My CityZine Article About Obama and Wright

Save the Obama Drama For Yo Mama!

The Time.com headline said it all. Apparently, discussions about race are unheard of or, at least, unexpected in a post-Civil Rights era presidential election. Hence the reason for characterizing yesterday’s speech by the Democratic frontrunner as “Obama’s Bold Gamble on Race”. Why must it be both bold and a gamble to talk about race? Do you see a happy, melting potted citizenry in this country?

It all began with the sermons of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., now retired after decades on the pulpit at the Trinity United Church of Christ. Fox News, whether on television or online, depicts him as a hate-monger whose “inflammatory” oratory was simultaneously anti-American and anti-White. Other media outlets followed suit, condemning Obama for attending services at a church where the preacher’s use of black liberation theology was widely accepted. At first glance, with one’s God-given ability to think critically stuck in “Park” rather than shifted to “Drive,” Wright’s words are appalling:

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own backyard. America is chickens coming home to roost.”

These are the words Wright delivered after the World Trade Center was brought down by terrorists on September 11, 2001. Is he saying America deserved this tragedy? Hardly. What he is suggesting is that America cannot, in good conscience, think God blindly allows this country to contribute to the ills of this planet without some kind of reciprocation. Some refer to this as karma. The biggest irony about Wright’s statement is that the “chickens coming home to roost” wording also lead to the silencing of a major Civil Rights era figure over 40 years ago. In late 1963, Malcolm X referred to chickens coming home to roost when speaking about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Those words eventually led to his forced departure from the Nation of Islam. The fact that Reverend Wright was borrowing from a historical figure was apparently lost on the major media outlets, but it was patently clear to the people sitting in the church.

Wright’s sermons appear to be a study in theology and sociology. In his mind, and in the minds of others who practice black liberation theology, a sermon cannot address one without addressing the other. This is why Wright would stand on the pulpit and utter things like “Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger” without hesitation. As painful or distasteful as his statement was, it was still true.

Barack Obama refused to completely reject Reverend Wright. Obama used his eloquence to tell America what can be summed up in seven words in the vernacular of Black America: Don’t hate the player, hate the game. This country cannot survive if it continues to ignore issues of race. We are a nation that continues to identify itself as a country of immigrants, knowing full well that the ancestors of one segment of the population were brought here by force. Equating the Middle Passage with voluntary resettlement in a new country is one of the reasons why black liberation theology remains a constant in many black churches. Instead of being surprised at the mention of race in this election, Americans should demand that it be discussed openly by all of the candidates.

Where the Author Pauses Before Answering

My son posed an interesting question the other day. Not interesting for an adult, mind you, but it was something I hadn't expected to hear from my child at the tender age of 6. Upon looking at the box of a new toy and noticing the human hand in one of the pictures, he asked, "Why are there only white people on the toys and on TV?" Hmmmmm. Good question, young blood.

After praising him for his critical thinking abilities, I reminded him that there are black folks on the TV (although I know good and well that there aren't many of us on the commercials seen on Nickelodeon, Noggin, and the like). I told him the question he should also be asking is why there aren't any Asian and Latino kids represented in the commercials. In the end, I said his question was one he should never hesitate to ask. Ask me. Ask Dad. Ask his teachers. Put all of us grown-ups on the spot and make us stammer through sugar-coated explanations of racism.

My CityZine Article About View Park

Creating a Culture of Incarceration?

One of the most daunting tasks a parent will ever face is finding an acceptable daycare for her children. Kidshealth.org advises parents to “ensure that [their] child is safe and happy in a child care environment that is fun, educational and nurturing.” Child development experts in both the public and private sector share this sentiment. Why, then, would a state-licensed daycare facility surround itself—or, more specifically, its play yards—in barbed wire?

The daycare in question is not in Fallujah or along the Gaza Strip. It lies in the heart of a middle-class black neighborhood here in Los Angeles, a neighborhood that Wikipedia describes as “one of the wealthiest majority-African American areas in the United States.” View Park is considered one of L.A.’s best-kept secrets. Lying 20 minutes away from almost everything (the beach, Downtown, Hollywood and the South Bay), View Park defies all of the stereotypes Los Angelenos hold about black neighborhoods. It experienced “white flight” in the early 1960’s. Interestingly enough, white homeowners are now returning, having realized the home prices there are more affordable than they are in more well known areas. View Park is a bona fide neighborhood; the folks at one end of a block probably know the names of the majority of the people on their street. Neighbors actually wave and speak to one another (which is more than can be said for many other neighborhoods in Los Angeles). A friend who grew up in, and still lives in, View Park once described it as “Mayberry”.

The Mayberry we all know and love was protected by a sheriff who refused to carry a gun and deputy whose gun was unloaded (since the one bullet he was given rested in his shirt pocket). There were no episodes about Opie going to daycare and having to scale a fence topped with barbed wire when he got it in his cute little red head to run home for one of Aunt Bea’s perfect lunches.

No one can successfully argue that a daycare with barbed wire creates a healthy environment, let alone one that is fun or nurturing. Barbed wire is for felons, not for children. This country’s prison industrial complex was built, in part, on the assumption that blacks commit the majority of the crimes for which the punishment is a prison sentence. Statistics about black men and incarceration rates abound in the media. Most people, knowing no better, believe what they hear (and what they read). It is when one travels to neighborhoods like View Park that one begins to question these myths . . . until one comes upon the daycare and its barbed wire.

Many questions come to mind upon seeing the barbed wire at a place charged with the caring for children while their parents are at work. Why would the owners use such material on the facility’s fences? Someone suggested that there had been thefts of playground equipment in the past. There is a proper solution to that problem. It is called build a taller fence. Why do the parents continue to send their children to a place that obviously has so little respect for them or their children? (How do you think the parents in predominantly white or Jewish neighborhoods would react to a daycare surrounded by barbed wire? They would not stand for it.)


View Park is a wonderful neighborhood. The streets are quiet and the people are friendly. Most people who were born and raised there never leave. They’ve got a good thing in View Park and they know it. The only blot on the landscape is the children’s prison fronting as a daycare.

My Take on The Color Purple (for L.A. CityZine)

How does one in good conscience turn a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the difficult early 20th century lives of black women in particular and black people in general into a musical about love? Oprah Winfrey’s production of The Color Purple, which is currently at the Ahmanson Theatre, attempts to do just that. The fact that Oprah is able to sleep at night, basking in the glory of the musical’s success while ignoring its larger implications, is disturbing, but not surprising.

Thankfully, the musical remains loyal to the book’s basic plot. The story revolves around the love shared by two sisters, Celie and Nettie, who are separated during their teen years and spend much of their adult lives not knowing whether the other is alive or dead. Celie, the oldest, is essentially given away to an older man, Mister, who views her as nothing more than chattel in human form. Their marriage, if one can call it that, is one of convenience. For the privilege of having a roof over her head, she must tend to Mister’s farm, children and sexual needs. She must also endure beatings and the knowledge that she has two children, who are the product of rape by her stepfather, somewhere out in the world. Nettie, the younger sister, eventually runs away to escape that stepfather and settles in Africa working as a missionary, too far away to easily communicate with the sister she dearly loves. At the heart of the story are the letters the sisters pen to one another for decades, letters that never reach their recipients until the two are in middle age. Celie, the sister around whom the story revolves, survives her plight by following the examples set by the strong women in her life.

When viewed as simply a theatrical production, The Color Purple is quite good. Jeannette Bayardelle, who plays Celie, possesses both the voice and the stage presence necessary to move an audience to sympathy for this seemingly poor, dumb girl. Felicia P. Fields literally takes the stage by storm the minute Sofia, Celie’s daughter-in-law, makes her first appearance. Sofia as played by Fields is head and shoulders above Sofia as played by Oprah in the film version. This is no small feat; Oprah’s portrayal of Sofia was worthy of the critical acclaim it garnered. On the whole, the performances were wonderful, as were the staging and the costume design. Nevertheless, someone with a knowledge of history leaves the theater with a sense of disgust.

While love is a prominent theme in Alice Walker’s novel, it is not the only theme. Let us not forget that the novel, movie and musical are set at a time when blacks and whites lived in separate and unequal worlds where racism and the spectre of racially motivated violence were omnipresent. Readers of the novel cannot ignore the significance of the racial schisms that deeply influence the lives of the characters in both America and Africa. The musical is either unable or unwilling to venture too deeply into such waters. To call it a disappointment would be too kind an assessment. In its incarnation as a musical, The Color Purple devolves into a racial stereotype of the worst kind: that of darkies happily singing and dancing their way through life when there is very little to sing and dance about. Oprah and Quincy Jones (who is also one of the producers) ought to be ashamed of themselves. Their one-dimensional version of The Color Purple is an affront to those of us who believed depictions of black people on-screen and on-stage were moving forward. Where is August Wilson when you need him?

Tarred (Again) With a Broad Brush

From CNN.com:
Nobel winner in 'racist' claim row

* Story Highlights
* Museum cancels lecture by DNA scientists James Watson
* Nobel winner said in interview that black people less intelligent than whites
* Comments denounced as racist

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A British museum has canceled a lecture by Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, after he claimed black people are less intelligent than whites in a recent newspaper interview.

Watson, who won the 1962 Nobel prize for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, provoked a storm of criticism after his comments were published in the Sunday Times.

The eminent biologist told the British newspaper he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really."

Watson, 79, had been due to give a lecture at London's Science Museum on Friday but the museum canceled his appearance, saying his comments had "gone beyond the point of acceptable debate."

The American professor's words have been roundly condemned as "racist," with fellow scientists dismissing his claims as "genetic nonsense."

"He should recognize that statements of this sort have racist functions and are to be deeply, deeply regretted," said Professor Steven Rose of the British Open University.

Watson is credited with discovering the double helix along with Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick in 1962.

In the newspaper interview, he said there was no reason to think that races which had grown up in separate geographical locations should have evolved identically. He went on to say that although he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

The British government's skills minister, David Lammy, who is black, called the comments "deeply offensive" and said Watson would only succeed in providing oxygen for extremist political groups.

"It is a shame that a man with a record of scientific distinction should see his work overshadowed by his own irrational prejudices," Lammy told CNN.

Watson is not the first scientist to show sympathy for the theory of a racial basis for intellectual difference. In March of last year Dr. Frank Ellis from Leeds University provoked anger in Britain after he admitted he found evidence that racial groups perform differently "extremely convincing."

What Did You Wear Today?

Wear black, they said. I was down with that. The only problem was my limited wardrobe. The first black shirt I put on I took off some minutes later when I noticed that some thing took little bites out of it when I wasn't paying attention. There was only one other black top I could wear and it's been sitting in the closet for a good two years. (I kid you not! I am a woman who prefers jeans, shorts and flip flops to clothing considered fashionable.) I prefer not to wear black in real life. Black only looks good on women whose looks need no assistance from their clothing. I am not one of those women. Today, I made an exception. Black clogs. Black skirt. Black top. I wanted to pull the locks back too, but everything I use for that purpose is colorful. The locks were set free for today.

At work, I saw only one other black person in black. What's that about? There aren't many of us there. Still, word gets around. Others knew, but chose to resist. One brotha, who was apparently too much of a punk ass to tell me his reasoning, told someone else that people didn't know the whole story. What did he tell me? I'm Jamaican, not black. This was the first time in many years that the words "Uncle Tom" came to mind.

My mother hadn't heard about the call for black. I told her, in complete seriousness, that she would get a pass. She'd already experienced enough in her 76 years. As far as I'm concerned, her generation has nothing to prove. They lived it. Nevertheless, when I saw her later in the day, she was in black. She was nice enough to mention she was even wearing black underwear.

When I was in college, I took a history class that finally provided me with a comprehensive overview of the Civil Rights struggles in the 50's and 60's. I remember calling home and asking my mother if she'd participated. When she said she hadn't, I think I had the nerve to be appalled. I assumed every black person in the country rushed to the South to be part of the protests. Now, I'm a mother who's cognizant of the history being made in Louisiana of late. And . . . I get it. I wore black out of solidarity. It's not like I was going to get on one of the buses going down there, not with a job, a husband and a child in school. I realized that some of us must continue to live our lives while the others man the front lines. I'm the same woman my mother was in the 60's. I've got to take care of mine and yet support the struggle as best I can from afar. I wore black. My husband wore black. My mother wore black. I took my son to school, went to work, picked my child up, and went back to his school later for Open House before finally taking off all this black. Today, that was the most and the best I could do.

The Burden

I heard something interesting on Democracy Now the other day. The mother of one of the Jena 6 said that her son hadn't initially understood the meaning of the nooses hanging from the tree at the high school. When I first heard this, I was taken aback. How can any black person, especially a brother in the South, not know the significance of a noose?

After my initial shock, I realized this speaks to something I've wrestled with as both a black person and a mother of a black son. How much of our history, particularly the unpleasant aspects (i.e., those involving violence against us), should we force upon our children and the generations to follow? My reasoning is this: blackness in America, while something about which to be proud, is in many ways a burden. When you know too much, you carry an indescribable weight on your back. When you know too little, the rest of us want to kick your black ass and then shake some sense into you.

What will I tell my son? How will I tell my son? When will I tell my son? When will I tell my son that there was a time in this country that black men and women were punished for being black by being hung from a tree after ungodly atrocities were visited upon them? I don't know. But I will tell him. After that, it becomes a matter of degree. I don't want him to carry that burden. As humans, we all live with our burdens regardless of our race. My goal is to make my son's load as light as possible. He must know the past, but he needn't be so well-versed in our history that he is unable or unwilling to understand that his future isn't necessarily determined by it.

The More Things Change . . .

The Talented Tenth

W.E.B. DuBois wrote this in 1903. What scares me is that it may be too late for us, as a race, to be saved by our "Talented Tenth". (Although he uses this term to refer only to men, I'm going to ignore his misogynistic bent. The women of our race continue to distinguish themselves both for their fortitude and their ability to succeed.)

The introduction reads as follows: The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools — intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it — this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life.

This is his conclusion: Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply teach work — it must teach Life. The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.

My concern, as both a black person in 2007 and member of the Talented Tenth, is that DuBois' contention is no longer relevant. Is there still such a thing as the Talented Tenth? Decades after the end of Jim Crow, segregation, and The Black Panthers, we seem to moving backwards rather than forward. We are divided by our socioeconomic status, by our region of origin, by our generation gaps and by our stubborn insistence on pat definitions of blackness. If there is no Talented Tenth, where does that leave us?