Protecting The Rights Of Racists

I think HBO comedian, political commentator, and talk show host Bill Maher said it best. Mr. Maher said that conservative Libertarian candidate Rand Paul is the equivalent of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin if she could make it through medical school. In an interview on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, the new darling of the Tea Party movement, Mr. Paul, was asked point blank about his skepticism regarding the validity of certain components of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Mr. Paul sparked controversy when he suggested to Ms. Maddow that the government had meddled too far into private enterprise with the passage of laws that were intended to put an end to America’s institutionalized racial discrimination that still permeated the country despite a series of court decisions that found racial segregation and racial discrimination wrong. Ms. Maddow gave Mr. Paul an opportunity to explain his position on the matter. But instead of making a clear statement whether or not legislation designed to help assure racial accord was appropriate when asked for a yes or no, Mr. Rand continued to do his best political dance around the issue. He did not say that he opposed any laws guaranteeing fair treatment to racial minorities. But to some dismay he clearly did not say that he supported laws that guaranteed the fair treatment of racial minorities.

If I understand Mr. Paul’s point, government should not be in the business of telling private individuals and institutions that they must open their businesses to everyone. Mr. Paul believes that a truly free society is one that allows businesses run by people who are racist or people who condone racism from their employees to pick and choose what segment of our social fabric they will do business with. A government that is intended to provide for the general welfare of the public should not be empowered to assure the equal and fair treatment of anyone. Mr. Paul says that he does not condone racism. But even though racism may be an evil in our midst, government weeding out the evil of racism is an even bigger evil.

A business does not operate free from any obligation to the entire social collective regardless if it is a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or some corporate entity given life by the stroke of some government official’s pen. Any business that operates in our communities enjoys the benefits of being part of our social collective. The roads that lead to any business and to its customers are provided by the public. The utilities that provide services to the business operate under the purview of our collective authority. The people who work in a given business are educated with our tax dollars. Even private schools operate according to parameters laid down by our social structure. A business enjoys the security of being protected from foreign entities by the United States government and its diplomatic and military machines. Any given business in our community operates under the protection of the United States economy and the value of the dollar. And although we often criticize our economic policy, our political leaders, selected by the voters, bend over backwards to protect the interest of businesses. Businesses get a lot of benefit from being part of our community.

But now, people like Rand Paul want to say that it isn’t appropriate for us to assure that businesses that enjoy the benefits of being part of our entire society keep up their end of the bargain. People like Mr. Paul want to say that businesses that reap the benefits of being in our American social structure should not be obligated to reciprocate to everyone in America. In Mr. Paul’s tolerance for racism, people should not expect equal and fair treatment from private entities that suck up public resources. It is Mr. Paul’s opinion that racism is a right that should be protected and it should not be viewed as some form of social disorder.

The freedom of business owners to deny whomever they wish a service or a product should not be given precedence over our public concept of social equality. The freedom of a business person to exercise their right to be racist should not be given precedence over our freedom to be treated fairly and our right to equal treatment.

Rand Paul can tout his tolerance for discrimination as some kind of twenty first century enlightenment against the evil of a government run amok. But the fact of the matter is that this is nothing more than old fashioned racism rearing its head and coming back strong after just a few decades of being on the down low. People are saying we have the right to be racist. That just might be true.

But our social collective not only has the right not to indulge racism, we each have an obligation to root it out call attention to it when we encounter racial discrimination or even the potential for racism. I know I like to think that I do my fair share. And today, I would like to call your attention to the racism of Rand Paul. A conservative Libertarian who would rather see blacks and other minorities discriminated against rather than see our government step up to the plate and nip racial discrimination in the bud as best it can. If Mr. Paul is elected, people all across this great nation of ours will have a hope that one day they can pull their “Whites Only” signs out of their attics or basements or garages or wherever they might have been put when our social order woke up and realized the long term impact that our tolerance for racism was causing to our national community.

