Uppity Negro Network™

So, school has started back and I’m trying to learn biblical Hebrew as a language that’s long be defunct.  It’s so outdated that this type of Hebrew consists of an alphabet with no vowels.  So the Masoretes came in between A.D. 500 and 1000 and created a “pointed text” in other words creating vowels, for the simple sake of pronunciation.  All that means that I’m learning a WHOLE new language with a new set of symbols that are actually letters–in other words, I’m not going to be blogging like I would like to be.  That being said, here’s an article some of you all may have come across in the New York Times from September 12, 2009 as an Op-Ed piece written by Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammad entitled “The Recession’s Racial Divide” so I’m shamelessly re-plugging it because I think it’s dead on the money. I’m posting it in two parts, here’s the second half.  Enjoy. Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

If any cultural factor predisposed blacks to fall for risky loans, it was one widely shared with whites — a penchant for “positive thinking” and unwarranted optimism, which takes the theological form of the “prosperity gospel.” Since “God wants to prosper you,” all you have to do to get something is “name it and claim it.” A 2000 DVD from the black evangelist Creflo Dollar featured African-American parishioners shouting, “I want my stuff — right now!”

Joel Osteen, the white megachurch pastor who draws 40,000 worshippers each Sunday, about two-thirds of them black and Latino, likes to relate how he himself succumbed to God’s urgings — conveyed by his wife — to upgrade to a larger house. According to Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, pastors like Mr. Osteen reassured people about subprime mortgages by getting them to believe that “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and bless me with my first house.” If African-Americans made any collective mistake in the mid-’00s, it was to embrace white culture too enthusiastically, and substitute the individual wish-fulfillment promoted by Norman Vincent Peale for the collective-action message of Martin Luther King.

But you didn’t need a dodgy mortgage to be wiped out by the subprime crisis and ensuing recession. Black unemployment is now at 15.1 percent, compared with 8.9 percent for whites. In New York City, black unemployment has been rising four times as fast as that of whites. By 2010, according to Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, 40 percent of African-Americans nationwide will have endured patches of unemployment or underemployment.

One result is that blacks are being hit by a second wave of foreclosures caused by unemployment. Willett Thomas, a neat, wiry 47-year-old in Washington who describes herself as a “fiscal conservative,” told us that until a year ago she thought she’d “figured out a way to live my dream.” Not only did she have a job and a house, but she had a rental property in Gainesville, Fla., leaving her with the flexibility to pursue a part-time writing career.

Then she became ill, lost her job and fell behind on the fixed-rate mortgage on her home. The tenants in Florida had financial problems of their own and stopped paying rent. Now, although she manages to have an interview a week and regularly upgrades her résumé, Ms. Thomas cannot find a new job. The house she lives in is in foreclosure.

Mulugeta Yimer of Alexandria, Va., still has his taxi-driving job, but it no longer pays enough to live on. A thin, tall man with worry written all over his face, Mr. Yimer came to this country in 1981 as a refugee from Ethiopia, firmly believing in the American dream. In 2003, when Wells Fargo offered him an adjustable-rate mortgage, he calculated that he’d be able to deal with the higher interest rate when it kicked in. But the recession delivered a near-mortal blow to the taxi industry, even in the still relatively affluent Washington suburbs. He’s now putting in 19-hour days, with occasional naps in his taxi, while his wife works 32 hours a week at a convenience store, but they still don’t earn enough to cover expenses: $400 a month for health insurance, $800 for child care and $1,700 for the mortgage. What will Mr. Yimer do if he ends up losing his house? “We’ll go to a shelter, I guess,” he said, throwing open his hands, “if we can find one.”

So despite the right-wing perception of black power grabs, this recession is on track to leave blacks even more economically disadvantaged than they were. Does a black president who is inclined toward bipartisanship dare address this destruction of the black middle class? Probably not. But if Americans of all races don’t get some economic relief soon, the pain will only increase and with it, perversely, the unfounded sense of white racial grievance.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of the forthcoming “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.” Dedrick Muhammad is a senior organizer and research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Maybe I’ve been wrong about this whole President Barack Obama and his apparently passive aggressive response to the conservative rhetoric.  We’ve been long discussing how Obama seems to be unaware of his critics, and in fact how the administration seems to actually concede to criticism (consider how the White House issued a quick change of “curriculum” issued to school teachers last week before his speech to school children).  We’ve most certainly made comments about how he’s been calm in the face of Teabaggers and has yet to “clap back” as we say, on the issue of healthcare in a way that uses a Bush method of silencing critics.

