schools and of course I chose UCLA.

My freshman and only year at UCLA was a success in many ways but a disaster academically. I declared Art as my major having no idea what the Art Dept at UCLA was like. The campus and classes were massive. I had classes in auditoriums that had more people in them than the entire student body at St. Francis. I lived in an off campus apartment, this being my first time living away from home. One of my rooommates played the electric guitar as a hobby. He had a Fender Stratocaster and he taught me about Les Paul, guitars, and the great and soon to be great guitar players like Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, Michael Schenker, Yngwie Malmsteen, Angus Young, and Joe Satriani. Up to then I only knew Jimi Hendrix because everybody knows Jimi, Andy Summers because the Police was my favorite band and Eddie Van Halen because he was from Pasadena. I worked a part time job as an intramural referee and came to really dislike fraternities but I ended up becoming good friends with some frat guys from a fraternity called Acacia. They were outsiders in the fraternity system lacking greek letters and a frathouse. The fraternity was christian based and the guys were what was considered “geeks” and that’s what I liked about them. I never joined the frat but they treated my like one of their own.

Half way through my freshman year I started getting recruiting calls from Redlands University. Because of my sub par academic performance I knew I wasn’t going back to UCLA. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with myself so I agreed to attend the University of Redlands and reboot my basketball career. My father still wanted me to attend a JC and get a scholarship. One week before I was to begin classes at Redlands I gave in to my father’s wishes and enrolled at Pasadena City College to play basketball. I played basketball for PCC. We made it to the state finals and lost to Merced in triple overtime. We had a great year but my heart wasn’t in it so that summer in 1983 I quit the team and basically wandered the streets for the whole summer. It was the lowest point of my life. I lost touch with my friends and was struggling with thoughts of suicide. I just didn’t feel like my life had any meaning. Music saved my life. It was the heyday of KROQ and I would spend hours alone listening to music by U2, Talking Heads, English Beat, XTC, Echo and the Bunnymen, Style Council, OMD, New Order, The Specials, and many other mostly British bands. In America I couldn’t relate but I could to these bands from Thatcher’s England. What I was feeling was in their music. I knew I wasn’t alone out there. There were a lot of people across the pond feeling just like me.

My younger brother Kenny was working for the YMCA as a day camp counselor and he invited me to attend their end of the summer staff party. At first I was hesitant. My impression of the YMCA was the people who worked there were a bunch of square Christians who didn’t party. Kenny didn’t party much but he did seem to enjoy his job quite a bit. I wasn’t hanging out with my friends because I was depressing to be around so I decided to go out of sheer boredom. I was totally wrong about this YMCA staff. When I arrived at the party the music was blasting and people were having a great time dancing and playing drinking games. In the backroom there was a group of people smoking joints and taking bong hits. This is where I met my brother’s boss, a red haired woman with freckles named CJ. We hit it off right away. I ended up having a real good time at the party and ran into a guy name Craig Catimon who had played Pop Warner football with my older brother Keith. Craig and I later would become best friends and partners in crime. For the first time in a while I felt good hanging out with people. I liked this group of people. It wasn’t college and it wasn’t sports, it was just regular people. The next week I received a call from CJ. She asked me I was interested in being a group leader for the After School Program at the YMCA. She thought I had the right kind of personality to work with kids. I decided to take the job. I was enrolled in classes at Pasadena City College and thought it would be the perfect part time job to have while I was going to school.

My only experience working with kids had been babysitting which I had done extensively since the age of 12. I was a natural working with the kids at the YMCA. I absolutely loved it. It was challenging and fun and I threw everything I had into the job. I looked forward to coming to work everyday. It was just a part time job so I was just enjoying it for what it was. I wasn’t making plans on doing it for more than one school year but summer came around and I applied for a job as a day camp counselor. That was even more fun because we had the kids all day and we went on adventures to the local parks, to the beaches, and hiking in the local mountains. The following school year CJ asked me if I wanted to be a Site Director in charge of one of the school sites. There were others who had been there much longer than I had but she felt I would be good at running things and providing leadership for the staff. I was a successful Site Director which was almost a full time job. I ended up having all kinds of jobs within the YMCA which was one of the things I liked about it as an organization. I held a ridiculous number of jobs in my 11 years at the Y:

After School Counselor

After School Van Driver

After School Site Director

After School Program Director

Day Camp Counselor

Day Camp Site Director

Day Camp Director

Youth Sports Referee

Youth Soccer Coach

Youth Basketball Coach

Resident Camp Maintenance Engineer (janitor/trash burner)

Resident Camp Cabin Leader

Resident Camp Ropes Course Instructor

Resident Camp Assistant Director

Resident Camp Branch Director

Summer Youth Employment Coordinator

Youth Director

Program Director

Senior Program Director

By the time I reached Senior Program Director I had seen it all when it comes to the YMCA. I could probably write a book about my experience. The YMCA is really big on training. They have a national training program that covers everything from life guarding at pools to raising millions of dollars for capital campaigns. Because the trainings were national I got to meet people from all over, from Boise to St. Paul to Orlando to Denver to New York. The best part about the whole thing was meeting all the kids. I met and got to know thousands of kids from preschoolers to high schoolers. I saw kids grow from fresh faced five year olds to take-themselves-way-to-serious teenagers. I was fortunate as I had the privilege to teach these kids about life as an authority figure and a trusted friend, it is a unique position to have in the life of a child. I did so many outrageously fun things with kids sometimes it was hard to even call it a job.

Working with kids put me in direct contact with the people who are the real heart and soul of this country and that is working parents. When you work with parents a partnership is born. You get a certain amount of respect from people who know you value their child’s welfare just as much as they do. You get to see parents at their worst (right after a really bad day at work) and at their best (showing up with big smiles and the their child for Pot Lucks, Talent Shows, and Haunted Houses). It was a good balance for my own personal life which leaned more toward the hedonistic and bohemian.

For about the first 6 years I didn’t consider the YMCA a career but by the time I made Program Director I decided it was what I wanted to do. I went to management trainings and certification trainings to mold myself from clock-punching-jack-of-all-trades to salaried, pensioned, credentialed professional. I went from small suburban branch to large metropolitan association. By the time I reached Senior Director I was just one step away from Executive Branch Director, it was the next and perhaps final stop on this particular trajectory. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be an Executive Director. It was far removed from working directly with program staff and parents. It was a suit and tie job that required attending lots of Rotary Club type lunches and securing large donations and grants from local businesses and corporations. I was a guy who rode a bicycle and a sported a mohawk. I just wasn’t there yet. More than that I had plenty of years to watch all the politics involved at the management level. The Y is a large non-profit but its bureaucracy is just like any other. As an organization the YMCA became more and more focused on the health club business. All the new branches were primarily health clubs with state of the art equipment and facilities. The primary business was no longer serving the community, the business became selling memberships and selling memberships was driven by marketing. That’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to build facilities and start programs that would serve the community, primarily youth and their working parents. If that was your agenda you didn’t have much say and you were on the lower end of the pay scale. Executive Directors at branches with large health and fitness memberships made a pretty good salary and had tons of perks like housing and vehicle allowances while small community based Executives struggled to balance budgets and get funding for their programs putting in more hours for less pay.

I started to become disillusioned with my foreseeable future with the YMCA. It would have been a secure future. I had a good reputation and knew lots of directors around the country. I could work anywhere in the country, even abroad as the YMCA is an international organization. But I wasn’t feeling it. I was just 30 years old and still had young man’s view of the world. In my mind there was still some romantic adventure out there for me. I wasn’t ready for the life of a non profit administrator. I still had a touch of the wild in me. I felt I was still firmly planted in the field of anti-establishment. Becoming an Executive Director would have been like killing off a vital part of myself.

I wasn’t exactly sure where I could go from the YMCA. I had ideas about opening a school/camp using progressive methods like experiential learning. I was starting to warm up to that idea when my life took another unsuspected 90 degree turn. Out of the blue, or rather out of the low lights and hip hop beat of a San Francisco jazz club, I found a new career, or it found me, I’m still not sure how to call it. I’ll save that thought for the next blog, part three. Once again thanks for tuning in. Same bat time, same bat channel.

