WE BEGIN, but do not end, with the sensational incident where the Obama White House, under Trumpian pressure, produced for public inspection the President’s “long form” birth certificate.

I do not know how successful I will be in my attempts to navigate the journey, but I think it’s important to move from an immediate feeling of hurt or anger to a broader view of the very thing that moves behind this event and is so upsetting about it. This is what I will try to do.

__

Why can’t we roam this open country?
Oh, why can’t we be what we wanna be?
We want to be free.

–Bob Marley, 3 o’Clock Roadblock

ROADBLOCK

What a frenzy.

What a storm of feelings, thoughts, tweets, and emotions were exploded into view with that one event, where the President of the United States of America—a man of color—answered the insincere jeering of a single white citizen by producing his identity papers for inspection. As if our duly elected President was but a teen at a police checkpoint, wearing baggy pants and with his hands up against the hood. As if he were a young man standing on a corner looking Mexicano, immediately suspect and thus beholden to the law man to prove he was not up to criminal acts. What a shaking of the timbers of racial history were felt up and down the blogosphere in this one simple happening.

And rightly so. What a harsh reality we trade in; that it will take far more time than our grandparents’, parents’, or our own lifetimes to evolve past the sickly, sadistic, inhuman history we Americans share on matters of race. In matters of history—look to Mexico, or China, or Egypt—this country is in an infantile stage. And the things that were done to African Americans, and Indians (indigenous peoples from el Norte as well as from south of the “border”); to Chinese and Japanese and Chileans and so on…. these ghosts will not fade fast.

Donald Trump is one of those ghosts, his ailing caricature of a human form cavorting to and fro, swaying recklessly but cleverly. Almost as if animated by an actual soul, he bellows nearly-intelligible sounds, and the media flocks to absorb the spittle. His expression remains forever puckered like a lemon-shocked anus-mouth, his mind alight with tired stereotypes and bursts of fart-static. A clown who doesn’t have the decency to laugh at himself.

And Donald is so easy to hate, isn’t he? Because he is a hateful man. And because he enlists the powers of hate, hate long rooted in American soil. Hate that long ago drew blood and tossed ropes and smiled for the picture as the body cooled to a dusk-like temperature. Hate that raided Native American villages to murder sleeping children. Hate that buffed its boots before demanding that black men duck their eyes, and go drink from some other fountain. Hate that considers women, and Blacks and Cubans and Haitians and Iraqis and Afghanis and Mexican and Chinese and Vietnamese and Puerto Rican as less than human. Hate today that spends Joe Arpaio’s paycheck, props up his decaying frame, and parades his prisoners in pink. Hate yesterday that reneged on treaties, and swallowed up gold, and burned codices.

Donald Trump is animated by the very same hate that is used to divide so many people today, and strives to obscure the roots of our liberation as it obscures the hands that lock the cuffs on us. It is a disease of the mind and soul called White Supremacy. And in the land wherein this virus thrives, certain kinds of men, with their ballooned minds and feverish egos, get to demand certain concessions from other people: that you surrender your papers; that you not harbor anger in your eye or your tone lest it be beaten out of you; that law shall endorse such beatings; that you prone out on the ground with a gun in your back at a moment’s notice; that you swallow a bullet if the bully feels sexy while perched up there and straddled around your spine. It is a land where you apologize for a role you never asked for but is ascribed to you by thieves and liars; where They will always have the right to tell you to pull over and prove yourself, and where You will always comply and perhaps be allowed to live with just humiliation if you are lucky enough to walk away with your life.

And so the target of so much history, for a day, becomes Donald “I am the Patriarchy” Trump. And many hearts seethe for his being so cruel as to remind us of our history, and to imply that even when you gain The Most Powerful Office In The World, it means nothing next to the anger of a White Man. It was the same reminder Republican Senator Joe “YOU LIE” Wilson gave us when he shouted down the President of the United States in the middle of an address that was adorned with all the pomp and decorum as we see fit to afford our nation’s executive leader. That shout, that demand to show papers, that insistence that you duck your eyes, it hisses You can even become President, but you still are not White. Which means you are not really the President. Don’t go dreaming that somehow you are now more powerful than me, darkie.

And as an immediate and visceral (and predictable) reaction, what did so many of us people of color need to see the President do? We needed him to scoff at the implication that such assertions could be true. We needed him to refute that reality. To deny it exists. To stand up and stand proud. To destroy that reality with a new action.

Was coughing up the papers but then roasting Trump at a gala dinner in front of the Press enough? Was ordering the home invasion and murder of a wanted man of color in Pakistan enough to erase that reality? Perhaps for our empathy with Obama being humiliated, it was. Perhaps now the unpleasant memory of watching the national daddy figure bow to a carnival barker has been mitigated for most. Maybe now that feeling, as if we watched the POTUS hand over his lunch money to bullies, has been nullified, gunsmoke wafting about our heads like purifying incense smoke.

And I suppose it is best to take the man at his word: he saw the Birtherism (also known as “Racism”) wasn’t going to go away and wanted to squash it and force the GOP ravers into a corner by removing what he saw as their last leg in what was left of the Birther argument.

But I do not think it does the larger issue any service to forget it when the feelings fade, or to imagine it resolved because the President has shown his papers, is in the clear, and we are feeling tough again because, damn son—he’s got that killer instinct. Just as Rosa Parks’ challenge was not to one bus driver, but to an entire system of inequality, this matter is much broader and deeper than the pageantry that recently unfolded between two rich men on TV.

Yes, the dynamic where we identify culturally or ethnically in some way with President Obama (and as a man of color, I do) leads us to watch the disgusting Trump claim victory for making the President skip on command, and we fume with empathy. We gnash our teeth and swear our allegiance all over again to Barack, this poor besieged man who has to endure the barbs and slings of Age Old Racism. This intelligent, thoughtful scholar, statesman, gentleman, father and husband. This President who bears up nobly in conditions potentially humiliating, conditions asked of no other President has been before him. We spit on the ground and growl Trump’s name. We swear to show up in the voting booth for the Democrats…as if that in any measurable way addresses the larger issue of Them Who Shall Be Asked For Papers.

CONQUER AND DIVIDE

I should probably clearly state the obvious in case it is not as obvious as I’d hope: the American Black experience is deep, unique, and I highly respect it. I would never claim to see it in all its parts or stand within it. I am not pretending to have any stake or voice therein. At the same time, I have my own experiences as a Xicano, and there is some degree of overlap between the experiences of all people of color in this nation. This I know from years of activism and friendships and conversations with people of different ethnicities.

Also—quite important to suss out and account for—there are (exploitable) gaps between our experiences. It is in those gaps that divide and conquer wedges are introduced by the ruling class.

Strategically, it is in marginalized peoples’ great interest to discover these gaps ourselves so they cannot be exploited casually. It is in our great interest to find them, examine them, and prepare for the attacks that will be launched; attacks that would seek to exploit the latent weaknesses that could threaten our unity as people marginalized and exploited by the oppressive, racist hand of law. Black and Brown alike suffer behind the racist criminal justice system, for starters. Statistics for both Latinos as well as Blacks are disproportionately high for the actual number of crimes that run rampant through all communities, when compared. This is so because the law continues old power differentials and is implemented by human beings who have been conditioned by the same society .

And because law begins as idea, and only becomes strapped with force when enough people agree on that idea.

One of the ways that unfortunate ideas become commonly accepted is by the use of emotional triggers to mislead thought and obscure the true machinations of state or corporate power.

It is necessary to deny the apparent binaries here.

This is not just a black/white issue. Take it from Chuck D. And for all of us who care, there is a way to channel the need to see justice done in the wake of this ugly moment. There are other peoples and communities who would greatly benefit from our consideration in the current context. People who would suffer in continued indignities and abuse were we to avoid using that lens in a broader sense. Other communities that are having their own dignity denied, with not just social pressure demanding they suborn themselves and produce papers for how they look (not white), but laws. Laws and actions, I’m sorry to say, that are supported very much by President Obama. Laws being snuck under the radar that increase the reach of the surveillance state. as well as that feed into the growing prison and detention industry in the U.S. Like the actions of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

I will be more specific on these both in a moment. But I wanted to prepare the soil of your imagination for this turn of thought. I invite you to explore these ideas:

• The President, seemingly the unwilling subject of this degrading and dehumanizing shape of act before our eyes—being forced to show papers in the course of his day, with no reason but for the fact that he is not a pale man called Smith—supports that very idea being implemented for others who Appear Foreign, and is directly involved with making this a reality across America.

• If it bothers me that he, as one person (and a very powerful one on the continuum considered) is subject to this, how can I engage the larger fight where millions are subjected to this? Millions of very vulnerable people. Not graduates of Ivy League schools; not powerful politicians with millions of dollars at their disposal, and millions of people clamoring to back them up.

2. This is not a struggle between Barack H. Obama and Donald Whatever Trump. Nor one between their persons or personalities. Sure, let us consider their power and from where their power derives, and what they use it for. Let us give context to the scene and the players. But we really don’t need to make either of them a demon or a hero for us to successfully engage this important fight. In fact, doing so will dilute our powers of observation and thought.

3. The battle is not between the Evil, Rich, Racist Ole GOP and the Beleaguered, Liberal, Bullied, Righteous Democrats. If I may presume to know and say so, the battle at the heart of this outrage and hurt here, is for principles. For human dignity, and human rights. The battle is for integrity. The battle is against racist hate shaped into popular opinion and finally, given the force of the masses’ will—be it in the shape of social pressure, law, violence, or all three.

Going forward, we must recognize the possible faultline that divides certain viewpoints rooted in the Black American experience from certain viewpoints in the Mexican American community, as well as in the Pro-Migrant community. Especially when exploited by the powers that be. We must dwell in our connectedness. It’s not hard. I know I don’t just care for Mexicanos. I care for all people who suffer behind the racist machinations afoot in the nation today.

4. It’s not citizens vs. immigrants. Human rights, dignity, fairness: these are not things we should let legal terms determine. These are things we want human beings to have. Don’t let the squirming exploiters and vampires at the top whisper to us the nightmarish myth of scarcity. Things only seem scarce when a small group of people need to capitalize on many people’s energies and resources, and this profit-making pyramid shape enforces an artificial scarcity.

When we feel we cannot even take care of “our own,” it’s easy to let a feeling of solidarity slip away. It makes me sad when I see people of color who should understand and join in the struggle that Mexicanos and other immigrants face today, but who veer away from that struggle imagining that immigrants represent a threat to their own community. This is the voice of White Supremacy, and it’s a bullhorn turned on all day and night in this land, so I understand. But when in all important ways our struggle is the same, “our own” can be an expansive thing—and these larger numbers will render us more powerful to fight those exploiters at the top, already unfairly given advantage.

Many of today’s most important issues deal with power differentials between the very rich, and the rest of us. Immigration is one of the most important area for us to mind. Many issues come together here. Drug war. Commerce, and the Economy. Lines of ownership; lines that signify an US and THEM, borders that we end up believing need small army units and millions of dollars of technology in guns, drones, and surveillance equipment to maintain their reality; their solidity.