Of course Mr. Paul can have his view that a truly free society must tolerate racism. He is a white man who would benefit greatly from the social conflict that comes with racism compared to how much he would actually suffer. Very few businesses would turn him and his kind away. They operate in the generic majority with control of well over ninety five percent of the resources and wealth in this country. But for racial minorities, the election of Mr. Paul and the people who support his views should be another clear sign that racism is far from over.

Thoughtless Thinking

I wished I had recorded the name. There was a black man on CNN defending Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell for his announcement designating April as Confederate History Month. The only thing the man had to say was the same tired old rhetoric about how it was good to see the other side of the story. The Confederate Army wasn’t fighting for the continuation of America’s institutionalized slavery. That was just an incidental benefit in their fight for state’s rights. If I understand their position correctly, the soldiers and supporters of the confederacy were fighting because they believed that individual states had the right and the freedom to deny black people the right to freedom.

The black man on the television thought it important to hear both sides of any argument. It is somewhat interesting that we never have to hear the other side of the story about pedophilia. No one needs to hear about the benefits of child rape or why it’s good for men to beat the shit out of women. There are just some things that are so reprehensible that there isn’t much that can be said to even attempt to begin to justify the act. There are crimes where the reasoning behind the commitment could hardly justify the crime itself.

Another rhetorical statement from the black man was the manifestation of his independent thinking. By showing his willingness to buck the trend that most black people have of turning up the nose at anything that wreaks of the confederacy or of people fighting for the right of anybody to enslave anyone, the black man was proving that he is courageous enough to do that which is unpopular. By showing his willingness to embrace the confederacy, he is proving he can think outside of the black community box.

But on the flip side, no one shows their independence by defending Germany’s Nazi Party’s attack on the Jewish community. No one sane proves their willingness to buck trends by saying that people should have the right to pick up a gun and blow the brains out of the first person they meet on the street. The independent thought processes condoning senseless murder is hardly looked upon favorably. Why does the black man feel the need to show his independence from the black community by showing his willingness to embrace the community of people who would be more than happy to allow our individual states the right to deny people their rights as human beings?

Independent thinking is so much more than just choosing an unorthodox result. If a house was on fire and everyone inside was running out to safety, no one would call the person who made a choice to stay inside the burning building an independent thinker. We would call such a person as crazy. Such behavior would never be admired or promoted. No one would label such independent action as independent thinking. In fact, considering the high possibility of injury, people would be more apt to suggest a lack of any thinking. But somehow, for some reason, we see the promotion of the black man who defends the confederacy and allow him to demonstrate his willingness to buck black community trends on CNN.

An independent thought process based on a review of information available can reach the same conclusions as people who might follow a collective decision making process. While everyone else might run out of a burning building because of the fire alarm, an independent thinker might be running out of a building because they actually see the fire. The independent thinker might be the one that causes others to take action.

Independent actions or results are hardly concrete evidence of independent thinking. In fact, it could be a sure sign that absolutely zero thinking took place at all. Such would be the case of the person who wants to show their independence by embracing a fire. The same can be said of a black person who embraces people who celebrate the ancestry of people who were fighting for the enslavement of black people whether it be a direct result of a choice to fight for the right to keep black people as white people’s property or if it is an indirect result of fighting against a federal government that just so happens to be trying to end the enslavement of black people.

The black man on the television was no independent thinker. This man was the modern equivalent of the house slave who is proud to be the one person of African descent the slave owner allows to live just one rung higher on the social ladder than the other people of African descent. Such a man is no independent thinker. He would quickly embrace whatever thinking the white man tells him. This is the type of man that would be more than happy to go inside a burning building if his master told him to do so. No independent thinking, no thinking at all, would be required.

Barack Obama Is No Man Of Peace

The epitome of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The man not only preached peace, it oozed from his every orifice. When the white establishment notched up its machine of violence and oppression, when the police were wielding their batons and letting dogs maul peaceful protestors, when white men bombed black churches under the cover of darkness and killed four little black girls, when defenders of white supremacy hid in the shadows and aimed their weapons of destruction at men who only wanted equality, Dr. King’s philosophy was to love those who meant us harm. Violence was not the answer. A true man of peace would know better.