But maybe I’ve been wrong about Obama’s approach.

It wasn’t until his speech last week to the joint session of Congress when South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson yelled out his infamous “You lie” heckle to the president that I racialized even remotely the level of nasty criticism that this president garnered from the likes of news commentators such as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the mostly unfair Bill O’Reilly, or even the old codger, Lou Dobbs.  It wasn’t that Wilson accused Obama of lying, I couldn’t care less, it was really the fact that he felt so moved, and free to do so on the floor of Congress, no less during a joint-session, and while the president was actually speaking.  My Facebook status the next day when I heard about joked that if someone had done that while Bush was speaking, Dick Cheney sitting on the right side of Bush would have pulled out his 12-gauge, shot the person, said to them “Fuck you” and then still made them apologize.

Granted Biden is no Cheney (and thankfully so), Obama flashes anger in one second, and politely says, “Not true” and continues on with his speech.

So in the midst of me inferring race into this situation (for back reference please refer to this article from earlier), I saw that in an NBC interview with Brian Williams, former President Jimmy Carter was enjoying his private citizen status because he was quoted as clearly saying that “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.”  Carter goes on to say:

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.”

And after I read that second quote, I immediately thought of the comedian Richard Pryor and a skit I saw over at Negro Intellectual that Pryor did as the first black President and how Pryor’s personality would have handled an inappropriate comment from a reporter during a White House press conference.  Pryor clearly walked down from the podium and proceeded to kick the guy’s ass.

Obama, of course did not do that.  Those two opposite reactions to similar situations made me wonder if Obama actually is aware of what he’s doing, but he can’t act in the way he wants to because he is aware of what some whites may think.

Even I grew up hearing about making sure to be on good behavior in front of white people.  It wasn’t explicit, but it was clear that certain behavior was expected in front of a racially mixed setting versus an all black setting.  My mother still tells of a story when she decided to try full time work again when I was eight at a small non-profit outfit in Chicago and how she saw how the other women looked at her and me and my behavior up against that of the other kids that had been brought into work by their mothers; certain behaviors were allowed by them, but not by me.

Well why is that Uppity?  Kids are kids right?

No, never has been.  This is America.  Duh.

We all stereotype racially ethnic children.  Certain stereotypes are that are really, really negative ones.  The stereotype, at least where I’m from is that Latino mothers (usually always lumped as “Mexicans” because of course they all look the same) are rather passive and let their kids run about unchecked in public venues such as grocery stores, even if the kid is rolling around on the floor.  The stereotype about black mothers is that they’re always yelling at their kids and making a big scene unnecessarily out in public.  The stereotype about white mothers is that they let their kids randomly roam about, but that tacitly, their kid can do no wrong, even if the kid plays all in the finger food and coughs over food and what not.  The point is that since dominant rhetoric is more or less controlled by those of the Caucasian persuasion (just turn on any major cable news channel and tell me what ethnic background the reporter or commentator is), then what results is whatever biases and stereotypes about blacks subconsciously are displayed as truth and fact.

Okay, maybe not the best example, but that’s all I can think of when I’m writing this.

I said all that to say that based on Carter’s comments, if Obama even remotely reacted “black” then all hell would really break loose.  Of course we all have what are considered tell-tale actions of what it means to “act black.”  If that wasn’t the case we wouldn’t have heard about the random white private liberal arts colleges having their “Ghetto night” parties when everyone showed up in oversized clothes, 40 oz. bottles of malt liquor, fitted baseball caps, fake chains, fake teeth and even some wearing black face.

(Which reminds me, did y’all hear about that damn Watermelon Soda being sold in Targets with a caricature of a black child Sambo style eating a slice of watermelon being sold in Target stores in NYC? Or did that COMPLETELY slip the radar?!!?!?)

This means that, based on Carter’s statement, if Obama reacts in any way that could be seen as offending the sensibilities of some white Americans, then it’s further proof that he’s not qualified to be the President of the United States.  I’m pretty sure with this sect of the populace Obama’s damned if he does or damned if he doesn’t–they’d probably say that since he’s left handed his handwriting is that of a Communist or Socialist (btw, are these fools aware that those are two different movements with two different socio-politcal and socio-economic goals?).

So, perhaps I’ve been wrong.  Perhaps Obama is quite calculated about his approach.  If that’s the case, then it’s a sad state of affairs that for the sake of the ontological ramifications of his skin color that he has to act the way he does.  Obama has give off the perception of being safe–which is equated with white–versus being unsafe or irrational–which would have been the Richard Pryor response to this whole recent hoopla.

