Piers & Bey: tea, scones & a warm raspberry compote

Piers Morgan wrote a piece in the Daily Mail that's raising a few eyebrows. It certainly managed to raise mine. In it he reports that a few years ago, he and Bey had tea. And scones. And he liked her, thought her charming and so on. But now, in the shadow of her new work, he's not liking her nearly as much. Between Bey's Formation video, her SuperBowl 50 performance and her new LEMONADE visual album, Piers is feeling....well I don't know what Piers is feeling frankly and I guess the question I'm asking myself today is: do I care what Piers is feeling? Gotta tell ya, I'm leaning, no.

  

A very smart, articulate young man - and admitted member of the BeyHive - wrote a terrific piece, in which he pointed out that Bey's latest works are not for White folk. Oh, you can surely buy them and enjoy them, but he cautioned that it might not go over so well, if folk with an expectation of White-centered artistic offering, got it in their heads to pan the work for its blatantly pro-Black themes. Mic drop. And this, from a sixteen year old boy. Congratulations young Alex Brown, you got what Piers, a veteran reporter, could not. You should call him up. Give him the Cliff's Notes version.

Piers began his piece on Bey by mentioning that five years ago, she was different; she was the high tea type. She seemed full of hope for a 'post-racial America'. She was his type. She was comforting, like a hot cuppa on a cold day. Unfortunately these days, she's more the standing-on-cop-cars-in-a-flooded-ninth-ward-New-Orleans type; she's the Black-Panther-leather-wearing-obviously-pro-Black-(therefore anti-police)-type and he's not happy. His hot cuppa's gone cold, the scones are hard and the compote isn't nearly compote-y enough and now tea time is ruined! He, in his own words, "preferred the old Beyoncé. The less inflammatory, agitating one." Yes well, there it is isn't it? He's missing his old bae, the one with whom he could have a cuppa. 

The undercurrent of Morgan's piece is a sense of "How did we get here?". Morgan doesn't quite get how the Dresden china-using, scone-eating Beyoncé became a virago. Ah well Piers, let me tell you a story about disrespect; a story about abuse, obstruction and multiple attempts at humiliation (of a sitting president no less) and then let me tell you a story about a boy named Trayvon, a girl name Rekia, a boy named Jordan,  and a girl named Ayanna and....... What Piers? Too much? Too many stories? Honey, I ain't e'em start yet. There's another 1000 names on the list of the dead. And that's just 2015. You want to know how come? This list, the slights, the obstruction, the vitriol is how come. Bey is not deaf. We are not deaf. 

The thing is Piers, Bey has all along had to decide how to parse her negritude to ensure greater appeal and acceptance, offering up for public consumption only the bits that she felt would be easily digested. This is called survival. Stop any random Black stranger on the street in a majority non-Black society and they can write you an essay on the myriad ways in which, on any given day, they do what is necessary to survive; from how they wear their hair, to how they measure their speech, to how they dress. I guess you just didn't notice any of that huh?

Beyoncé wasn't always Queen B. She had to start somewhere and she had to make concessions to get to where she is today. None of this is unusual for any person in the world. What is a little different, is that for people of color, a great many more of our choices are seen as political, even when they are anything but. Hair, political; Afro-centric garments, very political; annoyance/anger, not so much political as loaded with prejudicial over and undertones. I guess you didn't notice any of that either.

There are choices that artists of color must make on a daily basis if they wish to eat with any regularity. You know nothing of this, naturally. Folk like you would have recoiled in horror - is this not precisely what you're doing in the Daily Mail piece? - had Bey started out speaking the truth with any clarity or volume. Sometimes an artist must put activist passions on the back burner if success is to be attained. Bey ain't dumb, she's seen how society will do you if you get too saucy too soon. (See Piers Morgan's article on this very matter in the Daily Mail for an example.)

Individuals like you Piers, haven't quite come to terms with the fact that we can manage to play the game and yet not lose sight of reality. Shocking I know. Your issue is that you didn't even know there was a game afoot, one with rules, regulations and a scoring system of which you know nothing. That's OK! You don't need to know. It's not your game. You don't belong to the league. But we've tried numerous times to give you a peep into the inner sanctum of our Supreme Gamer Council, but you insist that there's no game. This is why you are out of sorts today.

The fact that Bey can handle an expensive Royal Copenhagen tea service, (was her pinky sticking out tho? This is what I want to know) and eat scones with the best of 'em, makes her no less Black; makes her no less affected by the deaths of Black people - young and old, male and female - in America; no less in tune with the state of Black America today. 