To be continued…

One Drop

How does one define black? Have you ever asked yourself that question? I certainly have. Whatever the answer is, it’s not one of those that comes rolling off the tongue effortlessly. When I proposed this question to myself I couldn’t come up with an answer that was satisfactory. What makes me black? I had to do some research. What did science have to say? Not much actually. You can’t tell from DNA. Anthropology is where we get our ideas about race but modern anthropologists will be the first to tell you what they call race is not based on science. Race is a social term, a social construct not a scientific term. Because it is a social term it can be wielded in many ways to satisfy many purposes from the benign to the malevolent. “Racism”, “race card”, “race baiting”, “miscegenation”, all these terms are rooted in subjective beliefs of race and have nothing to do with science or facts. When these words are used it is most often to shape and define a debate or conversation. It’s propaganda. It’s control. It’s a tool of authority. Census taking, job applications, loan applications, school applications, voter registration, prison populations, airline security, police profiling, immigration, legislation, and judicial decision making are processes where the subjective view of race weighs heavily on outcomes. There was a time when the weight of race was the law of the land and could be thrown around blatant without impunity. That’s the way it has been for the majority of the history of the U.S. 45 years after the Civil Rights Act we still find ourselves mired knee deep in race issues and defining race… or having race issues define us and how we live together (or not).

In post Civil War America segregation was the apparatus used to circumvent the 13th and 14th amendments which made slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional. Black people may have been freed but there was not liberty. In 1896 the future of black Americans for decades to come was decided by Plessey v Ferguson (state of Louisiana). In that landmark case it was ruled that states could use segregation as a way to regulate as long as there was equality (separate but equal). The irony of Plessey/Ferguson is that in today’s America Plessey would be considered white. He was what they used to call an octoroon, meaning he was 1/8 black (and 7/8 white). His case was orchestrated by a group of New Orleans citizens who wanted to challenge the legality of segregation. They believed that segregation was unconstitutional and in violation of the 13th-15th amendments which declared that all Americans would have the same rights and be treated equally under the law. Up to this point, One-Drop laws had been in effect in the southern states. The one-drop laws basically stated that if a person was 1/32 or more black they were legally black and subject to the authority of segregation laws. Race laws were always based on the implicit belief in racial superiority. Without race laws there would be no reason to legally define a person’s race. At the advent of the 20th century the United States had the choice to have an integrated country or to have a segregated country. Plessey v Ferguson went all the way to the Supreme Court where it lost 7-1 thus establishing segregation as legal under the guise of separate but equal. By 1931 the states of Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Nebraska adopted one-drop laws.

I believe that the United States today would be a much more progressive country had Plessey won and segregation was declared illegal. It certainly would be a better country for black people and other minorities. Legal segregation allowed beliefs in racial superiority and caste systems to flourish and become ingrained in our culture and society polluting the minds of Americans black and white. One of the greatest opportunities this country has ever had for progress was squandered by Plessey v Ferguson and the institution of segregation and one-drop laws. During the 58 years between Plessey v Ferguson and Brown v Board of Education racism rooted itself firmly in American culture and institutions. Segregation was the one thing that defined relations between white and black Americans more than anything else. Both sides lost. Segregation did not make the United States a better country. For white people it created a history of shame and a legacy of guilt. For black people it extended the legacy of slavery and condemned equal rights and upward mobility, stagnating growth and inducing self hatred and opened the doors to be victimized by state and civilian sponsored terrorism. The roots of the problems of the black community today go all the way back to Plessey v Ferguson. For black people it is the ultimate “what if?” question. What if we had never been legally separated? Where would we be today?