Let the record show, most people, especially people who think like Glenn Beck aren’t going to outright admit their various biases and prejudices, mostly, they are the shared tacit assumptions or submerged beliefs of a group.  They are never spoken about, and get passed on to one another without explicitly being said.  These submerged beliefs manifest themselves as espoused beliefs that often times contradict actions and perhaps some other type of rhetoric.  The espoused beliefs are the politically correct responses and answers that sometimes attempt to cover up the shared tacit assumptions.

In this case, the shared tacit assumption within some white communities is exactly what Carter said: they have a direct problem with Obama being black and being the president.  Some will say it, I’ll level that most won’t but that that prevailing submerged belief manifests itself in various other thoughts and actions and most certainly in deeds.

Obama is presenting the “new black” toward the white community.  He’s being calm, cool and collected in the face of tough times.  Perhaps he’s doing so because he understands what many older blacks already know: he’s representing the whole race.  Sadly, most blacks in mixed settings are aware of that.  Every comment we make in a classroom represents every other black person in America.  Every report we file to an office manager represents how every other black person in America values their job in the workplace.  Every paper you turn in to a white professor represents how every other black person writes and thinks–and please don’t let their be some fried chicken stains on the bottom page that have seeped through subsequent pages–or a drop of some red liquid on the front page–namely red Kool-Aid.

Perhaps Obama understands that he represents us.

Perhaps Obama is trying his damnedest, as in the phrase of Peerless Delacroix of fictional TV network CNS in Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled,” to “keep ‘em laughing.”

Damn, that’s a sad state of affairs.

After I watch either Spike Lee’s “School Daze” or “Bamboozled” I kinda shift out of Uppity Negro mode and go into somewhat Militant Negro mode because Manray of course says “Cousins, go to your windows and  yell out.  I’m not gonna take it anymore” which echoes Dap’s character in School Daze echoing the refrain of “Wake Up” at the end of the movie.  Am I the only one where a movie so effects your psyche you get like this?  Also, do see race playing a role in how the Obama administration is being currently treated?  Are these conservative push backs a result of race or simply a result of ideological differences?  If the latter, what makes Obama’s progressive ideology so different from another Democrat such as Clinton or Carter notwithstanding notable differences in technology (i.e. 24 hr news cycle, twitter and facebook)?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

So, school has started back and I’m trying to learn biblical Hebrew as a language that’s long be defunct.  It’s so outdated that this type of Hebrew consists of an alphabet with no vowels.  So the Masoretes came in between A.D. 500 and 1000 and created a “pointed text” in other words creating vowels, for the simple sake of pronunciation.  All that means that I’m learning a WHOLE new language with a new set of symbols that are actually letters–in other words, I’m not going to be blogging like I would like to be.  That being said, here’s an article some of you all may have come across in the New York Times from September 12, 2009 as an Op-Ed piece written by Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammad entitled “The Recession’s Racial Divide” so I’m shamelessly re-plugging it because I think it’s dead on the money. I’m posting it in two parts, here’s part one.  Enjoy. Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

WHAT do you get when you combine the worst economic downturn since the Depression with the first black president? A surge of white racial resentment, loosely disguised as a populist revolt. An article on the Fox News Web site has put forth the theory that health reform is a stealth version of reparations for slavery: whites will foot the bill and, by some undisclosed mechanism, blacks will get all the care. President Obama, in such fantasies, is a dictator and, in one image circulated among the anti-tax, anti-health reform “tea parties,” he is depicted as a befeathered African witch doctor with little tusks coming out of his nostrils. When you’re going down, as the white middle class has been doing for several years now, it’s all too easy to imagine that it’s because someone else is climbing up over your back.

Despite the sense of white grievance, though, blacks are the ones who are taking the brunt of the recession, with disproportionately high levels of foreclosures and unemployment. And they weren’t doing so well to begin with. At the start of the recession, 33 percent of the black middle class was already in danger of falling to a lower economic level, according to a study by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University and Demos, a nonpartisan public policy research organization.

In fact, you could say that for African-Americans the recession is over. It occurred from 2000 to 2007, as black employment decreased by 2.4 percent and incomes declined by 2.9 percent. During those seven years, one-third of black children lived in poverty, and black unemployment — even among college graduates — consistently ran at about twice the level of white unemployment.