In the issue of immigration and corporate abuse of borders and employees is revealed the secret of how towns and communities become economically destroyed by corporate powers being above the law, and exploiting the worker. In the selling of the idea that the only people affected are Criminal Illegal Alien Invader Types, the elite continue to exploit our vulnerable brothers and sisters.

In Immigration politics, we see the manipulative hand of Economics, and the fallout of Capitalism and Neoliberalism. Domestically as well as Internationally. Within this struggle are handholds to engage the struggle for working class rights, women’s rights, family rights, culture, reproduction, human rights, our national ethics.

As more and more strife becomes about resources and mobility, more conquer and divide tactics will be put to work in this area of Immigration.

We must remember first and foremost (and again at the end), that the forces that benefit from our being divided will seek to exploit all these key areas. A simple lens adjustment would make that impossible. We must come to realize how many of us share this same struggle; fighting that power that reared it’s ugly naked head recently under the glow of sunlight bouncing off skyscraper windows, and hissed at the President with breath as old and rancid as years of gallows sweat.

TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY

There are so many discussions about the Arc of Obama in the eye of popular opinion as of yet. We’ve all had an intense experience of some sort from election day until now, though our specific experiences may vary, and our current feelings vary just as much. Some have offered arguable reasons for becoming disenchanted with his administration. I will avoid the political laundry list, some or all of with which you may or may not agree with. That’s not the conversation(s) I am here for. I don’t want to get sidetracked. I don’t want to exploit or even risk the potential differences and faultlines in our unity just for a moment. And when I say “our unity,” I mean working class people. I mean the 99% of income earners in the nation. I mean many many Black, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Guatemalan, Dominican, Chinese, Korean or otherwise golden brown beautiful red black people. I mean white people. Here, I talk to all those people marginalized in some way by the powers and status quo that men like Donald Trump act in the service of.

I propose that what we have in common here is the idea of how wrong it is to deny the full dignity and rights to the Other in the name of safety and legal procedure. I suggest that this fight and furious sense of injustice cannot and should not end with the humiliating press conference, nor with the empowering roast of Trump at a dinner you and I had no means nor invitation to attend.

PROMISES, PROMISES

Candidate and President Barack Obama made some very specific promises to crowds of Latinos, in speeches to NCLR and to the immigrant community. He decried the ICE raids that tore parents away from their children, he called the system broken. In passioned speech, he told desperate immigrant families that he had their back. That he understood their pain. That he was determined to make a difference for them. He said he was an ally to Latinos and to Immigrants and that we could count on him.

He then turns around and continues the raids, but in other shapes. He deports more people than George W. Bush does, insuring that many, many children are torn from their parents, after all. He does this in the name of Papers, not in the name of human rights or dignity.

President Obama and Janet Napolitano brag to the Republicans that they are deporting record numbers of undocumented immigrants. He turns his back on his own disabled aunt when the cold eye of ICE falls upon her. He sends troops to the US’ Southern border, when the economic refugees flee conditions in Mexico that have been greatly caused by NAFTA policies (A Democratic accomplishment under Bill Clinton). Those people risking rape, murder, starvation, and poverty to cross the border to find a chance at life don’t need bullets in their heads, they need help accessing resources so they don’t need to flee their homes and families.

Obama’s Department of Homeland Security offers a program called “Secure Communities” (S-Comm) that ties in the FBI and ICE to local police so that anyone apprehended by local police has all their info shared with these other agencies, even if a person is not convicted of anything. We’ve seen how successful Arizona’s SB 1070 has been in disrupting society, and at driving a wedge between local police and many communities where people fear either being detained or simply being hassled based on ethnic signifiers. Many police have protested the implementation of S-Comm, understanding right away how it would harm their relationship with the immediate community and lend a hand to the proliferation of many crimes that would exploit this wedge. A few cities attempted to opt out of S-Comm, but voila! The cloak came off and Obama’s DHS suddenly informed these cities that the program was not, after all, voluntary. Whoops.

Immigrant communities understand that they are being targeted when they are just trying to feed their kids and make a living, often exploited by workplaces that know they live without protection from law or society. But to console the rest who don’t know this, Obama’s White House claims it is only deporting serious criminals. The most cursory examination of reality shows this to be a complete falsehood.

One easy example of this is shown quite blatantly by how the White House is going after activist, friend, and law school student Prerna Lal. Prerna is a positive role model, an engaged, passionate person and organizer. Hardly a serious criminal. (Please sign the petition to help Prerna fight deportation. Her crime? The creation and success of DreamActivist.org. Prerna was simply too successful in organizing students behind the DREAM Act, which—unlike these sly and disingenuous actions by the Department of Homeland Security—does exist in the service of human rights. We don’t need to be frozen in the sixties to aid those fighting for communities before it becomes common sense to do so. We can look Prerna’s way.

The stats tell the same story. The Obama administration is not deporting scores of dangerous criminals but people who have an old offense, or minor offenses, or who get caught up in the widening and growing web of “immigration enforcement,” or who are simply students and children of immigrants and dared to make a valedictorian speech at their school, or reach out to help other people in the same plight. Sometimes they are simply driving home from work, and get pulled over by an old, white, sheriff who might as well be Donald Trump. They get asked for their birth certificate because their name sounds…un-American.

COME TOGETHER

It’s so easy for us to stay firm in our personal experience and all the ways it feeds our own heart. One of the major premises in this article (or ramble depending on how you look at it) is that we proceed deeper and deeper into times when it will be important to not let ourselves be divided in the wrong ways. The Earth, mother of all, is increasingly poisoned and robbed…and those plunderers conspire to keep us misinformed about her condition. As she sickens in different ways; as our reckless, imbalanced, capitalist society veers drunkenly to and fro; as the divides grow starker and the ultra rich more intoxicated by desperation, the powers that be will work harder and harder to keep us at each other’s throats; to offer us others who we can throw to the curb in order to keep our own apparently threatened freedom.

We can feel empathy, kinship, or even an affection for the person named Barack Obama; for the challenges he faces navigating a system so strongly interwoven with racist currents, yet simultaneously see how today’s policies enacted by the creepily-named Department of Homeland Security exist to grow the racist prison syste<[/a>, and aid racist behaviors and values through the normalization of certain laws.

Final notes: Thanks to friend (and immigration lawyer) Dave Bennion for help with resources.

Crossposted at Shakesville

"Little Haiti," Miami, Florida. ©theunapologeticmexican.org

THE REPORTING OPPORTUNITY AND IMMIGRATION CONFERENCE I attended May 7-9 was quite an amazing experience. There was so much information and energy and ideas and new reality crammed into such a small time and space that there is no doubt I will be mulling it over and brewing on it and coming to a full understanding of it all over the next week, at least. Within a week or two, I’ll release a special NWN video where I hope to express cinematically what I will communicate here now with images and fotos.

Without a doubt, I am extremely grateful for the chance to have attended the May 7-9 French American Foundation’s Covering Immigration: An International Media Dialogue in Miami, Florida.

I am grateful to the French-American Foundation, to the Knight Foundation, to New America Media, to La Opiñión, to Sandy Close, Claudia Nuñez, and to all the journalists and scholars who shared their wealth of expertise and experience with all of us. I am also grateful to the Miami Workers Center and the African Heritage Cultural Center in “Little Haiti” for being so welcoming to the lot of us, dropping into their midst as if tourists starving for information about their lives. I am grateful to all the service workers at the EPIC hotel (especially my own housekeeper, Helen) for being so helpful and professional at their jobs. Finally, I am happy to have made some new friends at the conference—intelligent, energetic, good-hearted, and ambitious human beings.

As usual—and this really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with my work at this point in the game—the influence and mechanisms of race and class stood out to me and were worth noting. As I was representing both New Media and Ethnic Media (as it is called in the US…for now) I consider those elements part of my work, important parts of my observations. (Or essential parts of my milieu, I might word it, after so much company with so many very French-speaking people.)

The view from my hotel balcony

3…2…1…boom.

As you can imagine, Nezua did once again drop down some…controversial statements into the midst of the well-catered and arranged event. (Mmmmm! So well catered.) Not intending to, only speaking from my heart, and again—it ought to be clear by now to anyone with any familiarity with my subject matter that this is to be expected if you are going to ask me to observe and report on any event. Just as I did when flown to the last (as named) YearlyKos Convention in 2007. Just as I did in my doc on the DNC08 convention, the trip I took sponsored by Kenneth Cole Productions in 2008. In the case of the YearlyKos event, as this time, there were a few moments perhaps, of misunderstanding. Maybe there were a few people taking it personally as well as wondering why on earth I might head out on such a course…as if I am disappointing the Hand That Feeds.

It’s powerful, touchy stuff to talk about race and class. I also am convinced these are the conversations we absolutely need to have in this society. The pretense that these differences are not everywhere and that they do not affect everything and can be cordoned off for special conversations that don’t intrude or provoke is a dangerous one to maintain.

This doesn’t mean bringing up such topics is easy. As usual, it can be a terrifying and nearly nauseating task to take on. Because the messaging we absorb all our lives is one that screams never to bring these up in such ways. And pushing back on that inner indoctrination is not effortless.

I want to be careful not to make too big a deal out of the few arguably negative reactions that inevitably follow in these cases. Because while those seem to hit the belly harder than the positive, the truth is those are far fewer. In this case, numerous people came to me—I should note they were overwhelmingly (though not in every instance) people of color themselves—and showed me great support and thanks for bringing up the topics I did. In fact, overall, I’d say the reactions were 90% positive and unwavering in their stance on the matter.

"The Brown Contingent" is what the very fabulous Mona (Eltahawy) named us here in the hall. As such we decided it was best if we photographed ourselves stacking and otherwise doing brownish things. This moment was after my presentation and they found me, or we found each other, and talked more on the things I discussed. They were very supportive and it meant a lot.

There is no feeling quite like taking that risk, taking that leap, feeling shameful and as if in danger for doing so (a result of flouting the indoctrination and social pressure that guards against these conversations happening)—and then being immediately surrounded by people who understand exactly what you mean and give you love for taking that risk. If that were not always the case when I do these things? I imagine I couldn’t keep doing them, wouldn’t keep taking those risks. Because the nervous system usually takes a big hit when “cracking the bubble” as Sandy worded such dialogues on Sunday.

Stylish French Cat, Mona Eltahawy, Damaso Reyes, and Mizanur Rahman. This is, unfortunately, one of the worse pictures (focus-wise) I've taken in a while. Yet, the joy cannot be obscured.

Sandy Close wrote to me, in an email after the conference:

Nezua,
You added a great deal to the conference through your honesty and humility.
Thank you.

Sandy Close, Executive Director of New America Media

This brought tears to my eyes. Because in such events and speaking opportunities, I am trying my best to present these issues without aggression, but instead with a calm and centered front, and a more receptive energy. Which is a very difficult line to walk at times. For me. It is no easy feat to move surely and strongly on unsure ground, and yet remain unguarded and ready to respond with sensitivity to any lashback.

But if I can do that? It means I am growing in my craft as well as in my own skin. And that means I can be more effective in the world doing the things I do.

Of course there will also always be those who hear words on race and class as not only an affront to, but practically violent toward polite society. And if you think about it, they are right. Even when you speak those words calmly. Because polite society is another way of saying status quo. And today’s status quo is one that crushes people of color on the regular. And thus, it deserves a sort of violence. Not necessarily physical, but ideological. At least initially, to break the inertia and confidence of its arc.