I’m sure you are familiar with the recent case of Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay who were denied a marriage license by justice of the peace Keith Bardwell in New Orleans. They were denied because Beth is white and Terence is black. Bardwell’s decision is a direct result of Plessey v Ferguson. Even though it is 2009 we can clearly see how history plays a roll in the present. Bardwell believes that the children of black and white marriages are negatively impacted by being mixed. There is no logic, science, or empirical data to support Bardwell’s actions, there is just the history of segregation. He used his authority to deny two Americans the legal right to marry each other. What’s worse is that he has been doing this for 34 years. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights is what makes America, America. It’s not our economic system, it’s not our national wealth, it’s not our military strength, it’s not our racial makeup, it’s not our religions, and it’s not our 50 states that make us American, it’s the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that makes us American. It’s what makes us unique as a country. We were founded on paper. We were founded on the most progressive ideas of humankind which have been in existence for thousands of years but rarely used to define a nation.

In 2009 two of the most globally known and respected Americans are from mixed marriages, our President Barack Obama and renowned golfer Tiger Woods. Because of the one-drop history they are considered black in the United States. Obama is just as much white as he is black and Tiger is just as much asian as he is black. It’s all a matter of perspective. In Brazil the take on one-drop is the opposite. If you are not completely black then you are considered white whereas in America if you are not completely white then you are considered black. When the human genome was mapped no indicators of race were found in our DNA. They looked for it but could not find it. It’s too bad this science was not around in the 1890’s.

I like to compare the human race to grapes and winemaking. A grape is a grape is a grape but from a grape comes many distinctly looking, smelling, and tasting wines. The main difference between white wine and red wine is that the skin is retained in the making of red wine adding pigment but the grape is basically the same. The incredible array of wines is created by the environment of the grape and how it is processed. The soil, the amount of sunlight, the range of temperature, and the amount and timing of yeasting is what defines the grape becoming wine. Human beings are born into this world with the same DNA structure and instincts. Like the grape becoming wine we are affected by the conditions we are exposed to, whether they be natural or manipulated, in becoming self actualized, independent thinking and choosing adults. I fancy cabernets, merlots, and pinots but I also fancy chardonnays, rieslings, and sauvignon blancs. If were to choose one over the other as a rule I would only be denying myself the pleasure of the enjoying all the flavors that wine has to offer. It certainly would not increase my knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of wine in its totality. Why limit myself when I don’t have to?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed

apart

I am the Negro, bearing slavery’s scar,

I am the Red man driven from his land

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I

seek-

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, or might crush weak.

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me

And yet I swear this oath-

America will be!

Langston Hughes

Let America be America Again (1938)

Eye on the Prize

Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age

Alfred Nobel

Quoted in Saturday Review

Recently President Oback Barama was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Stateside and in some parts of the world the news was met with much negativity and cynicism. Its par for the course for the first black U.S. President. Everything he does will be praised and scorned no matter how successful or pathetic because he is being judged by a different standard than Presidents past. My first reaction had nothing to do with if he deserved it or not. My first reaction was amazement that he received it at all. The last American to win it was Al Gore in 2007 for his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Before Gore it was Jimmy Carter in 2002 for his cumulative work in finding peaceful resolutions to international conflict and championing economic and human rights. Before Carter it was Elie Wiesel in 1986 for heading the council that founded the Holocaust Museum. Before Wiesel it was Henry Kissinger in 1973 for ending the Vietnam War. Before Kissinger it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Civil Rights Movement. These are the 5 Americans that have won the Nobel Peace Prize in my lifetime. Were any of them deserving of the award? You can make an argument that none were deserving if you look at results based on fraternity among nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies which is what Alfred Nobel wished the Prize to be based on.

