OK folks…it seems as if the administration’s anti-“illegal” immigration initiative has dropped right off of this (mostly) safely white, Western-European descended blog in favor of the usual heartfelt hopes that BushCo will drop off of the face of the earth and we’ll be able to once again safely talk on the phone and not jump every time we hear a loud noise in the fear that it’s some kind of payback from a few of the billions of brownish people that the U.S. has murdered and robbed over the past 300 years or so.
Racism is America’s Original Sin, and it is not even slightly expiated yet.
So let me remind you, in case it has slipped your mind since May 1st…the war against the brownish continues apace.
More below
Donkeytale posted a short diary regarding a USA Today article that points out the dramatic rise in Hispanic home ownership over the past couple of years in the US.
Meanwhile, our lovely DemRats in Congress are not even BEGINNING to start a realistic opposition to BushCo’s plans to close the Mexican border and deport every goddamned wetback who ever had the courage and vision to flee a country that we were largely responsible for fucking up in the first place and the native intelligence to know that “legal” means were all but closed to him. (Go here for about 750 articles on Butchie’s threat to mobilize the National Guard to stop these ruffians from intruding on the U.S.A.’s (United States of Aryans) glorious freemarket republic and outhustling the dregs of what is left of our European-ancestried working class.)
Let me tell you something.
If the same immigration was happening from the Great White North, NOTHING would be said. This is RACE based. Most of our leaders…on BOTH sides, unfortunately…are flat-out racists.
Worse…many of them don’t even know it.
But that’s OK, because obviously most of their followers are racists, too.
Including many God-fearing, goodhearted people who post on blogs, apparently.
Culturalists, at the very least.
On the evidence.
On the evidence of almost no posts regarding this BushCo push.
I have said this here before, and I will say it again.
The Hispanic population of this country is our ONLY hope of survival as a nation. As have been immigrant groups for hundreds of years. The Black culture is in disarray, and it is KEPT that way by the PermaGov. The various Asian cultures have the same kind of work ethic as do the Hispanic ones…as has had EVERY successful immigrant group in America…but they do not have the numbers.
If S.E. Asia and Korea and China had contiguous borders with the U.S…THEN maybe. But not now.
So this USA Today article states that:
Asians also are bigger players. Nguyen, a common Vietnamese surname, moved from 23rd to 14th.
In California, almost 28% of home buyers are Hispanic, and the five most common surnames are Hispanic. Only one was in the top five in 2000.
The changes are dramatic elsewhere, too. No Hispanic surnames appeared in the top five in Illinois in 2000. Now, Garcia is third and Rodriguez fifth. Nevada went from zero to three and New Jersey from one to three. “It’s startling how rapid the changes are,” says Dowell Myers, a housing demographer at the University of Southern California. “People assume that Latinos are poor and that they’re not a factor in homeownership. They’re really integrating economically.”
The rate of homeownership among the nation’s 42.7 million Hispanics hit a record 50% in the last quarter of 2005, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Yup.
The white corporate aristocracy is scared stiff. They wink-wink-nudge-nudged for 40 years as Central, Caribbean and South Americans poured over the borders to fill the shit jobs that white Americans would not do and black Americans increasingly COULD not do because the power-that-be had quite purposely crippled their culture with drugs and bad education out of fear that a black uprising (Violent OR vote-based) would tilt the balance of power away from their own tranced-out base. And now, suddenly…
“DUH!!! These people are SUCCEEDING!!!”
As if this could have been missed had they simply stepped out of their goddamned limousines and walked among the people of any upward-striving Hispanic community in America over the past 35 years or so.
I am a latin musician of Northern European ancestry. I stepped into the culture in the early ’60s, when a tour for a “big-time” latin band from NY would consist of one day in Chicago and one in Boston. Believe it. In barrios.
25 years later I toured as many as 6 months a year inside of the U.S. with Tito Puente. Admittedly, he was a crossover artist to some degree, but let me tell you…when you play a club in Salt Lake City and find about 1000 NYC born and bred Puerto Ricans there, ALL making a good living in the once-whitest city on earth…baby, the diaspora done HAPPENED.
And the Puerto Ricans were just the first.
Then came the Cubans, the Mexicans, the Dominicans, the Central Americans from ALL over…
Two generations and out of the barrio.
In my area, out to Long Island, up the Hudson…gone to college, got a law degree, moved to Phoenix or wherever.
BET on it.
NOW these fools in DC realize their error.
Hell…I have been working as a musician in DC for 20 years. Regularly. All they had to do was leave their safe K Street cigar havens and go over to a restaurant and entertainment neighborhood called Adams Morgan. Every second restaurant is Central American, and the people who own them are THRIVING!!!
As the above article further states:
Yup.
That’s OK when it’s Koreans and Vietnamese in the tens of thousands.
But multi-millions?
“YIKES!!! We done fucked UP!!!” say the Ratpubs and their allied DemRats.
“WE gots to put some TROOPS out there!!! STOP this shit. I mean…WHAT IF THEY START TO VOTE!!!”
Yeah.
What if?
But why would they vote Democratic?
How many Dems are willing to stand up in Congress and say “NO!!!” about this?
They won’t say no about the war.
They won’t say it about rotten appointments or rotten financial bills or rotten health care legislation.
Why expect them to do anything about THIS little problem?
They’ve got more IMPORTANT things on their minds.
Like getting a white Democrat who favors a continuation of economic imperialism by gentler means into the White House in ’08.
Disgusting on the face of it.
Once again…we need a new party.
Sorry, folks.
No more time to waste maneuvering around the DINOs in charge.
There is a coalition of so-called “minorities” just WAITING for a candidate and a party that represents THEM.
It is the Minority MAJORITY in this country now.
Hispanic, Black, female, young, working class of ALL races, traditional liberals.
As the Democratic Party …led by assholes like THESE…
(The [Current] Gang of Four)
resist Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy (An approach that necessarily includes many states where Hispanics are actually IN THE MAJORITY despite the skewed census numbers.) in favor of the same old same old “centrist” (Read “white”, because the “center” IS white by self-definition.) power politics that have made the Democratic Party a permanent underclass of its very own.
I say again.
Look within, white folks.
Racism is America’s original sin, and just like the Catholic version, it ain’t whatcha DID…it’s just there.
Electing oreos like Barack Obama ain’t it, either.
When was the last time HE stood up except to go to a caucus of Caucasians and promote his own career by VERY carefully toeing the DINO party line?
“Yassuh, boss!!! NOW kin I run for Vice-President?”
I haven’t seen it.
The so-called “minorities” are ALREADY a majority here in the U.S.
Deal with it.
Or get your ass whupped again by the Rats.
BET on it.
VAYA!!!
AG
P.S. And finally…if you REALLY understand anything about America, check this out.
THE “American pastime” finally allowed a Hispanic to run a ballclub.
Oscar Minaya w/the Mets.
And he immediately went out and unapologetically hired a whole BUNCH of his hermanos plus a young black manager who had been dissed as too…face it, too well spoken, too uppity, too proud, too independent…by almost every major league team that has needed a manager for about 10 years.
They are BURNING!!!
From worst to best in one year.
Now maybe it won’t last.
Maybe not THIS year, anyway.
But…
“HOW ABOUT THEM METS!!!”
The DemocRatpublican Party is JUST like major league baseball. A bunch of rich white people trying to get over.
The first part of that one-party system that realizes the truth of the matter will be in first place one year later.
“HOW ABOUT DEM DEMS!!!” “
That would be nice.
Or…
NEWPARTY ’08!!!/NUEVOPARTIDO ’08!!!
“HOW ABOUT DEM NUEVOS!!!”
THAT would be nice, too.
Watch.
(Tips, please…)
And recs, too.
We need to become more inclusive.
Before we find ourselves totally excluded/
AG
careful, there, your majesty, the last time we riffed off each other like this we both ended up banned at DKOS by dhinmi. Gone but not forgotten. HAHA
Ah but I was so much older then
Im younger than that now
What the hell…
There’s always tomorrow.
AG
Are you sure about that?
Well…if not…
My ol’ granpappy used to say “Everything gets better except the last thing. And after that, you don’t have to worry anymore.”
Just had a phone conversation with his daughter, my 91 year old, fightin’ mad mother.
She said the same damned thing in a different way.
Must be genetic.
AG
my mother, donkette, is pissed off most of the time too.
Is it generic or oedipal?
Maybe we can get a group therapy rate from Dr. Freud?
Say, donkeytale.
How about a recommendation?
I’ve got one from dada, and another couple might put this up on the rec board where maybe a few people might have their eyes opened a little bit.
(We do what we can…)
AG
You are a shameless whore
Done.
Shameless…maybe. (I prefer the word “guiltless”, myelf.)
Ho’?
No.
AG
there is only one without guilt and it aint you or me, I am afraid to say
None of us are “guilty”, donkeytale.
Well…very damned few, anyway.
Sperm meets egg, and there y’are. Hitler, Mother Terersa or JoJo The Dog Faced Boy.
Always born into interesting times. The times work on you, and you do their bidding as your genes permit.
To be “guilty”, you first have to be conscious.
Of this one fact.
We are almost all as automatic as a tree or a rock.
Once THAT fact dawns on you…THEN guilt is possible. If you try to ignore that fact or if you use that knowledge in the pursuit of devolutionary aims.
Everyone else…they are as “guilty” of their acts as they are guilty of being a certain height or having a certain size and type of nose.
Sperm meets egg, and there y’are.
Or as the guiltless one to whom I believe you refer was rumored to have once said:
“Forgive them, Lord. They know not what they do.”
Yup.
AG
I don’t think it would be possible to be more condescending than this. Congratulations. You win the Ignoble Award for condescension.
I, and Man Egee, and Duke1776, and many others have been posting many many diaries and posts about the immigration issue. I don’t see that you have added anything real to the debate, just a lot of steam.
White people don’t have a monopoly on racism, by the way. Anti-white diatribes like this have the same smell.
I smell dead white people. Cause of death:
cultural, societal arteriosclerosis
of the soul
comorbidity:
undescended testicles
I am not being anti-white.
I am merely stating tha facts as I have seen them over 40 years of looking.
And that old saw about racism being a two way street?
Sorry, baby.
Y’got yer offensive racism and yer defensive variety.
The minorities in this country have never had a CHANCE to develop many offensive racism skills, because they have been too busy defending themselves any damned way that they could. Which admittedly means building a distrust that borders on hatred for white Americans in general among many members of minorities. Especially those who are held in economic servitude through the use of ghettoizationn and its invariable companions, bad education and worse drugs. But from personal experience as a white man who has lived (and made his living on a daily basis for 40 years) in several black, brown and beige cultures, all I can say is that if the amount and seriousness of the “racism” that I have experienced in those cultures were to be turned around and applied to the minorities of this country by the white majority then the racial problems that we now have would literally disappear overnight.
No comparison.
Believe it.
Once I prove that I am IN the culture…that I value it and respect it, that many of my models and teachers are and have been members of that culture…then I’m OK. Good to go.
However, a Black person or visually identifiable Hispanic can go to Harvard, get a law degree, buy a Brooks Brothers suit and when he or she walks into a situation that is primarily white…or worse, drives through a neighborhood…well, you know the drill.
Cynthia McKinney sure as hell does.
As far as your diaries are concerned…I am speaking of today. And by extension I am speaking of almost EVERY day.
Of the 77 diaries available on the first page of BooTrib, only 3 have to do with ANYTHING Hispanic. Or racial minority in ANY sense as far as the domestic scene is concerned.
And mine is one of them.
One is about the Hispanic boom into the middle class…good on ya, donkeytale…and one is about South America.
If I were a REALLY sympathetic scorer, I would say that BooTrib is batting about .039 on the matter.
And except for a couple of days around the boycott/march efforts in the last weeks, that average sounds about right generally.
However…the “problem” of racism is more like about 50% of what is wrong with this country.
More, actually.
Since World War II, if we could adequately tote up the various shades of complexion of “enemy” casualties in our various wars of aggression (overtly miltary, covertly so, and/or that most pernicious of wars, the economic one) and make a shade that matched the average…how dark do YOU think that shade would be?
Yup.
About the same shade as Muhammad “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger” Ali.
I am not trying to “condescend” to you, Arminius.
Just bringing the facts home as I see them.
Like it or lump it.
The fact is, racism on EVERY level is what is poisoning this culture.
Not that people of other races are BETTER in a genetic or talent sense than whites. That would be “anti-white”.
Just that on the level of sheer human ecology we are wasting the talents of some 40% or 50% of our population. And wasting the LIVES of some greater percentage of the REST of the world.
Stealing from them.
Murdering them.
And even among the BEST of us…largely ignoring them.
Just like on this blog.
I am here to point this out today.
As nicely as I can.
It is not a “nice” situation.
Sorry.
Don’t diss the messenger.
Later…
AG
Not to toot my own horn, but I was posting diaries on immigration way back in 2004 before the election.
Naive me thought this would be a good issue for Kerry. Turns out the only thing he knew about hispanics are his wife’s gardeners.
TOOT Toot.
Dont let Arminius get you down. He is a good man, too, possibly confused about events preceding beyond his control (on the other hand, he could be a she, in which case she is automatically smarter than he-huh?). Besides, that Ignoble Award is MINE. Lifetime Achievement.
“VOTE ONLY BY MAIL!” “Vote only by mail!”
donkeytale, I’ve read many of your diaries and I’m sorry I didn’t include your name. I also got Duke’s nick wrong.
FWIW, I had many opportunities to make really big bucks working for the powers, including a lawyer job at the most profitable law firm in D.C. which I quit in disgust after just a few months, taking a humbler job in immigration law that paid 30 percent of the previous salary.
Based on religious conviction, I turned my back on money and power in order to work to help foreigners, most of whom are brown and most of whom are not Christian. I know hundreds of white people with similar callings, most much nobler than me. Therefore, for personal reasons, I hate these kneejerk, overly broad anti-white diatribes. They are so tiresome. They sound like Angela Davis from 1970.
I have similar sentiments to much of the content of such diatribes, which is why I spend all my time on lefty blogs and none on winger blogs; however, I’m more precise: I vent my spleen at a subset of white people, which I prefer to call the “knotheads.”
No doubt my feelings here are less principled and less artistic than Arthur’s. But that’s how I feel.
Arminius…
It isn’t ABOUT whose name gets included.
It is about who…and what…gets EXCLUDED.
And I repeat…this blog bats about .039 on “minority” issues.
Not that what is said is necessarily “wrong”…there’s just not much said at all.
Bigger fish to fry, etc.
Like complaining about the media’s perfidy.
As if THAT’S news!!!
And your list of all the good work you’ve done…it really doesn’t mean much to me. Not because it’s not good work, just because the internet is not reliable in this sense. I have no idea whether you “did” that or not., For all I know you could be some KKK plant trying to stir things up. (Not that I think you are…)
So you, like myself, must be judged on what you say and how you say it.
Like what you wrote here.
“Angela Davis” and “tiresome”.
Like this?
Radical simply means “grasping things at the root.”
We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.
Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work.
Tiresome, eh?
She put her corporeal ASS on the line for what she believed. I would NEVER call someone’s expressions “tiresome” who had walked where she has walked, in her shoes.
Never.
You also write:
Well, sir…I am venting MY spleen at a HUGE portion of the subset of white people called “liberals”.
While you were suffering at 30% less salary than you might have made in “most profitable law firm in D.C.” (What’s that, “only” $105,000 per year instead of $150,000? Plus of course health care and retirement benfeits) …a position you “earned” at least partially by being able to fairly easily get an education that prepared you to be a big time DC lawyer…some millions of minority kids didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of even learning how to speak like a TV announcer, let ALONE spend 8 years in finishing school.
From the beginning of slavery right up until the present, a white child from a working class or higher family who wasn’t a TOTAL fuckup has had a damned good chance of growing up and earning a decent living. And it doesn’t take a WHOLE lot of brains for a white kid to become a relatively wealthy professional, either, if he or she can afford the education and manage to get Cs at a mediocre school.
Do you have ANY IDEA how far those goals are from all but the MOST exceptionally gifted (and luckier than hell as well) ghetto kids? They are beyond even IMAGINING.
I was teaching in a ghetto grade school recently…subbing for a friend who teaches music after school. One of my students was a young girl who is named after a soft drink. Yup. Sad but true. She is smart, super energetic, 12 years old and talented. I subbed a number of times, and since it is one on one and two on one teaching, I got to know the kids pretty well. This girl reads poetry for fun, expresses herself VERY well, and shows real understanding of how things work on the social level of that ghetto school. Which means that she takes no shit and can get quite aggressive at times if it looks like that’s her way to get over.
We started to talk about what she wanted to do with her life. I figured her for a high aspirations. She’s got the talents for them. Her eyes got a little dreamy and she said that maybe she’d like to work as a cashier at chain store of some kind.
I had to fight back tears.
And there it is.
Bad human ecology.
ANOTHER loss to society.
If she makes it THAT far.
Another girl the same age asked me if I wanted to hear a poem she had written about love. I said…”You’re in 6th grade. What do YOU know about love?” And then she read me the poem.
She’s been to all the bad places and back.
Already.
And they are not alone.
They are in the MAJORITY in their little patch of project-life society.
Bad human ecology.
Tragically bad.
As I re-read your replies to my comments, I find myself getting really angry.
So I will stop here, Arminius.
I have had my say, and I really do not expect you to hear it.
Venting is not necessarily the best tactic in these matters (as I have found out through WAY too much experience), so I am through.
Best of luck.
AG
Arthur,
I apologize.
I would like to have your friendship. Please don’t ostentatiously reject it.
I have read this response of yours several times. I’m drinking beer after an energetic day of mowing and housework. I’m tired. I’m sorry to make you angry.
We are allies. We shed tears over exactly the same things.
There is a 12-year-old black girl whom I myself, and my wife, are doing our best to help. She’s the adopted daughter of a friend of ours, who has had her family go into chaos for many reasons. She is brilliant. And she has no vision of a future. She has had advantages far beyond the girl you describe, and still no hope.
I’ll stop.
Sorry to object to your passionate diary.
Arminius
You got to remember AG is a jazz player. He is riffing. Dont take it too personally
Like me, he actually has a lifetime of experience from the bottom looking up. Our perspective is a bit different from the younger generation.
Just like the illegados you try to help—many embody the highest of “conservative” ideals, strong religious faith, strong desire to better themselves through their own efforts. Many of them will. Their children will do even better.
Many may eventually come to the Republican party and even protestantism! Thats another small trend I see developing out here in the wilderness. Born again Mexicans. Madre maria!
Asians I know HATE lazy incompetence. The leader of S. Korea was recently thrown out of office because the public felt he spent too much time golfing! Naturally, the ones I know have nothing but contempt for Bush.
Trouble is , they are finding it hard to pick out any American politicians to respect….
I have read yours too and recommended. You are to be highly commended for following the legal path away from the obvious, easy riches to HELPING CREATE THE FUTURE. Many many thanks to the doers out there
My perspective on this is highly personal–grown up in a part of LA that is 90% or more Mexican immigrants, mostly illegados. Married to a South Korean who has worked extensively within her own community to assist with legal immigration.
They will not be stopped–although events since 9/11 have been detrimental–they will not be stopped.
And shouldnt be.
Great diary, Arthur.
Oh, and no Iraqi ever called me a feminazi, either.
The beautiful thing is that no matter which side you come down on, the cognitively dissonant right or the caught-off-guard-again left (the “movement” isnt really theirs any more. Surprise!), the immigrants are here to stay and they will continue to poor across the border from all parts of the world. And yes, the negative reaction will ALWAYS be against ONLY those with darker skin tones.
When they stop coming is when we should start to worry.
Open your eyes and open your arms. We must embrace the future, not live in the past. Isnt that what “progressivism” is supposed to be all about?
Whatever muddled piece of ineffectual legislation eventually comes out of DC is already made irrelevant and already beside the point in the face of this mass and unstoppable globalist movement.
The Black culture is in disarray, and it is KEPT that way by the PermaGov.
Please explain. That is such a broad statement. Is this by way of Cosby School of Why Black Folks are Fucked Up? The Clarence Thomas school of I’m-really-a-nationalist-b/c-I-said-I-was-down-with-Malcolm X-once?
Or are you referring to fucked up jail/prison sentences?
It is from the school of believing that the PermaGov decided that the ongoing black culture in the late ’60s/early ’70s was the single most threatening part of the society regarding the aims of said PermaGov…which are basically elitist in content and fascist in practice…and literally flooded the ghettoes of America with drugs in an attempt to simultaneously disarm that threat and keep a permanent underclass in place so that they would have untouchables who could be forced to do the shit work of society at slave wages.
And they were successful.
For several generations, much of the flower of that society has now been either drugged out into total helplessness/death or confined in prisons because they went totally nuts when they saw what was going down at about the age of 10 and couldn’t handle it.
We tend to forget today how highly functional and honorable large segments of that society were throughout the entire period of segregation/early Civil Rights movement times, and how well it was working. As evidence of that I submit that it had produced an artistic culture that was as strong or stronger than any other in the history of the country, that leaders were arising who understood the power of their people and were being successful in harnessing that power for the good of those people, and that the level of organization among the Black population was rising at the same rate as was its level of anger and frustration. When that anger overflowed after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, it damned near shut down this country. Soon after…crack appeared. Better drugged out than dangerous, and there were always the wetbacks to do the shit work.
And the church-based, well functioning Black urban middle class cracked under the pressure. I was there, AP. I SAW IT HAPPEN.
I was there in Indianapolis, in Harlem, in Atlantic City and in Roxbury. And in smaller towns like Freeport and Roosevelt, Long Island. An outsider who was privileged to be IN the culture to some degree, but with eyes that saw from a different perspective than those of someone who was truly OF the culture. I saw it happen. When I entered that culture…say 1960 when I first started going to primarily Black jazz clubs and sitting in…every Black neighborhood, small city and large, had an ongoing social system that worked. It was informal and largely based around churches and meeting places like barbershops, bars and restaurants, but it goddamned well worked, given the segregationist social conditions under which its members lived.
Read almost any of the Easy Rawlins novels by Walter Mosely to get a good sniff of what was up then. Mosely lived through it and has the talent to sketch it out really well. He is often considered a “mystery writer” but he is SO much more than that. Mosely is a great historical novelist who uses the mystery/crime genre as a way to sell books, and reading Easy Rawlins on one side of the collapse/Socrates Fortlow on the other (“Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned”) is the best substitute for actually having been there that exists, as far as I am concerned. Plus the great non-fiction book “Black Like Me”, by the white writer John Howard Griffin who in 1959 dyed his skin brown and walked through the mirror of segregation into the other side in the pre-“civil rights” segregated south.
Now?
That culture is gone, gone, gone. Largely shattered into competing shards of projectized, ghettoized, media-poisoned poverty and upwardly mobile, let’s get the fuck away from these drugs and gangs suburbanized middle class wannabes.
PermaGov 1, America 0.
So it goes.
Please explain?
That’s about the best I can do.
Hope it’s sufficient.
If not…I leave you with the words of the great Harlem pianist Fats Waller, who when asked to define swing, said “If you don’t know…I can’t tell you.”
Black Zen.
Yup.
Later…
AG
P.S. And FUCK Clarence Thomas and Bill Cosby.
Fuck ’em BOTH.
(I cain’t he’p mahse’f!!!”)
How the PermaGov Murdered the Black Culture
AG
…I’m home, finishing a Mother’s Day meal, so forgive my thoughts if they are scattered.
First of all, I AM Black, so when I see statements liked the one I italicized, I’m suspicious. Now because I’m familiar with your writing and POV, I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions immediately. So many ways to interpret.
Now, the only reason I wasn’t there is because I wasn’t born. My parents grew up in Bombingham and weren’t afraid to tell me about the cross burnings, the bombings, and IIRC, a castration. To this very day, Mom hates German Shepards. To this very day, footage showing the great American savagery on its own people shakes her, upsets her.
In fact, Mom & Dad just visited a park two summers ago for the FIRST TIME EVER because when they were children, they couldn’t go.
Which I suppose was in some ways worse: you grew up walking to school while other kids were on buses; using their hand-me-down books, etc. and you were used to that–but damn near every kid loves to go to a park!
But not you.
My Mom also took part in some non-violent protests, too. Even met Dr. King once (that I know of). She got in major trouble with my Grandma for doing so…she wasn’t crazy; she knew she could have gotten hurt or killed. But, she wasn’t a big name or other big wig grand poobah. She was just a pissed off kid. This ain’t no fucking Condi Rice story here. My family was, ahem … on the other side of the proverbial tracks. Happy (in the sense of how a deer eats) but not a lot of money.
My Dad, OTOH, was po’. He said he didn’t realize he was poor until he was in high school. Had lots of siblings; his Mom died when he was 15. I’ve never seen a picture of her. Grew up in a shack, basically, but at least they could grow some of their own food. But with seven other hungry mouths… Again–happy, but in the sense of how a deer eats.
Of course, they got the hell out on the first thing smoking. They knew there wouldn’t be anything there for them. And they were prescient…ever take the train from DC to NYC? It’s the industrial wasteland tour, haunted with the ghosts of jobs that no longer exist. And it looks the same in Birmingham. Maybe not out in the burbs or by the university, but in towns you’ve never heard of like Bessemer and Ensley. Nothing there.
Anyway…they got out, came further north and set up a home after Dad’s enlistment. Probably half the folks in our neighborhood were here thanks to the local military installation. And when my parents started a family, they were determined to make damned sure they we didn’t go through the same shit.
So yeah, I’m pretty middle class. I make no apologies for it. That shit wasn’t easy for my parents who worked their asses off for us.
Luckily, we didn’t have to see what Vietnam actually did to the people shipped over, but we knew. I knew economic dislocation, but luckily my Dad stayed one foot in front of it. I knew what it was to be a so-called “latchkey kid”–I thought it meant I was more grown up and responsible. (Who knew you were supposed to be too dumb to boil water until your 3rd year of college???) I came of age in the 80s–I didn’t know how bad the crack war was until I was in college. In the age of crack babies and mandatory minimums that we KNEW were a bad idea, but Black folks were scared as shitless as everyone else.
[It’s so funny you mention the drug war–one of the local stations showed New Jack City last night. A subtle movie, it ain’t, but it IS effective in what it’s trying to say.]
Reagan/Bush, OTOH, I KNEW was fucked up. And the parents didn’t sugarcoat that, either. They were age-appropriate, but still.
So where am I going with all this? (Like I said, I’ve got an eye on their laptop and another on the food. I’m at their house today.)
You won’t find anyone more critical of “us” than me. There’s a lot of shit I just do not like: the homophobia on acid; “spitting acid” on black women; being so heavenly-mind we’re no earthly good–except to build yet bigger buildings to glorify self…ahem, the Lord; the “I got mine mentality” of some.
But there ARE other stories of our perseverance out there. I just gave you one. I’m admittedly biased, but I am damned proud, too. They are neither titled nor credentialed. But they had a vision and worked hard for it.
Not everyone is mired in hopeless despair. All is NOT lost. Now, we have a whole lot of shit to do, and it often seems overwhelming. But I take issue with the characterization. I know it’s serious. Quite frankly, it’s daunting. Fighting corrupt governmental policies and then fighting for your community? Tiring, to say the least.
Too many are lost. Which is NOT to say that all is lost. There is a difference.
For my part, I will not squander what my parents worked for. But I will do more than that–I will continue to work for a better tomorrow, in whatever form it presents itself. Sorry I can’t be any clearer than that. I often think that Dr. King had it right when he asked if “we are integrating a burning house.” So we’ll take what comes and do the best we can.
OK, I have to take the casserole out. I hope this makes sense to more folks than me.
But that’s OK, too.
AP…
I did not say that individuals…or even individual segments of Black society…did not survive.
The phrase you italicized was this:
“The Black culture is in disarray, and it is KEPT that way by the PermaGov.”
The “culture” of which I speak is the one that produced Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes, that magnificent socio-musical structure known variously as jazz, blues, R+B, Latin music, etc. The one from which geniuses like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane sprang, the one that produced leaders of such stature, vision and courage as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and most importantly, the one that produced a community in every town, village and city of America that had a Black neighborhood which helped about 15 generations of people make it through one of the most oppressive societies ever known to mankind in relatively good spirits.
And I stand by that statement now. In its entirety. Sure there are suburban and even urban pockets of hope. But they are not a culture. Not in a national, universal sense. Read Malcolm X where he speaks about what it was like to be in Roxbury and go to hear and see the great bands of the swing era. The oneness that the people felt. Read him about his experiences and emotions when he first arrived in Harlem, that Paris of upward-striving Black culture at the time. Read the enormously moving experiences of John Howard Griffin in the book “Black Like Me”…a white man who dyed his skin, passed as Black in the segregated 1959 South and discovered the compassion and love Black strangers had for one another when confronted by the monstrous evils of segregation and racial hate.
And then…go out into America and try to find similar situations.
From Duke Ellington and Miles Davis to gangsta rap.
From mutual love and assistance in the face of oppression to “BITCH slap that crack ‘ho!!! I want mine, now, and FUCK anybody who gets in my way!!!”
And this movement away from social sanity has been promoted and encouraged in every way possible by the Permanent Government and its publicity/programming arm, the Corporate Media. Bad food, bad drugs, bad education, bad culture. On a MASSIVE scale.
BET on it.
Like a starfish on an oyster, it apllied the pressure from every direction until the shell cracked open and the juices ran out.
THAT is what I was saying.
Happy Mother’s Day to you and to anybody else of ANY race who has managed to remain line-level sane inside of this society.
I salute you one and all.
Later…
AG
“P.S. And FUCK Clarence Thomas and Bill Cosby.
Fuck ’em BOTH.”
…and long live Michael Eric Dyson !
I also think it’s about racism, but I don’t think there’s anything so ‘simple’ about it. There are other reasons thrown in.. and drawing those out from from a fear of those that are ‘not us’ is difficult.
If you go back in US history you will find the same pattern repeated. At one time the Irish were not considered “white”, for example.
New groups arrive, they are accused of various things and discriminated against. They work hard, make enough money to move out of the slums, get some political and economic power and become part of the mainstream.
This has worked with every group, except blacks who are still at a disadvantage after 200 years.
There seems to be much heat but little light in this thread, so I’ve posted some facts in this diary:
Immigration “Facts” Debunked
The Black population finds it harder to pass as white. (Duh.)
Thus the “disadvantage”.
And brother Feinman…where there is heat there is energy. Use that energy to MAKE light if you so desire.
But don’t put it down.
AG