There's a thing that sometimes happens when we gain fame: we try to use it for the greater good. We don't all do that, but you should expect that we might. As a group, Black America still has a very long way to go. As an educated fellow you should anticipate this transition in Black artists who've achieved some success. Have you not heard of Paul Robeson? Langston Hughes?  Cassius Clay - you might know him better as Muhammad Ali? Harry Belafonte? What about Nina Simone? Ruby Dee? Mahalia Jackson? Surely, you've heard of these individuals and have some understanding of their histories? Why would Bey be any different?

As I've heard even Bryant Gumbel admit, we can't achieve our way out of the price of Blackness. And even if we're among the outliers who hit the life Lotto, it is in the DNA of our culture to look back and give a shite about who all are still back there. It is activism that has brought us this far, and it is activism that will take us all the way home. We are all too aware that a Black man in a BMW or a Jag is still too frequently seen as a car thief and may well be treated as such. We are all too aware that a Black man standing on the street can be mistaken for a criminal, tackled and cuffed. Ask James Blake how his most recent dealings with the NYPD turned out. And we are all too aware that a Black woman with a Benz can still be nabbed and put on a psych hold for claiming that the Benz in the impound lot is hers. 

While you, Piers, may well be able to see each one of these events as a blip on the radar, we - people of color - see the whole screen and for us, a pattern has long since emerged. It's OK for you to be 'more comfortable' with the old Bey - or with Old Bay, whatever floats your boat my brother. As for the rest of us, we see what we have always seen in our artists: people whose success allows them to speak boldly where before there could only be vague murmurings.

I'm glad you and Bey had tea, but the time for tea and sympathy is at an end. It's time for some lemonade my brother. Drink up!

Don't worry though. The human mind is capable of great things, adjusting to the reality that Bey is Black (*gasp* I know!) and that she gives a shite about the diaspora? Yeah, you can get used that. Or you can find a new bae whose music you can love. Free country. Do what works for you. Beyoncé sho' is. It'll be alright. I promise.

*Sips tea lemonade*

On post-racial transcendent Blackness........

It's been quite the week and  not exactly in a good way. Prince died and Harriet is about to give us free all over the $20 bill and naturally, folks have got their knickers in a bunch. Like I said, it's been quite the week!

On 4/20, the planet, OK just the United States of America, was rocked by the word that the campaign to put a woman on the $20 had reached its conclusion. Months earlier, we had heard that online polling had given the people's choice award to Harriet "I'da freed ten thousand more if they knew they were slaves" Tubman. On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that yes, they would indeed be putting Ms. Harriet on the $20 bill, removing ole Andrew 'Trail of Tears' Jackson, relegating him to the back of the bill.....as I read somewhere, one hopes they give us his back so he looks like he's paying due homage to Ms. Tubman's posterior, as would only be right and fitting. 

Right on cue, the usual suspects started up with their wailing. 

In Tubman we have a woman who, under no kinda circumstance, can be accused of trying to fit in, to accept the status quo, to go-along-to-get-along or any such thing. Under no circumstance is anyone going to look at Ms. Harriet and say that they don't see a Black woman. Ms. Harriet is about as Black as it gets. She ain't passin' and she ain't 'bout to try. Of Ms. Harriet the words, "She transcended Blackness" will not be uttered. Not sooner. Not later. Not ever. Can I gedda, "Glory Hallelujah!"? Ms. Harriet ain't transcend nothing and she ain't about to try. Ms. Harriet is everything a Black woman is aspiring to be but, if you listen to the nayscreamers - cuz they ain't just saying - this is not what we need to be advertising or holding up to honor in our society.

According to one FB poster - pseudonym. the Hippie Conservative - Pochahontas would have been a better choice than Ms. Tubman an "escaped slave and a thief" because you know, heroism doesn't require breaking unjust laws. Heroism doesn't require standing up against tyranny. What's that you say? Those are the very things we revere in the White men who struck out for liberty and independence from Great Britian? Oh well, that's different. 

Check out the Hippie's logic. It's....well, read it for yourself. Her logic is entertaining if not really logical.

So um, OK.

And then, on 4/21/2016, we get word of the passing of Prince. Early reports were of a medical emergency of some kind at his Paisley Park home. We were terrified but hopeful. Later it was reported that medics found the late artist unresponsive in an elevator and that efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. And so the reminiscing and the accolad-ing began with Jake Tapper tweeting at some point, "I think of Prince almost as a post racial singer. I didn't think of him as a black singer." Of course, he was not alone in his 'post-racial', 'transcendent Blackness' thoughts.