I have always seen the Nobel Peace Prize to be symbolic rather than a measure of actuality. Even Alfred Nobel realized this himself when he came up with the idea for the award. He said there would be laureates but war will continue just the same until the “forces of circumstances renders them impossible”. 113 years after his death the world is still at war. The arms industry (which Nobel was a part of) is more greater and powerful than ever securing contracts with every country in the world for guns, tanks, jet bombers, bombs, and missile systems with the attitude of more is better. The United States spends more money on military costs than the rest of the world combined. Everyday we hear the rhetoric of fear and how it is necessary to protect American lives from the evil terrorists and insurgents but how many of us actually believe that? I don’t. I never wake up in the morning and find myself fearful of insurgents or terrorists. Everyday I read about them in the news and how many of them were killed by our military in countries half way across the world like it’s a sporting event. They might as well put up some bleachers in Iraq and Afghanistan and charge admission and sell souveniers and garlic fries. In fractured Iraq and dirt poor Afghanistan I imagine that many people wake up everyday with the fear of being blown to bits or shot up by faceless flying drones or itchy fingered U.S. troops. What I worry about when I wake up is getting a job. I worry about what is in the food I buy from the local market. I worry about keeping my health insurance. I worry about being able to pay my mortgage the longer I go without a job. I worry about the future of America for my young nieces and nephews. I worry about my spiritual emptiness. I worry about the corruptness of the elected officials who make decisions that negatively affect the quality of my life. When I look at the root causes of my worries I don’t see the Taliban or insurgents I see men in suits, in boardrooms, deciding on my fate. When I read the papers from around the country I see much violence and conflict between Americans. Being part of a minority that has a legacy of being victimized it is truly disturbing to see the level by which we black folks kill and hurt each other. The Man doesn’t have to lift a finger anymore, He can just sit back and wait for us to do ourselves in and laugh at us from the Comments sections from His favorite website. That’s why I applaud President Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s a call to action for Americans in general to demand a country that is accountable for its actions at home and abroad and support a reduction of our massive military and network of military bases that span the globe and enforce our empire which is unsustainable and will eventually lead to our final downfall. I just heard on the news today that the military has reached its recruitment goals for the first time since it became voluntary in 1973. This is of course due primarily to the frightful economic situation we find ourselves in today. The youth of America would rather face the dangers of fighting for oil in foreign lands rather than face the prospect of succeeding in our economic system.

The world still sees us as the country that can bring about great change in the world for good, even after 8 years of Bush. Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and President Barack Obama have all won the Nobel Peace Prize in the last 7 years because they represent a possible different future for America and the world. America is myopic, we can’t help it given our insulation but the rest of the world lives in a small neighborhood with a history of conflict that predates us our sovereignty. They are weary and ready for change because they have suffered in ways we will never know (hopefully). Yes we are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq and we are threatening Iran but it’s a legacy inherited by President Obama not created by him. He can’t possibly just reverse it all in the first or even second year of his presidency. He is not Superman. But what he has done so far with his efforts to broker peace between Israel and Palestine, negotiating nuclear arms reductions with Russia, and a willingness to come to the international table when historically we have declared ourselves above and beyond international law has influenced opinions abroad. They see his crusade to establish universal healthcare in the U.S. as a signal of change. When was the last time an elected official of presidential magnitude made a stand for the people?

If not Obama for the award then who? What are the other world leaders doing to improve international relations? I don’t see Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Horst Kohler, Jose Zapatero, Vladmir Putin, Hugo Chavez, Hu Jintao, or any other heads of state doing much beyond their own borders and spheres of influences. It is undeniable that worldwide President Obama is the most popular leader. He has earned this prestige by making diplomatic visits to other nations and addressing their people at a pace that no other world leader can match. He’s visited Turkey and Egypt to offer a chance of a “new beginning“ for US/Muslim relations. He has visited the UK, Italy, France, Germany, and the Czech Republic to improve relations with the European Union. He has visited Russia and improved relations in Eastern Europe by abandoning the ballistic missile plan. Although he has not succeeded in Iran he has made overtures to the Iranian people and is willing to meet with Iranian leadership face to face without out any pre conditions. The world view of the United States has improved drastically since Obama’s election and much of that is due to his efforts to improve relations among nations around the globe.

Like many others I do not agree with escalating the occupation in Afghanistan. Are we there to destroy terrorists networks or to secure oil and natural gas pipelines? Whatever happens in Afghanistan from here on Obama should be held accountable for but up until now he has been continuing policies began in the Bush administration so as far as I am concerned the jury is still out. He is not a perfect president but when I weigh all that he has done so for the balance comes out in his favor and I feel he has earned the right to be a Nobel Prize Peace winner. Congratulations President Barack Obama.