So we cannot get hung up on supportive energy from all, or if everyone likes what we say. Though these affirmations from like-minded community help center my mind and push back on the inevitable doubt that tries to insert itself when you attempt to upset a standing order, destructive or otherwise.

But there is a creation happening in the midst of that destruction, as well. One of the most rewarding results of invoking these conversations, I’ve found is that it can spur further revelation or sharing of thoughts that might otherwise remain cloaked in caution. Such as after my presentation amidst the Q&A and back and forth. What a great feeling, to see that perhaps you have helped start or enable a conversation wherein people feel comfortable discussing something so important to them…and thus to the larger society and its method of informing itself in all quadrants about all quadrants.

I know I learn and feel inspired from those talks. Such as when Professor Kwong (for example) spoke of how “objective” lens shuts out many ideas, like his writing about Chinatown in ANY way that isn’t about the Chinese New Year. How he has an extremely difficult time getting any articles published if they present Chinese American culture or Chinese Americans in a way that the dominant culture (my phrase, not his) doesn’t desire to reinforce. And then Demaso jumped in and spoke about how a newsroom will miss stories and angles if “we all look the same.” And how today’s emerging Ethnic Media or the appearance of changes that facilitated the rise of Ethnic Media present a challenge to journalism. And an important one.

I think those are powerful things to be saying and discussing in such a setting as we were in. They are a boon to the future of journalism and social cohesion—not racial division as some might think. After all, as I said in my presentation, as I see it “Ethnic Media” arose because various communities felt we were not represented in the fake objectivity of the dominant culture’s media. If the larger view and conversation expands to represent all of us, that draws us back together, doesn’t it?

I like mine pulpy

I know by some reactions, as well as the fact that many whom were there will be reading my reporting on this to see both how they are portrayed and how I saw things overall that I need to clearly state a couple things.

1. I am not a traditional journalist.

Roles like mine are something new. Organically made possible and necessary by cultural realities and technological advances that won’t go away. You cannot align this image over the old blueprint. Attempting to do so will yield a distorted result.

I do not need to be warned about getting emotional or remaining Objective™ or being too “passionate.” What I do relies on my feelings and third eye and heart and all those other things that are not to be found in the AP Stylebook. I am a new media journalist. Or a writer/activist/artist/reporter who began as a counselor and filmmaker and melds it all together. Find a word or phrase that works. The exact title doesn’t matter to me right now. What I do know is that I have a function and I know my path by feeling it out intuitively. While I was trained minimally by MTV in NYC as prep for my year-long gig repping Oregon, I did not go to J-School. I don’t need to for what I do. I do need to honestly report what I see, not try to hoodwink anyone, do my very best to be right on any numbers or facts that I can. But also to employ other senses…ones I think as a human society (in the USA) we are long taught are ephemeral, unimportant, unreliable, and dangerous. I happen to feel that this overall judgment on the less tangible senses of the human creature is extremely dangerous to our existence. At least if it is the only approach it sure is.

So. That’s what I do. Please frame all I offer you in that light. Don’t try to evaluate it by an old filter. Through that mesh, what I do will seem all wrong. As if you drank a cup of orange juice but were expecting to feel milk run over your tongue.

2. It’s not about you.

This one I offer to those who feel hurt by anything I say on race and class and culture. It’s not about you! In fact, I only ran into one person whose energy I found rather disturbing, as he raised his voice talking about how it was appalling and wrong to “smear” FAIR and CIS; that younger reporters are fine, but they should be “trained” (do you see a leash in your mind?); that we ought take sympathy on Arizona for passing SB 1070 and not boycott, and so on. He was an older gentleman and I understand that he comes from a completely different world, or uses a wholly different lens that I do. I disagree entirely with him. But feel no need to demonize him. I feel he simply doesn’t understand certain currents or angles or viewpoints that are alien to his experience.

My larger point is that my comments on systemic patterns that happen to be symbolized and manifested at any given moment by concrete happenings are still not about individuals. Or their hearts. Or their intentions. Or their goodness. I know it can be possible to mix critique of systems up with criticism of a person. We are all capable of making that mistake from time to time.

I just think we need to talk about these things. I must trust each human can deal with hurt feelings in the end. I know I’ve had to. It’s up to me to grow past that. That’s life, eh? Just as I would have to respond to those who have said at various times that “being called racist is the most damaging thing that can happen to a writer/journalist/pol/person” with “No, the damages of racism upon communities and souls and bodies….that is the most damaging thing. Please don’t redirect the camera in that way…that angle misses the big picture.”

Rolling into Miami!

Before you go shipping that nitro…

I am aware that I am potentially annoying you by talking all around the event at this point, while not yet having talked about it but bear with me if you will—even though my regular readers are probably saying “Why is he re-explaining all this? We know his take on it, we won’t misinterpret! Enough disclaimers!” But there will be people reading this post who are not used to the way we discuss these things. And in this case, I’d do all I can do avoid misunderstandings.

Outside the Hotel

Here’s another surprise for ya: I agreed to not post my video on the event until I showed it to the organizers. This is something I never do. I figure if you have me appear to speak and know what my work is about (and if you don’t, then you really should have researched), then it is my right to tell truthfully what I saw.

But I did agree to having the video pre-approved anyway. I was approached before I left by two very cool gents and had no real issue with agreeing to that. Honestly, I think I am partially at fault for perhaps inspiring some anxiety about how I was going to present my findings. But I would make clear that by saying repeatedly on Saturday “Just wait til you see the footage,” it was only my way of pushing back on the couple voices that insisted my views were off/inappropriate. It wasn’t “Oh wait til I drop this bomb on you,” it was simply me saying “I cannot argue this point here and now. I’d much rather express what I experienced with cinema. It will simply make things clearer to you.” But I think perhaps the “just wait til you see the footage, then you’ll get it” was misread as something more threatening. Again, given the view that some have that being called racist is something terribly damaging, I can understand anxiety around this. But the truth is, I received different responses in some cases than some others did. This only reinforces the things I am saying. So my point was, “you won’t understand the full truth of what I am clumsily saying here until you can view for yourself those responses.”

Dinner on Friday

The Two Gents said no, they didn’t think I would mischaracterize people’s comments; they trusted the “professionalism of my approach.” And I sure appreciate that.

Because yes, I know these journalists are all professionals with careers and I am not out to harm any person. I know aside from my repeating “Just wait, then, until you see the video,” I—as THE BLOGGER—am simply not predictable, am not bound to conventions in place, am my own editor, and so it is easy for people to feel threatened by what I might write or create.

But while I certainly am a small fish in the scheme of things, I take the power that my words and film might have seriously. I do feel a certain responsibility. I do not believe in hurricaning through lives and saying anything you want in the service of a personal mission…actions involving messaging and communications and film (as they have the potential to impact society exponentially) must be weighed carefully.

Also, the practical reality is even if you are telling truths the world needs, a career or opportunities can be destroyed (mine) or at least greatly harmed if powerful or well-monied people who have reached out a hand to you feel they were burned.

These are tricky things to weigh. But in the end of course I always value my responsibility to the human race to be truthful about what I see and feel. Because my eyes, heart, and belly and mind were given to me by the highest authority. And nobody here on earth supersedes that imperative. And if my career in some way needs to take a hit in that service, okay. I am calm about that. [Update: Some wording strikes me reading back and I know why, and I know why it is not so hard for me to prioritize telling my own truth...it's because my blog is not my career. It is what I do because I must! My career is art.)

However, I'm not worried about the approval. Because as I said...this is not about individuals. And to make my points I need single out nobody. And surely they are not interested in censoring my discussing race and class and cultural divides entirely! And certainly not when it comes to immigration! These things are definitely all interwoven.

And if they don't want me to discuss even that much, well. I'll peel that orange when I come to it.

©theunapologeticmexican.org

Gaze of the Other

One thing that strikes me in these situations when you drop into a setting to connect with the reality of those who live there, is the differences in class and positioning in the world. Maybe that is because you approach attempting to connect. This is what makes me videotape the lavish buffets that always appear at conventions and such (or often do.) That’s what made me feel more at home with the (latina and latino) NYU janitors and cleaning ladies than almost all of my peers there. I simply cannot be unaware of different racial, cultural, or socioeconomic signifiers and positions.

The Stylish French Cat (on left in the “brown contingent” photo) spoke to me about his similar sensation when sitting in Starbucks with his interviewees. There was “something off” about that particular setting and situation and contrast to him.

Another tall, well-spoken intelligent seeming white cat (forgive me, bro, I forgot your name) spoke to me in the lobby of the hotel on our way to dinner, as well. He mentioned my words the day before on our walking into these settings in such a way—a way where class privilege and signifiers shriek out of a gap. “It’s not the ideal situation,” he admitted.

First Course at Gabbiolo

What to do? I certainly am not saying reporters should get blisters in the sun and arrive with dusty hair and hungry! Nor that these conventions that are purposely comfortable in order to buffet the human spirit a bit from the weariness of the travel we make (many from out of the country) and the long, busy days should be held at motels or in tents, or anything. I know I sure wasn’t lamenting, refusing, or feeling shame over the five course meal at Gabbiolo’s, complete with fantastic wine and dessert! In fact, I’m still salivating over it.

I am simply pointing out that the disparity in watcher and watched distorts the information gathered. And this mostly becomes dangerous when that is not acknowledged in the reportage itself, in some way. And thus the danger of false “objectivity” which never says “Here I am, with my particular lens, at this particular time, and thus am seeing this particular angle.” The Objective™ voice pretends to be the godvoice, to be neutral and not situated on any particular piece of land or from any particular era and thus lacking a viewpoint that can be evaluated and separated from the text itself.

Stylish French Cat’s example was “Africa Experts” who were there one time, “or who have a neighbor who was in Africa once.” The Objective Façade (damn, I am hitting all the French words today, yeah!) brings a bias, erases the serial number, and calls it Truth.

Ethnic Media in Europe and the United States

The conference documents themselves stated that the US is “further ahead” in terms of “Ethnic Media.” It is taken more seriously, more widely supported, and  is more legitimized. The Europeans themselves are aware of this. On the other hand, one or two seemed to yet grapple with the very voice/tone/angle/”passion” that has led this to be so! At moments, it may be a hard bridge to gap, in such a short time. The one between the US and the UK, or France, for example. But I think we did pretty well, anyway. I can only imagine how, for example, my voice—already considered confrontational in the USA!—comes across to them, if Ethnic Media is much less part of the conversation where they normally operate. So in that sense, I appreciate that we did as well as we did.

I really enjoyed the French people I spoke to. There’s always been something about their way of avoiding as many hard divisions that we have in the US that really appeals to me. Their newspaper front pages are, apparently, often a melange (ooh, “melange”!) of departments all weighing in on one topic. (Possibly where Huffpost got their “Big News Page” idea for various hot topics.) Rather than walled off, isolated columns appearing in the same area. In my very limited experience of their literature (translated to English), the “French” way of writing and thinking on page often wanders and free associates and takes you through an experience, through the thoughts until you have become filled with the idea and story that the author wished to impart to you. As opposed to a tightly structured, tightly-contoured, and arranged series of parts. Is this making sense? I am interested in minds that see this type of movement and mezcla as viable. It feels like freedom to me.

One of the things I am attempting to do by drawing out all the nuance is avoid implying or giving the impression to anyone that this trip and this experience were not useful. Nor that the money was not wisely spent, nor that other journalists should not attend if they are lucky enough to have the opportunity. Exactly the opposite. I feel these types of discussions galvanize thought and spur progress. And I have no hesitancy in saying I felt damn honored to be amongst all these professionals.

I only offer my experience so that if desired, the organizers can think on it and use it to make the next one even better…at least to include the awareness of this dynamic, or more discussion in such directions. But again, I did not operate under any such seemingly altruistic agenda. I simply spoke what I saw and felt.

Karla Gomez-Escamilla of Univision exchanges looks with me as we are given an unexpected post-discussion/ pre-dinner speech about not letting our 'passion' or what we heard in the field get in the way or overshadow our journalism on these topics.

Objectivity: the Man Behind the Curtain

“You don’t know how he’s gonna hit you,” said Mona (she’s the one flashing the peace sign in group shot above), about the so-called “Objectivity Lens” of much Mainstream Media. He’s a man behind a curtain. Won’t show his face. “That’s why I left that world,” she said. I’m tired of that type of objectivity. “I want to tell you how I feel and how I see things,” she laughed, loudly, with what I perceived as a damn enchanting British accent.

And I encouraged her to please do so, please keep on. Mona is a spirit-filled, wise, powerful voice and she’s shaking things up, informing the world, and shattering Muslim stereotypes left and right, every time she speaks on her community.

Stylish French Cat said The Objective Lens is a way of keeping YOU OUT. “No! This is objective! No room for you!” he laughed, dramatically holding both his hands up.

Professor Kwong mentioned how the typical gatekeepers would only allow articles from him that prop up their own visions of Chinese culture. He said the “Objective” model is one that functions to exclude. And that the objectivity model is a misleading one.

Mizanur said “I don’t mind even FOX news having an agenda. I don’t have a problem with expansion of the menu. More choices, to me, is good.”

Karla Gomez-Escamilla of Univision (I repronounce the way she says it from time to time in the back of my mind…oonee-vis-YON!) and I met at the first breakfast and hit it off right away. Over the next two days, we spoke a lot about these things, and as she is a working TV reporter, I’ll keep all her words off the record. But we spoke of all the currents in play, and speaking for myself, I’m glad she was there. There were moments her presence—and what I knew to be her background and opinions and experience—were a touchstone of safety and comfort. Even without words. After all, at this event I was—and even called as much over and over—”The Blogger.” The potential for me to have been isolated, given not only that aspect, but also in what I kept talking about, was high. Again, I have a lotta love for all the friends I met who made sure to surround me with support, both days.

Chicken Plus!

In my presentation, I spoke of the MSM as being ethnic media in its own right! Just not the brown contigent of Ethnic Media. A different ethnicity. It is the lens that pretends it is no lens. It is the invisibled lens. You’ve heard me speak about this in years past as The White Lens.

I spoke of my ideas on Ethnic Medias’ strengths—prefaced by the warning that I can only speak for what I know of Ethnic Media. Not all “ethnic media.” Also adding that race and ethnicity and culture matters are obviously unique to each country and that country’s history. I said that communities of color have longer memories when it comes to history. Here in the US, we factor in slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wounded Knee, General Sheridan, the US invasion into Mexico, the CIA interference in Latin America, or the railroads and how they came about when we speak of the echoes that still play out in oppressions and laws and politics today. Etc.

I said that Ethnic Media, in many cases, would know right away there is something problematic about dropping off a van of mostly white—or simply outsiders—into a community of color and then prompting that community to reveal the divisions they have between them and other communities of color. Ouch. Which was our assignment, in essence. To fish out the positive interactions they have with new immigrant communities, as well as the conflicts. [UPDATE: I tried to leave this out, but doing so leaves a question mark as to the strength of my reaction. The first day we were given our papers explaining the assignment there was only the directive that we should discover the conflicts. That completely weirded me out, and I was glad to see when they handed out updated papers the next day, the assignment was much more even-handed, and was changed to the version I posted above: to find out the positive "as well as" the negative. So if anything, those planning this adjust and self-examine quickly, and clearly are aware enough to be on guard for those kinds of biases. I felt better after the edit, but still found the entire scene odd. I also brought up to the group that I noticed this edit, and was happy to see the change.]

There was some pushback to the things I said to the group. I know I didn’t word everything as perfect as I would have liked. I know, too, though, that the process of interacting with free speech and getting to the bottom of these things will be imperfect and at times messy. And yes, we must be careful not to be essentialist or to overgeneralize.

The Big Cheese. (And Mizanur.)

I feel it is far more perilous to pretend these dynamics are unimportant.

What should also be made clear is that I was not informed of this practicum part of the experience until after I had agreed to speak on a panel! I had no idea the trip would involve my going out and into a community for a couple/few hours and interviewing people. If it was in the documents they sent me, I missed that part (very possible). Regardless, that part came as a total surprise. As it was, though, Miami was Part TWo of a two part (International) symposium, the first of which was in Paris. (Damn! Missed that one!) So everyone but me, pretty much, knew we’d have the reporting component.

I also loved the field trip and am very glad it was, indeed, a part of the trip.

Sandy Close of New America Media said on the penultimate day of the symposium “I always learn the most when I am uncomfortable.”

And that’s why I’d never want anyone to draw the conclusion on this event that it was not supremely educational and worthwhile, despite ripples in the smoothly-ironed fabric of our planned dialogues. Because part of what happened—conflict and all—was part of what needs to happen and is happening everywhere.

As Mizanur said to me, this is the way news is trending, like it or not.

Maybe that is because the Objective Model was never objective to begin with and has in fact been a detriment to justice and democracy.

We were warned to apply sunscreen liberally. Here are some folks putting some on before we took our field trip.

You deconstruct…but do you create?

The gentleman who was speaking up hard for anti-immigrant extremist groups FAIR and CIS also said that writers like myself, bloggers like myself (he did not mention me by name, but to tell you the truth, many things he said might have been interpreted as almost direct responses to some of my writing and videos) who “go off into their own tribal enclaves” are dangerous. He sounded very worried, to be honest.

I am not dangerous to him. At least that is not my intention, nor do I put any energy into harming him or wishing him ill.

Again, though, if we go back to the Polite Society idea, you can see how voices like mine (voices not “trained” and reined in to the standing order and conventions) might be perceived as dangerous.

But I am not here to simply deconstruct or challenge or as some say about us “ethnic media” types, to complain. I see this type of writing more as…sweeping sand and clutter and debris away from the floor so you can see where the weak spots are. So you can travel safer, faster, and truer. I am certainly not saying I see all, or have all the answers. Which is why Ethnic Media is very often associated with community, with the need to connect with each other and support our communities, and from which political action is basically inseparable. This consciousness and tradition is passed down in our communities from generation to generation.

When I dropped into the African Heritage Cultural Center on Saturday, I had little urge to either cleverly or directly inquire to them—as someone from outside their community with only an hour or so to spare to build up any rapport—regarding the conflicts between US-born African Americans and Haitian immigrants or Cubans. I am not saying that these conflicts do not exist!

What you don't see is that the moment after I surprised him with a lens in his face, we grinned at each other and shook hands without uttering a word.

But I am saying…why? Why go in there and try to get at that? In this short time? What is the interest there, first? And I have to say, I steered away from that for the most part. I am glad the organizers were sensitive to this, to the fact that the conversation or day might go otherwise. And they did remind us that those questions were only suggestions before they sent us out on our trips.

Though I did, a few times, attempt the questions, anyway. And what I found—it’s what I expected to find, even though I may have been assuming too much by extrapolating from how the activist/community-oriented Ethnic Media blogger-types I am familiar with are—these people wanted, instead, to speak of how their solidarity crossed over divisions in communities of color. They talked to me about how we are all in this together. About how we are not settling for the conditions in which communities of color find themselves, and are fighting it. About how nobody is illegal, and if someone is, then its everyone but the indigenous. They were mostly black, Haitian, Latino, and they radiated and demonstrated such love and acceptance of each other and positive energy that I was swept up and was reminded of my days at Centro Cultural de la Raza where as a young chico, I first remember feeling that community love.

Love and Community

That’s what it’s about.

I’m not saying there are not tensions that need to be explored! Especially when they erupt into harm or violence on one or more of a group of people. But like at least one of my interviewees, I feel that tension we are chasing is very often exacerbated or initiated by Arpaio types. By Brewer types. By Hayworth N McCain types. And that the focus ought to be on them, and the big border lovers who do NOT see us all as together here, and on those with far more power in the system who would ferret others out by their accent, or their otherliness. Or put the glare not on the poor housing and impoverished conditions they live in quite as much as on those who operate in this world and make so many rundown areas possible by their own massive and disproportionate siphoning of wealth.

I know at least one person at the conference felt that this focus was a weakness of Ethnic Media. Okay. I won’t argue that. I disagree entirely. But I have nothing to gain by arguing it if you don’t get that.

More importantly, the focus is better served being on positivity. A constant broadcast of fear, scarcity ideology, terror, and division resonates in the collective heart. The focus ought to be, sometimes if not almost always, on the ties that connect, on the common causes, on the strength and bridges built between commonly marginalized communities. On the love and power there that not even the most objective person could deny feeling, even as but a stranger invited into the bosom of another community’s presence.

________________________________

This was my rundown of all the cultural and social elements of the event and setting. Soon I’ll post again on the info and insight that I gained through sitting in the presentations and hearing the findings and teachings of scholars and journalists. Both these worlds coming together reveal more, I feel, than only one or the other.

]]> http://theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete/2010/05/10/miami-debriefing-the-intersections-of-race-class-journalism-activism-croissants-and-reality/feed/ 6 http://theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete/2009/07/25/the-melting-pot-chapter-2009/ http://theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete/2009/07/25/the-melting-pot-chapter-2009/#comments Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:55:57 +0000 nezua http://theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete/?p=4003

The Famous Melting Pot T-Shirt

HOLOCAUSTIC SHOOTERS, Teabagger protestors, Anti-immigrant hate groups, Hate crimes rising, Birthers, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck…these poor souls are having a very hard time facing reality. The nation’s cultural demographics are changing to better match much of the world. And specifically…the POTUS is black.

These types, as much as some part of them might desire, cannot give vent to what truly troubles their mind, so they twist up their thoughts and use mouthsounds like “Fascist” and “Socialist” and phrases like “that’s not a Birth Certificate, it’s a Certificate of Live Birth,” or as Liz Cheney recently drizzled “People are worried that he doesn’t seem to want to defend the country” and so on.

To break the hatecode, reference the key set out by Lee Atwater in his famous quote on the “Southern Strategy”:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*gger, n*gger, n*gger.” By 1968 you can’t say “n*gger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now that you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And that’s how those types talk about it now, too. And these same types of minds are going about harming very specific portions of the population in the same ways.