I juxtapose the 'ascendance' of Tubman (through her elevation to the front face of paper currency) and the 'transcendence' of Prince to make a single point: there is this need that some folk have, to separate brilliance from Blackness. Prince wasn't Black, he transcended Blackness. Michael Jackson wasn't Black, he transcended Blackness. At the same time, we also seek to withhold any signs of such transcendence from those who fight tooth and nail against the status quo like Ms. Harriet, and are unapologetically, don't let you forget it for a moment, Black; folk whose very existence gives the whole 'Black cannot be brilliant' notion heartburn. 

So let me just ask this question straight out, since it's hanging there, begging to be asked: what is this terrible Blackness of which we speak, that it must be transcended if we are to be exceptional? Is it some low, dragging, constraining & confining thing that must be escaped, like the pull of gravity which a shuttle or plane must escape before it can take flight? No seriously, I have to ask because every time a Black man or woman manages something brilliant, we have to hear about the various White folk who don't see this obviously Black person as Black. Is that supposed to be some kind of compliment cuz I gotta say, I'm not feeling complimented, either on their behalf or my own.

When folk like me use the words "White" and "supremacy" in a sentence, others get all twitchy but what is this idea of transcending Blackness if not that very twitch-inducing thing? To transcend is to ascend to greater heights, suggesting immediately that wherever you've come from is somewhere below or beneath; a status lower than the status you attain upon transcending. 

Supreme (supremacy), is the state of being at the top. Seems pretty clear then that transcendence is about attaining some status higher than the one to which you were born. And you twitch when I say "White supremacy"? I twitch when you say I speak/write well.....for a Black woman, so we're even. 

The language is what the language is, and it conveys what it conveys. And the language being what it is, maybe we need to talk about (i) the view that the brilliant among us needed to 'transcend' the limitations of negritude in order to be great; (ii) what it is exactly that colorblind folk think is holding us back, the Black skin or some external force? What's our 'gravitational pull'?  and (iii) the scale that puts non-Black above Black. Or maybe the three questions are really just one question, that question being "WTF?" I thought we'd given this up? Guess I was wrong about that. Not the first time, nor the last I'm sure.

Transcendent blackness. Lawdie. Post-racial indeed. We are so post-racial that you gotta tell me I've risen above expectations for my kind. I see what you did there. Neat. Very neat.  

Making America great (no, not 'again')

I saw a note on FB this morning which was very interesting but included a line that confused me. The writer said that what we are watching is the deterioration of a once-great nation. My question is simply this: when was it great? No, I'm serious. I just want to know. How are we defining greatness because I'm starting to think that word doesn't mean what we think it does.

Bear in mind that I'm an immigrant so my perspective is different. I'm not wedded to any of the notions of American  greatness and exceptionalism that native-born sons and daughters are, and it's therefore far easier for me to look dispassionately at the history of this Great Country*.

I come from a formerly colonized nation, so questioning the colonizer is what I do. Forgive me.

The root of American - and European - greatness needs to be questioned and looked at with a clear, unflinching gaze. I've said this before, and will likely say it again, only the truth will set us free. So the question has to be asked: when was America great? Give me a date. How did she get great? What war did she win? What new territory did she conquer? How did her greatness come to be?

As far as I can tell, the America of the founders' imagination is a fabulous idea but betwist idea and implementation, is a long road of death, destruction and damnably persistent exploitation. Are we there yet, at implementation I mean? Are we at the full implementation of the founders' idea: equality, liberty and the right to pursue one's happiness? And if we aren't, what will it take to get there? And, given that there are folks who are constitutional originalists among us, do we even know where 'there' is any more? Seems to me that to a constitutional originalist like Clarence Thomas, 'there' might be a place where his learning to read was against the law. Just sayin'.

Based on what I've seen and heard, America was great when the Native Americans were walking the Trail of Tears courtesy Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal policy. Indian Removal: great for America, not so much for the Native Americans.

When America was great, the slaves were arriving in Jamestown in 1619. Slavery: great for America, not so much for the slaves.

When America was great, newly emancipated slaves were being forced back into sharecropping and de facto (version two) slavery. Only the stories of the sharecroppers can give a real sense of how exploitative these conditions actually were. History books tend to lay the continuing poverty of sharecroppers at the feet of the vagaries weather and crop yields, but in many cases there was far more to it than that. Sharecropping: great for America, not so much for the sharecroppers.

When America was great, domestic terrorism was a thing keeping newly freed people of color from getting too big for their britches. Lynching: great for America, not so much for the n*ggers.

When America was great, Black people could be used for medical experimentation. Medical research and advancement: great for America, not so much for the guinea pigs (aka Black human beings).

When America was great, discrimination in lending and home sales was OK; unequal resourcing to schools was OK; disparate treatment in any and every sphere of life was OK; discriminating against persons on the grounds of the race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or gender expression was OK; and using disparaging language as we spoke to and about each other was perfectly acceptable. Discrimination: great for America, not so much for those being discriminated against. So I ask again: when exactly was America great? Or perhaps the real question to be asked is, for whom was this great America great? And in our quest to regain this apparently lost greatness, who are we going to put in a box, because clearly, someone's gotta be the guinea pig, the sharecropper, the slave, the n*gger. Who's it gonna be? I'm not volunteering. I guess that leaves you? Oh wait, not you either? Hm. We seem to be running out of candidates.

We have long confused the ideas of greatness and prosperity. The two words are not synonyms, not even close.

Belgium is wealthy, but that wealth is built on the bones of millions of Africans in the Congo who were brutalized for rubber, which makes a response to the events in Brussels complicated. We repudiate the violence but we must also be mindful of the history. Does wealth make Belgium 'great'? If so, then surely the source of that wealth makes Belgium something far less than great? Great Britain is also wealthy but that wealth came at the expense of both the East and the West Indies,  the Triangular Trade, colonization and its attendant brutalities. Great Britain was made wealthy through the stripping of people from their culture and stripping of culture from its people. That certainly made her wealthy, but great?

America is wealthy. The Founders' idea is a great one. The Bill of Rights is fantastic, but even as that was being crafted, Thomas Jefferson was exploring/exploiting some kind of connubial relationship with Sally Hemmings and George Washington and several others were slaveholders. They were tacitly, if not actively, supporting the rape and torture of the female slaves on their plantations and while ain't nobody ever talk about it, I'm pretty sure some of the male slaves were being raped as well. Was the slave-owning version of America great? What about the Trail of Tears and Native American genocide version? Was that one great? How about the current version of America, where unarmed people of color too often do not survive even the simplest encounters with agents of the state? How great is that?

Perhaps rather than toss the word great around we need to figure out what greatness looks like and then hold America up against that standard and see where we come out? Before we talk about making America great again, let's do the gap analysis, see how it comes out and then get to working on closing the gap because I'm not feeling the 'again' bit. The first time around wasn't so good for my people.

If you want me to sign on, let's talk about finally making America great; finally realizing the promise of the founders’ vision. I could get on board that train. The Trump train? Not so much. 

* Don't you feel like the words Great Nation should always be capitalized or bolded, the way folk say it? I do.

Bargain Basement Voting

“The Negro needs to be able to occupy a bargaining position. If Goldwater has been defeated, but Goldwaterism remains triumphant in GOP councils, America faces a difficult future.”

- Jackie Robinson

Robinson described Goldwater as a bigot, having faced racial slurs, threats, and violence from Goldwater supporters at the 1964 Republican convention. It should be noted that Goldwater himself did not engage in overt White supremacist speech. Instead, he refused to support legislation that favored the welfare of African Americans, and he used language that devalued and delegitimized the actions of Civil Rights activists, and that could be interpreted by segregationists as invitations to use violence. At the 1964 convention, he famously declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” This thinly veiled language led Jackie Robinson, who had historically been a Republican, to declare that Goldwater “seeks to gain the Presidency by capitalizing on White resentment to demands for Negro justice.”

The description seems as relevant today as it was then, and not just for the Republican Party. Jackie Robinson contended that as a group, African people in the United States must remain politically flexible in order to capitalize on our voting power. In the case of the 1964 Presidential election, despite his Republican affiliation, he charged African Americans to vote for the Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, because he considered the Republican nominee so harmful to our collective welfare. That year 94% of the African American electorate voted Democrat, setting a record for the party that would not be broken until the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

Not two weeks ago, Bill Clinton, faced with challenges about the 1994 Crime Bill, and especially about his wife's support for it, in which she used the racially-coded language of superpredators, accused modern Civil Rights activists of supporting murderers. The Clintons' support for legislation that targeted African Americans for police repression and mass incarceration, and for other policies that stripped social support networks from the most vulnerable segments of the African American community, in my view, signaled a more aggressive anti-Black stance than Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Hillary Clinton's superpredator language, which was clearly code for poor, inner-city, predominantly African American youth constituted an invitation to the violent police repression of African Americans, and it more than matched Goldwater's innuendo. While Goldwater dismissed the validity and moral uprightness of the Civil Rights call for justice, Hillary Clinton reduced us to the station of animals with her "bring to heel" remark.