When I think of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the last thing I would think of would be a person who would condone war as a means to peace. Although it is believed that war is an unavoidable part of the human social condition, people who initiate wars, people who contribute to wars, people who escalate wars, people who dream of wars, aren’t usually thought of as Nobel Peace Prize contenders. While we might appreciate our soldiers, nobody gets the Peace Prize for their ability to kill and win wars. If that was the case, J. Robert Oppenheimer would’ve won the prize for being the father of the atomic bomb. And companies like Lockheed and Boeing would be consistent Peace Prize contenders and winners for their latest and greatest killing machine with exponentially more fire power than last year’s weapon of destruction.

Normally, the Peace Prize is aimed squarely at people who have demonstrated an unwavering objective towards peace. Dr. King preached incessantly about turning the other cheek. One has to admit, that sounds like someone who is doing their damnedest to keep the peace and is worthy of being recognized as such.

President Barack Obama is no man of peace. He has demonstrated time and time again that he has no real desire to work for an end to war. His whole response to the status quo of inequality and subjugation is to look the other way or to simply do what the majority of people want in order to keep whatever remains of his popular appeal. For a black man to become President of the United States, it wouldn’t look good if he supported the black community. These days, a President of the United States has to keep the status quo of racial inequality that is becoming more and more popular as more people try to convince everyone that racism is a thing of the past regardless of the inequality that continues to manifest. A man of peace would not be afraid to talk about inequality because a man of peace isn’t searching for status or material wealth or power or anything else that might be an impetus for war.

A man of peace does not fight a war in an oxymoronic bid for peace. A man who fights war is a man trying to kill, maim, and obliterate his opponents into silence or submission. The peace that is gained is the peace of intimidation and domination. It’s the kind of peace that a parent might gain from their child with a painful slap across the child’s face. It’s the kind of peace a man or woman gains from their significant other when he or she is aggressive and regularly uses violence to enforce their way. It is the kind of peace that comes not from understanding but from overwhelming power and an ability to conquer. A man of peace does not stand up to accept a globally recognized prize of peace with a promise to escalate war.

If Mr. Obama did not hold the key to the most destructive war machine on the face of the planet, his appetite for war would be much different. But since we have confidence in our ability to kill with utter force, we can afford to escalate hostilities on armies with only a fraction of our troops, strength, destructive capability, or our wealth. It is always far easier to escalate war against people who are poor and a people who are believed to have no redeeming values. On the other hand, a man of peace would find a way to keep guns silent and keep destruction at bay.

When the Nobel committee announced that Mr. Obama was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, many people wondered why. He had no real record to point to show that he earned such recognition. Many people thought his selection was premature. But others said that he would earn his prize with his future decisions and accomplishments.  In the aftermath of Mr. Obama’s predecessor, a man who invited those who wished us harm to engage us in conflict with the infamous words “bring’em on”, nearly anyone who replaced him would have looked like a real peace prize contender.

But today, we see exactly what kind of man was selected. Mr. Obama is a man who refers to himself as a Commander in Chief at war. In many respects, he sounds exactly like his predecessor who professed to be a man of peace as he initiated two wars. Mr. Obama professes to be a man of peace as well. And as soon as he kills the enemies of the United States, as soon as we kill everyone who does not share the values or our high minded majority, we will have the kind of peace that is attainable only through conflict. But a man of peace knows that such a peace is a temporary thing.  A true man of peace doesn’t talk about peace while keeping the world’s mightiest war machine in his back pocket.