That was the black recession. What’s happening now is more like a depression. Nauvata and James, a middle-aged African American couple living in Prince Georges County, Md., who asked that their last name not be published, had never recovered from the first recession of the ’00s when the second one came along. In 2003 Nauvata was laid off from a $25-an-hour administrative job at Aetna, and in 2007 she wound up in $10.50-an-hour job at a car rental company. James has had a steady union job as a building equipment operator, but the two couldn’t earn enough to save themselves from predatory lending schemes.

They were paying off a $524 dining set bought on credit from the furniture store Levitz when it went out of business, and their debt swelled inexplicably as it was sold from one creditor to another. The couple ultimately spent a total of $3,800 to both pay it off and hire a lawyer to clear their credit rating. But to do this they had to refinance their home — not once, but with a series of mortgage lenders. Now they face foreclosure.

Nauvata, who is 47, has since seen her blood pressure soar, and James, 56, has developed heart palpitations. “There is no middle class anymore,” he told us, “just a top and a bottom.”

Plenty of formerly middle- or working-class whites have followed similar paths to ruin: the layoff or reduced hours, the credit traps and ever-rising debts, the lost home. But one thing distinguishes hard-pressed African-Americans as a group: Thanks to a legacy of a discrimination in both hiring and lending, they’re less likely than whites to be cushioned against the blows by wealthy relatives or well-stocked savings accounts. In 2008, on the cusp of the recession, the typical African-American family had only a dime for every dollar of wealth possessed by the typical white family. Only 18 percent of blacks and Latinos had retirement accounts, compared with 43.4 percent of whites.

Racial asymmetry was stamped on this recession from the beginning. Wall Street’s reckless infatuation with subprime mortgages led to the global financial crash of 2007, which depleted home values and 401(k)’s across the racial spectrum. People of all races got sucked into subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages, but even high-income blacks were almost twice as likely to end up with subprime home-purchase loans as low-income whites — even when they qualified for prime mortgages, even when they offered down payments.

According to a 2008 report by United for a Fair Economy, a research and advocacy group, from 1998 to 2006 (before the subprime crisis), blacks lost $71 billion to $93 billion in home-value wealth from subprime loans. The researchers called this family net-worth catastrophe the “greatest loss of wealth in recent history for people of color.” And the worst was yet to come.

In a new documentary film about the subprime crisis, “American Casino,” solid black citizens — a high school social studies teacher, a psychotherapist, a minister — relate how they lost their homes when their monthly mortgage payments exploded. Watching the parts of the film set in Baltimore is a little like watching the TV series “The Wire,” except that the bad guys don’t live in the projects; they hover over computer screens on Wall Street.

t’s not easy to get people to talk about their subprime experiences. There’s the humiliation of having been “played” by distant, mysterious forces. “I don’t feel very good about myself,” says the teacher in “American Casino.” “I kind of feel like a failure.”

Even people who know better tend to blame themselves — like Melonie Griffith, a 40-year-old African-American who works with the Boston group City Life/La Vida Urbana helping other people avoid foreclosure and eviction. She criticizes herself for having been “naïve” enough to trust the mortgage lender who, in 2004, told her not to worry about the high monthly payments she was signing on for because the mortgage would be refinanced in “a couple of months.” The lender then disappeared, leaving Ms. Griffith in foreclosure, with “nowhere for my kids and me to go.” Only when she went public with her story did she find that she wasn’t the only one. “There is a consistent pattern here,” she told us.

Mortgage lenders like Countrywide and Wells Fargo sought out minority homebuyers for the heartbreakingly simple reason that, for decades, blacks had been denied mortgages on racial grounds, and were thus a ready-made market for the gonzo mortgage products of the mid-’00s. Banks replaced the old racist practice of redlining with “reverse redlining” — intensive marketing aimed at black neighborhoods in the name of extending home ownership to the historically excluded. Countrywide, which prided itself on being a dream factory for previously disadvantaged homebuyers, rolled out commercials showing canny black women talking their husbands into signing mortgages.

At Wells Fargo, Elizabeth Jacobson, a former loan officer at the company, recently revealed — in an affidavit in a lawsuit by the City of Baltimore — that salesmen were encouraged to try to persuade black preachers to hold “wealth-building seminars” in their churches. For every loan that resulted from these seminars, whether to buy a new home or refinance one, Wells Fargo promised to donate $350 to the customer’s favorite charity, usually the church. (Wells Fargo denied any effort to market subprime loans specifically to blacks.) Another former loan officer, Tony Paschal, reported that at the same time cynicism was rampant within Wells Fargo, with some employees referring to subprimes as “ghetto loans” and to minority customers as “mud people.”

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of the forthcoming “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.” Dedrick Muhammad is a senior organizer and research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies.