Archive | October, 2009

Headed to The Mecca

21 Oct

howard founders-library-front

Anyone that knows me knows that I’ll use any excuse to make it to Washington, D.C.–I found one.

Actually, I had already blogged that I wasn’t going to D.C. which is why I made my trip to Birmingham, Ala. my birthday weekend which spurred the now widely circulated blog “Is It Okay For Young Black Men to Wear Skinny Jeans?” and some various derivation of that title.  Currently it is on FreshXpress Blog via AverageBro’s website and getting some comments–yay!  So, I’m definitely going to be out of commission until next week because I’m going to be in Washington with Howard University’s Homecoming events, through Saturday, come back, work and finally get an off day next Monday.

It’s a 9-10 hour drive so keep me and my homeboy mindful as we drive down the interstates.

Catch ya on the flipside.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL


Asking The Hard Questions

20 Oct

questionsI had a commenter tell me that she had noticed marked disillusionment in the tenor of my posts and I didn’t really respond, but if you’re reading this, you’re more than correct.  It’s hard being 25 years old and being an African American male who has a wider world view and broader understanding of, hmmm, shall we say epistemologies for the lack of a better word.

Wait?  Epistemologies?!?!

I know most of y’all are saying “Using words like that makes you truly ‘uppity.’”

The traditional 25 year old African American male wouldn’t have a problem with using another word that has probably about three or two syllables, but of course not, this uppity Negro merely encourages the listener to pick up a dictionary and increase their own knowledge about knowledge (Hint hint!!)

It’s hard being in my position.  I see things differently.  It’s hard sometimes to not come off as elitist and distance when a certain issue is raised, most easily one concerning pop culture vis a vis politics, race and religion.  I generally want to dismiss most conversations around those topics as surface and only dealing with symptoms of a root problem.  I’m always interested in asking the hard questions; the one’s that are politically incorrect and that offend people’s sensibilities.  So even when I try and sugar coat those questions as to not offend, my questions are summarily dismissed which makes me even more frustrated and stressed out.

That being said, a good case of me being frustrated is caught up still in the Morehouse College dress code policy.

As I’ve talked to some more people, I’m still hearing the same basic arguments: an infringement of personal rights versus the idea that this is an institution of higher learning and these young men need to know how to dress for a job.

Blah, blah, blah.

I’d rather talk about why certain young men on campus either felt the need to wear shades in class, wear the oversized clothes, wear the fitted caps or even wear the grillz in their teeth.  I think it has something to do with black males and their understanding of cultural identity and masculinity.  This is why I said in my previous post that for Morehouse to take away those particular cultural identifiers is to go down a slippery slope.  I know they’re not advocating their students to be in a uniform, but still, this is a tacit assertion of what it means to be a black male in this country that is coded by saying what it means to be a man of Morehouse.

question mark typewriter keyThe problem I foresee with this is that to take these away is, as I said before, assimilationist.  That is this is hearkening back to a mindset where blacks felt the need to assimilate to a point where it a) didn’t offend white people b) for the sake of garnering equal rights with regards to the Jim Crow segregated South.  Newsflash to Morehouse: this isn’t the modern Civil Rights era.  Engaging in modernist ideals in an ever-increasing post-modern society is not going to set a standard of excellence as many believe, able to produce the next Benjamin E. Mays or Martin Luther King, but rather render these young black men obsolete in a world that requires them to be in touch with lives of all in the global community.

Talking to Citizen Ojo of The Desultory Life and Times of a Public Citizen via Twitter earlier yesterday, he said he went back to his HBCU alma mater for homecoming this week and he simply said he didn’t like what he saw–with regards to dress.  Okay, well tastes aside, are we really ready to impose on a younger generation our clothing tastes?  It’s more than just the clothes.  I’m sure alumni over the past few years have visited the school and done a double take at what they’ve seen.  It is what it is, but I guess for me, this boils down to a few concerned alumni, trustees and various people within the administration being more concerned with outward appearances than what’s in the brain of the students.

The word education has it’s root in the Latin word educare which was a combination of ex and ducere which has a literal translation of out of and lead, guide or conduct respectively which leaves the word educare to pull out of–which is the exact opposite of the banking method of education which is to pour into with the expectations of replication for the purposes of a test or even in larger society.  By forcing someone to change their dress doesn’t change their mind, if nothing else, it will do nothing more than make them want to do it even more.

And of course, I’m quite clear this letter was homophobic. (The fact that 24 of 27 member’s of Morehouse’s Safe Space Organization were in favor of this dress code is a bit beyond me–the oppressed becoming the oppressor can we say?)

don't ask don't tellLook, I’ll be honest, I don’t know or have the foggiest idea why someone with a male anatomy who wants to dress up in women’s clothing and attend Morehouse.  It’s beyond me.  Is this really who they be?  Is this a political statement that they’re making?  Or is this general undergrad B.S. that is really just some immature students who are doing it for the sake of garnering attention no matter what that attention is.  Whatever the case, I’m convinced that failing to ask these hard questions contributes to the general “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the black community.  This policy isn’t confined only to issues of sexuality, but as much as we are an oral and aural people, some stuff we just don’t talk about.

I’ll be honest, I’m a bit saddened and grieved that it’s 2009 and we’re still fighting silent injustices such as this.  Most of us see this as a black and white, cut and dried, this or that situation; but of course this uppity Negro doesn’t.  This world hasn’t been that simple in quite some time.  I don’t know what the answer is, but I’d rather face reality and live in the liminality and struggle in the tensions that life presents, anything else is a detriment to my soul, to my community and to my God.

I write this because more or less this is my only outlet.  I don’t really have the privilege of talking about these things with most people; when I bring it up it gets dismissed as me just being “the uppity Negro” and no one really ever challenges me on my ideas.

Meh. Such is life.  You keep on living.

I came to the conclusion last month when actually I was challenged on a particular idea and the other person kind of hinted around “what’s the limit” or really asking how liberal are you willing to be when we were discussing the ethical and moral issues surrounding the universal health care plan and began talking about each and every person as a human being.  I was saying that once we begin to see everyone else as human then I wonder if we’ll stop inhumane treatment toward others.  That lead me to simply quote Dr. Martin Luther King “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  That is to say that wherever someone’s humanity is being threatened whether they be black or white, gay or heterosexual, old or young, homeless or own’s their own island, I personally, have a responsibility to say something.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The Crossroads of Assimilation and Elitism: The Implementing of the new Morehouse Dress Code

15 Oct

Morehouse attire policyFirst stated, what school doesn’t have a dress code somewhere on the books.  I know my high school had one, that no one really enforced.  My college, Dillard University, had one that they tried to enforce.  They were having an issue, more so with young ladies who would come to the cafeteria on the weekends, when class wasn’t in session mind you, wearing flannel pajamas and of course something thin and revealing often times and their heads wrapped up in various states of being done and not–and sometimes the big stupidt Tweety Bird slippers ten times the size of their feet.  Of course on the hotter days of late summer and early spring, young men would come in with slide on shower shoes, basketball shorts and for the more physically fit, tank top t-shirts or cut off t-shirts.

This in no way affected our education.

For the most part and I do mean more than 99% of the student populace would put on clothes and go to class Monday through Friday.  Actually, for many HBCUs, it’s such a damn fashion show, the pajamas thing is really a weekend thing.  It’s the weekend, we live on campus–you’re eating where you live!  Generally on Saturday mornings, people don’t get dressed just to go downstairs, eat breakfast just to either a) go back to sleep or b) go the living room of your house and watch TV.  This is what brings me to the post topic.

Just this past week Morehouse College of Atlanta, Georgia implemented a dress code, that as I said, probably isn’t much different than most other colleges and high schools in America, but following the heels of Morehouse College president Robert Michael Franklin’s much circulated “Renaissance man” speech this past spring that was highly circulated in the black blogosphere and black talk radio.  I did a post where I uploaded the vast majority of the speech and you can check it out here with this link.  And then I did a follow up where I parsed the speech at the points where I had some contention and you can check it out with this link.

More or less it’s the same argument I have with the recent implementation.  I think what college administrations fail to do is actually begin the process of dialoguing with the students.  Students receive way too many mixed messages from older generations.  On one hand they hear, you’re grown, but then on the other hand they get told what to do because “it’s for their own good.”  Children get told to express themselves, but then when they do if it upsets the sensibilities of the adults, then you stifle creativity.  And I think this is some of what is at issue with this dress code.

sagginDoo-rags, baggy jeans and shirts and the sagging of jeans are cultural signifiers.  They may not carry the political weight of the afros and dashikis of the 1960s and 1970s but both outward styles of dress are clear cultural signifiers that help to identify to one another a certain shared assumption of what is uniquely black. That’s why parodies of Barack Obama and his blackness always show him wearing a doo-rag.  This has nothing to do with the largely undefined notion of being “ghetto” (and for those interested make sure to check out Cora Daniel’s Ghettonation) as most of the older generation seem to think.  It transcends just the musical aspects of hip-hop to the cultural aspects of what it means to be hip-hop or as M.K. Asante, Jr. says, to be a part of the post-hip hop generation.

Sadly, supporters of this dresscode seem to believe that it must be this way so that these young men can get a job afterwards.

That puzzles me because I wasn’t aware that the point of going to an HBCU, and Morehouse of all places was just so that I could “get a job” working in a white corporate setting.  What I heard mostly from supporters of this dress code who were on The Rev. Al Sharpton Show this afternoon were using this idea of getting a job as a paradigm for dressing a certain way on campus.  As I said in my earlier post, perhaps if the dress code were to be implemented for some altruistic reason of bettering the community around us or even being an exemplar for those who didn’t have the opportunity to get into Morehouse, then perhaps I’d buy into it, but just for the sake of working for the proverbial “the Man” is bollocks in my opinion.

It reeks of assimilation actually.  Especially because while Morehouse is a private owned institution and can do what it wants with regards to policies, when Franklin was quoted as saying “If you cannot follow the guidelines of a moral community, then leave.  Change your behavior or separate from this college,” then it is quite clear that he is trying to institute an HBCU collegiate culture with European ideals.

Yes, I said it before and I just said it again.

Fonzworth BentleyAll this talk about making a good look for recruiters during job fairs and what not is all good talk and important talk, but I’m disappointed and somewhat shocked at the lack of revolutionary rhetoric that we all so readily associate with the premier HBCUs.  Perhaps its a misnomer though.  Seriously, as of recent, what serious movers and shakers with regards to civil rights have we heard from HBCUs.  Yes, we have a plethora of successful individuals who graduate from HBCUs and do well for themselves who contribute to the black middle class (that’s a whole other post in and of itself), but it astonishes me that in some segments of the black community we’ll be all “black and proud” and then in others it’s much more “go along to get along.”

Above all, attacking cultural signifiers such as the doorag, fitted baseball caps and baggy jeans and the sagging of pants primarily attacks the culture of the future generations.  It’s part and parcel of the banking method of education where a synthesis of the facts and knowledge isn’t encouraged and ultimately the older generations are wanting to make clones of themselves or even of their parents.  What the older generations fail to do is recognize the sign of the times–they are a’ changing.  I’m convinced that my generation combined of hip hop and post-hip hop have never wanted to completely throw out tradition and throw out old ideals, but they certainly have wanted the ability to be themselves.

What I hear when older adults say “take off your cap inside” or “pull your pants up” or still the weird looks young men get who have tattoos all over their arms and possibly necks is that not only are we upsetting their sensibilities, but we’re keyed into wondering how do white Americans see it.  Are we really worried about how upset we are with it, or how much we’re upsetting the delicate sensibilities of white Americans.

recession gapElitism, to me, is borderline assimilation into European ideals and values.  It’s all about how much will you buy into a certain type of culture and anything counter-culture is not tolerated because you’re not “our kind of people.”  DuBois famously said the the premier issue of the 20th century would be the color line; I’m quite sure that now he would redress that statement and add that the premier problem we’re facing now is a class issue both inside and outside our own community.  Blacks as a whole are already way off the mark with regards to whites in this country and income disparities, but still within our own community, we do a VERY good job of separating the people from Harlem Heights versus those from Bed-Stuy; from those that live in Lithonia to those that live in the West End; from those that live in Baldwin Hills to those that still come from Compton and Crenshaw Blvd.; from those that live in Chatham and Beverly from those that live in Englewood and Roseland; from those that grew up in Prince Georges County, MD to those that grew up in Southeast DC–we do it naturally and we don’t care to give it a second thought.

This us versus them, this house Negro versus field Negro dichotomy is ripping us apart day by day and we still feed into it failing to think critically about deeper issues.  Seriously, what difference does a doo-rag on in class make to me learning–or wearing a fitted cap inside a building?  If I never thought about it or gave it a second thought and I’m the one wearing it, why should someone else?  Why do we let issues such as clothes get in the way of greater communal issues; we’re worried about individual seats on the ship, but the whole ship is slowly sinking into the abyss of ignorance and anti-intellectualism.  The issues that plague our community are bigger than doo-rags, bigger than my fitted caps, bigger than my tattoos, bigger than my pants sagging, but that’s what instead we choose to focus on.  Perhaps we should have dealt with the other part of the dress code that felt the need to ban purses and other feminine associated attire and deal with the psychology (and possible pathology) behind why the school felt the need address it as such–a male college that has students that want to dress like women in a growingly liberal society where merely sweeping these issues under the rug leads to a big pile of dust under a rug that will cause someone eventually to trip.

Taking the road of assimilation and elitism is not the direction that we need to be moving.  To the black community: GET IT TOGETHER!

First, who actually read this whole post?  Why is it so hard for us as blacks to deal with deeper and different issues in our community?  Why do we take the easy route and deal with stuff on the surface when already know that scratching the surface doensn’t change anything?  What is your response to this post–in favor or against?  What would you add to the conversation concerning this discussion?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The End of The Age

14 Oct

A couple of weeks ago, one of my professors had us read the “Mini-Apocalypse” in the biblical scriptures found in the Gospel of Matthew 24:3-8

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ, and will deceive many. 6You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8All these are the beginning of birth pains.

Most Christians are familiar with this type of speech and usually we allude to this scripture when it comes to trying to explain natural disasters that leave wanton devastation such as the tsunamis in the south Pacific and the destruction of Hurricane Katrina or the terror of 9/11/01 in New York City or even the wars in the Middle East.  Many Pentecostals and charismatic Baptists run around declaring that we are indeed living in the end times and if you’re John Hagee, you’re quite sure that Jesus is coming back in ___ amount of days, hours, minutes and seconds.

That being said, my professor went immediately into astrology.

Of course I was taken aback of course because I was wondering how he was going to tie it all together.  He went back to the Hebrew Bible and just brought up the idea of the twelve tribes of Israel and how interesting it was that the twelve tribes are good correlations to the twelve zodiac signs.  He went on to use the Joseph dream motif in Genesis 37 to highlight how the writer did mention moon and stars and the sun, of course astrological symbols to get the point across about Joseph’s greatness.

Okay….and…

…was what I was saying.  I had grown up hearing that one time from my youth pastor, and that was enough for me to really not get caught up in astrology like some people.  How they try and peg your personalities based on your astrological symbol.  I usually just chalked it all up as self fulfilling prophecies if you use to believe it.  So, he went on and asked the class if they had heard of the Year of Precession.

Of course we hadn’t.  Didn’t even have a clue what he was talking about.

He went on to say that we are clearly approaching the Year of Precession as we live in 2009 C.E.  Approximately 2,000-2,100 years ago was another Year of Precession.

See, where I’m going with this.

For those who are still lost check this out:

I recommend the first and third clips to fully understand what I’m talking about.  Especially the third clip, because it drives everything home.  I just put them all up because I really got caught up in watching them and maybe you will too.

Whew!

I never felt so small in my life after watching that.

But for those who skipped down and didn’t have the 50 minutes to take to watch that, in a nut shell, due to the rotation of the earth on it’s axis, the rotation of the earth around the sun and the apparent rotation of the actual sun, ergo the Solar System, at the point of our vernal equinox (the first day of Spring in March) we seem to be in a different position with reference to the zodiac signs.  Approximately every 2,000-2,100 years we move into a different house, backwards in the zodiac calendar.  This is commonly known, as the precession of the equinoxes.  Below is a picture to further drive that point home.

Equinox_path

Okay, Uppity, now I’m really confused, you’re asking.  Don’t worry, I know where I’m going with this.

As anyone knows we are seeing a shift in culture, not this major shift that was noted by the actual ages of the Greco-Roman calendar of Silver, Bronze, Iron and this ultimate Golden Age comprising what’s known as The Great Year (a total of approximately 24,000 earth years), but still, a shift in an age of thinking.  Most people will admit that we are indeed living in a post-modern society.  Where modernity has dominated solidly for at least half a millennium, we clearly are seeing this shift.

Our professor had said that isn’t it interesting that often times in the Hebrew Bible that the ram was considered the premier sacrificial offering but that in the ages prior to Jesus’ here on earth it was the Age of Aries, the ram and before that the Age of Taurus which was the bull?

Ram in a bush anyone?

So of course everyone knows that Jesus went after disciples who were fisherman.  And Jesus now asked them to be “fishers of men” drawing them into the concept of Jesus’ christology.  And many people know that the symbol for early “followers of the Way” was the symbol of the fish.  Do you honestly think that there was some cosmological coincidence that the historical Jesus entered the scene shortly after the beginning of the Age of Pisces–symbolized by the fish?

So where does this leave Jesus?  The disciples in Matthew asked Jesus how would they know the end of the age and not the end of the world. The Koine Greek clearly has two separate words aionos being age and cosmos being world.  The disciples ask about the end of the age and Jesus simply says in the Great Commission in Matthew 28:20 that “lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the age.”

Whoa!  That’s heresy you’re talking Uppity, you say.

No, I’m just stating the obvious facts.

What I’ve said about The Great Year and the precession of the equinoxes is observed fact and observed fact for a few millennia it seems and something that pre-dates the Bible.  After watching this documentary and allowing myself to be a bit more free-thinking that traditional church would probably prefer, for me the question is how does Jesus fit into all of that?  I know the typical church question would ask how does all of that fit into Jesus–but just for fun let’s flip it and see what we get.

I think all that it shows is that yet again, there was this dominant thought and for the most part, thanks to Constantine and St. Augustine, the father of church doctrine as we know it, something that still not even Martin Luther and Calvin were able to undo totally, were a dominant force for the last two millennium and that indeed the promise was to get us to the end of this age.

We are indeed moving into a new era.

I think the children of today that are blessed to live to the end of this century and maybe even beyond will definitely have stories to tell that will rival the stories of centenarians today who talk about World War I, the Great Depression and World War II with stories of nuclear armaments of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Standoff.  Actually, I’m rather inclined to believe much of what I saw in the above clips–why? because it just simply all of that information told me its bigger than that.

I’ll always have questions for Jesus, particularly the Constantinian and Augustinian Jesus that has presented itself in church dogma (thanks Paul) today.  Too often we approach the Bible as though all of it speaks with one voice and has one audience.  How do we reconcile the fact that it wasn’t until St. Augustine that we began to “preach” from the Bible?  Before that if someone had a word from the Lord, they spoke and if it came true, then so be it, otherwise they were labeled a false prophet or as the writer of I John called them simply “the antichrist”–anything that was against the messiah.  But that Jesus, I’ll always have questions about, but as for a God that I fully believe is bigger than all that I saw in that documentary, I have no problem with believing that.

Perhaps because the scientists have shown us that there is some order to the cosmos beyond our own earth.  Does it answer the questions about dinosaurs and what not?  No, not even remotely, but again, given this age, it’s quite clear as humans we are limited in our comprehensions.  Do I wish I were alive in this fabled “Golden Age” and witness the “comprehension of God”?  Probably, but clearly that’s not going to happen.

I’m putting my trust in God.

I really don’t know what’s going to happen when I die.  If there is a heaven, I definitely wanna go.  I think most people here on earth are rolling the dice of religion and hoping that their chips have been placed on the right number when the end comes.  I think that documentary showed me that our human capacity has only reached to the point of barely understanding a true faith concept; there is a gnosis–hidden knowledge–that we seek to understand, but simply can’t.  That being as it is, we do the best we can, and me believing in God is doing the best that I know how.

Seriously, I’d love to hear your reactions to this post! Does it rock your world?  Is it something you can live with?  Does it make you uncomfortable or does it give you ease?  If you’re Christian, will you have some questions come the next mid-week Bible study or in Sunday School this coming up week?  Or do you just outright reject this notion and think that since none of this was mentioned in the Bible then it’s all bollocks?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

What A “Nobel” Birthday

9 Oct

Nobel Peace Prize

Yes, for interested parties, I turned 25 today.

That means I’m in a new age demographic and that hopefully means car insurance premiums will decrease.

That being said, I was more than shocked as I rolled over this morning for the FIRST time and checked my Twitter updates that President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize when it was announced in Oslo, Norway [1].

obama smilingWait!?!?!?  Our current President?  The one and only current President of the United States was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes thinking I was confusing the words awarded and the word nominated.  But no, he actually won it.  Not to mention an approximate prize of $1,400,000.00 as well for it.  I guess those are like the “genius grants” where you supposed to take the money and go do something with it.

I’m quite interested in knowing what his plans would be with the money.

That aside, I’ll be the first to say that this was a straight up political move.  Now according to the rules there is some rather rigorous process through which the nomination undergoes and that the total nominees remain in secret for 50 years I guess until they’re released so we’ll never know who Obama was in contention with.  But, that aside, everyone, even the White House is quite clear that this was shocker.  I think this was interesting on the fact that the Nobel Prize committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland  and the committee were quoted as saying “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

So, they gave him a prize based on hope?

I think most will admit that was the case.  Even Obama was quite clear that he wasn’t deserving of the prize and to be counted in the number of a Martin Luther King, Jr. who endured direct persecution for his actions nor a self-sacrificing individual such as Mother Teresa or even others such as the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. I just wonder what effect will this have on Obama personally?

This particular country in which we reside is perfectly okay with continuing on with business as usual and letting this Nobel Prize win be nothing more than a minor speedbump down the road of economic imperialism driven by the automation of capitalism.  I can only imagine what Glenn Beck has already said during his show earlier today and I’m sure Hannity had a field day with his radio show earlier and is planning to act a fool tonight along with Rush and O’Reilly none plan to disappoint their listeners and viewers.  And maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve grown to dislike Republican National Comittee chairman Michael Steele in general, but his remarks just sounded like, yet again, the lil’ brother being jealous of the older brother because he got more juice in his cup.

Along with the Nobel Prize Committee and I’m sure the rest of the world, except our country it seems, it is my hope that somewhere deep down in Obama’s soul and spirit that this is the impetus he needs to begin to deliver on his campaign promises and not be the politician that he campaigned to be.  As their statement said, there’s this collective hope for a better future–a future that Obama has the ability to move towards.  The eyes of the world are yet again looking toward this country to lead them into a collective future, not one where we’re merely the big kid on the block and everyone is afraid to stand up to, but the future where we’re all on the same playing field and we’re able to make a dent in the plethora of world crises.

But yes, it is ironic to the Afghani’s that he wins the Nobel Peace Prize as talks of ramping up troops is clearly on the table; it’s ironic to the Pakistanis and Iranians as U.S. counterattacks still take place and collateral damage is still occurring.  It is most certainly ironic that he wins the Nobel Peace Prize to most Americans as many of us would have rather, as George Stephanopoulos quipped tonight on ABC’s World News Tonight, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics

Honestly, I don’t think he deserved, he doesn’t think he deserved which is great for minimizing fallout from the conservative pundits, nonetheless I still think it’s one of the best “FALL BACK BITCHES” moment in recent history!

Isn’t it wonderful that he can tell George W. Bush and Cheney and the rest of the Republican Party to just “FALL BACK” and eat everything they’ve been pushing since the campaign season last year.  I mean I think this acted doubly as a great big “FALL BACK” with a middle finger to the former Bush administration that just–well, you know EFFED up everything royally on the international scene as far as public relations were concerned.  Within this regards, I am glad for him truly glad for him.

I wish he would take the money and do something meaningful with it.  Donating it to charities is so cliched.  And even starting your own charities is rather cliched in the sense that you’re doing it more for PR purposes and we rarely hear about work that a lot of those celebrity funded charities end up doing.  Even local papers are slow to report about local charities.  If I were Obama I’d save that money until the post-White House days and actually use that money to do something hands on with it a la Jimmy Carter.  I mean, Carter in his old age actually does the work with Habitat for Humanity–his old peanut farming self is out there with hammer and nails.

That’s true outreach and ministry, where the rubber meets the road.

As Sen. Barbara Boxer says in that above clip, wouldn’t it be nice if enough of us were on the same page where this was some galvanizing moment in American history, but meh….I guess that’s not reality.

[1] Please wish me a happy birthday dammit!! LOL :-)

[2] I had a prof in a Church History (Protestant Reformation to 1740) put on the test “Where did Martin Luther King receive the Nobel Peace Prize?” and I answered “Oslo, Norway” and this buck-mouthed fool informed me that that was a common misnomer and that the Nobel Prize was issued in Stockholm, Sweeden.  FIRST of all, the Nobel Prize is issued in Oslo, Norway and the rest are issued in Stockholm, Sweeden–with yo Fire Marshal Bill faced ass!

What are your thoughts on Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?  Do you think it will make a difference in White House policies or even with Obama on a personal level?  Who would have been your nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize prior to today if you had to choose?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Dealing with Negro Nonsense and Barbershop Knowledge

7 Oct

I need to vent.

Be aware, I’ve recently been watching Spike Lee Joints: “School Daze,” “Bamboozled,” and just this weekend “When The Levees Broke” which still had me fighting back tears.

That being said, a few things I heard over the past week or so just made me angry and I just want to set the record straight and address the “Negro Nonsense” (thanks AverageBro) and to knock down the “barbershop knowledge” that’s so prevalent in our community.

1. Negro Nonsense #1 — Olympics and Derrion Albert

Obama and the OlympicsLast Friday, much to my happiness, Chicago lost their Olympic bid.  First let me clear up somethings 1) Chicago was “not out in the first round” as has been widely circulated.  This was the NCAA equivalent of the Final Four.  The final four cities of Rio De Janeiro, Chicago, Marid and Tokyo were the top four.  Chicago was the first city to go out in this round, but people were acting as though only four cities submitted their bid.  I mean USOC chose Chicago out of other contenders such as New York way back at least a year ago when they decided that Chicago had the best bid to submit to the IOC.  So, everyone running around saying “HA! They were out in the first round are wrong!”

Additionally, as pointed out by AverageBro, it’s the biggest crock of bull if anyone thinks that Chicago lost because of the Derrion Albert murder.  How dare anyone take this young man’s life and blow it up out of proportion and dare say that Chicago has more pertinent issues to deal with such as teen violence.

Really?

Anyone ever heard of favelas?

Derrion AlbertSeriously, if anyone from Chicago rolled through Cidade de Deus they’d have an awakening.  The favelas are way more crime ridden than the South Side of Chicago.  The IOC most certainly couldn’t have taken this particular incident of Derion Albert into consideration given the crime statistics of the non-tourist sections of Rio De Janeiro.  Moreover, Brazil actually has a much more “brown” population than the United States FYI; thankfully the IOC made the decision to go where they had never been before.

It’s also my opinion that given Chicago’s low bid out of the four had something to do with it.  They knew that cost overruns are probably common with this and knowing Chicago’s financial status and that the Olympic stadiums and what not were to be financed by mostly private donors, and that they wouldn’t really fly if costs went over.

2. Negro Nonsense #2 — Black guy defending Troy Dale West (Cracker Barrel beating). Well, I searched for a news story to try and relay this point home.  The fact that I didn’t see an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) when I did an online search makes me even more cautious about this topic and further proves my point about random “barbershop knowledge” that’s used to influence real ideas at stake.

For background info on the story here goes:

I was listening to Atlanta fave Derrick Boazman on 1380AM because he follows The Al Sharpton Show which moved from the FM station and now he’s on the AM dial (seriously wassup with that??!?!)  That being said, earlier that day I was hearing Al Sharpton field calls concerning gang violence in the inner cities of course pointing back to tragic murder of Derrion Albert.  I actually tweeted @TheRevAl and more or less said as long as we live in a society that thrives off of not just violence, but an actual crime industry thats protected by police department and corruption on both the micro and macro levels nothing will change.  Essentially what we need is a new world order.  Simple fact is that since no African American owns planes and cargo ships that travel between Afghanistan and Central and South America that can transport pure products of heroin, opium and cocaine–clearly the crack dealer on the street that can’t catch a break or even the “Nino Brown’s” of the inner cities are still very low on the totem pole compared to the ones bringing in the shipments on the cargo ships, airplanes and military transport planes and ships, yet and still their the ones paying the most for the crime.

So by the time I heard the Negro Nonsense on Derrick Boazman’s show, I was bit full by then.

They were discussing this fact that the white man, Troy West, who has assault charges leveled against him after he beat and punched a black female, Tawshanea Hill, an Army reservist, at Cracker Barrel, now has a prominent black attorney, Tony Axam, from Atlanta defending him–pro bono I believe. Whether this is true or not, apparently the issue of whether or not this black attorney really loved his black sisters came into question and of course many of the callers were referring to the attorney as a “house Negro.”

Wait.  Pump your brakes.

In defense of the “house Negroes,” last I checked a slave was a slave.  Just because of the perceived better status of being in a house rather than a hot sun was really a misperception. Seriously, the “house Negro” was at the beck and call of Mistuh and Missus.  The buck of the house, stereotypically speaking, had to worry about the “Potiphar’s wife” motif of the Missus and the mammy of the house always had to worry about being chased after by Mistuh–stereotypically speaking that is.  Not to mention, particularly in a big house on a plantation of a few dozen slaves, house work in the ante-bellum and even post-bellum period was back breaking work, from doing laundry to being a wet nurse to cooking for a whole house of people.  And often times women were expected to do “man’s work” at certain intervals such as chopping wood for a stove and come on now, doing laundry back then was NOT what was up.

So really–we’re equating that with some fucked up understanding of ontological blackness and what “really black” is?

I guess since Malcolm X so famously did it, it must be an okay definition for 2009.

It’s disheartening to listen to such rhetoric being spewed by grown adults.  Then this caller named “Quincy” called in and he was trying to give an opposing point of view more or less saying that it wasn’t fair to malign the brother as such a “house Negro” and that we must be fair when talking about matters of race.  I felt Boazman back up a little bit, but still, the tone toward “Quincy” was overall condescending and more or less indicative of how we deal with most social and religious issues in the black culture: we don’t entertain opposing views well.

Yes, I understand this because too often we hear the opposing view which is often times the prevailing dominant view of white patriarchal culture and our view is the reaction to that view, but we most certainly don’t handle opposing views from within our own community.  For instance, I’ve seen various blog posts from The FreshXpress about religion, particularly atheism.  You bring up atheism in a barbershop or around grandmama, and you’re damn excommunicated from the black community.  I remember that blog going on to say it would be better to come home married to a lesbian with four children than say “Grandma, I’m an atheist.”  Or the fact that now we try and put our kids on medication for ADD and ADHD and too many of us old timers are still saying “Let Jesus work it out.”

It’s time out for underanalyzation of ideas and topics that come to the forefront of our community.  We have to ask the difficult questions and be prepared for their answers.  Too often, at least on my school’s campus and I think it’s the case in our community, the problem lies with the generational and class gaps.  Too often opposing sides are just hollering at each other and no one is listening.  Forgive me if I offend my elders when I say the following, but the elders time is growing short, would it not make more sense to get on board with those who have to be around after the death of the elders?

3. Negro Nonsense #3 — Affirmative Action is for the “underqualified.”

Recently in class I heard one person comment that “affirmative action was for the underqualified” and I almost jumped out of my seat and strangled him.  That’s the exact line used by all self-professed conservatives.  Has that type of thought process begun to go through the black community unchecked?  Honestly, what I heard him say was that any one but white males were essentially underqualified.  This would include white women and contextually for me, what I heard him say that people of color female and male weren’t qualified for the jobs therefore a law had to be made that allowed them to get the jobs.

*****************

I just really needed to vent since you all see I’ve been missing for a few weeks with just random posts here and there.  But this whole idea of the black community operating off of half-truths and this misconceptions and anachronistic ideas is mind-boggling.  I sit in many of my classes and I hear some of the ideas passed around and I just wanna stand up and holler “ARE YOU GUYS LISTENING TO YOURSELVES TALK?!?!”  Many of us pose that the Popes of Blackness per the State of the Black Union engage in intellectual masturbation and they clearly have not been in a room with a bunch of black senior pastors or done group work with said group.  It’s a veritable hell.  They delegate all of the work and when they get the floor, they start preaching.

I just sit there and roll my eyes.

Just like the other day, I was in a group with all older people, where probably out of six other people, four of the six could have been my grandparents and the other two definitely could have been my parents.  In the midst of discussion, they never once asked for my opinion when I sat in the group and didn’t contribute.  Seriously?!?!  And these would be the same folk wondering why the 18-40 demographic isn’t feeling church anymore.

Derrion Albert 2After experiencing the murder of Derrion Albert, all of us, myself included offer some opinion and yet and still invariably sometime in the near future, somewhere in the “off the beaten path” inner cities none of us hear about like a Chester, Pennsylvania or a Camden or Trenton, New Jersey or Newark some young black male is shot and the selected community spokes persons perhaps with a public school superintendent get up and make some passionate plea about “Enough is enough” and say “We’ve got to stop” only to rinse and repeat sometime in the future.

As Cornel West portrays in Race Matters, stuff like that gives into the nihilism that many of us from the hip-hop and post-hip hop generation engage in on a day to day basis.  Certainly, Negro Nonsense and “barbershop knowledge” is not going to even chip away at the veneer that is post-modern nihilism.  I can’t write that I know what the answer is, or what the root problem is, but being dismissive of certain types of talk is not going to help the situation, I can guarantee that.

Just as a conclusion, recently I’ve been a bit more conscious about the future generations and those that come after me, so the next time you say a prayer, do so in the name of those who have sacrificed for us in the past and in the name of those who are to come.

Do you think blacks to often indulge in “Negro nonsense” and “barbershop/beautyshop knowledge” when it comes to the deeper issues in our country?  If so, what do you think we can do to move away from that–or do you think that’s okay?  What can be done to bridge the generational gaps in your opinion?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

A Discussion for the Water

6 Oct

I survived Katrina.

Now I can say I survived the Great Atlanta Flood of 2009.

Seriously, I did.

Atlanta Flood 3It rained all of week before from about September 15 or 16th which was last Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.  And it really never stopped raining. So, Atlanta metropolitan area got socked with downpour after downpour.  So by the time Saturday rolled around, the whole are was just soaked and the Saturday-Sunday combo we got socked with was the worst.  I remember Saturday I had a rehearsal up on the main part of the AUC campus and that it was a sight to see the water cascading down the hills on which the campus is built.  Water had pooled up so much at the bottom of this one side street I had to turn down, I prayed my car didn’t stall.  When I turned up the hill, initially the water went over the hood of my car, thankfully I knew the street and knew it was barely a car lengths deep–but still enough to stall a car if there was something that wasn’t water tight under the hood.  I had to cross the river that was Fair Street and needless to say, my shoes and socks became immediately soaked through and through.

I made it to service on the following Sunday and had managed to dodge the rain successfully enough as I went to meet up with some friends at Gladys and Ron’s for some after church soul food–fried chicken of course.  But Monday, was wash day for me and I need to wash, I was running rather low on socks and underwear.  Shirts–well, just look at my closet and you’ll see I wasn’t hurting in that area.  So, since I don’t wash on campus because I discovered it’s much easier to go to a laundromat to wash in bulk, usually meaning I wash once a month (yes, I have that many) but I have at least five loads to wash, not to mention when I need to wash a comforter and bathmats and what carpets and what not.

Last year me and a friend had discovered this one place up off of Cheshire Bridge Road that I was driving to on this Monday.  I beat the rain clouds getting there, but leaving was another story.  I had already seen the creek behind the laundromat rising which was really some offshoot tributary of the Peachtree Creek, and both of which had severely gone over their banks.   Where I was wasn’t in direct danger of flooding, but this was the flood of epic proportions.  By the time I left I had seen a steady, not just heavy rain, but downpour that had me driving on city streets at 25 mph with my wipers on high.  I was nervous because I couldn’t think of the best way to get back home because Atlanta is so hilly and I knew these hill bottoms by now would be nothing but standing water just waiting to stall out the lowest car.

So of course the closest street I chose was Piedmont after I panicked not thinking of any other way back.  Of course as I approached Monroe street, Piedmont Ave dips wayyyyyy down and there was probably about a good foot of water, way more than anyone recommends you drive through and cars were gauging how to attack it and I figured if an early model Jaguar in front of my got through without stalling out, my cruise ship of a car would make it through.  I waited before I hit it, and of course I hit the water pretty hard and you could feel the force of the water and I had convinced myself either the car was about to start floating or that I was about to stall out.  The scary thing was that it was probably about 50-75 feet to the other side, it was a quick get in get out pool of water.

Rinse. Repeat.

Atlanta Flood 2I made it through two other flooded intersections after turning down 14th and taking Juniper back south to my side of the city, just thankful my car didn’t stall out in the water.  On Juniper I was riding along side a Camaro and I definitely knew if the Camaro made it that I would be alright.  I got back home safe and sound, but it really was bad in other areas.  It had stopped raining by the time I made it home and I safely unloaded my clothes.  By that time as I turned on the news they were reporting that the west side of I-285 had been closed because of a creek that had begun to flow over the highway.  They had reported a serious mudslide on U.S. 78 (Stone Mountain Hwy) that had closed one side of traffic and was threatening the other side because the mud had gotten as high as the retaining wall.  Then the worst news was that Sweetwater Creek in DeKalb County as it crossed I-20 in Austell was well over it’s banks and running over I-20.

Soooo, another major east-west interstate that runs from Augusta, Georgia all the way to west Texas, almost to El Paso, was closed due to record high flooding.  Come to find out, that bridge remained closed for at least two days.

As I went to chapel that following Tuesday, and all county schools including Fulton County were closed for at least that one day, the school’s chaplain and Pastoral Care director talked about how water was the great equalizer and how this flood and this water forces us to deal with our humanity.  He posed a question I had asked with regards to New Orleans–why build houses, let alone a city in an area that’s so susceptible to flooding?  I’m not blaming homeowners in this Atlanta flood for their own losses, and I’m certainly not blaming New Orleans for the floodwaters of Katrina, but rather I’m pondering as to why do us as human beings act shocked when things like this happen.

Run with me on this for a moment.

Why do we get shocked when nature happens?  I guess that’s my honest answer.  Why do we get shocked when earthquakes happen in earthquake prone places?  Why do we act shocked when tsunami’s hit tsunami prone places–in fact the earth moving is just doing what it does.  Tsunamis when they hit land are just doing what they do.  The flood waters of a few weeks ago were just doing what they do.

Perhaps in our human arrogance we really have believed that we can and will ultimately conquer nature.

Atlanta Flood 1Yet again I learned that water acts as a great equalizer.  This flood affected those that lived in cul-de-sacs.  Certain neighborhoods were literally cut off!  Cul-de-sacked neighborhoods that had only one road in and that same road acted as the exit.  However these roads crossed minor streams and gullies that often time carry little more than a trickle turned into raging currents that eroded away at the soft dirt that asphalt roads and bridges were built next to, they would wash away and whole neighborhoods were cut off.  In case of an emergency these very rich people in two and three hundred thousand dollar houses and homes could not get any help.  By the same token, the floods affected those living in mobile homes.  This is not to give into the stereotype that all people who live in mobile homes are poor, but they most certainly are not people living in $200K and $300K homes.

Don’t get me wrong, people need help and still need help, but let it be real help.  Not some superficial help that merely brings fish to a hungry person but the type that teaches the person how to fish.  Will I actually get off my bum and drive out to Austell and start gutting houses?  Probably not.  I’m not convinced that’s my purpose; but rather to raise awareness and hopefully someone who reads this will be moved to do something.  Is that in itself not a positive?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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