Saturday Afternoon Funny: Old School Player Wisdom on the Joys of Sex

We are the product of those who mentor us. For example, I have mentioned my uncle Mr. Tucker many times on this site as an entry point for folks to understand just where the twisted genius that is Chauncey DeVega came from.

He was the old school player eccentric who would ask me about the differences between the wondrous yonis of the different races. Mr. Tucker would travel to the Dominican Republic with garbage bags full of cheap clothes and trinkets for the young women he would bed while on holiday. He was also the millionaire skinflint next door who never parted with his ducats, even after death (a long story). And in my favorite memory of him, my uncle--a married man by the way--had a personal refrigerator that was padlocked and chained shut so that his wife would not steal "his" food. It was only after his death that I found out the strange and even more astounding truth behind his odd refrigerator practices...but the truth of that mystery will remain mine and mine alone, for the dead must be allowed their secrets.

Apparently, my uncle Tucker has a doppelganger who dispenses sage wisdom on love, sex, and the mysteries of women. Random question: Why is it that the old, out of shape, and seemingly undesirable seem to get all the play? Second question: Is this what Viagra has wrought upon us as a society?

Laugh and enjoy. And if you can, go out there and get yourself a "snappy" this Saturday afternoon.

Pathologies of the Right (Continued): Shirley Sherrod Used 'Lynching' To Gin Up Democratic Voters

Just when you thought he couldn't make himself appear even more bigoted and stupid, American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord just keeps on talking. With the spirited defense of his sick and twisted political hit piece "Shirley Sherrod a Liar", Jeffrey is more and more like a man sinking in quicksand--arms flailing about, writhing in panic, and in denial as to his inevitable end.

Once more we are dealing with very sick, sick people.

From Talking Points Memo:

On Monday, former Reagan administration official Jeffrey Lord astonished the left and the right by penning an article in the conservative American Spectator attacking former-USDA official Shirley Sherrod for using the term "lynching" to describe the murder of one of her relative years ago. The problem, according to Lord, was that the victim, Bobby Hall was beaten to death by a blackjack, rather than being hanged by the neck. "It's...possible that she knew the truth and chose to embellish it, changing a brutal and fatal beating to a lynching."

Critics, even at his own magazine, pounced, noting that a lynching is an extrajudicial murder by a mob, whether or not the weapon of choice is a rope.

Last night, in an interview with TPMDC, Lord defended himself and extended his critique of Sherrod, and the entire Democratic party, which he claims is the true repository of racism in the United States.

"I have felt for a long time that my friends on the American left, in the Democratic party have just had this atrocious history with racial issue," Lord said. "I mean it just can't possibly be any worse. I've gone back and read all the platforms for the Democratic party starting in 1840 which was the first one."

What's changed in the last generation, according to Lord, is simply the nature of the Democratic party's racism.

"What struck me about [the Sherrod speech] was that sort of little, casual aside, where she says something about health care, and 'I've never seen people so mean' ... The implication is -- and she uses the phrase at one point 'the black president' and 'we endured the Bush years'. And the implication to me was that she was saying 'if you didn't agree with Obamacare then you're a bigot,'" Lord said. "The essence of the formula is 'scare race X to death that race Y or Z is coming after them in some fashion, and then, you know, you get all the votes and the money, etc, etc, etc. And that all that's gone on over a couple years of history of the Democratic party is that the races have changed."

"What is the difference, really, between Jimmy Byrnes trying to pursue a "white" agenda, and Sonia Sotomayor's wise Latina comment?" Lord asked rhetorically.

For Lord, the key inconsistency is that Democratic southerners were to blame both for Hall's murder, and for ultimately overturning the conviction of his killers, and yet, decades later, Sherrod sympathizes with the Democratic party.

"I understand that people on the other side are going to go poopoopoo and the Nixon Southern Strategy and all that kind of thing," Lord said. "To think that this was just, all these people just switched their party and made the Republican party segregationist is just nuts. I was there."

Lord stands by his initial criticism too: that Sherrod was wrong to use the term "lynching."

"Lynching is most serious business," Lord said. "Let's just say for the sake of the argument that you're 'pro-life' and you're an official in the Bush administration at HHS in a comparable job to what Shirley Sherrod has. And you stand up in a neutral forum where you're there as a government official and you refer to Roe v. Wade as the 'Baby Killer Act. Holy cow, you don't think there'd be any reverberation for that?"

"To be an official of the United States government and stand up there and make such a blatantly flammable description, can be interpreted only one way: that you were trying to gin up the so-called pro-life vote," Lord added. "And to me, what she did here was that equivalent. She used a phrase -- the lynching phrase, however she phrased it there -- that's just designed to inflame people."

Barraged by criticism Monday, Lord later expanded his critique of Sherrod by arguing that Hall wasn't beaten to death by enough people to constituted a mob, and therefore it couldn't have been a lynching in two different ways. He stands by that assessment.

"Certainly the image in my head of a lynching is rope around the neck," Lord told me. "And when we really got into this, it was quite apparent to me that there was all sorts of other things. That there has to be a mob -- mob action. Well what is a mob? Is it two people? Is it three people?"

Lord says he doesn't want Sherrod to lose her job, and urges his fellow conservatives to work toward winning over black voters. "Get out there and engage on race," Lord said. "There's no reason in the world that we can't be getting the black vote. But it's our job to separate black from left and talk about left and right."

Thursday Afternoon Musical Randomness: Cassius Clay, The Gray Album, and a Little Help from My Friends

One of my heroes.

As I did last week with Brother Bruce Lee, here is some randomness from these Internets. So you tell me, on a long Thursday, one day before Friday, and two days from the weekend, what songs get you through Thursday?

For me today, we have my boy Jay to the Z's "Encore" being remixed by the one and only Dangermouse with the beats of The Beatles:



I end today with my boy Joe Cocker because in these trying times we do really need "A Little Help from our Friends":



What will get you through to Saturday?

Slouching Towards Eugenics? The Evolutionary Origins of "Ghetto Related" Behaviors

FROM feckless fathers and teenaged mothers to so-called feral kids, the media seems to take a voyeuristic pleasure in documenting the lives of the "underclass". Whether they are inclined to condemn or sympathise, commentators regularly ask how society got to be this way. There is seldom agreement, but one explanation you are unlikely to hear is that this kind of "delinquent" behaviour is a sensible response to the circumstances of a life constrained by poverty. Yet that is exactly what some evolutionary biologists are now proposing.

There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK. All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has dealt us. If we understand this, it won't just change the way we view the lives of the poorest in society, it will also show how misguided many current efforts to tackle society's problems are - and it will suggest better solutions.

Evolutionary theory predicts that if you are a mammal growing up in a harsh, unpredictable environment where you are susceptible to disease and might die young, then you should follow a "fast" reproductive strategy - grow up quickly, and have offspring early and close together so you can ensure leaving some viable progeny before you become ill or die. For a range of animal species there is evidence that this does happen. Now research suggests that humans are no exception.

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Are the rich and the poor that different in their values and beliefs? Are middle class black Americans that divergent from those in the underclass, seemingly trapped in a perpetual state of poverty? As suggested by a widely discussed public opinion poll in 2007, are there really two "races" of black Americans? The ghetto underclass and the African American middle and professional classes?

