Can you hear me now?

I see and hear people's pain over the outcome of this election, and as much as I too am pained, I want to scream, "Can you facking hear me now?!" It's a bizarre thing to be caught between Schandenfreude and grief.

If, as a nation, we hadn't made such a practice of marginalizing people and then dismissing their wailings; if we hadn't made such a practice of enshrining our bigotries in law and social practice, we might have avoided this pass. But no, being ugly to those not like us is what we do; it's who we are and so here we are. How're you liking the view so far?

There's plenty of talk about identity politics now in the post-election period but what is that exactly? Is that expressing concern for and crafting solutions to the problems of specific groups? Cuz that just sounds like 'politics' to me but I could be wrong about that. It seems to me that the only reason we would need identity politics is if we still believe that some identities are more equal than others......but I could be wrong. Identity politics is the name we've come up with for the politics that gives a shat about non-white people. 

Rather than attend to the needs of the working and middle classes broadly, politicians have been scrambling to attract one segment or another by offering goodies and benefits and subtly downplaying the legitimacy of other groups' demands. We run a zero sum politic that results in a nearly-zero-for-everybody-but-the-one-percent outcome and then act all surprised when folk retreat and vote along tribal lines? 

My assessment reamins that our troubles go back to our original sin (which I've already written is not slavery but White supremacy). Our refusal to treat every citizen/resident equally has had and will continue to have consequences but we are committed to our three monkeys approach....because it's working so very well!

We will not face the issue of race like adults. We run from the challenges like an African distance runner closing in on the finish line of a marathon: with a burst of incomprehensible speed, racing as if there were a gold medal awaiting us at the finish line. Hint: there ain't, but carry on.

As a nation, we're yet to accept that all citizens are equal. Oh we talk about "with liberty and justice for all" but those are empty words. They have absolutely no meaning and they never have in this society. When have we ever tried to live them out? Name me an era. We talk about them but we have zero interest in putting them into practice.

This nation started from a place of inequity, dismissal and oppression. The Naturalization Act of 1790 opened the door to immigration to "any alien" who was "a free white person". That's where America's ideas about who could be American began and while much has changed, we continue to weaponize our bigotries [i] every chance we get. 

And so now, when I see latte liberals [ii] sounding the alarum bells, beating their breasts and wailing about what these next 4 (8?) years will bring, all I really want to say is, "Welp, I guess you can hear me now huh? Shoulda heard me sooner. Shoulda stood up for the right thing sooner. And now, we can watch what little we've achieved be destroyed together. You comfy? You got popcorn? Cuz the show is about to start."

And if your takeaway is that I blame mealy-mouthed liberality for the pass in which we now find ourselves, you would be correct in your assessment. 

The responsibility for pushing back on ignorance was not the sole purview of POC, but it was left to them primarily. The responsibility for handling bigoted aunts, uncles, mothers and/or fathers was not POC's but you did not take it up. The responsibility to purge Town Councils, Boards of Education, PTAs and leadership councils of all kinds of gross racists and racialized policy-making was not ours alone but those best placed to repudiate hate simply did not stand up in large enough numbers. Rather than stand and call ugliness out, some of y'all chuckled quietly behind your hands and enjoyed the warmth and comfort of your privilege. Welp, I guess you can hear me now, huh? I guess you had to have some skin in the game before you felt a need to play. Well the court is all yours. Lemme see whatchu got. 
  

From http://bennorton.com/mlk-on-white-moderates/

It is, as MLK Jr first said in his Letter from A Birmingham Jail: the White moderates' approach to the slow liberation of minorities is more harmful to progress than the intolerance and angry resistance of the bigot. Why? Because the coddling of bigots made bigotry feel welcome rather than loathed and in the damp and welcoming space you gave it, it grew. And so, here we are. Now, that there are acts of ugliness everywhere, I guess you can hear me now huh? Cool!

Still, I don't expect your newfound awareness to redound to my benefit in the long run. When the shit hits the proverbial fan, I'm pretty sure you're gonna do what you have always done: retreat into the comfort of your privilege leaving me, my kith and my kin to fend for ourselves. Self-preservation and all that. I hear you Boo. 's OK.

Note to self: nothing much has changed since 1963. Many are still moderate and me & mine are still Black.

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[i] weaponized bigotry: public policy that enshrines bigoted beliefs into actionable steps to keep people of color locked into circumstances that limit their options and progress

[ii] Liberals who want me to believe that they and I share a philosophy but only as long as that philosophy ignores all notions of intersectionality. So should I wish to discuss my pocket book issues in reference to or in conjunction with my race, my gender, my sexual orientation, my gender identity or my national origin, the question will likely be asked, “Why you gotta bring into it??”