And the reaction this springs from? This fear that everything is upended and civilization is threatened by this strange unknowable “perversion” of time-honored power structures? It’s purely cultural in nature, of course. Otherwise, what is really changing so much? President Obama is a a political centrist. And a corporatist, essentially. And a hawk!! I mean, many important things aren’t changing a bit.

But even the President saying in a press conference what is simple fact—that blacks and latinos are arrested and incarcerated at disproportionate rates, and harassed for being brown™—terrifies some people! Granted, the people most disturbed by this are a rather gross lot and (if ya don’t mind my saying so) a lot of them will die before toooo long. (Sometimes for change you simply need for old, stodgy, crazy minds to fade off the earth to give room for new thinking!) Especially if they keep loading up on Viagra and taking trips to the Dominican Republic in search of… ?

But meanwhile, for the President to even dance close to a truth that brings us toward discussing institutionalized racism…well. You get scaredycats talkin’ like this:

“We’re finding out that this guy’s got a chip on his shoulder. He’s angry at this country. He’s not proud of it. […] Let’s face it, President Obama’s black, and I think he’s got a chip on his shoulder. I think there are elements in this country he doesn’t like and he never has liked. And he’s using the power of the presidency to remake the country.”

—Rush Limbaugh (via thinkprogress)

RUSH LIMPLY:

Of course you’re not being honest, Mister Limp-paw. Just making jowl-sounds. This is just a clever way of tapping into the whole “WHO IS HE REALLLLY???” thing. You know. Furrener, Other, Manchurian, etc etc ad nauseum. Yawn.

“Chip on the Shoulder” is of course “Uppity.” It’s the whole “I don’t like your tone, boy” thing. It’s the whole “why aren’t you acting obsequious and below me???” It’s the shifting paradigm of power and the ailing, arrogant, radio host is stamping his feet because The Most Powerful Man in the Free World (funny how absent that phrase has been lately, eh?) is of a phenotype that Rush prefers to think of as inferior. Not very complicated.

As far as the rest of the quote, well, I’m guessing that any person who runs for president sort of sees things about the world they don’t like and desires to change them. This, ah, might actually a prerequisite for becoming President, eh? But again. Some people, when they raise their voice are being “confident,” and others will be perceived as “threatening.” Depends on your sex, your phenotype, and your class. Rush is underlining traits that never bothered him in Bush, and not even in Clinton! Nobody ever said that Bill Clinton was trying to remake the nation!! That would have been like complaining that speaking people are using their mouths to send sounds into the world…and that’s bad.

But again, Rush is not using language to communicate truth. He is simply stoking racial prejudice. He is shouting in code to his listeners: BLACK MAN HAS POWER OVER YOUR LIFE. THE BLACK MAN IS CONFIDENT. THE BLACK MAN HAS POWER OVER YOU. IT’S EVEN POSSIBLE HIS PENIS IS LARGER THAN YOURS!

Rush is a lowlife with a chip on his shoulder trying to use the power of his pulpit to remake the country that he cannot accept as-is. He is just jealous that Obama’s pulpit is bigger than his. (And without pharmacological aids, either!)

[sudden daydream of obama leaning back in his chair, puffing up on a fat cigar and laughing at rush's agitation heartily...'ha ha ha! chip on the shoulder? i'll open up a can of chips on your ass, rush! and once you have one stack, you won't go back!]

Okay, reluctantly turning away from Mister Limply’s victim mentality, we can now address

LOU DOBBS:

Ah, Lou Dobbs the Birther.

For those who don’t know, “Birthers” are the Internet crazies who think the US is so haphazard you can become President without being vetted for citizenship status. Or to be more honest, they are racists who are sublimating their distrust and revulsion at seeing a black man in the White House into a ridiculous question about the validity of Obama’s birth certificate.

Lately, Lou Dobbs has taken on the cause. It seems his bosses at CNN aren’t taking to it to kindly, telling him now that it’s a “dead story.” And other places, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, are making statements of their own: Lou Dobbs should be fired.

We have a bit of a special relationship here at UMX with Lou Dobbs, as you can tell by reading the tagline on the header above (unless you are not reading the actual blog). He’s a clown. He’s a bigot, and he tries to use the power of popular outrage to remake the world the way he wants it to be. He has a chip on his shoulder. No. Wait, that’s a huge flake of skin. Nevermind. MAKEUP??!

Lou is baffled at the atypically strong pushback because he is used to doing what he does, and is a tiny bit behind the nation’s true zeitgeist due to his living in a bubble of his preferred reality, as well as under 1/8 inch of pancake TV makeup. This has kept his thinking process moist and primordial and it has yet to really sink in (nor for Rush) that Obama is both BLACK and PRESIDENT. So the things they are used to saying and doing are, in relation to the new terrain, now completely new actions with an entire new resonance. And thus, garner new reaction. As we can see playing out.

Others, too, are struggling with the reality that the nation did not just elect someone who appears black, but who has a bit of the non-white experience in him. In otherwords, sometimes he is gonna “think black,” if I may presume a tiny bit.

Others, like the Cambridge cops.

CAMBRIDGE PO-PO

Obama commented on the Skip Gates arrest. You know about the Skip Gates arrest? Dude (Harvard dude, that is) was bringing his luggage into his house from his porch (oh, Famous Black Academic Harvard dude, I should mention) and a neighbor called the 5-0 on him. (Which is probably the weirdest part to me.)

Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver’s license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said.

The police report said Gates was arrested after he yelled at the investigating officer repeatedly inside the residence then followed the officer outside, where Gates continued to upbraid him. “It was at that time that I informed Professor Gates that he was under arrest,” the officer wrote in the report.

Gates, 58, declined to comment today when reached by phone.

The arrest of such a prominent scholar under what some described as dubious circumstances shook some members of the black Harvard community.

(Bill Carter/Demotix Images)

He was arrested in his own house! Well, the cops asked him to step outside first. (It’s like a vampire thing, they have to be invited in by either you or a judge or the imagined sense that they “smell something.”) Then they cuffed him and took him to the station to do all those humiliating things they do to you in a booking. Search you, strip you, print you, (sometimes) x-ray you, treat you like meat and so on. So you can imagine the well-respected law professor was pretty pissed off about that. People not experienced with this process will meet the shock that comes when you realize the law allows for anyone to be controlled and caged and deprived of rights you personally might feel are inalienable. It’s upsetting. It’s especially upsetting when all you were looking to do was leave the encounter with some dignity, which is usually one of the first things a cop takes from you. That is, you know that when you have to be quiet and pretend you don’t mind being disrespected or bullied to avoid getting shot or tazed, then you have given up your dignity. (The spreading of the cheeks for a cops flashlight search for possible drugs? You’re across the bridge from Dignity at that point!)

Well, commenting on the issue, Obama spoke to the press, who reportedly “audibly gasped” as a whole (this cracks me up) when POTUS spoke up in defense of his friend and fellow-black man, and mentioned the harassment Blacks (“as well as Latinos”) face often, at the hands of the police (and we might add Asian Americans, Indians, other non-whites). I won’t get into how much I imagine was strategy (an eloquent gifted speaker using “stupidly” in such a charged situation surprised me right away and I wondered if it were a way to back off a “hastily uttered” statement later), but the pushback from many corners was tangible and vociferous, either way.

That right there is the part I want to weave into this narrative.

The police are outraged that Obama would dare factor in race. (When some—including myself—would like to see the idea extrapolated to all the situations where it applies.) That Barack Obama would suggest—by casually citing facts usually ignored in polite society—that race came into play at all in the treatment of Henry “Skip” Gates. The stunned police demand an apology or recantation just as the Birthers and Lou Dobbs demand he produce a Birth Certificate to their liking and approval.

You know. It’s not about the words “the police acted stupidly” and it’s not about, per se, the idea that Obama”brought race into it.” That’s not really what’s under the outrage. Just as the Birthers’ demands are not really about the piece of paper they claim to thirst for (and thus can never be sated, which makes Lou Dobbs’ exploiting their complaints dangerous and unethical and plain stupid.)

It’s about shifting the power back into the paradigm these people rely upon like an emphysema patient relies on an oxygen tank; it’s about DEMANDING something (like “keep your eyes on the floor” or  ”watch your attitude” or “get your hands up”) and having the black/brown/yellow/red man respond, listen, nod, agree, obey. This will soothe their outraged sense of hierarchy. Nevermind that fact that Obama irritates some members of the black community with his statements about personal responsibility (the MSM loves that “Tell the blacks to stop loafin off” junk, but hearing about racial profiling…not so much!)

These people—all in their own ways—are struggling greatly with the reality that is gradually being revealed for this nation. Because the illusion of white supremacy blankets mainstream culture in many invisible ways. Some of the most entrenched are institutional, it’s true. But many are in the dim storage rooms of our own minds; the stacks and lists and shapes of inventory where we assign importance and worth and acceptable roles and thus behavior to other people and types of people.

These outraged stances by Rush, Lou, Birthers, the GOP, the cops…they aren’t just strategy to throw us off the rails or distract us. They are real reactions. (Though the cable news networks may milk them because they titillate.) As much as the dominant culture arranges its media messaging to obscure the standard of Witeness as the invisible Normal, it’s not so invisible when the reference points shift. For these people mentioned above (and sadly, many more), to upend the hierarchies written in blood and for hundreds of years is like them waking to find that MC Escher has redecorated their homes overnight. They can’t find the back door and are worried any moment that their bed will turn into a car and sink to the top of the ocean.

-

It’s important for our society to start recognizing publicly these dynamics. But in the name of clarity, these essays on Whiteness are not an attack on just any person who happens to be fair-skinned or European. This is about a view, and about behavior. And I come to this place to do it, as I have been for over three years.

But I think Elon James’ recent writing on this made a good point. (The entire post is a great read):

So here I am. I’m Blacking it up even NOW. I have the appearance of a angry, fist-pumping, screaming, militant Negro. Please note: I am NOT an angry, fist-pumping, screaming, militant Negro. I’m not sitting here with my big afro thinking about how I’m going to take down the White man. I am an Average Black Person. I would much rather play my Xbox 360 and watch reruns of Scrubs (yes, I said it). I would much rather argue why Batman can, in fact, take down ANYBODY. I don’t want to rant and rail against the system and the perceptions of Blacks: I’m FORCED to. Why? Because I’m not deaf, dumb, and blind. If I had those three ailments perhaps I wouldn’t be able to tell how NOT post-racial America actually is.

I, too, would rather not talk about white supremacy, would rather not upset people and have to be ready for the lashback; would rather not have to deal with the hate mail that comes from online lurkers, not deal with the sting left by old friends who have walked away from me because they don’t understand this aspect of mine that feels so hurtful to them. (Stop identifying with a destructive mindset, taking it personally, and join me in the anti-racism fight!) I don’t want to rant and rail either. I, myself, love playing video games! I laugh at Scrubs! Hell, my white half even loves mayonaise and tries to buy hard rock electric guitar-heavy albums when the rest of me is busy dancing to Control Machete. You know. I just want to enjoy my days! And like Elon mentioned in another part of his essay, I have had plenty of moments over the years where I thought Okay, enough. You’ve made the points clear, and you’ve learned what you needed to. Time to start the foto-blog on body-art and leave UMX behind.

And then…on your way to the store, or a search engine, or across the radio dial, you’re hit with the wakeup again. That there remain a lot of people in power who just want people like me, and like some of my family and friends, kept in a certain place. And the fact that I hid from my Latinidad for years is directly due to the pain I felt from media messaging like the kind these lowlives are still sending forth, every day, without remorse.

So for now, this is where I’ll be. Doing what I do.

Oh, and PS: buen trabajo, Señor Presidente. Keep on with—ahem—ya bad self.

A favorite.

Ben

Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I’ll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You’ve got a friend in me
(you’ve got a friend in me)

Ben, you’re always running here and there
You feel you’re not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don’t like what you find
There’s one thing you should know
You’ve got a place to go
(you’ve got a place to go)

I used to say “I” and “me”
Now it’s “us”, now it’s “we”
Ben, most people would turn you away
I don’t listen to a word they say
They don’t see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I’m sure they’d think again
If they had a friend like Ben
(a friend) Like Ben
(like Ben) Like Ben

IF GEORGE W BUSH hadn’t destroyed the notion with his lurid and violent brand of hypocrisy, Obama might be running on being a “Uniter and not a Divider.” Sometimes I call George W. Bush the Great Divider. He did nothing so well as entrench the divisions between poor and rich, elite and peasantry, Red and Blue, Us and Them. He is ALL about division. He just wants to think he’s a nice guy so…wait. We’re done ranting about Bush, I forgot. We’re happy happy in a Post-Racial World (wait, do I hear a Material Girl spoof in my head?)

But let me get on with it. Obama really is a uniter. He really does erase lines of separation. He does not live by those hard lines, or at least does not espouse them, nor behave as if he is guided by them. This “grayness” in both his ethnic makeup as well as his ideology is disturbing to many. We like our divisions, our containments, our separations. They are comforting. They let us know who is in the “Us” and who is of the “Them.” Of course taken too far these divisions and delineations lead us to…war.

I get the grayness. I am there. I’ve long been there. I feel I understand a bit of this. Perhaps it is because we both have lived between worlds. We are both “mutts” as Obama said, in a way. (Or maybe it’s not that entirely, but I bet it has a little to do with it.) And in this new Era Obama, everyone wants to get in on the mutt train. We all wanna be Post Racial. We wanna be like him, He Who Seeth No Race. We shiver away from the Dire and Dim Bush Days and hope to enter a sunny land of unpartisan-skin and we got us our Black Prez statuette on the dashboard to guide the way. But I don’t like how some of this discussion is muttying lines.

The press conference is already being called the “mutts like me” press conference. Some are praising his comfort in talking about race.

So yes, he was trying to be light-hearted about the dogs and inserted that little self-deprecating comment about his race to heighten the effect. After his prepared remarks, he appeared a bit on edge, perhaps a little nervous, during the question and answer session with reporters. He seemed to be laboring to hit the right tone – serious but not somber, concerned but confident – and his gaffe about Nancy Reagan seemed to be a product of jitters, more than anything else. But the inquiry about the dog and his daughters was an opening for him to shake it out, if you will.

And so he threw it out there, it was nothing, just three little words. Right?

I’ve heard mixed-race people use that term to describe themselves before, usually in the same ha-ha way Obama did. I’ve also heard it thrown around as an insult, a pejorative, a slur. I’ve felt the slap of that word across my face and it is not a word I can “reclaim.” My fear, however, is that Obama, as the first mixed-race president, will shape the way most Americans view people of mixed race for at least a generation. And will Obama calling himself a “mutt” – with humor, as if the word is nothing, nothing at all – make it socially acceptable for people to start calling me a mutt? My kids?

Because not only does the word have a history as a slur, but there are reasons that that word makes such an easy slur. It allows people to rhetorically reduce us to animals – people “bred” like dogs are bred. For all our “mutts are better!” talk (it is, as Obama knows, better to adopt a dog from a shelter, right? Rejected, but nonetheless in need of love), it still comes from a place where “purebreds” are better. It stinks of eugenics and generally just makes me queezy.

Mutts, like me, we may not be as desirable as purebreds but we can be lovable despite our unfortunate mix.

—Mutt Like Me, Kimchi Mamas

And then you dig into the comment threads on a page where the Kimchi Mamas (Burn Your Tongue!) blog was picked up, such as Political Intelligence (boston.com) and you begin to see how our bright shiny Post-Racial Nation is being embraced by some:

135. Oh, get over it. We are way to wrapped up in race in America.

I chuckled when Obama said that, that’s what I call my self, so what I am too.

The Black, White,Asian, Latino thing is getting soooo tiring, let’s start acting like the brothers and sisters that we really are. The constant racial harang is only a mechanism to divide and destroy.

Posted by Evelyn B November 10, 08 02:32 PM

So tiring, the “Black, White, Asian, Latino” thing.

I’m not sure what to do when I come across comments like this. I point it out because it is indicative of a growing trend, not because I have found the only comment that takes this stance.

It is far too tempting for many in this nation to want to get past all that “Tiring” stuff. I don’t blame you. I can’t tell you how tired I am of peering into mirrors or hoping I never hear a racist comment again, or crying over beaten or killed immigrants, or children in rooms without sun, or of fearing conversations that pop up because I don’t know how I’ll react when mi gente or mi familia or myself are insulted, or worse.

But how do I react? Do I point them to Kai’s landmark post on the idea of Political Correctness?

Or do I post something like this:

In case you cannot see or don’t have time, that’s a video on the killing of Marcelo Lucero, a man who has been living in the USA and working in the USA for 16 years. He is a migrant from Ecuador. He was working to support his family down south. He was not “way too wrapped up in race.” He was working and living a life. On one of those nights, he went out to catch a movie at a friend’s house but never made it past the driveway. He was killed by seven young men who were out with the express purpose of looking for “some Mexicans to fuck up.” Marcelo was not Mexican, but they fucked him up all right. They stabbed him in the heart. I can’t even type this out without crying again. (Don’t get me wrong. I’ll cry with one hand tight around a baseball bat, so if you want to come looking for Mexicans to Fuck Up in my part of town, keep it in mind.)

Others are rejoicing after hearing Obama’s “Mutt” reference, too. One man is “Hecky Powell,” who used to serve on the District 65 School Board in Evanston, Illinois. During a “discussion of how District 65 School Board statistically reports multiracial students” Powell used the term “Mutt.”

Critics took off on his mention of the remark [...] as insensitive of the feelings of African-Americans and multiracial children.

Powell eventually issued an apology. He drew more criticism later, however, when in answer to his critics, he added a “Mutt Special” to the menu at his restaurant, Hecky’s Barbecue. [...]

Ever since Barack Obama’s first press conference as president-elect, Evanston restaurateur Hecky Powell said calls have been pouring in. “It just feels like Obama gave me a pardon,” a not unhappy Powell said Tuesday. [...]

Guess what? He’s renaming the dish after perhaps the most successful self-described mutt in history, calling it the “Obama Mutt.”

—Obama’s ‘Mutt’ Remark A Pardon For Evanston Man

The title of that post is so telling. The idea that people who have been called out for using speech that hurts members of society not in the dominant demographic now are “pardoned” from any transgression against any person or persons by one joke from one man who happens to be President is lunacy. But it is a lunacy that will sell to the Colorblind crowd. Worse than simply being happy with his past boundary-steppin’ being pardoned, it seems Mr. Powell (and we know he is not alone) feels empowered to move forward with gusto and conviction.

But you’ll notice one thing. Mister Obama called himself a Mutt. He did not call another person a name. And yet Hecky Powell did. Children! Even disregarding the intelligent thoughts that Mama Kimchis put out there, there is a huge difference between calling yourself a name, and calling another person a name. (Ask Kramer about this one.)

To commenters like Evelyn B, whom I quoted above, who are so “tired” of the “Black, White, Asian, Latino” thing, I would ask, is it cool if a man calls you a “bitch”? Seriously. Plenty of women have reclaimed the term “Bitch” and there is even a “Bitch” magazine. Does not the success of that magazine pardon me? Anyway, it seems dog references are okay now. Right?

No—I’ll answer for you because I have access to writing this post and you do not. It is not okay. Even if the word “bitch” is in songs and on magazine covers and even if women call themselves it. It is still not okay for men to call you a Bitch. Even if many men are “tired” of that whole “feminist” thing. Because no, we cannot “start acting like the brothers and sisters that we really are” by ignoring our brothers and sisters’ voices when they say “that hurts me.” One magazine cover cannot give men permission to use a word on any woman they meet (who had no part in making that magazine), women who may have been hurt badly or seen others hurt in connection with the same hatred that birthed that slur and who may feel that word is simply another bone in the same violent beast that spits the word “Bitch.”

And one last thing. White folks: You don’t get to step over this whole sticky issue of race and power and oppression in this nation by claiming you, too, are a mutt. Not when your muttiness is composed of Russian, Scottish, German, and Irish. Not today, not now, not here. Because the lines have been drawn, and the power flows in certain directions and we benefit or suffer according to that power flow. And Obama is the type of multiracial person who is seen as brown or black. Period. Those who are of European mix do not get to step next to Obama and claim the same path. You don’t even get to claim my path, and mine is not his, either.

I was reading Womanist Musings yesterday, and a post called Why We Need To Talk About Whiteness and Privilege. In that post, she ends on the thought of those of us who are “bi-racial.” In that post, Renee recenters some of the discussion away from the White Lens and frames it in a way she feels is more useful. One that doesnt focus on the “Raced” parties (the Brown™ as I call us non-whites and non-white blends) but on Whiteness. And of course Whiteness does not like to see itself. Whiteness is the Universal Standard in this nation. Whiteness gets uncomfortable seeing itself, and would rather center itself and see all others from that viewpoint. Whiteness doesn’t mind talking about the poor folks in the ghetto or working in the fields, if it comes to that. But Whiteness does not want to talk about how it benefits from these situations. PortlyDyke, a commenter on Renee’s post, muses that she will soon begin conversations with white people “So, how often do you realize you are white?” as a way of pointing toward an empathy of what non-whites live.

Those white people/Euro people who want to hop on the Post-Racial Mutt-tastic bandwagon might consider this question. How often does your “muttness,” then, confuse you? How many hours do you spend a year looking at reflections and trying to see the separate “halves” of yourself? How often does your “Muttness” make you feel shame? Make you fear for your life? How often does the USA introduce the idea through so much media that you are gross and unworthy? Show images of your people that paint them as oversexed filthy criminals? Lock your people up in vastly disproportionate amounts, in detention centers? Hunt for you? How much does all this eat at you every day?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We may howl at the same moon, and that is a beautiful thing. But we still running in different packs. And most of all, I aint ya pet.

Finally, Mister Obama? I know you have to be careful up there. I know this groundbreaking move you are doing requires you to be one hella skillful navigator of deadly currents all about you. Right Wing/Religious weirdos are now mainstreaming burning crosses and lots of people are pretty sore over losing the land their forefathers stole for them. I know part of us moving forward is, indeed, breaking down the idea of Otherness and I’m sure the Mutt joke came from that urge. Why not hand so many people at once an opportunity to feel joined in a struggle? Why not soften those lines of separation? It fits in with all you do, and seem to believe in. I can understand this.

Cuidado. In your attempts to soften and blur those lines, you can easily erase people and their struggles. I know you stand for change. But some change has to be earned. If not, it is not only not believable, but actually harmful.

IF WE WANT TO UNITE, it cannot be by overlooking differences that stab at people and stick in their throats and veins and bellies. This unity must come about by connecting ourselves through struggle; by working together to fight the iniquities that pit brown against black against gay against indigenous against secular against Trans against Asian against Disabled (and so on) and all so that one or two types of persons can ascend unfettered, to the top of the heap (of riches and power and bodies and lives and lost chances). We must band together and abdicate those hateful systems already in place (and there are more than I can link), and we must fight against those who would work to keep them in place.

Anything else is just a joke.

WE WRAP UP our week of the African American Perspective at UMX feature with depth and soul and power and I thank Alexis for capping things off so. I want to thank all the writers who were generous enough to help me make this feature work and share their thoughts, feelings and experience with the UMX audience. I have found all the various viewpoints extremely helpful even in arranging my own thoughts. I also owe big thanks to Sylvia, my admin. asst. at XOLAGRAFIK for coordinating much of the effort. Tomorrow we return to your normal Nezrantium terrarium. Hasta entonces!

—Nezua

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the founder of BrokenBeautiful Press. She is also a PhD candidate in English, Africana Studies and Women’s Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

A Great Rejoicing Across the Land.

The night before election day this November, Durham’s Youth Noise Network (YNN) presented a poetic audio presentation of June Jordan’s insightful and prophetic essay “On the Night of November 3rd 1992.” Jordan wrote that piece about end of the Bush era, about an exuberant election party celebrating the victory of a candidate who had campaigned on hope and change, about the giddy belief that a diverse groups of people we able to have for a moment in the United States of America. Jordan was writing at the end of the first Bush era, celebrating the election of Bill Clinton, and Jordan’s belief was never in Bill Clinton himself, but in the potential power of a majority that voiced it’s rejection of the status quo and it’s belief in change that day.

The night before election day this November, Durham’s Youth Noise Network, most of whom were born around 1992, most of whom cannot vote, read that essay like it was scripture or news, and said we do not trust or expect politicians to create the world we want and need. We do not believe that one person will make a world worthy for us to live in. We know that we are the people, nonvoters though we may be. And we know that it takes all the people doing more than voting to create a change worth living for.

And at home, having just left YNN I had a semblance of the moment I saw so many have the next night when the election results were announced. The night before, I stood up screaming, I clapped, I danced around the room, I was near tears. I said YES! over and over again. I was hearing a change I could believe in. The youth in my city were claiming their futures and our world. I am tearing up again even as I write this. I live in a city (and if you ask you will find that each of us do) where the young people know what power is and what it isn’t. And they know that you don’t trust a politician, you can only trust your own movement. I stood on a chair and sent frantic celebratory text messages. A great rejoicing.

The month before November (aka October) I was on the Grassroots Media Justice Tour
sponsored by Left Turn Magazine, Free Speech Radio News, Make/Shift Magazine, Spread Magazine and Bitch Magazine that went across the SouthEast in a beautifully bootleg and breakneck manner. Once we were even in the same city (Asheville) as the president-elect on the same day. (And astonishingly people still came to our workshops.) In most of the cities I led a workshop called “Pressed for Knowledge” in which a group of stranger came together to create radical publications in 2 hours. Watching groups in different southern cities agree and disagree on matters of messaging, content, audiences and division of labor, watching people create community by creating art stregnthened my deep belief in direct democratic practice.

And every night as I facilitated a poetic exercise called “Dig” which asked everyone to fill in the blank “If you dig here you will find __________.” I found myself making church in my own mouth, filling myself with mmhmms, and yeses at the startling depth of every statement, at each communities newly articulated recognition of it’s roots and cracks, at the hope in the faces of the people in the next cities as they listened to our growing sound collage. I found myself believing in places, Valdosta, Georgia…Pensacola, Florida that I had never considered important parts of my world. A great rejoicing. Across the land.

So, after a very important month, and a very important night there came that other moment, that I had not been waiting my whole life. Call me impatient. Say I jumped the gun, but like most of the people I know, love and respect, I have not been content to wait my whole life to find traces of home, identification and affirmation in the place that I live. I have been digging for those things all along, in the days spent writing, reading and listening with young people, and elders, in the hundreds of poetic exercises I’ve imposed on unexpecting and brilliant audiences, by putting my hands in the dirt of our community garden, by searching the archives for hidden histories that affirm a radical existence here in this place.

The election of a particular American President cannot, must not be the determining factor of my joy, or of my ability to be inspired in this place that I live.

In her essay, “On the Night of November 3rd 1992,” June Jordan says that upon the of Bill Clinton, at her election party, full of a multicultural group of friends and loved ones, she felt more at home than she had ever felt. And I understand why so many people, especially black people, keep saying that they feel proud of their country for the first time in lifetimes, and why we identify with the ascent of this particular family. I get it. My dad is a well-spoken charismatic light skinned guy who is very convincing when he speaks (even and especially in front of white people), my sister and I used to wear our hair like those beautiful little girls. I understand why looking at that family on stage, and imagining them in the white house makes some of us imagine that we might finally be at home.

But I have to resist that feeling. This is not the Cosby show. I cannot imagine that I am home when my chosen family is still under attack from the INS, when the president-elect can come out of his mouth and support an apartheid Israeli state, when all of the Republican AND Democratic candidates in my state ran on anti-immigrant platforms.

If I accept this election as the foundation of my home, I am sacrificing the home I actually want, the home I am collecting and saving out of the faces of every poetic collaborator, every workshop participant, every morning, afternoon and evening with the youth visionaries of Durham. If I pretend that home is something that the state can give me in the form of a good-looking “first family”, without stopping any of its economic, invasive, nativist violence, then I deny us all the home in the making that I believe in today and every day. And the day before and the month before, and always as long as you live here with me.

love,
alexis

*note: the title comes from June Jordan’s “On the Night of November 3rd 1992″ in her collection of essays Affirmative Acts.

FOR TU SABADO, in the African American Perspective at UMX feature we have a post by a blogmigo known as The Thin Black Duke, or more commonly “Kevin.” Today’s fine sampling includes a musical touch and doesn’t shy away from history either. Very tasty, so dig in without hesitation.

(For those just tuning in, this special feature at UMX runs through to Sunday the 16th of November—mañana.)

Kevin is a former graduate student in English literature and language and an Americanist specializing in poetry and poetics. He also spends a lot of time studying trickster narratives, linguistics, and rhetoric. Kevin is a life-long, hardcore music devotee and a tech hobiest as well. If you can imagine a dude sitting around reading Hart Crane or Emily Dickinson while listening to My Bloody Valentine or A Tribe Called Quest and compiling a Linux program from the source code on his home built-computer all at once, you’ve got him figured out.

The Cross Road.

Blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson famously sang of “The Cross Road Blues” a song which is often interpreted as being his telling of meeting the Devil and selling his soul in order to play the blues as well as he did. A less known interpretation of the song, however, is that of Johnson singing about the dangers of being Black in the Deep South.

Historian Leon Litwack has suggested that the song refers to the common fear felt by blacks who were discovered out alone after dark. As late as 1930s in parts of the South, the well-known expression, “Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on you here,” was, according to Litwack, “understood and vigorously enforced.” In an era when lynchings were still common, Johnson was likely singing about the desperation of finding his way home from an unfamiliar place as quickly as possible because, as the song says, “the sun goin’ down, boy/ dark gon’ catch me here.” This interpretation also makes sense of the closing line “You can run/ tell my friend poor Willie Brown/ that I’m standing at the crossroads” as Johnson’s appeal for help from a real-life fellow musician.”[2]. Furthermore, it is said that Johnson requested that Willie Brown be informed in the event of his death.

The Cross Road has been on my mind lately.

Not because I feel that our President-Elect, Barack Obama, is at the cross road in the sense of selling his soul to become President, or that he is “out alone after dark” in his new role as leader of the United States. Both possibilities are there, to be sure, but that is not what concerns me now.

I am, however, thinking of Robert Johnson, Papa Legba, and Eshu Elegua, and the Yoruban and other myths that spurned these figures that linger at The Cross Road, figures of transformation and freedom, and why they might be necessary for understanding where we are right now in our national consciousness.

We are, my friends, at The Cross Road.

It is, perhaps, not Barack Obama that signifies Papa Legba or Elegua. Perhaps it is us. We are the ones that are opening the doors to our future. We are the elocution, the voices that shall ring loudly and proudly as we determine what the future will be. As the song goes, it is “we” that shall one day overcome.

I know, you’ve heard it before: “we are the change…blah, blah, blah…” It’s almost corny and played-out to say it anymore. Truth be told, I could never hear the word “change” again and be quite happy with that. But there’s something in the air, nonetheless. There’s something about seeing Obama “brush his shoulder” off and laughing at the folks that think Jay-Z is the originator of that gesture. For me, the gesture is not relevant because a pop culture icon appropriated it in a song. It is relevant because it points back to our stories, our songs, our ancestors. Like any good transformational figure, Obama is moving both forward and backwards at the same time; and like any good transformational figure, he is bringing us along for the ride, even if we don’t fully recognize it. Obama’s ascent makes perfect sense to me in the framework of black, African, folklore and the stories that have carried us this far along.

What struck me on election night the most happened as I was heading home from work. I heard noise. A lot of noise coming from the college nearby. At first, I couldn’t tell what people were yelling, but it quickly became apparent that the noise I heard was chants of “Obama! USA!” This was my first clue that Obama did, in fact, have it in the bag. You see, this isn’t New York City, or Chicago, where it was expected that people would take to the streets and celebrate (or riot). This is small town, private college, upstate New York. To hear these young voices, the voices of kids who, quite frankly, would be just fine regardless of who was elected President or what happens to the economy, so exuberantly yelling Obama’s name in the streets…well, it was jarring. I didn’t know what to make of it at first. These were the same kids that often display their privilege and entitlement to me daily at my work. These were the same kids that see nothing wrong with throwing a “pimps and hoes” party and inviting me, and then wondering why I’m offended. And then it hit me.

Yes, we are at The Cross Road, and The Cross Road can be a dangerous and scary place. There are things that must be accounted for, but we don’t have to be afraid to be “out after dark” anymore.

Being at The Cross Road isn’t about heroes or heroines, instead, it is about us. Papa Legba is a symbol showing us our potential–allowing or denying us the right to move to a higher level as we see fit. So it is with the first Black President of the United States. I don’t write this to try and diminish the amazing accomplishment that Barack Obama has achieved. Nor do I wish to suggest that Barack Obama is nothing more than “a symbol.” I, like most of you, am proud and excited beyond belief at Obama’s victory. That the most predominant figures of Black people in the United States are intelligent, responsible, good people rather than some wannabe gangsta with weak rhyme skills is something I’ve longed to see for some time now. President-Elect Obama, however, is simply showing us a new path. It is us that must walk it.

ALSO TODAY in the African American Perspective at UMX feature we have a post on African Americans and Latinos by a blogmiga whom I know personally. She’s one dynamo you want on your side, full of fire and joy and positivity. (And dig her pretty blog, wow! Who designed that thing? ::wink wink::) So gracias, Carmen! [PS, As Carmen did not send me a bio, I have patched together one from some words on her own blog's About page.]

(For those just tuning in, this special feature at UMX runs through to Sunday the 16th of November with at least one new post every day.)

Carmen D. is an Independent with moderate political views, a social liberal with strong opinions and is always open to a good argument. She has lived in projects and affluent neighborhoods, experienced poverty and abundance, had life changing experiences traveling all around the USA as a producer for ABC News, and throughout all of it her foundation has been the world view and intellectual curiousity her mother and grandmother provided while she was growing up.

Is Barack Obama the needed bridge between blacks and Latinos?

Is Barack Obama the needed bridge between blacks and Latinos? Maybe.

One of the most “YES!” inducing moments of last Tuesday’s election dissection, was learning that my Latino hermanas y hermanos had come out in a large majority (2 to 1) to support Barack Obama. In 2004, President George Bush garnered 44% of the Latino vote and pundits everywhere declared that “Hispanics” were conservative, and might provide a growing base of support for the Republican party going forward. It was a reasonable hypothesis, I guess. But what no one saw coming in 2004 is how sharply a first effort at immigration reform would be excoriated and then vetoed by both members of the Republican party and the right wing electorate. The call to stop all efforts toward immigration reform “until we secured our borders” left a foul taste in the gut of many who were surprised at how quickly John McCain dropped his rather mavericky effort and lurched as close to the Minutemen, without walking a shift on the border, as one could get.

There were a few expressions of bigotry coming from high profile Latinos, that seemed to be signaling a skepticism, even within the brown community, that Latinos in high numbers would support a black candidate. The encouraging observation, however, is that every time this fractured narrative was advanced during the primary and general election season, other members of the Latino community pushed back in a loud and forceful voice.

It was so good to see Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, my home city, lined up behind Obama as a member of his super nova caliber economic team. Villaraigosa was a chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign so I am glad to know that bygones are bygones. And I believe Obama is sending a signal to Latino people that his administration will recognize and honor their contribution to his victory.

To be honest, there is a detectable tension between blacks and Latinos here. It is pronounced in certain areas of the city where there is underemployment, high gang activity and a lack of job and educational opportunities. Not surprising, right? But my view of the tension is that it’s rooted in a sense of lack and an inability to see the power in working together across the color spectrum to push for expanded opportunities and fairness for everyone. I believe that if Barack Obama, while he works on fixing the economy and keeping us ‘safe’, is steadfast in pursuit of smart and humane immigration reform coupled with strategic, high level Latino appointments, his administration can proffer the profound sense of “hope” for little Latino girl and boys, their big brothers and sisters and their moms and dads that was instantly instilled in black children and their families on November 4th.

TODAY in the African American Perspective at UMX feature we are gifted with an essay by Elle, the Southern sistorian whose blogging is always personal, openhearted, and real. (For those just tuning in, this special feature at UMX runs through to Sunday the 16th of November with a new post every day.)

Elle is a historian whose work centers the lives and labors of black women. she’s a single mama, an erratic blogger, and an assistant professor.

Assessing the Secret of Joy

I’ve been thinking about this post all week and, as usual when I’m preoccupied about something, I called my mom. She listened to me go on and on for a while about all my fears and concerns, all the worrisome things I’ve heard and read. Finally, she broke in to say, “Don’t let people steal your joy!” And I realized, in the immediate aftermath of the election, that is what I did.

I expected to cry if Barack Obama won the election—everyone who knows me expected me to cry. I even had friends who called and said, “Are you crying yet?” Admittedly, I dashed away a few tears, but I didn’t really cry. The joy I felt was overshadowed by worry. Already, I was thinking about the Obama family out there on that huge stage. But I worried more about, “oh-my-god-if-he’s-not-immediately-the-bes-tpresident-EVAR-people-will-freak!”

The worries got to me. More importantly, people got to me. The Thursday after the election, I walked into one of the offices in my department in which two white women (one a student, one a staff person) were having a discussion. They stopped immediately. Aware of my discomfort (and my inability to leave because I had to search for something), the student began talking again. The topic was the election. I knew the student was from an ultra-conservative background, but tended to be center right herself.

But the other woman? Bitterness poured off her in waves. She launched, loudly, into a speech about how Obama was not a messiah and she was tired of people treating him like he was a god and how it’s been proven he’s been hypnotizing and brainwashing people. She’d picked her friend up from work on election day, she said, and asked if the friend had voted. The friend nodded, but said nothing else for a few minutes, then finally spoke up and said, “I voted for McCain.” “I did too,” she told the student, “And I asked her, why should we be ashamed, you know? Why should we be ashamed to vote for a war hero?”

There have been very few times in my (relatively new) professional life in which I’ve felt I was targeted because I was black. I have no doubt most of that speech occurred because my black self was in that room. That shook me so badly that I went to my co-worker’s office and virtually collapsed. Then, I cried.

And I cried more, after my 12:30 class, when one of my young, white male students approached me, excited, talking about Obama’s victory. “He actually had a majority!” He was so happy and before I could do more than smile, an older student chimed in, “He didn’t win by that much.”

I am frustrated by all these efforts to discount, to downplay the political adroitness of the man. All the rooted-in-reality people, on the left and right, who are cautioning us misled masses not to get our hopes up. Why?

And why am I letting it get to me? I am in a part of the country that didn’t rejoice, didn’t laugh, and dance, and cry in the streets. I am away from family with whom I could have laughed and danced and cried. I think that is part of the reason I reacted so strongly at work—I mean, come on, the women in my department with whom I socialize are a bunch of “latte sipping intellectuals” or whatever, who were firmly behind Obama.

But I had to turn off that besieged part of me to focus on the historicity of this election. Obama’s election does set precedent. Voters are sending an African-American man to the most coveted home in the political world, a house to which, just a century ago, inviting a black man violated American mores.

Yet, in many ways, his victory was not surprising in the aftermath of the primaries. When Americans felt that President Herbert Hoover no longer cared about them, that he was ill-equipped (and unconcerned) with dealing with the realities of an unparalleled economic catastrophe, they sent him and his party home. When conservative Americans felt that the world around them was imploding, raining jagged shards of feminism, civil rights agitation, worker militancy, and anti-war sentiment upon them, they elected Richard Nixon. When southerners felt their cherished Lost Cause had been forgotten and fundamentalists decided they missed the days when women knew their place, they rallied with others to elect Ronald Reagan. After eight years of a bleak, warmongering, fearful, economy-destroying presidency, that the Republicans got the boot is not ahistorical.

Still, that Obama surmounted the obstacle of the election caught me by surprise. I wanted him to win. I wanted him to change things. But I had not yet formulated what I wanted that change to be, what I wanted his presidency to be. I have big ideas-end this hellish war, revive our economy, start the turnaround for public schools, acknowledge and address the civil rights crises that are still ongoing, particularly for PoC, for immigrants and the LGBTQI community, do something about the prison-industrial complex, about poverty, about healthcare.

But I have more intimate ones too. I’ve written before about how the image of 84-year-old Milvertha Hendricks, a black survivor of Hurricane Katrina, wrapped in the American flag, was jarring to me. I have been made to feel like something “other” than American—for my color and my beliefs—for so long, that seeing black people huddled beneath the flag gives me pause. So that is one of my hopes, that his presidency will be a progressive, and people (not money or corporation) centered one, one with which I can identify. That it will be one that responds to people, and not an extension of the imperial presidency (or vice-presidency) that the Bush regime embodied. That would give me the kind of joy that can’t be stolen.

I’m at a point in my life, or in my son’s life, I suppose, where he has become the philosopher to whom I listen most. So as I thought about this post, I consulted him, too. I asked him what he thought the election of Barack Obama to the presidency meant.

He didn’t have anything particularly wise to say this time, on the surface at least. His response was, “He said it was about change, Mama.”

“But what kind?” I prodded.

He shrugged. “I hope a good kind.”

That might just be what I hope most.

TODAY in the African American Perspective at UMX feature we give you a strong piece by Matttbastard, who I thank for adding his voice to our mix. (For those just tuning in, this special feature at UMX runs through to Sunday the 16th of November with a new post every day.)

matttbastard is a (typically foul-mouthed and incivil) Canadian blogger, activist and political junkie.  He blogs at bastard.logic and Comments From Left Field, and has guest-posted at Shakesville and Muslimah Media Watch.

Barack Obama: [Re]defining Possibilities

Say it with me, brethren: Barack Obama ain’t Jesus (black or otherwise.)

He’s not RFK, nor MLK, nor FDR. He sure as hell isn’t on the vanguard of some post-racial generational shift, from Moses to Joshua; as Colin Powell recently put it, “no matter what happens in the case of [President-elect] Obama, there are still a lot of black kids who don’t see that dream there for them.” And, sorry, Oprah, but, with all due respect, Obama ain’t ‘The One’, either.

Chet Scoville hit it last week in a morning-after post:

Barack Obama was just the right person at the right time, which is something that can never be predicted [emph. mine]. And that means that even now, American politics can be unpredictable.

The unlikeliness of Obama’s ascendancy cannot be overstated. A skinny mixed race kid with a funny name, barely 2 years into his Senate career, who goes on to thump the Clinton machine, John “The Original Maverick” McCain, and conventional wisdom re: racial politics in America, barely breaking a sweat in the process?

Amazing.

But not fate, unless one defines ‘fate’ as the inevitable finally occurring.

So.

Strip this admittedly monumental (if unlikely, unpredictable and–paradoxically–inevitable) event of all mythic connotations, take it out of broader historical context.

What does the election of Barack Hussein Obama mean to me, a skinny mixed-race political junkie from Canada (whose name is only ‘funny’ in the sense that it doesn’t quite match his complexion)?”

Here’s the thing: despite recent image problems, we (as in ‘the world outside US borders’) actually do have a longstanding love affair with the idea, the great potential, of America. That America in practice rarely lives up to that potential has always been a given. We have no illusions regarding America’s exceptional benevolence, or lack thereof.

But there’s never been anyone in the Oval Office like George W. Bush, who has taken America’s moral capital and, over the course of a decade, put it into negative equity.

The Bush years have been, for lack of a better word, abusive. I feel abused — the whole world does (just ask the Islamic world, which, out of everyone, has borne the brunt of America’s bold, brazen turn to the dark side.) Now, finally, we’ve entered the post-Bush era. Bishop Desmond Tutu, writing in the Washington Post this past Sunday, said that “Barack Obama has turned America’s image on its head” and that Obama’s (monumental, unlikely, inevitable) victory “dramatizes the self-correcting mechanism that epitomizes American democracy.”

And that feels damn good.

Now, does it make me feel proud to see someone who reflects my biracial identity at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation? Sure–but what Barack Obama’s victory most represents to me, as a progressive social democrat from Canada who also happens to be a person of colour, is, as I wrote the other day, “an opportunity.” The margins of ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ have been redefined.

Ain’t about the man–never was. This election was about us. We did this, we the people (yes, we–y’all seriously gotta get used to the rest of the world not despising you again.)

4 years from now, if we’re not disappointed by the first term of President Barack Hussein Obama, it means we haven’t set the bar high enough–not just for Obama, but for ourselves.