Question: Are these divides in values and behavior rooted in nature or nurture? Behavioral scientist Dr. David Nettle would suggest that both forces are at work.

I am of two minds on these matters. On one hand, any conversation about race, poverty, and genetics will always make me feel a bit dirty because science has been used to advance and support white supremacy (of note, science was also used to tear down Jim Crow and formal white supremacy in post-World War 2 America). Ultimately, because science is "a regime of knowledge," it serves elite interests. And by implication, what counts as "truth" in a given moment is malleable and not fixed. In the muddy waters where "race" meets "culture" and then intersects with "behavior" much evil can be done--especially when the study of the relationship between poverty, genetics, and human behavior almost always slouches towards a Bell Curve like moment in which "bad genes" meet "ghetto culture."

On the other hand, I cannot deny the obvious social realities of black poverty, underclass culture, and limited life opportunities. If science can help serve the public good by shining a light on what could be the biological and evolutionary forces that are driving destructive choices, then why not go down that road? Beyond moral condemnation and looking down one's nose at the seemingly irrational behaviors of the underclasses (of all colors), perhaps by understanding the selective incentives that drive their choices all boats can be lifted?

For example, the young woman with 5 children by 3 different men may in fact be making an advantageous choice given her social milieu. The corner boy with his Alpha male persona and "warrior genes" may in fact know exactly what he is doing, as criminal behavior imparts local social status that in turn earns him prestige in his 'hood and the opportunity to impregnate multiple women, thus spreading his DNA. Conspicuous consumption and spending one's resources on overpriced sneakers, expensive clothes, and a rented Mercedes when one lives in a poor neighborhood and has no savings in the bank, may actually be an optimal strategy in a signaling game with one's similarly located peers.

But as someone invested in the uplift of African Americans, I must ask how do these types of very local social capital translate outside of a limited social, economic and geographic space? Moreover, as compelling on the surface as these socio-biological frameworks may at first appear, I am deeply troubled that a scientific explanation for self-destructive behavior can become a legitimation of these "choices" and their long-term negative outcomes. Are these worries misplaced? Reflexively, given the fiction that is race, the wide diversity of human behavior within a given aggregate population, and the complexities of class, do these arguments about group behavior obfuscate more than they reveal?

The powerful article, "Die young, live Fast: The Evolution of an Underclass" can be found here in its entirety. We are doing a cross-posting on this piece with two other bloggers--the always notable (and quotable) culture warrior Cobb and man of science Cnu of Subrealism fame. So please check out their great commentaries.

Pathologies of The Right: American Spectator Magazine Brands Shirley Sherrod a Liar because her Relative wasn't Really Lynched, He was "Only" Murdered

In other words, the Supreme Court of the United States, with the basic facts of the case agreed to by all nine Justices in Screws vs. the U.S. Government, says not one word about Bobby Hall being lynched. Why? Because it never happened.

So why in the world would Ms. Sherrod say something like this?

No idea. It's possible that Ms. Sherrod simply doesn't know the truth. As with any family, stories from generations past can get handed down and over time the truth gets rubbed away and fantasy or fiction replaces it, younger generations none the wiser. This event took place before Ms. Sherrod was born, so that is certainly possible.

It's also possible that she knew the truth and chose to embellish it, changing a brutal and fatal beating to a lynching.

The image stirred by the image of the noosed rope in the hands of a racist lynch mob was, to say the least, frighteningly chilling. Did Ms. Sherrod deliberately concoct this story in search of a piece of that ugly romance to add "glamour" to a family story that is gut-wrenchingly horrendous already?

Again, I have no idea.

There is also a third possibility for what appears to be a straight-out fabrication. Having watched Ms. Sherrod's speech and read the transcript, I think it's abundantly clear that she is a liberal or progressive political activist.

She is clearly enamored of President Obama and the progressive ideas that once fueled the New Deal and is the rock upon which progressives would build their Utopia. Her fierce devotion to the idea that government programs are the source of all good is not to be missed, whether she is championing the idea of working in the federal government or the idea that a particular program where she doles out millions is a source of agricultural nirvana.

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Following the debacle that is the Shirley Sherrod affair, the Right and its echo chamber have revealed themselves to be (perhaps) worse than I had ever imagined. In the rush of the conservative punditry to defend Fox News and Breitbart, their thin mask of decency has finally been thrown aside.

Of course, we can expect Limbaugh, Buchanan, Beck, and Coulter to continue with their bloviating, mouth frothing cries of reverse racism in the Age of Obama for that is their shtick. I am also willing to concede the cheap partisan games that Fox News plays as they race bait and gin up white racial anxiety in order to drive ratings. And ultimately, to my own immediate political and social concerns, I can sit not very surprised by how black conservatives have been noticeably silent on the Shirley Sherrod affair.

But, when is enough enough? At what point do the adults enter the room and say "no more?"

That moment has now passed, as conservative mouthpiece The American Spectator ran a column today suggesting that Shirley Sherrod's relative Mr. Bobby Hall was not lynched by the Klan. According to Jeffrey Lord, "he was only beaten to death." I kid you not. From The American Spectator's reasoning, the original "lie" that is Sherrod's story is proof of her lack of trustworthiness. By extension, "the exaggeration" of the circumstances surrounding the death of Shirley Sherrod's relation is evidence of a "racist" "progressive" agenda because Ms. Sherrod apparently does not criticize the Southern Democrats and Hugo Black, legendary Supreme Court justice (and noted member of the KKK), who freed her relative's killers.

Quite frankly, this is exhausting to even explore.

Never mind that lynching need not only be committed with a rope ("lynching" is a catch all phrase for murder by a group of people), but that an opinion journalist at a "respected" magazine would consider the terms of Ms. Sherrod's family story--a particularly painful and tragic act of white supremacy--as fair game for a political hit piece is beyond reproach.

In my writings here and elsewhere I try to be even handed. I assume that while I may hold deep seeded disagreements with conservatives on many an issue, that we are all (more or less) decent people at heart. But in the aftermath of Obama's election, it has become more and more apparent that many on the Right are possessed of no small amount of moral cowardice: Even when racism is obvious (as proven by the racial theater of The Tea Party, the Arizona and Texas resolutions, and the not so coded dog whistle that is the trope of "real Americans" and "Joe the Plumber," standard fare for Palin and her brood) they stand silent and in denial.

The games played in the aftermath of the Sherrod affair have led me to the following inexorable conclusion, one that is motivated by an adherence to parsimony in my reasoning, and the b.s. test famously called Occam's razor. In total, the New Right is threatened on an existential level by the fact that a black man had the unmitigated gall to run for President and that he won.

These folks (as typified by the Jeffrey Lord's, Pat Buchanan's, Rush Limbaugh's, Bill O'Reilly's and Glenn Beck's of the world) are also projecting their deeply rooted racial fears on to others. While they have long denied the existence of white racism (be it structural or personal) against black and brown people in this country, many on the Right are afraid that a black man who happens to be President will turn the tables on white folk and do to them what historically Whites as a group have visited on people of color in these United States for some 3oo or more years. In this twisted alternate reality white people are victims of racism, and black folks have been laying in wait for centuries to visit undeserved and unjust vengeance upon "The Man."