Robinson expressed a prescient concern about the persistence of "Goldwaterism" in the GOP. However, he did not envision the ascendence of it among the Democrats. Much of the modern African American electorate seems equally blind to this possibility, because despite the Clintons' rhetorical and policy affronts to the lives, liberty, and dignity of African Americans, a large swath of our community sees them as allies, and even as honorary members of the group. These perspectives are demonstrably at odds with the factual record, but the same was true of Jackie Robinson's view of the Republican Party of his day. At least, it was until the Republicans nominated Goldwater, showing unmistakably their contempt for African American life and liberty. At that point, Robinson understood that he could trust neither party to pursue the welfare of his people, and he came to see our votes as strategic tools with which to bargain or deliver punishment.

It is my expectation that like Robinson, the larger African American community will require some more open and egregious anti-Black actions and speech from the Clintons and the Democratic Party before we recognize them for the frenemies they are.  

Perhaps then we will be able to collectively return to the more politically astute application of our votes that we demonstrated in the 1960's, using them as bargaining chips, rather than delivering them as bargain basement goods to be handed over in exchange for empty expressions of affinity for African American culture. 

Brussels; It's Complicated

My condolences to the innocent people of Brussels whose lives have been disrupted, radically altered, or even taken from them.
At the same time I am struck by two things that greatly temper, or at least complicate my feelings about this.
The first is that there has been no comparable media coverage or social media outcry for the people similarly killed in Ankara, Turkey, on March 13, just over a week ago, and there has been even less said of those so killed in Cote d'Ivoire that very same day. There has been little news coverage of the subsequent terrorist bombing in Istanbul, Turkey, on March 19, just two days before the attack in Belgium.
This is not some deviation, perhaps attributable to the horrible, shocking, and disorienting nature of this violence. There is a consistent pattern of dismissal, omission, and silence about terrorism when the victims are people of color, and it stands in stark contrast to the very visible and public expressions of outrage, grief, and compassion when the victims are predominantly White, or are targeted in White, Western countries.
Like most people of color, I grieve for the victims in Brussels.But I also wonder why the people of Brussels, and France, and Great Britain, and the United States find it so difficult to grieve, indeed to even be aware of the victims in non-White, non-Western places.
The second complication for me is that Belgium is, historically, the author of horrific human atrocities, most particularly the plunder of the Congo by the enslavement and genocide of at least 10 million Africans under the rule of King Leopold II. The motive was not religion, but money to be gained from the harvesting of rubber. Those who enforced the enslavement frequently punished the African victims who did not meet the demanded quotas by chopping off their hands. Women, children, no matter. Long before the horrors of Auschwitz, there was the Belgian enslavement of the Congolese people.
As with all grotesquely exploitative ventures, the Congo was extremely lucrative for Leopold, and he poured his earnings into lavish infrastructure and development in Belgium, all of which ultimately became state property. The wealth and beauty of Brussels, is in no small measure, built with the forced labor, torture, mutilation, and genocide of millions of African people.
While the modern residents of Belgium, and certainly those who lost their lives yesterday, did not commit the atrocities of their state, the things that Belgium has done in the world make it difficult to see the country as an innocent victim.
I grieve for the victims of terrorism in Brussels, but I also grieve for the victims of terrorism by Brussels.

It's complicated.

New chicken, new egg

So Bill-O did an interview with the Candidate Trump recently. In the course of their exchange, Bill wanted to gain further understanding of the candidate's plans to create professional opportunities for people of color. Bill posed his question thusly: "How will you get blacks jobs when they're ill-educated with tattoos on their foreheads?" Well, we at least have to give him credit for not actually saying that we're all ill-educated with tattoos on our foreheads. He only suggested it. Points for that Bill!

Yo, Bill-O! This is my forehead. See my tattoo? Yeah, me neither.

If asked, I'm sure Mr. O'Reilly would tell you that he's not a racist but his latest offering certainly would give the lie to any such claim.

I'm sure there are plenty of insightful commentaries on Bill O's latest entry into the Racism Much Olympics. All I have is a cross reference to my earlier post Chicken or Egg? with a quiet reminder that in the absence of real conversations about race and what race has always meant in this society, folk like Bill will continue to exist. Not only will they continue to exist, they will continue to infect others.

I read a post this morning, about the many teachers who are reporting the distress children are feeling at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Youngsters, immigrant and non but mostly Black and brown, are deeply concerned about the tone of the presidential contest and what certain outcomes might mean for their families and their friends.

The Bill O's and the DT's of this world are creating psychic misery. Not that they care. Why would they? This society was built on the creation and dissemination of psychic misery. Our entire economic model is built on fear and the creation of misery in entire swaths of the populace. Things have only recently got ugly because the recipients of that misery have started to look more like the majority. When those on the receiving end looked a certain way, we could keep pretending that this system worked just fine. Now that the pain is spreading, well we absolutely have to take stock and make some changes! Um hm.

That being the case, Bill O is entirely correct to claim that you can't create jobs for Blacks "when they're ill-educated with tattoos on their foreheads". That's not a line tossed out there for shock value and to get a guffaw. Nope. That is either what Bill (and his interviewee Trump) really believe, or it's what they're hoping to get their listeners to believe. They have to believe this stuff because if there are perfectly well-educated Blacks who can't find consistent work; if there are non-tattooed Blacks who can't catch a break then maybe something else is wrong? Neh! It's gotta be them!

Unless and until we reckon with the truth, we're going to continue to play this game of "See, they really were only 3/5ths human". We will keep on voting for troglodytes like Trump and listening to imbeciles like Rush and Bill who do everything but scream at the tops of their lungs that "the Black man has no rights which the White man is bound to respect" (quoting Justice Taney in the dreadful Dred Scott decision of 1857).

This entire society was built on the dangerous and toxic landfill of a foundation of exploitation. We gotta reckon with that. We gotta figure out what that has meant and continues to mean in terms of public policy. Sans that reckoning, mostly men though a few women too - White, straight, rich - are going to keep coming on the television and writing in the news of these 'others' among us as if they are less than. Those folk will continue to pretend that the playing field is level and that application of the shoulder to the proverbial plow is all that it takes to bring in a bountiful harvest, never mind they do everything humanly possible to dam up your rivers and the block the sun and tell you it's your fault your field's yield is so low. It's your fault (thanks to the tattoo on your forehead), that you're in the straits you're in. Um, K.

Only the truly under-exposed are still buying what's being sold here. Too bad so many are still so woefully under-exposed eh.

Out of line and finally, out of time

A friend posted this song for me today, and it immediately occurred to me that Starr was right. War is good for absolutely nothing or rather it ain't good for nothing good.


Yesterday, in a fit of pique for which I'm hoping he will pay a high, high price, Bill Clinton struck out wildly at some Black Lives Matter protesters in Philadelphia. He contended, in response to their interruptions, that the BLM is supporting criminals who, according to him sent 13 year olds out to kill others. Apart from being factually just wrong, it is also fantastically telling.

"You are defending the lives of the people who kill the lives you say matter!" he shouted. "Tell the truth! Tell the truth!" So the question must be asked: what is the truth Brother Bill? What is the truth? Can you handle the truth my brother?

The truth, as we have recently learned from an old interview with a Nixon Administration official, is that the entire War on Drugs was a creation meant to demonize a particular population. Guess which one? We can choose whether we accept this information or we reject it, but there it is. Straight from the proverbial horse's mouth.

Another truth we must accept is the outcome of zealous application of Bill Clinton's Crime Bill (1994). To be clear, Bill didn't start this wave of mass incarcerations, but he sho' nuff didn't try to end it. Oh no indeed.

The consequences for families of color of these last thirty or so years, have been nothing short of disastrous. It would be one thing if that disaster were a one time thing: a perpetrator goes to jail, does his/her time and is released but that's not how this worked out. Punishments under the Crime Bill are of extended duration (thank you 'three strikes laws' courtesy the 1994 Crime Bill), rehabilitation is not the goal (it never was), those left behind are left in poverty, and those released are never again free. The whole thing is a rolling disaster of epic proportions: lost opportunities; destroyed families; grinding poverty and dysfunction, oh and untreated addiction.  Each of those things continuing long after the period of incarceration comes to an end. Felony disenfranchisement and felony exclusion from receipt of federal benefits - including housing - are additional longterm effects. There truly is no end date to the suffering. There is no such thing as paying one's debt to society in full. Add to that list the fact that a felony conviction can get one excluded from many job opportunities, Bill's bill is the gift that keeps on giving.

For him to stand there on that Philadelphia stage yesterday (4/7/2016) and pretend first of all that there was nothing wrong with the Crime Bill is to spit in the face of reality. Second, to claim that BLM supports criminality is to stand proudly in the blissful ignorance White privilege so often confers upon the intellectually lazy.

To be clear Bill, BLM is a Right to Life movement. BLM's sole claim is that we have the RIGHT to LIVE through our interactions with the police, as Robert Dear Jr (PP Colorado killer) and Dylan Roof (Charleston Nine murderer) managed to do, but Tamir Rice, Ramarley Graham, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner and so very many others did not. Apples and oranges. No, this is not apples and oranges, this is apples and mountain bikes. The two ain't even in the same universe Brother Bill. You ought to know that much at least. If not, somebody ought to school you.

For years, we've been giving BC honorary Black man status, which....just no. Today, things have got so out of hand that Bro. Bill, your Black card is well and truly (and perma-frigging-nently) revoked. You are all kinds of wrong and all kinds of ignorant, entirely out of line and out of time. Good night Bill. Time to exeunt stage left.

What's worse than his apparent insistence that the bill was good law, is his willful conflation of issues and general wrongness on issues which, to people of color are life and death matters. Dude! No, no and no! There are plenty of voices (that's just one reputable source) saying that it was bad law and had all manner of negative long term consequence. For you to stand there behaving as though you ain't got no 'splainin' to do is just, hell if I have a word to describe that. What did Bro. Bill say at the DNC in 2012? Something about having big brass ones? Yeah. That works.

Look, I get that the nineties were the terrible dark days of crack addiction. I get that. But much the same as in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 we needed clear heads to adequately assess the situation and take targeted action and instead got the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, so too in the 90's did we need clear heads, critical assessment and targeted action. We didn't get that. We got the toxic Crime Bill and twenty years later, we've got 2+ million men and women, most of them Black and brown, incarcerated for the crime of addiction. Worse still, at no point have we gone back, looked at the data, considered the disparate impacts or the downstream consequences and done a damn thing about it! No Bill, you all the way wrong here. All. The. Way. And your unwillingness to reflect and correct? Yeah. Problem.

All wars leave bodies in their wake. All wars leave wounds, deep wounds and fetid gashes that need to be cleansed and healed. The War on Drugs was no different. It was especially toxic to people of color though, born as it was, out of the usual contempt for Blackness and Black empowerment. Now we have a new nameless war, waged by agents of the state upon Black bodies and you say what? You say that Black Lives Matter supporters approve of drug-fueled criminality? Yeah. You need to back that up and roll on out. Out of line and out of time.

Don't bother to try to walk this back and tell me you were misunderstood or you misunderstood the protesters. Nope. I ain't buying none of it. I think that in the heat of the moment, you said what you said cuz that's what you meant, it's what you believe. You disdain the Black Lives Matter movement. Got it. You still believe in superpredators. Funny, I do too but I'm pretty sure you and me, we see different predators in our dreams. But that's neither here nor there.

Bill can use his power and his plenteous privilege to demand silence but I'm here to tell Bill in my own quiet way that the days for silence are done. Y'alls drug war ain't good for nothing. Your war on Blackness and brownness ain't good for nothing. Your war on the poor ain't good for nothing. Your war on the psyche of the oppressed ain't good for nothing.

Black lives, minority lives, poor lives do indeed matter and we ain't afraid to call you and your superpredator friends, in whatever industry or space we find them, out. Deal with it. You are out of line and you are definitely out of time. I'm so done with you.

Fundamentally flawed

"The fundamentals of the US economy are strong", thus spake John McCain in the midst of the Great Crash of 2008.

A very interesting video came across my newsfeed the other day and it made me think of this quote from John McCain. The video was of Senator Bernie Sanders talking about of income stagnation and erosion. According to the figures Senator Sanders offered, a man right in the middle of the workforce, the average male employee, in 2013 made $783 less than a comparably situated man would have made 41 years earlier ($ adjusted for inflation). A woman, on the other hand, made $1,337 less than she would have made in 1997. The erosion of women's earning capacity was significantly less than the erosion of men's. A 41 year setback for men, less than a decade's setback for women.

Now, it is probably true that men had further to fall, given wage inequities across this great land, but that's some fall! And so I asked myself what was happening socially about 41 years earlier. Were women perhaps starting to come into the workforce in ever greater numbers? Were Civil Rights and Affirmative Action perhaps on the rise? What about immigration?

My great epiphany was that White men might well have 'suffered' for equality, this was not Sen. Sanders point but go with me for a moment, and if they are enraged by the erosion of their economic (not to mention social) standing, perhaps their rage is to be expected? From their perspective, maybe it's even reasonable? The trouble is, the rest of us were suffering for their success. We were suffering under inequality even as they prospered, so you'll forgive us if our sympathy well has run a little dry. We may sympathize with their anxiety, but we do not empathize with it. We've lived with that particular anxiety rather long enough. We're ready to try something new. They will have to as well.

The candidacy of a certain Republican speaks to and stokes a rage which we have no trouble understanding though some of us may not understand fully its source. Thanks to Sen. Sanders, I now have the data that explains it all. Where the challenge remains is in comprehending crossover point between the rage and the racial animus. What is it that causes economic insecurity to morph into ugly racial bias? Perhaps the better question is does the animus simply exist but only in times of economic insecurity does it rise up? Perhaps the animus isn't specifically racial? As usual, these last three are the real questions that we continue to avoid like the pox on our house that they are. 

As I listened to Senator Sanders, what became quite clear is that perhaps opportunity has decreased for White males in part because of increasing competition from other groups: women, minorities and immigrants, but it wasn't the sharing of opportunity that caused a decline in wages. My suspicion is that opportunity and wage stagnation have been consequent upon the changed environment in which the fundamentals of the economy to which Senator McCain referred in 2008, must now operate. Which fundamental(s)? The ones that built this economy on exploitation. The fundamental of two or three generations of land grants; land and wage theft; the fundamental of human degradation, exploitation and suffering. Those. Those are the fundamentals I'm talking about. Add to those, the fundamental that gives better pay to men, than to women; to Whites over Blacks and other minorities; the fundamental that grants better access to quality housing and schooling to one group over all others. Those fundamentals. Those fundamentals are flawed, dangerously so and are suddenly meeting with resistance on a number of fronts. And now that those fundamentals are impacting folks outside the usual target groups, the natives are getting restless. Good. It's about damn time.

When Senator John McCain said in 2008 that the fundamentals of the US economy were strong, he was right, he just didn't know what the fundamentals were. The fundamentals are strong, real strong. Too bad that in 2016, they no longer fit huh? Now that the exploitation of weaker or outcast groups has passed out of favor; or rather, now that weaker groups aren't allowing themselves to be exploited, we're flapping around looking for somebody new to squeeze. All that's really left is the planet itself; strangers overseas and using right-to-work laws and a slew of other measures, a lot of very unlucky sots right here. 

No matter how many economic booms we've seen over the last 40 years, most of us have secured little from them beyond a job with a few good benefits. Maybe. Most of us - the 98% - are still teetering dangerously close to the financial abyss. One illness. One divorce. One crisis of any kind and the whole house of cards collapses. Is it any wonder that folks are in a rage? This is not the future we were promised!

We have allowed ourselves to believe the whole "rising tides lift all boats" foolishness because it tells us what we want to hear. It tells us that if we vote with the billionaires, our own circumstances will quickly eventually change. It tells us that if we vote with the other guys, at least SNAP and WIC won't be savaged (though no one tells you that you'll still need them). When you listen to Senator Sanders though, and you look at our financial and economic history, it is pretty clear that even if the tide should rise, its rise serves only to drown the majority.

There are those now who want to take their country back. When asked recently, one leading candidate finally admitted that the era for which he yearned was pre-Civil Rights. The 1950's. I'm grateful he didn't go back further, I won't say to where. Simply put, he and many others want to go back to the time before they had to share their toys. 

Unfortunately for them, there are two immutable facts with which they, and we, must contend. First, we're not going back. They will have to deal with it. Second, and far, far more importantly, the US business model that only seems to prosper when there's someone being exploited doesn't work in a more just society. But I draw your attention again to point number one. Here is where we are and we're not going back. We're just going to have to reconsider and radically remold the US business model into one that works for all of us. The rules of fair play apply to everyone. That's just how it is now. We'll have to find a way to generate profits in this Brave New World and no, the TPP is not it. The fundamentals are strong yes, but they continue to be fatally flawed. We're going to have to do something about it.

If all any political party has to offer is "rising tides lift all boats", they're going to have to do better and offer more than that. As one whose forebears survived the belly of a slave ship, I for one will say no thanks, that doesn't work for me. I 'fraid boats. Try again.

We all need to come to the realization that exploitation is a bad business model and stop lining up either to be exploited or worse still, to offer up our neighbors as the next victims. We can do better than that. It is past time to get off the plantation and try something new.