Mitrice Richardson Is Just Another Missing Black Woman

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department released twenty four year old Mitrice Richardson at an ungodly hour in the middle of the night from a remote substation. The young black woman, an executive assistant and lived with her grandmother in Los Angeles, was arrested on September 17th from an upscale restaurant in Malibu, about forty miles from her home, when she was presented with the eighty nine dollar check and couldn’t pay. The restaurant staff said she was behaving. They claim that at one point she sat at a table of six other restaurant patrons and engaged them in conversation. That’s really odd because we know people never bother to try and meet other people. And by odd behavior the staff must have been referring to the fact that she was broke. That’s certainly odd to see in a Malibu upscale restaurant. The restaurant manager had to call the police.

When the police arrived, they searched Ms. Richardson’s car and impounded it after finding a small amount of marijuana. Ms. Richardson was arrested for possession of marijuana and not paying her bill. The police took her thirteen miles away to the Malibu/Lost Hills sheriff’s station. Her car remained at the restaurant. The young woman was then released at about one o’clock in the morning, without a cell phone or her car, on her own recognizance. She had no transportation and no way to communicate with her family. That was the last time anyone actually heard or saw of her.

Now, more than a week later, the police are still trying to find her. There have been few leads in her disappearance. One resident in a neighborhood several miles away from the sheriff’s station reported seeing a woman meeting Ms. Richardson’s description sleeping on a porch that morning, but nothing else. Ms. Richardson’s parents, along with their lawyer, accuse the police Friday of inconsistencies in their reports and say that Ms. Richardson should never have been released into the middle of the night so helpless. The police created an unsafe situation and handed Ms. Richardson to someone who may have done her harm on a silver platter. The police told the parents that they didn’t operate a baby-sitting service. Police also claimed that there was no room to keep the woman at the jail. But a check of police records show that there was only one other prisoner at the jail that day between 1:30 a.m. and that afternoon. What gives?

According to a statement by Captain Thomas Martin, most of the news stories have focused on her release from custody so early in the morning. But he wants the people to know that the Sheriff’s Station personnel acted appropriately and legally during the entire event. He claims his deputies acted compassionately and did their best to find someone to pay Ms. Richardson’s bill at Geoffrey’s, the restaurant, in an attempt to avoid an arrest. Although her family offered to pay the restaurant over the phone, the restaurant said that they couldn’t process phone call charges. So I guess we’re supposed to believe that the police searched Ms. Richardson’s car thinking they might find the eighty nine dollars in the back seat cushions or something. According to Mr. Martin, when the deputies didn’t find the funds, she was placed under a citizens arrest by the restaurant management and brought to the station for booking.

Mr. Martin went on to say that while Ms. Richardson was at the station, she was allowed to use the phone to call someone to pick her up. When she was unable to find a ride home, she was afforded the opportunity to remain in our custody until morning and leave at her convenience. When she declined, she was offered the lobby for her use all night, but she declined. Once she was processed and found to have no wants or warrants they could no longer legally detain the young black woman for the two pending misdemeanor charges. Mr. Martin says that he has thoroughly examined this incident and found his personnel acted professionally, compassionately, and within the law. But he prays that Ms. Richardson will be found safe and sound.

I find it difficult to believe that the police acted with compassion or professionalism to a black woman acting strangely in one of their posh Malibu restaurants in a predominantly white area by engaging other patrons in conversation. My experience has been that a black person in a predominantly white area is seen as a nothing but trouble. A black person better make sure he or she has their Ts crossed and Is dotted, Xs slashed and Os closed if they want to avoid trouble. The last thing that black people can count on is compassion from the authorities. We’re supposed to believe that the treatment given to Ms. Richardson is some exception to the norm.

So this morning I turn on the news and I don’t hear a peep about the disappearance of Ms. Richardson even though she disappeared over a week ago. What I did hear was more news about the formerly missing Yale student Annie Le. Even though her body was found inside one of the basement walls of the medical building she worked in days ago, she still manages to garner public attention.

The only way I found out about Ms. Richardson is a hookup from Dark Frosty, a visitor to my blog who sent me to Monie on the Outside. Obviously Ms. Richardson’s story just doesn’t meet the minimum standard necessary to become a national sensation for some reason. The compassion that the deputies of Malibu are supposed to have just isn’t reflected in our national community. A missing black woman just doesn’t pique our interests. It appears that if the black community wants to get the word out about this young black woman we are going to have to do it ourselves.

Caster Semenya Deserves Better

Eighteen year old South African runner Caster Semenya bolted to the world’s attention when she shattered records on the track. At the African Junior Championships in Mauritius she posted the fastest 800-meter run of the year at the time with a 1:56:72. When she competed in her first senior championship at the world track and field championships in Berlin just a few days ago, she clocked another record for the year of 1:55.45 and finished two seconds ahead of the defending world champion.

The wide margin of victory against elite runners of the world added to the speculation that Ms. Semenya could be a male. Officials from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), track and field’s governing body for the world, will be conducting a gender testing procedure that includes an endocrinologist, a gynecologist, a psychologist, and both internal and external physical examinations. The IAAF director of communications, Nick Davies, says that the organization does not believe Ms. Semenya has been intentionally cheating but is the victim of a medical condition known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). AIS is a condition in which a person who is genetically male but is unaffected by male sex hormones known as androgens. Some people with AIS will have a totally female body on the outside, but will lack ovaries and a uterus while others may demonstrate partial AIS and will develop more muscle mass and have more facial hair than usual.

To say that the rest of the track runners are praying for confirmation of the AIS gender malady in the test results is an understatement. Ms. Semenya literally blows away the competition with the ability to literally walk away from the rest of the pack at will. With respect to her opponents, Ms. Semenya does a very good impersonation of Jamaican sprinter and Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, who outruns his male opponents just as easily with his own record shredding performances. As a man Mr. Bolt is immune from accusations of gender confusion. No one is going to accuse him of running like a girl, not unless it’s the bionic woman.

And speaking of the bionic woman, if Ms. Semenya looked like Lindsey Wagner, who played the transistors enhanced Jaime Sommers, questions of her gender would not have been an issue. But because she does not fall into the typical standards of beauty of keen facial features and long wavy hair, it’s easy to dismiss her as nothing more than a freak of nature undeserving of her success. If she looked more like the Florence Griffith-Joyner and ran with a long flowing ponytail and sporting the latest in Cover Girl products or was a perky bundle of muscle like Dominique Dawes then we would simply call her the winner and stand in line to swoon all over her.

Instead, we hear rumors that she might be more man than woman and suddenly point to her anatomy and ask, what gives? Does she really have too much muscle mass to be a woman? Some of her competitors look just as muscular. Maybe they should have their gender checked as well. Does she really have more hair than other women? I know for a fact that nobody questioned Brooke Shields’ gender when she walked onto the scene with her bushy eyebrows. But that won’t stop these fleet footed kettles from calling Ms. Semenya black. Italian competitor Elisa Piccione said that these kinds of people should not be allowed to run with normal women. I guess by normal she doesn’t mean slower.

Instead of being celebrated as the latest great athlete, Ms. Semenya is going to be systematically taken apart and studied all the way down to her genetic level. Her twenty third chromosome will be checked for the proper pairing and she’ll be put under a variety of technologically advanced microscopes so some of us can examine her every defect. Some of the test that she’ll be subjected to will be arbitrary and based on somebody’s opinion of what it means to be male or female. Seriously, what can a psychologist contribute to the understanding of this runner’s gender? The only reason she’s going in for psychological testing is that she did her best to win a race.

If this woman is going through a battery of tests simply because she won a race then maybe it should become standard procedure for all women who win a race to have their gender checked and their psyche scrutinized for their every Freudian flaw. Why stop there? Let’s avoid embarrassing the winners and the rest of the runners altogether by checking their femininity when they sign up before they run. But to wait until women like Caster Semenya are in the middle of experiencing their highest high, after they have put their best effort forward with astonishing results, after they have played by all the rules, while they’re steep in the middle of overwhelming emotions, to single them out for further testing simply because they won and don’t fit our expectations of how a woman should appear and act is some serious loser like behavior.