Sadly, we have reached an impasse in this country, one that neither a "beer summit" or "teachable moment" will correct. Why? Because denial mixed with fear are potent elements in a toxic stew of white racial resentment on the Right--a mix that will not be undone by appeals to reason, historical fact, or common sense. There is no pithy way to put it. These are very sick, sick people. I would be embarrassed for them if they had any shame.

The unbelievably vexing "Sherrod Story False," can be found here.

Saturday Not So Funny: The Pregnant Woman Ign't Battle Royal at a Burger King Parking Lot

We truly are a society too sick to survive. Really. We are a culture where fame is fortune, and where at the nadir of American empire people are distracted by spectacle and foolishness. As black folks, we live in the age of Obama, but we still have so many that are crippled--psychically, emotionally, and intellectually--by a self-hating, internalized ugliness. As a mirror, the rise of the collective mediocrity that is Sarah Palin infused faux populism, tea bagger stupidity, and Breibart madness speak to the very same cultural crisis: the mediocre among us have won, and now they are on Youtube, the evening news, and the Internet.

Question one: Is this video more an indictment of black men (who are cheering this fight on and later participating in the melee) or black womanhood?

Question two: When did "bitch" and the generic "female" come to replace miss, ma'am, or sister?

Question three: Is this what happens when grandma is 30 years old?

Question four: What would Brother Malcolm say about this madness?

Now Introducing "The Ballad of Shirley Sherrod"

The saga of Shirley Sherrod has all of the elements of a classic American story: a little person beaten down by the powers that be; a muckraking villain; the vexing elements of race, class, and gender; and a triumphant victory where the bad guys are exposed and our heroine stands supreme.

What is the only thing missing? A song to accompany this tale.

I am lucky to have talented friends who go out of their way to support my hair-brained schemes and impulsive ideas. Courtesy of LGOLDEN, guitarist and singer who has performed at such venues as Toad's Place in New Haven, Connecticut, I proudly present "The Ballad of Shirley Sherrod":

A Peak into the Conservative Imagination: Ms. Sherrod's Speech Was Most Certainly Not About Transcending Racism

Since the election of Barack Obama it has become increasingly clear that the dividing lines between Left and Right, liberal and conservative, are hardening. I have always hoped that we can come together on issues of policy in the interest of the national good. However, an increasing amount of evidence gathered over the years has come to suggest that conservatives and liberals live in different ethical, cognitive, and emotional universes. In total, these differences are only amplified by the right wing echo chamber noise machine.

Given our country's struggle against white supremacy in order to make whole the central contradictions of the founding and the Constitution-- and how race is as Gunnar Myrdal famously labeled the central American dilemma--moments such as the harassment of Henry Louis Gates Jr. by the Cambridge police, and now the saga of Shirley Sherrod, are lightening rods for our ideological and political divisions. In the case of the latter, to most reasonable folk it seems a cut and dry case where a good person was unfairly maligned by a political opportunist for the purpose of a cheap win in a game of race baiting politics where the bogeyman of "reverse racism" was the weapon of choice. Apparently, not so on the other side of the partisan aisle.

This is only one data point among many that will come into being in the aftermath of the Shirley Sherrod debacle. Nevertheless, it is quite telling for how despite the facts in the Vox Populi Conservative imagination, it is the NAACP and Shirley Sherrod who are the villains and smear merchant Andrew Breitbart who is the victim.

From the National Review:

Ms. Sherrod's Speech Was Most Certainly Not About Transcending Racism

I've been too busy to get into this, but I finally watched the unabridged Shirley Sherrod speech this morning. I also listened to Mark Levin's interview of Brent Bozell (the "audio rewind" can be accessed here; Mark's interview of Brent is the second and third segment of last night's show (i.e., click on July 21)).

It's all well and good to say Andrew Breitbart should have done more due diligence, or that his source should not have edited out important parts of the tape. As I've noted before, when taped or transcripted statements get presented to juries in litigation, we rely on the "rule of completeness": if one side plays or reads a part of the statement that the other side claims is misleading, that other side gets to present whatever parts of the full statement are necessary for context. This way, the jury has an accurate sense of what the speaker was saying. Clearly, there were parts of the tape left on the cutting room floor that should have been considered in conjunction with the parts Andrew published — and knowing Andrew, he would have published them if he'd had them. (By contrast, the NAACP did have the full speech, but threw Ms. Sherrod under the bus anyway.)

All that said, I don't understand the sudden pendulum swing in the other direction. Now, in Take Two, we are to understand that Ms. Sherrod was not exhibiting racism. Instead, "taken in context," we're told, she is actually a heroic figure who has transcended the racist views that, given the terrible things she saw growing up in the South, were understandable.

Okay, but how come it is not incumbent on the folks who are pushing the revised narrative (and slapping Andrew around over the old one) to account for the Sherrod gem below (which begins a little after the 22 minute mark in her speech)?

For context: She is talking about how the evil "people with money," beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries (i.e., around the founding of our republic), created a still existing system designed to institutionalize racism against black people while simultaneously keeping poor whites and poor blacks divided. All highlighting is mine:

So that's when they made black people servants for life. That's when they put laws in place forbidding them [i.e., blacks and whites] to marry each other. That's when they created the racism that we know of today. They did it to keep us divided. And they — It started working so well, they said, "Gosh, looks like we've come upon something here that could last generations." And here we are, over 400 years later, and it's still working.

What we have to do is get that out of our heads. There is no difference between us. The only difference is that the folks with money want to stay in power and whether it's healthcare or whatever it is, they'll do what they need to do to keep that power, you know. [Applause] It's always about money, ya'll. [Applause and murmurs of agreement.] You know. I haven't seen such a mean-spirited people as I've seen lately over this issue of health care. [Mumurs of agreement.] Some of the racism we thought was buried — [someone in the audience says, "It surfaced!"] Didn't it surface? Now, we endured eight years of the Bushes and we didn't do the stuff these Republicans are doing because you have a black president. [Applause]

I wanted to give you that little history, especially the young people, I want you to know they created it, you know, not just for us, but we got the brunt of it because they needed to elevate whites just a little higher than us to make them think they were so much better. Then they would never work with us, you know, to try to change the situation that they were all in.

So, in Sherrod World, mean-spririted, racist Republicans do nasty things that "we" would never do because we have a president who, being black, is above that stuff. Still, we have-nots need to band together for "change" because a cabal of haves, desperate to keep their power, is still imposing their centuries old capitalist system of institutionalized racism — the same racism that courses through the Republican Party and surfaces on "us versus them" issues like healthcare.

Pardon me, but I think I'll stay off the Canonize Shirley bandwagon. To me, it seems like she's still got plenty of racial baggage. What we're seeing is not transcendence but transference. That's why the NAACP crowd reacted so enthusiastically throughout her speech.

With an ever-expanding federal bureaucracy assuming overlord status in what used to be private industry and private matters, are we supposed to feel better that this particular bureaucrat's disdain, though once directed at all white people, is now channeled only toward successful white people ... most of whom — like successful black people — worked very hard to become successful? Are we supposed to forget that when the Left says, "It's always about the money," you don't have to have a whole lot of money to find yourself on the wrong side of their have/have-not equation? Are we supposed to take comfort in having our affairs managed by bureaucrats who see the country as a Manichean divide beset by institutionalized racism?