Democracy is work

What is this thing called democracy? How easy is it to create, to sustain? What are the factors that undermine it, strengthen it? These are the things I've been forced to think about since election night turned out way differently than I'd expected. 

Here are a few thoughts I've had about the fragility of democracy since that night. 

1. Every democracy is an experiment. Sometimes experiments fail, abysmally

We don't talk about this enough, nor do we respect this notion enough, but every democracy is a series of experiments. Every time we go to the voting booth, we are saying (and actively doing) something about democracy. We're taking control of it and staking our claim to it. When we fail to participate, we're doing precisely the opposite. When we shrug and walk away, we leave the door open to those whose version of democracy is anything but democratic. Those people are motivated. They show up every time. Those who have opposing views must be equally so.

It's tough to overstate how easy it is for this experiment in democracy to fail completely. With every tweet, every Thank You rally utterance, we are given further reason to question PEOTUS's suitability for high office, but we stumble on. We must. 

The American election process gives us an escape hatch in the form of so-called faithless electors of the Electoral College, but I'm pretty sure we won't use it (and, unsurprisingly, we didn't) but even if we had, then what? We would then have been in completely uncharted waters if the required 37 electors had said “Nay” to the Donald. 

And so we're a-stumblin' on because the people have spoken, though to whom and what exactly they said is an open question. 

The experiment continues. 

Whether the experiment will ultimately prove successful remains to be seen. 

2. Functional democracy? We have one of those?

This US democracy[i] may have been around for 240 years but it's not perfect; it never was, attestations to the contrary notwithstanding. After two centuries one might think that most of the kinks would have been worked out by now. Not so, mon cher! Equal rights? We're just not there yet. Equal justice remains a (largely elusive) dream; Civil Rights for people of color are barely 50 years old and are being undermined every year; equal marriage recognition is barely two years old - and could easily go away with the 'right' appointment to the SCOTUS; and the rights of LGBTQI people are still not completely protected under the law and such protections as do exist can be easily undermined; and prisoners are still technically enslaved and that's upheld by the Constitution. And that's after 240 years. 

Real democracy isn't like evolution, moving from one stage to the next, pushed on by necessity. No, democracy is art and with an unskilled painter, the outcome is no Mona Lisa. 

A relatively functional democracy is what the majority of Americans have always known. Because of that, none of us has any idea what it takes to establish this thing we call democracy from scratch; what it takes to create something from nothing. 

We've never had to consider that process before since we discovered our democracy in relatively good working order (hence the italicization of the word democracy) and generation after generation has mostly left it in slightly better order. Our job, generally, has been to 'perfect' the union not create it; mind the store not build a startup. Four years from now, things might be  a little different.

We look at places like Grenada, Syria, Iraq, Libya  and much of Latin America (places, coincidentally, where our government has had a hand in destabilizing or removing governments) and cast aspersions on the character and will of the people and their leaders to establish a lasting peace, a shared prosperity and a participatory democracy. We've had the temerity to judge others' efforts at establishing democracy when we haven't the first clue what it takes to create political and social order out of chaos. We have no idea what it takes to rebuild a failed democracy, especially one broken by an authoritarian, but we may be about to find out. 

Let's hope that our years of sneering at others don't come back to bite us in the arse.

3. When it comes to democracies, 'functional' ain't the default setting

We've been lulled into a false sense of security thinking that after 240 years, 'functional' was the default setting on our democracy and that all we had to do was (i) show up from time to time (even if halfheartedly); (ii) depend on the news media for factual information and all would be well. Those days are over. 'Functional' isn't the default. There is no default. If we want functional democracy, we're going to have to work for it. Hard. Every day.

We've presumed that what obtained yesterday - politically-speaking - would necessarily obtain tomorrow, because We Are America! We've assumed that what we were experiencing was the baseline; the low water mark. We've assumed that gains, once made, were permanent. Yeah, NO. 

My great takeaway from this election is this: democracy is not sustained by the disinterested. You have to show up. For every one just barely interested citizen, there are at least two or three passionately engaged folk whose aims are direct opposition to your barely interested aims, so the onus is on both sides to show up, and may the bigger side win. 

Those who object to growing freedoms are eternally vigilant, concerned as they are about the erosion of their standards of decency. They stand ever ready for a fight. Those who complain about big government and social programs - but never about the ginormity of the defense budget somehow - are registered to vote and show up at the polls without being asked or coaxed. Those who object to rights for LGBTQI persons; protections for criminals/suspects in police custody; recognition of rights for undocumented persons and all manner of other things, have no trouble getting involved. Democracy is a fight between ideas. If one side fails to show up, its ideas won't see the light of day. It's really that simple. Worse still, if one side fails to show up, there are no longer any guarantees of good faith actions on the part of the other side. cf North Carolina's legislature this past week.

Tomorrow, as people of faith are fond of saying, is not promised, yeah well, neither is democracy. Tomorrow's democracy is the work of today's participants in the democratic process.  If you want democracy tomorrow, you'd better show up today.

The election of 2016 has proven to me that we have casually and cavalierly presumed that democracy would continue without our express efforts to ensure same. We now have proof that it will not. 

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[i] The word democracy is italicized because so much that has occurred here in the last 240 years really is the antithesis of democratic. 

Making a Way: Economics

Make a way out of no way

Over the next few years, we are going to have to do and be very different. The seasons have changed and we must make ready for winter.

I've seen one too many ridiculous memes about who and whose grandpappy made it through Jim Crow so we can too. While I understand the impetus to make such supposedly supportive utterances, I can't really say that they're helpful. I say if we want to be helpful to each other, we need to offer up some insights on what we might do to move ourselves forward economically, politically and socially.

If there is one thing that I am sure of, it is that the ingenuity and hard work that built the first Black Wall Street, can, and will, build us another if we make a concerted effort. This time around, with focus, effective use of social media and digital marketing tools, we can create and hopefully sustain an entire parallel universe.

1. Dreams matter

I've had various dreams over the last several years. One of those things involved abandoned houses in Detroit.  I recognize that my dream of rebuilding communities that have fallen on desperately hard times is a crazy one, especially since I'm neither a multi-millionaire nor am I especially handy with construction, but that doesn't make it any less of a great dream. I have visions of entirely self-sufficient communities, a central farm surrounded by homes, schools and every possible business needed by a community. Ain't nothing wrong with dreaming.

The next step after having the dream though, is taking action. What I probably should have done and I certainly encourage others to do, is find funding for your ideas and programs. There are grants. Go look. Network with non-profit professionals (if your dream is a non-profit) and find ways to make your dreams a reality. This isn't necessarily about becoming wealthy, although that would be lovely. It is about providing a needed service and making a way for yourself and those around you. 

Look into non-profits that received federal money to support entrepreneurs here. Start thinking about that thing that you think the world, your street or your community needs and begin the process of creating that. If a for profit enterprise is your thing, find incubator programs and reach out to the SBA and Score for support and guidance. 

I'm not for a minute saying, "Quit your day job!" but I am saying that we need to see what else we can do to build something with our sweat and ingenuity. 

2. Make a plan

I am under no illusions that this is going to be easy. Lord knows, 'easy' does not reside in our neighborhoods and even if it's just passing through, when it hears us coming, it runs like hell. We will have to work hard and fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground we can gain but how is that different from what obtains today?

Many in the urban centers, particularly in poorer neighborhoods, live in food deserts. Can you deliver healthful food in your neighborhood? Can you make 'real food' available? Can you and a few friends make something like this happen? Then do. There are communities aplenty in need of this kind of support. Do the research. Go to the neighborhood library. Get the help you need and try your hand.

Don't have money start a food desert supply service? Then what about creating an urban garden? Check out the guerilla gardener! Allow yourself to dream and be inspired to imagine some new thing that only you can do.

3. Use social media

Look, I'm no expert on social media. If I were, I might writing fake shite and laughing all the way to the bank. That's not me, that's not how I want to roll. Still, there are those of you who have your finger on the pulse of social media. Use it. You know how to drive traffic? Drive it in the general direction of up and coming Black and POC businesses, especially your own!

These are going to be trying times. Have you seen who's being tapped for Cabinet posts? Good Lordt! We better get our shite together! Use your vast social networks to create and sustain interest in your business and those of your friends.

4. Get the help you need
There are people out there who can help you. Everybody's got a computer in their pocket. Use it! Spend less time matching three cropsies or whatever and more time building yourself up for the days ahead. Trump and Bannon  are gonna be running the store for a minute. We'd better make sure we are ready for what that is likely to mean.

5. Support each other
We will need to rely on each other and we will need to support each other. One of the great things about the original Black Wall Street was that there were so many complementary businesses there, that a dollar circulated between 36 and 100 times before it left the community. Where do we do anything even close to that today? *Hint: nowhere

Do you have a friend who's a painter? Hire her/him to paint your house. Have a friend who's a caterer? Hire him/her to cater some part of your next shindig. Have a friend who's a writer (psst! lol)? Share their work. We are really going to have to do a new thing in this Brave New Trumpet World. Let me remind you that during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, thousands and thousands of Black men, women and children walked for months (13 to be exact, 381 days) to make themselves heard on the issue of desegregation. We need to 'make a point' (and to both ourselves and the majority) about self-determination. 

6. Network
Networking is critical to success in this society, it's also a significant part of why people of color do not thrive in the professional world the way others do. We don't create networks and we don't do the glad-handing and socializing that's required to maintain them. I understand it completely. So much of our lives in the professional world requires performance of Black acceptability that it gets wearying. We just want to go home and switch it off. I hear you. I feel you and I tell you "Not today". Stay plugged in and turned on. We can rest later; maybe four years out when Elizabeth Warren or Tulsi Gabbard is president-elect.  

There are Black Entrepreneurs Meetups and networking events. There are also Hispanic entrepreneurs meetups. Find a group that meets your needs or interest. Can't find one? Start one. Find a mentor. Become one. Join something that will uplift and encourage you. Get help and support. Ask questions. Be vulnerable. Be brave but don't immediately give up your day job!

I dream of the day when super wealthy POC's foundations create opportunities for fledgling micro-enterprises, but that may not soon come to pass. In the interim, we have to find other ways. Hopefully, one or two of the six ideas above will give us places to start. 

Ultimately, we must have faith....in ourselves and our circles and our circle's circles. We are going to have to have each others' backs. We are going to have to support each others' endeavors and network like our very lives depend on it because they just might. Prayer is good and all, but Jesus ain't buying your services, the people in your neighborhood are. So talk to Jesus, but talk to Jesús next door too.

We are going to have to imagine and work our way to independence. Whether we have a burning desire to be 'job creators' or we simply want to offer a good or service as a side hustle, we're going to have to hustle. A lot.

Whether ours is a brilliant massive idea or a simple small one, whatever our gift(s) are, use it (them). Seek out the help needed to make something out of nothing, a way out of no way, a bridge out of thin air. We don't have much choice.

When candidate Trump asked what we have to lose by voting for him, we had an inkling of what might be at stake. As time passes and his Cabinet starts to take shape though, the 'what' we might lose looks to be every damb thing. 

Trying times are ahead, be the change. 

And while we're out there doing our thing, join the Injustice Boycott because social justice activism and political action are just as critical as economic independence.  

A Knowing

The point of creating stuff for others' consumption is to move the needle; to bend the arc of history as it were. History's arc, as I wrote a few weeks ago, does not bend on its own. Effort must be made. And so, writers write; musicians compose; artists paint; jewelers create; sculptors sculpt; impresarios create shows that bring various works together to generate thought, thought being the parent to action.  

All the writing and speaking of writers, comedians, musicians and thinkers of all stripes - color and otherwise - can bear no fruit if the land in which we plant is uncultivable; barren. Until the land upon which the seed falls is fertile, nothing will grow. 

I really want to believe that the land isn't uncultivable. I want to believe that the land is in fact rich and fertile, so fertile that even before the seeds are planted, the land knows what it must do. The land knows, likewise, the minds into which writers and artists attempt to pour their seeds already know the truth.

So the question is to be asked: why then is there so much resistance to the knowing? Why so much resistance to new knowledge? Why so much resistance to hearing a perspective that differs from your own?

A brilliant friend of mine suggested that there was a 'collective dissociation' at work with denialists. "As human beings on an individual level, we can dissociate from the awful things that might happen to us or things we might do [or might have done]", he suggested. "That dissociation", he went on to say "is like psychic amputation [severing the self from the act]. If this can happen individually, it sure as hell can happen collectively." This behavior is an act of psychic self-preservation. 

White supremacy knows what it has done. Supremacy knows what evil it has perpetrated and in whose name such evils have been perpetrated. Supremacy knows, but those who have benefited most from those acts don't want to. An entire industry of denialism[1] has sprung up to separate the beneficiaries from the roots of their benefits. Those who have even a passing understanding of the history really don't want to see in full; they don't want to hear the truth. And even before they've seen or heard the truth, they want to be absolved of all responsibility. They want the sweet comfort of forgiveness and forget-ness well before there is any acknowledgement of wrongdoing. This is why there is so much White fragility. No one wants to be confronted with the truth. And when confronted, ytpipo would rather say, as Tomi Lahren did on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, "What has the KKK done?". The rest of y’all ask, "What have I done, I never owned slaves?" when the truth is that what you want to say is, "Actually, you know what, I don't want to know, just forgive me and let's forget it. That's all so long ago, it hardly matters any more!"

Some of us have so dissociated from historical truth that we are now able to deny its very existence. You deny genocide; you deny brutality, even yesterday's, claiming that it was too long in the past to matter. You deny verifiable facts because we weren't ringside when they occurred. All of which allows you to pretend that we live in a perfect equal and just world......and then a man caught on videotape shooting a fleeing Black man in the back and then staging the crime scene gets a hung jury and your center cannot hold. But still you deny. Still you dissemble and split hairs. "We don't know what came before (the bits we see on video)!", you bellow, because you are convinced that something that happened out of sight is justification enough for what you do see.

Having learned to deny the realities of history, and hell, the realities you see on video, those ‘realities’ no longer exist. There are no more facts. Didn't one of the President-Elect's surrogates say exactly that? Facts no longer exist. The truth is no longer a thing. Supremacy has created an entire narrative that gives its adherents plausible deniability of real, provable facts never mind that that denial is simply not plausible.

My friend hypothesized that "deep in the psyche of every racist [sic] person is a knowing. Their psyches know that their views and potential actions are detrimental to other human beings." A knowing. We know when what we're saying dehumanizes or otherwise negatively impacts others. We know. 

We know when the policy we're advocating harms one group more than others as was the case with the surgically precise targeting of 'voter ID' laws in SC. We know. We know when our deals will likely negatively impact clean air or water supply but still we wail about the importance of such projects as Keystone XL and DAPL.  We know. We just don't care. Or perhaps it is that we do know and the outcome is precisely what we secretly want but we have good sense enough not to say so out loud? 

The problem, at the end of the day, is not the knowing, it's the caring and if you live in a land of intellectual dishonesty, you are predisposed not to care. You're quite content to demonize, otherize and dehumanize. Your issue isn't dissonance, it's dishonesty. 

Perhaps the land is, in fact, uncultivable. There are no words that I (or anyone else) can write to make another person care. The work required to reach a place of caring is not mine to do. I cannot write you a soul. That is work entirely yours to do. Good luck.

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[1] Industry of denialism: that would be the media – both traditional and non – whose entire raison d’être is to present a fiction-based narrative that counters lived reality. Who are the greatest prponents of this alternate reality? The Tomi Lahrens; Alex Joneses and Fox ‘News’-types

Hereafter Hustlin'

Since June, when Jesse L. Williams dropped serious lyrics on the BET Awards stage, I've been trying to find the words to write about Hereafter Hustling a term I got from him. 

In his speech, Williams referred to the hereafter as a hustle and that really resonated with me. Because my faith is not a Timex (it took a licking but did not keep ticking), I had some thoughts. But since I live in a universe full of Christians I thought I'd just hol' meh han' (keep my mouth shut).  Folk would not understand, and I didn't have the energy to fight. My biblical swash-buckling days are pretty much done.

But then........... 

But then, Walter Scott's murderer got a mistrial and his mother stepped up to the microphone to preach a sermon of "Jesus will set this straight" right after the verdict was read. There she was, singing "Oh Rest in the Lord, Wait Patiently for Him (Mendelssohn)" and I could only cringe and squirm and swallow the bile in my throat.

O Rest in the Lord - Elijah (Mendelssohn) - Cheryse McLeod Lewis

Honestly, I weep for us. Have we so lowered the bar for the recognition of our humanity in the world, that the best we can claim is "Jesus gon' get him"? Have we so bought into the religion of those who took us captive - both physically and mentally - that the best we can do is use that very religion as the path to our ultimate victory? Have we so misunderstood God that we really believe that the ONLY place where there will be peace for us is in a pine box or "Heaven"?

Ladies and gents, the Black Kumbaya chorus does not help. It does not advance our cause. While we are yet singing, another will be shot dead and we will be called upon to sing still one more verse.

I appreciate that you are a believer. I appreciate that you can set aside all the times when God chose not to intervene in mankind's affairs (Free Will and all that). I understand. But seriously, the "God is in control" line of reasoning strikes me as dangerous. God may well be in control in Heaven, but who's in control on the ground? Cuz it ain't lookin' much like it's Him.

The theology of "Let go, let God" doesn't work when you're in a car racing down an incline and your brake line has been cut. Letting go is the very last thing you want to do. America's brake line has been cut and we are careening downhill but y’all wanna holler "Jesus take the wheel?!?" Um, k. I guess. Me? I'm grabbing the wheel.