The Audacity Of A Belligerent Black Man

Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested!  One of the most respected African scholars in America was arrested.  What prompted his arrest?  Mr. Gates was trying to break into his own home.  He was having trouble with his front door.  And like some people who get locked outside their own home, Mr. Gates decided to get in right then and there the best way he can.

According to the news report, somebody saw a black man trying to break into a house.  The police made a visit to the house.  By the time the police showed up Mr. Gates was inside the house.  He was asked to provide proof of his identity and proof that he lived there.  Mr. Gates produced a driver’s license and his university identification.  But then what happened dissolves into a case of his side, their side, and the truth.

The police say that Mr. Gates became belligerent.  Imagine that!  Mr. Gates arrives from an overseas trip from China, a pretty good distance and a very considerable amount of time away, only come home to find his front door stuck and he has to force himself into his own home.  Shortly thereafter, the police are knocking at his door asking him to prove he owns his house.  It isn’t hard to believe that he was upset.  Dude was probably tired.  Instead of the police recognizing an angry man in his own home, the police want the respect from a black man that they feel that they are due.  Since the police didn’t get their props from Mr. Gates, they felt it was in the best interest of the Cambridge community to pull Mr. Gates out of his house and book him on charges that amount to being angry.

The spokesperson for the Cambridge police says that mistakes were made on both sides of this issue.  As is the custom when confronting black people, the police made the mistake of following the standard procedure of throwing any and all forms of compassion out the window in favor of the heavy hand of law.  On the other hand, Mr. Gates made the mistake of being a black man and thinking he was entitled to be angry on his own property.  Both sides have made key mistakes.

Mr. Gates is only the latest black man to be hauled off to jail or harassed by police for being accused of having a bad attitude.  And contrary to what a lot of people would like to believe, this is far from being an isolated incident.  I was listening to people making their comments during a program on the radio and a lot of white people were recalling their stories with police.  How come when they were harassed by police it wasn’t racist but this case was?  What makes Mr. Gates’ arrest different?

Off the top of my head I would say that none of the stories told were about police coming into their homes and arresting people when no crime was committed.  I would say that the fact that Mr. Gates identified his self and had proven that he was entitled to be in his house.  After such a long trip, it’s pretty reasonable to think that Mr. Gates was cranky.  Add a stuck door to the picture and it’s easy to believe that he’d be pissed.  Put cops on top of that and I could see him being angry.  But Mr. Gates has no criminal record and has a history of being a good citizen.  The fifty eight year old man is an asset to the community.  But good behavior doesn’t buy much these days.

Unless he had threatened somebody the police should’ve simply walked away.  But instead of allowing good judgment to prevail, the police felt that whatever damage their egos suffered from Mr. Gates’ anger required compensation.  A black man needs to have more respect for the agents of law.

People are entitled to their anger.  As a social collective we are told that our children are entitled to be angry with their parents, we are told that spouses are entitled to be angry with their significant other, some of us believe that we are entitled to give god the middle finger if we are so moved.  But then on the flip side of these anger management coins, many of us think that the lines of anger that are so crossable in other areas of our lives must be held fast and strong lest black people lose their proper regard for law enforcers.

Instead of people seeing this incident as the latest manifestation of the collective disrespect for black people, people want to sweep it all under the rug as nothing more than an unfortunate misunderstanding between two parties who both contributed to a series of mistakes being made that resulted in the harassment of another black person.  This was just another one of those cases where cops are too quick to trample the rights of a high profile black citizen by mistaking him for the typical black person without the resources to call attention to their abuse, and a case of a black man forgetting his place in our social structure.

I Remember Michael Jackson

A coworker came by my desk to give me the news.

Hey Peacemaker, have you heard?
Heard what?
Farrah Fawcett died today.
Oh yeah, I heard about it a little while ago when I was listening to NPR.
So did you hear the other part?
The other part?  What’s that?
Michael Jackson had a heart attack and stopped breathing.
Over Farrah Fawcett???

And then I noticed other people in the office were having their own version of the same conversation in the cubes nearby and throughout the office. Michael Jackson was dead. Farrah picked a hell of a day to kick the bucket. The last thing a self important person like Ms. Fawcett needed was to be upstaged by the death of Michael Jackson. I went back to work.

It might be sad to say but I really could not care any less. Michael Jackson was the very worst example of a black person who really hated being black. While most self hating black people would be content to simply say that they have transcended race, Michael Jackson was the one black person that actually decided to do something about it. Michael Jackson stared at the man in the mirror and decided he didn’t like what he saw enough to buy a new white skin tone, a keen nose that stayed on his face most of the time, thin lips, and a drippy jerry curl to exorcise the kinkiness of his natural hair and eventually just had it permed straight and long. This was not a person happy about being black or who wanted to embrace his blackness. Mr. Jackson ran from being black in front of the entire world to see. Being black was much too painful for him to live with.

What is sad for me is that I loved Michael Jackson just as much as anyone else. Who didn’t? Who didn’t love to hear Michael Jackson sing? And I’m sure there were people who didn’t, but to hell with them. Everybody knew this was a seriously talented young black boy. The dude was crooning like a troubadour at five years old. Who shows that kind of natural talent just months after kicking their diapers to the curb? What was there not to like and admire? No doubt the boy was singing about things he truly didn’t understand. But his voice was so strong, so controlled, with such a good range, and so full of emotion that he could give you the impression that he knew exactly what he was singing about when he was singing songs like Got To Be There and Mama’s Pearl and I’ll Be There.

When Michael broke the stranglehold grip of Berry Gordy and Motown, he truly hit the stratosphere of stardom. Off the Wall, produced under the talented tutelage of Quincy Jones and released under the Epic label, was a phenomenal success for a debut album. And although the cracks were beginning to form in his blackness, his Motown roots were shining through.  The songs were soulful modern interpretations of the songs Michael Jackson grew up singing with his brothers. And we all would be talking about Off the Wall to this day if it wasn’t for the even more spectacular success of his follow up album Thriller. Thriller broke just about every record when it was released. But by now Michael’s true colors began to show and black was not one of them.

On a daily basis Michael Jackson got weirder and weirder. And his music started to suffer as well. You use to be able to sing to a Michael Jackson tune. You could snap your fingers and bob your head as you sang Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough or Rock With You. But I couldn’t sing some of his latest stuff if you held a gun to my head. Michael stopped making the kind of music you wanted to hear and focused on the kind of music that had to be performed with a killer iconic dance move. For sure Michael Jackson’s name is associated with some of the most famous dance moves of all time. Everybody remembers the moonwalk and the robot associated with the song Dancing Machine. Everybody liked to see him spin in place like an ice skater doing a pirouette. But the new music began to take a backseat to the new dance moves on the stage and the songs became impossible to simply listen to or sing with over the radio.

The music that made Michael Jackson famous evaporated along with his blackness. The new hybrid Michael Jackson that looked more like a scarecrow from a Japanese anime and his accompanying music could never compete with the older version. And instead of being content to let his greatness lie in the past the King of Pop kept trying to recreate a new phenomenon based on superficial glitz and glamour instead of what really drove his initial success, the raw talent and the music.

Yes it is sad to hear that Michael Jackson died. But the fact of the matter is that to me, the Michael Jackson I came to know and love died a long time ago. The caricature that took the talented Michael Jackson’s place has finally died as well. Maybe in his death he’ll get the peace he appeared to never have had in life. I will miss the Michael Jackson I fell in love with. I will miss the Michael Jackson that I thought I could identify with as an obvious member of the black community. However, I will confess that I will not miss the man that became better known as the King of Pop.

Rest in peace Michael Jackson.

More Evidence Of The Contempt For Black People

Someone asked what has the Democrats done for the black community? It is an interesting question to which I really don’t have a good answer. I know that the Democratic Party is more apt to increase minimum federal wages. But I would be hard pressed to identify anything that the Democratic Party has done that really helps the black community.