A Controversial Choice? Tom Vilsack is My Respectable Negro of the Week

contrite [kənˈtraɪt ˈkɒntraɪt]

adj

1. full of guilt or regret; remorseful

2. arising from a sense of shame or guilt contrite promises

3. (Christian Religious Writings / Theology) Theol remorseful for past sin and resolved to avoid future sin

[from Latin contrītus worn out, from conterere to bruise, from terere to grind]

contritely adv

contriteness n

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This may be a controversial choice on my part. But what the hell, the joy of these Internets is the freedom to speak one's mind--with little (or much) consequence. I have much to offer in the upcoming days on The Saga of Shirley Sherrod--some guest posts, a "big" piece, and some random thoughts that will hopefully be worth your time.

In this moment, Shirley Sherrod is our virtual Rosa Parks. And Lord 'cause it must be said, I hope she sues the hell out of Fox and Breitbart for slander. But, there is another half of the story, one oddly fitting given Mrs. Sherrod's theme of race and racial reconciliation.

Today, upset, grumpy, and fired up on a hot Chicago afternoon without a/c in my den, I watched a breaking news story where Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a minor cabinet official whom I have never seen before on television, called a press conference and apologized for preemptively pressuring Shirley Sherrod to resign from her job with his department. I must admit: I watched open mouthed and quite surprised.

He didn't whitewash his misdeeds. Vilsack didn't backtrack. He owned his behavior and the errors he made in firing a good, hard working, public servant.

We extol folks for great deeds. But oftentimes, greatness is not defined by charging a machine gun, fighting off racist cops during Jim Crow, or leading slaves to freedom. Strength and honor can come from doing the right thing when it is profoundly inconvenient. In that spirit, I nominate Tom Vilsack as my respectable negro of the week (because he did the right thing when it would have been easier to have done wrong...and yes it is a given that Shirley Sherrod is in my personal hall of fame). For me, Vilsack's press conference is the very definition of being contrite and professional. Moreover, Tom Vilsack committed a near cousin to seppuku, in an age where cowardice is common and sport, his deeds today were indeed special, unique, and worthy of a pat on the back and a firm, eye locked hand shake between brothers.

Ultimately, in the quasi post-racial age of Obama, for a white man of some decades to get on television and admit that we still have work to do on race (in his own bureau) and to say "my bad" earns a handshake from me. Racial progress does not always come from the loudest, the most vocal, or those who march in the street. Contrary to those seeking the dramatic, often, it is the work of folk of all colors, doing the correct thing quietly (or in this case before millions), with dignity and little acknowledgment that moves mountains sometimes by an inch, and sometimes by miles. These folks do the good and the moral because these deeds are simply the right thing to do. An awkward sentence, but one true to the story of race and progress in this country and the triumphs of the Black Freedom Struggle.

Pray tell. Am I being too forgiving?

The Twisted Politics of White Victimology: In Defense of Shirley Sherrod

Boo hoo once more at the absurd claim that white folks are seemingly the newest victims of discrimination and racism in America.

Did you know that white people are oppressed in America? That the NAACP is a “racist” organization? And that white people, in particular white Conservatives, routinely suffer grievous discrimination in these United States at the hands of the Obama administration? I didn’t until I started watching Fox News and listening to Right-wing talk radio.

It would seem that the voice of a few, amplified by a 24 hour Right wing propaganda machine, can indeed make a mountain out of a molehill. Here, Fox News can magnify caricatures such as the New Black Panther Party into perpetrators of high crimes and misdemeanors. Limbaugh et al. can reframe the NAACP as being a hate organization. And if one were to listen to Glenn Beck, there is a grand conspiracy against "ordinary" "hard-working" White Americans that only he (as the rechristened Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) can save them from. In this long hot summer of race baiting by conservatives, we can add the bullying and subsequent resignation of Shirley Sherrod, a "racist" USDA official, to the list of the Right's short-term triumphs as they fight for a truly "colorblind" America.

Unfortunately, as long as it continues to pay dividends in the form of low hanging fruit, the news frame of white conservative victimology will predominate for the foreseeable future--where it serves as a distraction from the real issues imperiling our country's future.

Nuance and context were slain long ago by opinion based journalism and the rise of the 24 hour news cycle. There is no longer room for the delicate, for facts, or details that would suggest a news item is not as sensational as it would first appear. In the case of Shirley Sherrod, a person's career is now over precisely because of how race has become a spectacle, and the media replay a thin and tired narrative, one more than a century old, where white folks are portrayed as the real victims of racial discrimination in America.

I must ask a provocative question: What did Shirley Sherrod do that was so wrong? If one does some research, they would easily discover that she actually assisted a white farmer who had come to her seeking aid. Moreover, the moral of her speech, presented in heavily edited fashion by Fox News, was how class actually unites us, and where race is an illusion that separates folks of common concern and interest.

Let's be frank. As a practical matter, Shirley Sherrod was a bureaucrat faced with a condescending, quite likely embarrassed white farmer who had to ask a black woman (of all people, the horror...an experience that my fellow members of the coloured professional classes can certainly relate to) for assistance. She chose to offer the white farmer help, initially not going beyond the call of duty--but rendering the required amount of assistance--and also referred him to legal counsel. We may disagree about the level of professionalism she demonstrated in that first encounter, but once more how does a choice, one made some two decades before (and since resolved positively) reveal anything about Shirley Sherrod in the present?

To point. One more inconvenient data point excluded by the Right-Wing echo chamber in their witch hunt for Shirley Sherrod: the family of the white farmer in question has come out in her defense and praised the assistance she has given them over the years.

Most troubling is how context and history will be reimagined in this moment. The USDA has a long history of discrimination against black and female farmers. In fact, they settled a billion dollar lawsuit to make amends for the persistent harm done to farmers of color and women by that bureau's racist and sexist policies. Given the myopia and selective memory common to the Right and enabled by its media machine, one story of a black bureaucrat's choice to help a white farmer (and do not forget that she actually assisted him) will become the dominant, uncontested narrative, as opposed to the real racism and sexism--structural, persistent inequality and disadvantage--experienced by the plaintiffs who sued the USDA.

There is also a powerful irony in the Right wing's discovery of white victimhood. Beyond the absurd claims of anti-white racism or "reverse discrimination" (what are Orwellian new speak like oxymorons) the very people screaming the loudest about anti-white bigotry are the same people that consistently dismissed claims of prima facie racism against people of color. Racial minorities were told to "get over it," that they were imagining things. "So what if there is racism just work harder and stop complaining." Or my favorite, that black and brown folks should "stop playing the race card."

Funny, it seems that white conservatives have rediscovered their religion. Its name? The politics of grievance and identity. Born of Jim Crow and slavery, it was refined as Nixon's Southern strategy, used by Reagan and Bush, and was the patina and timbre of the McCain Palin campaign against Barack Obama. I wonder though, why doesn't the Right, and its aggrieved white membership, follow the same advice that they so generously gave to others?

And ultimately one must ask the obvious: If the roles were reversed, and a white bureaucrat made the same choices about a black farmer, how would the Right twist themselves into a knot defending him or her?

The Rumble in the Tea Party Jungle: Black Tea Bagger David Webb versus White Bigot Mark Williams

I love turning a premise on its head. Given that Mark Williams was working in what was essentially race minstrelsy in his dig at the NAACP, let's use his logic to skewer the New Right and the Tea Party instead.

****

So the Tea Party has repudiated unapologetic bigot Mark Williams, author of the notorious "Letter to Abraham Lincoln from 'the Coloreds.'" Remember, politics is chess. It is not checkers. I don't trust these neo-John Birchers to act in the interest of justice, intelligence, wisdom or the like for that is against their modus operandi. Moreover, white racial resentment is the fuel and fire for the Tea Party, so one must ask "Why repudiate Mark Williams now? What is to be gained? Will this 'rebranding' help legitimize the Tea Party?"

Thus, I have been asking myself the following: What was the conversation like between black conservative garbage pail kid slave catcher David Webb (he who went on Face the Nation and swung the Sword of Damocles) and his white masters before the expulsion of Mark Williams? How did the tea bagger elite convince one of the few non-white members in a movement that draws on the waste water of white supremacy for its strength, to condemn a white bigot, a hero of the tea bagger rank and file brigands? What transpired? And what promises were made?

So then, let us indulge our imaginations as we reconstruct that conversation:

The Tea Party: Hi boy. How are you feeling today? You know we love you, don't you?

David Webb: Yessa sir. I knows how much you loves us poor negroes. You is good white folk. I be know that.

The Tea Party: So we have a problem. We brought you and other minorities into our family for a reason. Michelle Malkin, Alan Keyes, Kenneth Gladney, Shelby Steele, and you fit into this grand American project because you have the courage to do things we cannot. You all are special. You good minority Americans know that right? Be our friends and we will take care of that. Got me?

David Webb: Oh yes. Oh yes sir my boss man! We be workin' for you good white people all's the time! I ain't a common niggrah like those other ones. I be a good one. What you needs me to do? Please, I will do whatever you be asking!

The Tea Party: Which way does trouble roll?

David Webb: I be understand that stuff. It be going downhill sir. I learned that lesson real good so many years ago!

The Tea Party: You are a good black Conservative. Excellent. You do pay close attention to your lessons. Okay then. You are going to appear on the tv and condemn Mark Williams.

David Webb: Condemn? You mean like condom? What a man puts on his pee pee to keep the baby making juice from coming out?

The Tea Party: No, I mean that we tell them they are bad people.

David Webb: I get's that pretty easy. I am a good house negro. I am no rapscallion runway with that touch of the rascality. I am a good black conservative. I like you. I don't cause no trouble. Whatever it be you want I is gonna help you.

The Tea Party: I love you. White folk love you. You know that right?

David Webb: Oh yes! I knows you loves me. What do I need to say on that there talking box with the pictures you smart people call the television?

The Tea Party: Say that Mark Williams is a bad white man and that we good white patriots in the Tea Party are not racists. Can you do that?

David Webb: Oh yes sir. Oh good Lord I know that to be true! Lordie Jesus I be dons't able to do that. I will even put on my good white people voice. I can be reals smart when you all let me. The good white folk won't even know what is going on! They will be so happy to see me. But massa I can't be vouching for how those darkies and bad niggrahs in the fields will be criticizing me. They may see through the whole bamboozle! I be scared. I know you promised to reward me for being a good house negro but I don't want no troubles. I is scared...

The Tea Party: Know your place boy. Have we ever failed you? Are those coloreds who work with us taken care of?

David Webb: Absolutely mister! We got good jobs. Kenneth Gladney, Lloyd Marcus, even Dr. King's niece she be mighty happy on that good white man Glenn Beck's show. Her uncle such a bad colored, now she be trying to do right. I hope she can fit things right to be makin' up for her uncle's sins. That bad Dr. King was such a disobedient black against the good white man. It made me and my kin so sad.

You knows I be sorry for questionin' you. I get out my place sometime. I know that Glenn Beck and you will take care of me. I is scared sometime is all. Us coloreds we get scared 'cause we ain't got the courage of the white man.

The Tea Party: Good boy. That lazy unqualified Clarence Thomas is doing good isn't he?

David Webb: Oh massa he is! You be right! If he can make it I know I can!

The Tea Party: Excellent. You know the way to get even with and neutralize those liberal whites and those NAACP negro trouble makers is to set black against black. So, those liberals in the media will send a colored against you when you go on the television. Do what we say and you will be fine. Trust me you will be rewarded. Be our mouthpiece and all things will be fine. Understand boy?

David Webb: Yes sir! I get's you! This be so great, I can't wait to go on that big talking picture show with the box and condemn, that is how you be done say it right?, that bad white man Mark Williams. This be so good.

The Tea Party: Negro watch your place. Don't you ever ever ever talk bad about no White man! Don't you ever!

David Webb: I's is sorry. I know's we be on the same team. Sometimes I get's excited and uppity is all. That happens to we negroes. Can't help it. We be too emotional. I will do a good job. Not to mouthy or sharp tongued just good enough. I will make it clear he be a good white man. Maybe he just a bit confused and how you be saying, "misdirected," that is a mouthful for a negro like me. Does that be okay? Please say yes? We black conservatives just want to please you boss...

The Tea Party: Good boy. You know your place. Do that interview and we good white Tea Party folk will change up our game! You colored tea baggers are good people. Real good. You make our lives so much easier. I hope you know that. Just keep being good and we will reward you.

David Webb: As long as there be sunshine I be taking in those rewards. We love how you good white folk pat us on the head and let us know we be good. I be dons't showin' that bad white man Mark Williams that he is a racist and then you good folk will reward us black conservatives! Sure 'nuff we be eatin' high on the hog tonight, I ain't never leavin' the white man's plantation! Thanks you boss for being such a good massa! We black conservatives love you all 'cause you let us be special!

The Tea Party: Good boy. Good boy. It best you know your place and you will be rewarded as you know. Now go back to your work cleaning those toilets and mopping our floors and we will call you when you are needed again. But don't you get's too far out of our sight cause you coloreds, even conservatives like that Michael Steele have a tendency to roam. Boy, don't you forget your slave pass. Not ever...

David Webb: I got's my pass right here. But boss you be knowing I don't need it, I am mighty comfortable right here on our plantation and in our big house 'cause you do takes such good care of us.

The Tea Party: We do. That we do.

David Webb: Oh yessa that be correct. Thank you massa and I be at your beck and call like all the other good black conservatives when you be calling on us! We lives to serve, that we do!

Brother X-Squared, Black Radical Genius, Speaks on The New Black Panthers, Voter Intimidation, and the Obama Administration

The We Are Respectable Negroes News Network (WARNNN) in partnership with the website The Intersection of Madness and Reality is proud to bring you the latest installment in our recurring series of interviews with Brother X-Squared, president of the North American Chapter of the Renewed Black Panther Party. As you know, Brother X-Squared has become a legendary force on the Internet following his stunning debut on WARNNN last year. In this latest installment in our series with Brother X-Squared, The We Are Respectable Negroes News Network has decided to hand the reigns over to Brother Rippa, founder of The Intersection of Madness and Reality for a special expose on Brother X-Squared's relationship with The New Black Panther Party, President Obama, and the Department of Justice.

RIPPA: It's good to finally catch up with your Brother X-Squared; it's really been tough. In particular I wanted to have a chat about the situation concerning the New Black Panther Party's Philadelphia chapter. Are you familiar with their voter intimidation case? The very case that has been dropped by the DOJ?

Brother X-Squared: It is good to speak with you again. As I always have to do with that sad respectable Negro Chauncey DeVega, I need to correct your questions as well. You are growing in knowledge, but like many confused captive Nubians you do not understand the power of words. First, what of this "catch up" and "tough" that you speak of? Brother X-Squared is a leader of men. I am in the front line of intellectual battle with the evils of the White Man in America and his colored supplicants--yes I am talking about Obama and his minions--I don't have to catch up to anything. It is the world that is behind Brother X-Squared. "Tough" is a word that implies that there is weakness to be overcome. Brother X-Squared and the other saved New Black Men in America have never been weak.

Weakness is for the sagging hip hop coon show minstrel hoppers and those basketball chasing negroes who follow Lebron James and the NBA...what I call the "nigger ball association" because they are a bunch of million dollar slaves. The fools obsessed with that nonsense are similarly brainwashed! We have black people that know nothing of their history and don't even know how much money they have in their checking accounts who can wax poetic about all manner of stupidity and sports. Most sadly, we have black queens who will lay with these sad humanzees because of their knowledge of basketball or how well they play some foolish sports related video game. All of which is tricknology that the White man has laid for the unsaved Black man in America. You don't need Willie Lynch, another lie perpetrated by the White man by the way, to hold down the captive negro. No, just give him a basketball and ESPN.

I am familiar with the case against the quote unquote New Black Panthers. What a joke, a fraud, a game. And of this, and damn, the white man has so much power in language he even studies it with a field called sociolinguistics--but you simple negroes know nothing of such things--the idea of voter and intimidation being applied to black people is a con. With this country's history of lynching, violence, rape, murder, and the denial of voting rights to the Black Man--the White devils even had to add a clause to their wicked Constitution to give us the right to vote which they then denied for a century or so--the thought that a Black person could even intimidate a white person is a laugh! A joke! A farce!

Once more and again language shows it power. DOJ equals Department of Justice! Whatever. Is there any justice in America for the captive black man and his radical brown, red, and yellow brothers? Answer my question Brother Rippa? Is there! And don't you dare lie...

RIPPA: Well, we can get into a lengthy discussion about "justice" and the black man in America, but I rather not. Instead, let's stick to the subject at hand. I must say Brother X-Squared, you seem a bit more animated than usual. Is this voter intimidation case more personal for you because it centers on the New Black Panther Party? I mean you said a mouthful just now, but let's be honest: this is 2010, I'm not sure if they actually do poll taxes anymore anywhere in America these days. Your thoughts?

Brother X-Squared: Hmmmm, it would seem that your case of draptomania has returned. Especially in your use of evil and twisted language such as "poll tax." You don't even know the history of that word, how the black man was abused as though on a poll by white America and then taxed for having the nerve to even breath the air. Sick. So sick this society is.

But, seeing that we have much to discuss I will defer. This New Black Panther story is the white man pulling the nigger cotton over your collective eyes. You see the white man is a master of strategy and tactics. So many of the devils use what is called subterfuge to get their way. Two of those wicked white Europeans, one named Clausewitz, and the other you know, Napoleon--who had a tiny little penis by the way which explained his megalomania--preached that you have to distract your foe and then you can hit them when you are ready.

Just like with that mess with those Russian spies, you see the white man's FBI and CIA, just like they did with Cointelpro in the 1960s were on to those Russians and let them keep doing their mess. This way they learned about the big plans the Russians had in store. This is why I will not play the white man's game. By presenting all of your information it empowers him to distract, control, and trick you into working for his ends! So deep this is, like the wisdom of the ancient Nubians who invented chess. We must think 10, 20, 50 steps ahead if we are to win. Sadly, so many captive negroes only think about tomorrow while they play simple games like Spades and Craps or sing Karaoke at ghetto bars. Pathetic.

Have you seen those quote unquote New Black Panthers. Old men with sticks wearing tired uniforms! Brother X-Squared disavows them! They are unwittingly being used as a pawn by the white man.


They get all this mess and controversy started about white people being victims as a pretext to the real evil! Brother X-Squared has foreseen this: there is a white backlash against that halfrican Obama. Those white sick sex freak tea baggers and militia types egged on by those drug addicts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck...two true deviants who will be caught one day with dead children in the trunks of their cars...are trying to incite violence against Black people. It is called eliminationism. The right wing Fox news types drink it in everyday of their lives. They want to eliminate their foes by any means necessary!

Brother X-Squared is ready. I say come for me, although I know they won't because the white man is a natural coward, and we will settle this in battle.

RIPPA: But Brother X-Squared, the same white folks you speak ill of as it relates to this case are raising hell! They're not too happy that the first Black president and his sidekick Eric Holder took a stand and decided to drop the charges against the New Black Panther Party. Doesn't that count for something? Can America's first Black president at least get some credit? Is he not worthy?

Brother X-Squared: Again, you must be in jest. Do not waste your time trying to figure out the twisted minds of white people. You see for the real power brokers the only thing that matters is money! The color green oh yes! The Bilderbergs, the IMF, all those folks don't care about countries, or borders. They care about power. You see they know, because the White man is my enemy but he is oh so devious and smart...never underestimate him...that he can put those dumb tea bagger conservative white people (with the help of their slave catching coon Republican assistants against each other....never trust a Black Conservative! Never! They are sick in the way that Frantz Fanon discussed) by talking about black people. Then as always, they don't see how their social betters are destroying them. Did you know that the top 5 percent of people own 90 percent of the wealth in the good ol' us of a! Ha! What sort of democracy is that!

The white man, in particular the middle and working class white man, has always been tricked by his racism. Throughout this country's history, starting at Bacon's Rebellion, the dumb white working classes were turned against black people. The white man will cut off his own nose to spite his face by not working with black people on issues of common concern! So dumb they are!

You know what I think of Obama so don't ask. He is a spiritual zero. No energy. A nonentity because his white and black sides cancel each other out. Eric Holder, notice the name, wow this is deep, "hold her" is a punk, one of Obama's supplicants. His energy is feminine and weak. Thus his non-sense on America being cowardly on race. The Black original man is no coward! Never has been, never will be! Those white devils, but he wouldn't honestly say that, are the true cowards, along with any weak negroes fool enough to follow them...next question.

You are missing on an obvious question about Brother X-Squared and the New Black Panthers. Perhaps your mindstate remains blinded by my octahedron Nubian black knowledge that is the god particle walking the Earth in human form as Brother X-Squared--not that fake b.s. science revealed by those European devils and their atom smashers!

RIPPA: Well now that you brought that up Brother X-Squared, I do have a serious question about yourself and the New Black Panther Party. You see brother, I'm a bit bothered. I realize you speak many truths, and it is in itself a blessing to sit at your feet as a child in the struggle. However, I saw the recent tape being widely circulated which shows on the the alleged perpetrators of voter intimidation - he goes by the name King Samir Shabaaz. I couldn't help but to notice a striking resembleance between the both of you. Brother X-Squared, was that you on the tape? Do you really advocate the killing of "crackas" and their babies?

Brother X-Squared: Now you are trying to see the light! Yes, oh yes! Have you ever heard of Operation Mincemeat during World War 2? You see those white British were master spies and they came up with all sorts of tricks. In fact, they even taught the CIA--those devils were called the OSS back in those days--how to be especially devious and evil. To trick the Nazis they took a corpse and put all sort of fake documents on it. The body washed up on shore and the Germans took the body and analyzed the documents. They got bamboozled! The British devils those foul Imperialists that they are told the Germans exactly what they wanted to hear. The result? Those white allied wicked armies that segregated black and brown soldiers successfully landed in France on D-Day. This is the same thing they are doing with that fake King Samir Shabaaz! They have someone who dresses like me and who imitates me to trick you black and white fools! I am the original, the one and only Brother X-Squared. There is no imitation!

Now you need to separate the issue of my wanting to kill Crackas and their evil foul spawn from this New Black Panther mess. The white man is doing a good job killing himself. I only need to sit back on watch as the white man, a product of Yakub's science, destroys his own Earth. Like an owl, only the white man fouls his own nest! Now, I will stare down and destroy crackas wherever I find them. The cracka is a particularly befouled type of white devil who was the poor white trash overseer who died by the hundreds of thousands to maintain a system of white supremacist slavery that they they didn't even benefit from. They are the forebearers of those wicked Glenn Beck dumb tea baggers. Suckers! I line up crackas by the the dozens and immolate them with the power of my black gaze. I am for all time and in all ways a black king, an African Ultraman fighting to free the captive black man in America!

RIPPA: Oh wow! So this is yet another one of those examples of "tricknology" you often speak of? But why you Brother X-Squared? Why do they seek to destroy you? You mentioned "them" killing each other, but yet said nothing about us killing each other. I'm confused Brother X-Squared; confused I am. Is White Supremacy winning?

Brother X-Squared: No, tricknology is the use of techne, look up your Greek Brother Rippa! That fire stolen from Prometheus to make evil machines and technology. Damn that white man. What my enemies are using is called subterfuge. Not all tricknology is subterfuge. Not all subterfuge involves technology. Why me? Why do you think? How many strong true Nubian warriors are willing to stand in the gap and confront the white man's evil armies?

I will tell you. None! Brother Rippa, again, you are blinded by my mental mindstate because you have let your brain and pscyhe become weak like all those other simpleton negroes. The white man is killing himself as I said. The Black man, the new age slave, has been killing himself for centuries. Now, what is going on in our cities, places like Chicago where these young weak self hating negro ign't troglodytes shoot each other by the dozens each weekend is just a culling of the herd. This is Malthus and Darwin in action! Oh yes it is!

We need the weak and the lumpen to destroy each other for only the strong, mentally prepared black freedom fighter like Brother X-Squared will remain standing! White supremacy has already won Brother Rippa. If you can't see that, I cannot help you. I am about playing a new game, once more I am playing in the fourth dimension of knowledge whereas the unfreed minds are living in the White man's Matrix!

RIPPA: Once again you have left a lot on my plate to digest Brother X-Squared. I guess in essence what you are saying is that you're the embodiment of "blackness" and ultimately this "attack" on you is emblematic of the forces of "evil" and their ongoing pursuit and destruction of the black man? As always Brother X-Squared, it is indeed a pleasure to sit at your feet as you share your wisdom much like Black Jesus did on the mount as he traveled throughout Africa.

Brother X-Squared: Hmmmm. You sound suspicious and mocking. But, given that you are trying to overcome your mental drapetomania I will give you the benefit of the doubt. I am not the embodiment of blackness for blackness is omnipresent and all powerful and cannot be contained in one vessel. The evil was done to the Black Man over centuries! It will not be healed in my lifetime or yours! Trust my words. Black Jesus is a mythological figure. I am real. I am here. And I will continue to preach the truth.

Gordon Gartrelle’s Haiku Movie Reviews

Chappelle's Show
Mooney on Movies
www.comedycentral.com
Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs Black Comedy True Hollywood Story

I apologize for my extended absence, folks. Chauncey has done a commendable job holding it down dolo. I know from experience how tough it is to lose one of your writing colleagues (Zora, come back!).

I thought I’d ease the burden on Chauncey by offering reviews for the last six black movies I’ve seen. I’m extremely short on time, so not only am I bundling the reviews in pairs, I’m doing them in haiku.



35 Rhums & Killer of Sheep

silent, lyrical
black splendor in the mundane
fell asleep on both

Precious & Medicine for Melancholy

White liberals' dream
ham-fisted, patronizing
black folks wrote this shit?

Black Dynamite & Diary of a Tired Black Man

low budget as fuck
funny for different reasons
best movies ever?

The Tea Party, Mark Williams, and Why the NAACP is the Greatest Slave Trader of Them All

"We are dealing with people who are professional race-baiters who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader, ever. It's time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong along with all the other vile, racist groups that emerged in our history."--Mark Williams, Tea Party Express National Spokesperson

Question: Could there be any gift that does not keep on giving in the way that the tea bagger Palin brigades do with so much unselfish selflessness?

[Talk about a genius example of Oscar Wilde inspired wordplay, was that sentence not like wiping your behind with silk?]

Mark Williams' offering is one of those rare and priceless moments where a Freudian slip meets a psychological projection. Despite (or maybe because of himself) one of the key spokespeople for the Tea Party reveals who he and they really are as he attempts to rebut the charge that there are in fact racist elements within the Tea Party, all the while simultaneously deploying the white racist tactic of projection...what kids more affectionately call the "so I am, but what are you!" game.

Lost in the collective sigh and exhalation regarding the tea bagger's, Sarah Palin's, and the twisted Right wing populi's claim that the NAACP is somehow a "racist" organization, there is a teachable moment that has gone unclaimed by the punditry and the peanut galleries alike. The collective conservative White denial and defensiveness against what was a very measured and reasonable resolution by the NAACP was 1) a missed opportunity for the Tea Party to seize the initiative and be in agreement that the racists in their ranks should be expunged and 2) would suggest that in relief, the tea baggers seem to have a profound misunderstanding of the nature of chattel slavery in the New World.

Alternatively stated: What sort of twisted person would joke about slavery and suggest that the premier civil rights organization of the 20th century somehow profited more than the United States' slaveocracy and its bloody handed slave traders? That fighting White supremacy somehow earns money and profit in an order of magnitude greater than that earned by the perpetrators of one of THE greatest crimes against humanity? Ultimately, and this is the sickness implicit in white Conservative race baiting reactionary politics, how could one reasonably suggest that the Black Holocaust was somehow a benefit to African Americans?

To even have to write these questions seems absurd. The tea baggers, New Right, die hard conservatives, and their related ilk somehow believe that slavery was a walk in the park. Possessed of a bizarre view of American history (and drunken on a visual of happy slaves on ye old plantation sitting under the shade tree, playfully picking cotton, and eating watermelon till the sun sets), slavery is reduced to an inconvenience to be gotten over.

In the conservative imagination, race is not a variable that over-determines life chances even into the 21st century. No, racism would only go away if people of color would stop complaining. Just as the Civil Rights Movement was greeted by a white ethnic backlash that manufactured stories of white disenfranchisement and the folk fiction of signs that read "No Irish, No dogs," (a twisted equivalence game where all oppressions are somehow created equal) the New Right imagines white folks as being the new victims of Jim Crow.

What many willfully ignorant folk do not understand is that chattel slavery in the New World was barbaric. In the United States it tore a hole in our collective democracy and exposed the glaring contradictions of a Constitution that purported to proclaim freedom for all while excluding all those deemed 3/5th's of a person. With its long shadow, slavery in America has produced a legacy of structural inequalities in wealth, income, access, and opportunity that plague us to this day. The slaveocracy and white supremacy were also realities in which black bodies were counted as amongst the most valuable assets in the United States--so valuable in fact that a whole society would risk destruction in order to protect this human capital.



And not to be forgotten is the human cost of slavery--the millions who died during the barbaric Middle Passage, and the many millions more grinded under by the gears of the human killing fields of the plantation. These are anonymous and lost people, statistics if you would, for those who do not share their kinship or blood. For others, these are our lost brothers, sisters, ancestors, and kin. They are the whispers on the wind of memory and history not to be forgotten as they speak to a missing link in our connection to both the past and present.

In total, the way that some conservatives, and in particular how the New Right and the Mark Williams's of the world play these sacred dead for cheap political gain, suggests a broader crisis in political faith, values, empathy, and community that goes beyond race and straight to an emptiness of shared struggle in the face of common problems. We are a society in crisis. The tomfoolery and race baiting of the tea baggers makes this dire truth even more clear.

All in all Mark Williams, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party brigands believe that slavery was a joke, or alternatively that the enslavement of black Americans is a punchline to a political speech. As we began, you don't joke about slavery, the Holocaust, or the genocide of Native Americans. You just don't. When the New Right and its believers do so, they reveal once more a political culture that is terribly sick. For in conclusion, these neo-John Bircher racists show us all the while who they have always been. And for that we should be grateful...while also being truly disturbed.

Thursday Randomness: Bruce Lee on Fame and Being a "Star," Pray Tell What Lessons Do Your Heroes have for All of Us?

Some randomness for you all.

I have a few heroes in my life: Brother Malcolm, Martin, Muhammad Ali, and Bruce Lee. True, no bs. One of the favorite truisms I have heard throughout my years is that black folk have two pictures in their homes: Bruce Lee and Martin Luther King Jr. For some, we would add JFK Jr., especially if you went to my grandma's house.

Random factoid: I actually studied Kung Fu with one of, if not the only, African Americans to study with the most high and skilled teachers in China. I will never forget watching this brother doing our forms in dress shoes as I slipped, bare footed, embarrassed, and near fallen in front of him. Our teacher smiled, suppressed a laugh, and said I best keep practicing...

I also remember him hitting me once and I damn near was lifted off of my feet. Funny, after a few years of study I still was an incompetent...but ironically, that little bit I absorbed saved my life on one frightening night. Trust, if I had a time machine I would go back and pay closer attention to Brother Paul's teaching so I could actually be semi-competent beyond the ability to fight off young ign'ts with undersized pistols who happened to tangle with the wrong negro.

As we reach for the stars, as our wings of wax melt, and we keep on trying despite the obstacles, Brother Bruce Lee's words still resonate. I keep on trying to be a star even though I am far from being one. But funny, thus my faith in the creator of the multiverse, I keep getting lucky despite myself.

Ain't fate grand?

My respectable negroes friends and allies, tell me of your heroes and what lessons they have taught you? Are your heroes conventional or unconventional? Are these personal lessons which none can comprehend? Or are these teachings for all of us to grasp and share?

Absurdity of the Day: Sarah Palin and the Tea Baggers Accuse the NAACP of being "Racist" and "Divisive"

We do indeed live in strange times. So for the Right, the NAACP is a "racist" organization, and the tea baggers are innocent Americans unfairly accused of racist behavior?

Beyond partisan sniping, what is so troubling about this classic, white deflection (i.e. a mirroring where those who call out racism are in turn labeled as "racists") is that it involves a 1) deep misunderstanding of what racism actually is and 2) that in the 24 hour news cycle where all points of view are equally valid, Palin and the Vox Right peanut gallery's claims will be elevated to that of the reasoned and rational.

Mining white racial resentment for electoral gains is a tried and true strategy of the Right and Conservatives in this country. Remember, political parties are a brand name, a type of shortcut that helps its members (potential or actual) decide to support the organization. While by the reasonable person standard the Tea Party may not be a classic white supremacist organization per se, they certainly contain a great many racists. Moreover, if public opinion data is any indication, the tea baggers are certainly very "traditional" in their racial attitudes.

Ultimately, (and as I suggested before) the tea baggers condone and give safe harbor to the racists in their midst. For me, that is enough to christen the Tea Party as the new age John Birchers that they are, a group of people who as I often remark may not hold the noose at the lynching party, but would show up in their Sunday finery and cheer it on.

To point on the twisted world in which the Right wing populists live, a choice excerpt from the article "NAACP vs. Tea Party: Racism Debate Heats Up as Sarah Palin Joins Fray":

The St. Louis Tea Party coalition on Monday evening passed a resolution of its own condemning the NAACP for "hypocritically engaging in the very conduct it purports to oppose." The resolution calls on the NAACP to withdraw its resolution. It even urges the IRS to reconsider its tax-exempt status of the NAACP because of what the Tea Party coalition dubbed the organization's "habitual partisan political behavior."

Former Alaska Gov. Palin , a vocal advocate of the Tea Party movement, jumped into the heated race debate Monday night, assailing the NAACP resolution as an example of "typical divisive politics that is so absolutely unnecessary." "The Tea Party movement is a beautiful movement, full of diverse people, diverse backgrounds," Palin said on Fox News' "Hannity." "It's very unfortunate that they are taking this tactic because it's a false accusation that Tea Party Americans are racist. Any good American hates racism. We don't stand for it. It is unacceptable." Palin in turn called on President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama to "repudiate" the resolution and "set the record straight."

The former GOP vice presidential candidate tweeted her support for the Tea Party again today: "I'm busy today so notify me asap when NAACP renders verdict: are liberty-loving, equality-respecting patriots racist? Bated breath,waiting..." Other Tea Party loyalists charge the NAACP's charges are driven solely by political motivations and are misguided. "Those ideas that Tea Party people are racist and that we're trying to instigate a racist climate in this country, that's simply a lie. That's out and out falsehood," said Rev. C.L. Bryant, a former president of NAACP's Garland, Texas, chapter who is now a leading Tea Party activist.

"I have not heard one racial slur that came out of that march," said Bryant, referring to the Tea Party protest on Capitol Hill where members of Congress alleged racist comments. "Those were simply Americans who were protesting."

****

We do indeed live in interesting times, do we not? And am I so wrong to yearn for the good old days of honest racists and honest racism? When folks wore their stripes (or hoods) proudly for all to see?