Then again, I’m hard pressed to point to anything that the Republican Party has done to help the black community lately. The party of Lincoln stood back while a hurricane obliterated the poor black community in New Orleans. I know that the conservative judges appointed to the Supreme Court by the party of the conservatives have given institutions directly opposed to racial diversity and opponents of affirmative action the benefit of judicial decisions that support their arguments regardless of how unsubstantiated reverse discrimination might be. It should be apparent that the party of Reagan supports the heavy handed approach of law enforcement and zero tolerance for people suspected of breaking the law in the black community but look the other way for similar or even worse behavior. While governor of Texas George W. Bush would condemn a man convicted of murder to his fate with the electric chair despite the lack of hard evidence that supports the conviction, but would turn around and start not one but two wars that have our soldiers paying with their lives in order to “protect America’s freedom”. I guess the freedom not to lose one’s life in an illegal and unjustified war isn’t one of those protections our soldiers are fighting for.

I know that the Republican Party, heavily influenced by the big players in the oil industry, is more likely to sit back and let Exxon-Mobile or Texaco earn billions of dollars of profit in a week’s time while the public goes broke paying three dollars a gallon for oil in the off season. And then these people look dumbfounded when the country falls headlong into a recession with a serious depression right behind. I know this is the party that is more likely to deregulate an industry so that their profits can go through the roof while the quality of service and products plummets. I know this is the party that could have corrected the sub prime mortgage mess before it became the bane of the global community but instead decided to let market forces get out of hand. As long as the president’s scope of understanding was limited to individuals losing their homes their attitude was that the whole problem could be fixed with people exercising a little personal responsibility. Who cares about a few dominoes falling? But now that the chain of dominoes has gained speed and has spread to infect the global community and now that we hang on the cusp of financial ruin we can spend the money necessary to correct this much bigger problem. A stitch, in time, would have saved the country hundreds of billions, maybe even in the trillions, of dollars.

I guess in the end the question isn’t so much as to what has the Democratic Party done for the black community. I think what is more pertinent is what has the Republican Party done to the black community. Neither party has done much for the benefit of the black community. Nothing much has happened for the black community since the sixties. But turn the question around and ask which party is likely to do the worst damage to the black community. The answer should pop right out at you like eyeballs in the dark in a caricature of the first black president.

Sherri Goforth, an administrative assistant to Republican State Senator Diane Black of Tennessee, thought it was appropriate and even humorous to distribute a racist image that shows all the Presidents of the United States in official like portraits with the lone exception of the first black president as nothing but a pair of round eyeballs standing out against an all black background. Ms. Goforth confessed that she sent the email to the wrong list of people. The implication is that there is a right list of people who should have received the image.

Of course people have defended the image. I actually read somebody comment that nowhere is it written that it is an image of President Obama, just implied. I guess that makes it okay. I guess that was supposed to be an image of any generic black man in a picture with all the presidents instead of the first black president. That makes sense.

This is on top of former state election director Rusty DePass of South Carolina issued an apology for his comments linking an escaped gorilla from the Riverbanks Zoo with the ancestors of First Lady Michelle Obama. Of course, people defended his racism saying that Ms. Obama believed in evolution so she must believe that the primate was related. And on top of that, Mike Green, an employee with Lexington Republican consulting firm Starboard Communications apologized for an online joke about President Barack Obama taxing aspirin because it’s white and it works.

The era of post racism is getting off to a seriously rocky start. A lot of people want to say that these are nothing more than isolated incidents. But I’m more apt to think that this is a much more realistic example of the true condition of race relations when the mask of political correctness falls away. And these examples are from people who have more than the usual influence on the mechanisms of government. Is it any wonder why we continue to scratch our collective heads in confusion trying to figure out why the state of the black community is in such relatively dismal condition? When people have such contempt for the first black president is there any doubt that there would be contempt for black people in general?